Before Law

The People v. The Cock of Basel

This collection takes its name from the story of the Cock of Basel, a shape-shifting, gender-bending rooster tried for laying an egg. The works presented here enliven a meditation on gender and sexuality subsumed by legal frameworks that define whose bodies are deemed acceptable, and whose are in need of 'correction'. Its narrative includes ideas of sodomy, that showcase the slippage of subjectivities that have inhabited this label throughout history; delving into notions of 'evil', and the importance of magic and mysticism, in shaping legal histories and the subjects that are constructed through them.