Opening: 18 November 2026, 18:00 Running: 19 November 2026 – 29 January 2027 Where: AIL — Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab, Otto Wagner-Postsparkasse, Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010 Vienna Opening hours: Mon–Fri, 11:00–18:00 (closed on public holidays)
The engagement with climate justice reveals a complex field of perspectives across multiple temporalities, geographies, and forms of knowledge. In this context, environmental destruction is entangled with economic interests, the uneven distribution of risks and responsibilities, colonial continuities, imperialist power relations, and geological deep time.
The exhibition Future on Trial. Between Unruly Evidence and Unfinished Climate Justice moves between two conceptions of justice. One that is produced and negotiated in courtrooms through scientific and legal evidence, data, and visual investigations, and another that understands justice as an unfinished, collective process, grounded in Indigenous knowledge, queer ecology, multispecies perspectives, and activism.
Through a dialogue between artistic practices and scientific experts in the field of climate litigation, the exhibition opens up a space between evidence and uncertainty, accusation and repair, institutional accountability and collective imagination.
With contributions by
adO/Aptive · Beatrice Tulagan · Eline Benjaminsen in collaboration with Elias Kimaiyo · Forensic Architecture · Paolo Cirio · Prin Rodriguez · Radha D’Souza and Jonas Staal · Valentino Skarwan
Curators
Adriano Vinca · Camille Belmin · Elisabeth Falkensteiner
Expert and scientific support
Inga Menke · Jameela Joy Reyes · Krishna Ariola · Michaela Krömer · Nicholas Petkov
With support from the European Geoscience Union, the Norwegian Embassy Vienna, and Stadt Wien Kultur. In collaboration with AIL — Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab.
Preview image: Radha D’Souza and Jonas Staal, Comrades Against Extinction, 2022. Produced by Helsinki Festival. Photo: Jonas Staal.
Contributors
adO/Aptive
No Court(s) — banners 150 × 200 cm, zines, 2026. New work.
adO/Aptive is an interdisciplinary collective working across fine arts, performance, publishing, and theoretical mediation. The collective uses adaptation and adoption as strategies for collaboration, care, and the creation of shared imaginaries that delve into artistic research and participatory practices. They have presented work internationally at festivals, exhibition spaces, and independent art initiatives.
Beatrice Tulagan
What Happens Next? — projection mapping and installation, crowdsourced and archival footage on textile (garments of Filipino environmental defenders), 2026. New work.
Beatrice Tulagan is a Filipina artist, climate justice organizer, and the founder of tala storytelling collective. She explores the personal as inevitably political amidst the climate crisis, social shocks, and power grabs, suggesting tender wayfindings and collective endurance. Her artistic and movement practice weaves poetry, sound, performance, participatory installations, and experience design.
Eline Benjaminsen, in collaboration with Elias Kimaiyo
Petro-tales at the Edge of Thule — video, 2026. New work.
Footprints in the Valley — video essay, 2024, with Elias Kimaiyo. Existing work.
Eline Benjaminsen makes camera based follow-the-money narratives combining video, print- and publication making. Her works are attempts at observing the always weird, often violent and mostly invisible spaces where market fundamentalism, financialisation and ecological crisis meet. Techniques associated with a documentary photography tradition are fused with experimental representations. She collaborates with a variety of platforms and individuals, from researchers and activists to the financial press.
Elias Kimaiyo is a land rights advocate and leader of Kenya’s Indigenous Sengwer people of the Embobut forest, with whom Benjaminsen developed Footprints in the Valley.
Forensic Architecture
The Environmental Continuum of Genocide in Namibia — video, 23:47 min, 2025. Existing work.
Forensic Architecture (FA) is a multidisciplinary research agency investigating human rights violations, based at Goldsmiths, University of London. FA works in partnership with institutions across civil society to carry out investigations with and on behalf of communities and individuals affected by conflict, police brutality, border regimes, and environmental violence. Their findings have been presented in international courtrooms, parliamentary inquiries, citizen’s tribunals and international exhibitions.
Paolo Cirio
Climate History — installation, 96 charts. Existing work.
Paolo Cirio engages with social, economic, and cultural issues of contemporary society. His interventions and research-based artworks are presented as installations, lectures, artifacts, photos, videos, and public art, both offline and online. Paolo Cirio compiled this timeline through years of research by comparing various articles and publications. To keep this history updated, Cirio shared the timeline as an open database, allowing researchers, historians, activists, lawyers, and journalists to use and contribute to it.
Prin Rodriguez
Marea Dulce — video, 2026. New work.
Prin Rodriguez is a Peruvian photographer whose work explores identity and family legacy through experimental and sensory narratives that intertwine individual and collective memory, offering alternative ways of sharing and preserving knowledge. Co-founder of the Pariacaca collective, she has been recognized by the Prince Claus Fund, World Press Photo, and the VII Mentor Program. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally.
Radha D’Souza and Jonas Staal
Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes — video, produced by Framer Framed, Amsterdam, 2021. Existing work.
Comrades in Extinction — gouache on paper, poster reproductions, 2020–21. Existing work.
Comrades Against Extinction — video documentation of performance, produced by Helsinki Festival, 2022. Existing work.
Radha D’Souza was Professor of Law, Development and Conflict Studies at the University of Westminster. She is a lawyer, social justice activist, writer and commentator. Her inter and transdisciplinary research straddles Legal Studies, Development Studies, History, Comparative Philosophy, Resource Conflicts and Geography, from Third World perspectives. Together with Dutch artist Jonas Staal she is co-founder of the art project Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes.
Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, propaganda, and democracy. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization “New World Summit” (2012–ongoing). Together with Florian Malzacher he co-directs the training camp “Training for the Future” (2018–ongoing), and together with human rights lawyer Jan Fermon he initiated the collective action lawsuit “Collectivize Facebook” (2020–ongoing). With writer and lawyer Radha D’Souza he founded the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (2021–ongoing) and with Laure Prouvost he is co-administrator of the “Obscure Union.”
Valentino Skarwan
Frog Sauna (until conditions improve) — installation, video, 2026. New work.
Valentino Skarwan is an Austrian-Guatemalan multidisciplinary artist based between Vienna and Guatemala City. Working across sculpture, installation, and performance, their practice emerges through encounters with places, materials, archives, and overlooked structures. Their work has been presented internationally, including at Belvedere 21, Künstlerhaus, and Tanzquartier Wien. They are a recipient of the Kunsthalle Wien Preis (2026).