Updated January 2026

Overview: Artist-Placed Public Document Art in Relation to The Local Rule of Law

Some Definitions:

“Artist-placed document art” | noun phrase

Artist-placed document art is defined as an art practice in which an artist formally submits legally viable documents into public court systems where the documents function simultaneously as both legitimate legal filings to create public interest law as well as legitimate text-based artworks, creating a dual-performance structure in which the artist's voluntary filing constitutes the first performance and procedural rules compel institutional actors to respond to the artist’s court filing in a second performance for the public to see that completes the artwork.

“The local rule of law” | noun phrase

The local rule of law is defined as describing how the rule of law is not uniform or singular, but rather exists unevenly across many discrete legal jurisdictions or micro-legal-climates, functioning robustly in some places while becoming compromised in others due to attorney-as-officer-of-the-court misconduct, particularly in human-centered areas of law where such degradation directly harms real humans in the general public who most depend on legal fairness and justice.

Image courtesy of Engage Projects Gallery (Chicago).

Context: Broader Works and Theories to Date

Adam Daley Wilson (b. 1971, US) is a conceptual artist and appellate lawyer. As a conceptual artist, his works and theories to date may be understood as suggesting that human theory-making by human artists, now in the age and context of artificial intelligence, might function as what he calls "post-theory art"—human-made theories communicated by artists, in any medium, to other humans, in ways that are not just cognitive (thoughts) but also in ways that are emotional and sensorial—that is, landing in the human recipient's head, heart, and body all at once.

While music and other mediums may allow this most clearly, Daley Wilson's works may be seen as experiments to see if conceptual text-based art can achieve this too. If so, perhaps this approach may position human-artistic theory-making as something that may be difficult for AI to replicate, at least for some time, as, perhaps, human-made theories that are received from an artist by other humans, when embedded with humanness (emotion, feeling, intuition, embodiment, and even imperfection) may be among things that AI (at least currently) struggles to understand or authentically emulate.

In this new and fundamentally different era of artificial intelligence (what some of Wilson’s works reference as "empty intelligence"), this possible head-heart-body approach to human theory-making and human-to-human communication, through artistic mediums, may possibly offer one method, among hopefully others, to protect, or at least document, our distinctly human aspects of considering, documenting, and proposing human knowledge to each other in ways that transcend any one culture, society, or time.

Artistic Ideation/Execution Methods to Date

Daley Wilson's conceptual work typically manifest across oil painting (inscription paintings, personal writing system works; and text-over-image pieces); performance art; and, relevant here, what he terms “artist-placed public document art” defined as actually legal documents that he files (places) in public courts that function as both performative text-based art as well the catalyst for institutional critique.

In all of his ideations/executions, his art process involves both logical-cognitive and intuitive-associational-leap layers that are built on inchoate but plausible connections that he sees over time between things normally considered far apart.

Daley Wilson, and the conceptual art gallery that has represented him since 2020 (Engage Projects, Chicago) attribute at least some of this ideation/execution method to hypomanic episodes arising from his Bipolar I disorder, which appears to cause increased electrical connectivity resulting in broader relation recognition and association-making in both extended and compressed time windows: Months or years of inchoate contemplation, then an instant insight, then execution of the work within minutes.

Apart from this unique ideation/execution method, the resulting physical works fall within recognized categories of conceptual art, post-conceptual art, and text-based art traditions that trace back to the 1960s in the United States, among other traditions.

For example, they reference text-based conceptual artists such as Kruger, Holzer, Ruscha, Wool, Kosuth, and Weiner, among others, using ideations and text-language that is never appropriated by Wilson; they come suddenly, almost always fully-formed, in the instant insights after his months and years of inchoate process.

Artist-Placed Public Documents As Working Within Established Traditions

What Daley Wilson describes as artist-placed public documents may be seen as both within, and as an extension of, two traditions:

(a) the tradition in law of bringing legal test cases on open questions in the law, in order to improve the public’s laws in the public interest; and

(b) the traditions in conceptual art, post-conceptual art, and text-based art in relation to emerging neo-conceptual art practices of the 1980s and 1990s and new genres art practices since then.

His literal placement of test-case legal theories into public courts, doubling as visual activist text-based artworks—may be seen as an extension both natural and original as to working within established art and law traditions of institutional critique.

What appears to be new is that, for the first time, theories of public interest are not only (a) actually embedded in institutional systems; but also (b) courts, judges, and attorneys become both audience and actors in a performance about matters of public interest, and are compelled to do so by procedural law, as discussed in more detail later on this page.

It is this mandatory aspect—compelled response due to the public court’s own procedural rules—that is both within existing traditions and also an extension that is new. Wilson appears to be the first artist, or artist-lawyer, exploring whether institutional response and critique can be compelled through the artwork itself—on matters of public importance—that are both transparent and documented, for the public and press to see.

This dual structure—Daley Wilson's artist-lawyer act of filing a formal and valid legal test case on a matter of public interest, causing a mandatory and compelled institutional response—removes, perhaps for the first time, the institution’s ability to ignore the artwork, such as in the case of a protest before an institution.

Institutions had the ability to simply decline participation; institutions of power, and in particular institutions of public power, appear to have exercised this approach in prior examples of attempted direct institutional critique, at least in the United States over the past half-century.

As such, the “artist-placed public document” practice within both art and law appears to possibly generate elements of law-as-art and art-as-law that could benefit the public good through a merging of art-as-activism, performance art, text-based art, public interest law, and institutional critique within systems that may remain primarily human—the courts applying human-made law.

In other words, if courts, judges, and officers of the court (attorneys) turn out to be one of the last places of humanity in the new age of AI, then Daley Wilson’s art-law practice of “artist-placed public document art” may be at least one of the ways that the public and press can see how courts and especially lawyers comport themselves, and the rule of law, in these last of truly human places.

