How to Notice Kaleidoscopic Legal Places: Lessons From a Mural, a Street in Redfern, and Walking the City on Aboriginal Country

Abstract

What happens when we walk past a faded mural? What changes when that mural is finally restored? As we place our feet on the ground, and brush past a painted brick wall, is it possible to see, feel, or listen to law and its stories told, retold, heard, or not heard? Perhaps, but this requires some quite challenging conceptual shifts in how we experience and understand the materialization of law, and its locations, especially when multiple laws inhabit the same place. My argument is that different types of law inhabit physical spaces differently, whether state, federal, local, or Aboriginal. Sometimes, in fact often, different laws simultaneously inhabit the same place, as in the case of a mural called “40,000 Years” that runs down a long, low brick wall in inner-city Redfern in Sydney, Australia. In this article, I delve into the paint, bricks, and restoration of this mural to unravel how it shares, hosts, holds, refracts, and aesthetically materializes different types of visible and invisible laws, including a variety of western and Aboriginal laws. When multiple laws cohabit, such as they do with this mural located on a city street that is also Aboriginal Country, fractal patterns of different types of law emerge, criss-crossing the physical landscape, creating what I call a “kaleidoscopic legal place.”