New Value Institute
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Work

JUDGE ME

Conceptual KeywordsSocial JudgmentSelf-AdjudicationProcedural LegitimacyTestimony and EvidenceRevisable JudgmentInternalised ValueAudience as Jury

A courtroom performance that turns social and internalised judgments of artistic worth into a public, revisable procedure.

2021 PremiereOngoing
Jingyi Wang standing at the claimant podium during JUDGE ME, facing the judge in a courtroom setting.

JUDGE ME is a scripted performance staged as a courtroom trial. Jingyi Wang performs within a structure of claimant, defendant, witnesses, expert testimony, cross-examination, jury voting, and a verdict that leaves the question open, turning the theatre into a public situation of judgment.

Format

Scripted performance, courtroom trial, audience participation

Watch trailer

JUDGE ME is a 105-minute performance structured as a court trial in which the artist appears simultaneously as claimant and defendant. The work investigates how systems of social value and legitimacy become internalised as structures of self-judgment.

Six witnesses from different professions testify on both sides, while the audience functions as the jury, casting votes through specially developed software throughout the performance. Materials from surveys, street interviews, workshops, and extended conversations were selected, recomposed, and organised according to the procedural logic of the trial.

Rather than treating judgment as a private psychological process, the work places questions of self-worth, recognition, and legitimacy within a public institutional framework. By appropriating the legal apparatus of testimony, evidence, deliberation, and verdict, JUDGE ME examines how individuals come to measure themselves through systems of value inherited from society. The project premiered at Meteor Festival in Bergen in 2021, was selected for ISPA’s 2023 New Works program, and received the Arte Laguna Prize in 2024.

Procedural Elements

  • Claimant and defendant positions
  • Witness testimony
  • Expert framing
  • Cross-examination
  • Revisable jury voting
  • Public judgment
  • Authorial rupture
  • A verdict that does not resolve the underlying conflict

Documentation Gallery

Jingyi Wang standing at the claimant podium during JUDGE ME, facing the judge in a courtroom setting.
JUDGE ME performance documentation.
JUDGE ME performance documentation.
JUDGE ME performance documentation.
JUDGE ME performance documentation.
JUDGE ME performance documentation.

Related Labs

Adversarial Judgment Lab

Develops and tests procedures that make contested judgment public, revisable, and accountable.

Related Research & Writing

JUDGE ME: Value, Judgment, and Legitimacy as Public Procedure

A research essay on how JUDGE ME stages value judgment as a public procedure through testimony, evidence, jury, and verdict.

Do We Need Artists?

The two closing statements of JUDGE ME, in which the artist argues both sides of her own trial.

Asbjørn Grønstad on JUDGE ME and Post Capitalistic Auction

A synthesis of Grønstad’s reading of JUDGE ME and Post Capitalistic Auction in relation to neoliberalism, justice, artistic labour, and value.