Law and Art

A few years ago, when I was in my second year of Law School, I heard about a brand new extracurricular activityand decided to join: it was a group called Law and Art. The idea was to find different ways to combine law and art and organize seminars every week in order to present our work to the public. Law and Art group was funded by the University's librarian, together with some Civil Law Teachers and also some students. I have always liked art, so I was very enthusiastic to take part in a group that would let me express myself while doing something related to my studies as well.

I was part of Law and Art for two years, but last year I couldn't attend their meetings or present something, because I was an erasmus student in Spain. However, this year we are about to start our sessions again and, hopefully, I will be a part of them once more. But, in case I am not inspired enough to propose a theme, I will definitely attend the others' presentations. Our first meeting is this Saturday and if by any chance you are an erasmus student in Athens and would be interested to see how we work, you could contact me! On the first meeting, we discuss our ideas and propose the potential subjects we'd like to talk about or organise a seminar or event. Until now, we would get together on Thursday afternoons, in a University's room. I don't know on which day we'll be having our meetings this year, but we usually choose one specific day each week, so that it wouldn't be confusing to the non-members who want to attend them.Here, I will write some examples of how this group used to work the two years I was part of it, so that you can get an idea of the presentations' style.

• Law and Music: this was actually my own presentation, together with a Civil Law Professor of my Faculty. We chose songs that were related to Law. I chose songs of all genres, while my Professor chose to talk about Law's relation to rock'n'roll music. We played the songs on youtube and then commented on them, pointing out the -more obvious or, in other cases, subtle- presence of Law in the lyrics or behind them. We used songs like “Hurricane”, “Born to be wild”, “Approach the bench” and others. We analysed the lyrics and talked about each song's history. Then, the public could ask some questions or make comments. Although I was really nervous, since I've never done such a presentation before, it went quite well.

• Law and Fairytales: This presentation had to do with the idea of justice in traditional greek fairytales.

• The sea inside: For this presentation, we showed the movie “El mar a dentro” with Javier Bardem and then we talked about the difficult subject of euthanasia. Some professors who have studied the matter a lot, were invited as guests in order share their opinion with us.

• Nikos Kazantzakis: This presentation was dedicated to one of the most famous greek authors. The presenters read extracts of his worked, showed some images and talked to us about his life and his idea of justice.

• A separation: We watched this movie and talked about the different laws on divorce depending on women's role in the society. We also talked about how religion can affect the law and the existence of gender equality in certain societies.

• A Clockwork Orange: This was the second presentation in which I participated. First, we watched the famous Stanley Kubrick movie and then we talked about it. There was another Law Student, one of our Philosophy of Law teachers and I. We analysed the subject of violence, the penalties and the issue of morals versus law. After our presentation, there were many questions from the audience and people shared their opinions on the movie with us.

Law and Art is a group that helps me combine my legal knowledge with my love for arts. It has always been a way to do something different than the ordinary and now it is also a remedy to post-erasmus depression!