Details: Artist-Placed Public Document Art and The Local Rule of Law

Working Within Conceptual Art Traditions

As suggested above, what Adam Daley Wilson has termed or coined as artist-placed public document art appears to operate within established traditions of conceptual art, post-conceptual art, and text-based art that emerged in the 1960s and continued through neo-conceptual practices of the 1980s and 1990s.

“Artist-placed public document art” may be defined as an artist's formal submission of legally viable documents into courts, where those documents function simultaneously as (a) legitimate legal filings on matters of public interest and (b) the performative art of placing text-based artworks into institutional actors for those actors to respond—courts, judges, and attorneys as officers of our public courts—as they must do as a result of being required or compelled to do so as a function of the public court’s own procedural rules.

No matter the procedural or substantive outcome, this feature of required response, arising from the institution’s own rules, causes two performances. The first performance, by the artist-lawyer (placing the initiating lawsuit into the court) initiates a second performance—the public and transparent performance by the institutional actors as to how they comport themselves with respect to following the substantive and procedural rules of public law in responding to the public interest test case law suit.

The public and the press receive a transparent documentation of an institutional performance about a matter of public interest.

The Dual Nature Of “Artist-Placed Public Documents”

While Daley Wilson is both a lawyer and an artist, any artist (or person in the general public) may file such cases pro se—one need not be a lawyer so long as the filing is compliant, viable, and non-frivolous under existing law.

As an appellate lawyer, Daley Wilson files legally sound complaints presenting viable test cases on legal issues of first impression—unsettled areas of public law, tested through properly-pleaded claims under existing legislative statues and decisions by courts, that could expand existing law for the good of the general public—the public interest.

At the same time, as an artist, this same act constitutes a performative act—performative artwork that is within recognized conceptual art traditions, particularly in the United States and Europe since the 1960s.

In other words: A valid legal complaint functioning simultaneously as text-based art—creative language authored by an artist-lawyer, expressing human theories to improve our human legal system, at the local-rule-of-law level, on matters of public interest.

The filing itself may be understood as a first performance, this first one by the artist, within traditions established by conceptual artists in the 1960s who questioned what art could be, including at the institutional critique level.

What appears unique is that then there is a second performance, not by the artist: In artist-placed public document art, the institution must respond because an institutional response is compelled by the public procedural rules that initiate automatically, and cannot be evaded, when a complaint is filed in a court.

This now completes the artwork, through this second performance—not by the artist, but by the institution and its actors themselves: Their acts and their conduct in relation to the test case now occur over the life of the lawsuit and will show how public institutional actors (public courts and publicly-regulated attorneys, who are officers of the court) either comply with the public’s procedural rules and substantive law—or not.

For example, do the public institution actors properly address the test case on its substantive merits relative to existing law?—Or, do they engage in improper conduct to evade or distort? And if the institutional actors decide to improperly evade or distort, does that harm the rule of law in that county or state—the local rule of law?

The Distinction Made By “The Local Rule of Law”

Based on what several of Adam Daley Wilson's "artist-placed documents" have revealed to date, as several institutional critiques of how some institutional actors have responded to various legal test cases, Wilson has now observed a distinction between "The Rule of Law" at the uniform national level and what he terms "The Local Rule of Law"—a distinction reflecting this apparent reality:

Even if the rule of law is respected broadly, say at the national level, it can nonetheless be eroded and harmed in discrete legal jurisdictions—pockets within a nation, or even pockets within a state.

As such, "artist-placed public documents" may be understood as an art-as-law or law-as-art practice of illuminating how our public courts, and officers of our public courts, comport themselves behind the scenes, away from public and press scrutiny.

And, as such, "the local rule of law" may be defined as a concept identifying specific small-scale geographical or jurisdictional pockets in a state or region where the public suffers actual legal harms when the institutional legal actors in that micro-pocket (particular court and judges; particular attorneys who are officers of the court) comport themselves unethically in order to evade or distort facts and law.

One aspect of “the local rule of law” distinction appears to go directly to the intersection of law as applied to humans (as distinct from corporations): Particularly in human-centered areas of law such as family law, disability rights law, and civil rights law, it appears that humans, not corporations, face the most direct and most harmful consequences in micro-pockets or discrete jurisdictions where the local rule of law has been harmed by unethical attorneys and allowed by courts and judges in their capacities as public institutions.

In other words, it appears that those institutions and actors that cause harm to “the local rule of law” are directly harming not just the public interest in the abstract, but also harming the actual lives of humans in our most vulnerable areas of our human-ness.

For these reasons, and from both art-as-law and law-as-art standpoints, Daley Wilson has begun coining "the local rule of law" to describe, both conceptually and legally, how the uniform notion of a singular “the rule of law” in fact appears to operate and exist unevenly across pockets of areas or spheres within given states and localities.

This also might be called “micro-legal-climates” or “micro-legal-jurisdictions”—all of which appears to be a concept that, to date, has not been widely discussed in academic, legal, or conceptual art scholarship to date.

For example, instead of considering a singular “the rule of law” as one uniform condition across all 50 states of the United States, instead consider just one state in particular, any state.

Then consider that, in some county courts within that state, the local rule of law may function as intended, with the law being applied equally to all citizens, and with courts, judges, and attorneys respecting and ethically applying the procedural and substantive laws that result in due process and non-arbitrary substantive outcomes.

But then consider that, in other nearby counties in that same state, due to unethical lawyers as repeat-players in that micro-jurisdiction, the local rule of law could become compromised by their chronic attorney misconduct, particularly if that goes judicially unchecked and institutionally codified by judicial apathy or exhaustion.

At the local level, when attorneys lie to courts, circumvent procedural rules, or weaponize bias and stigma against vulnerable individuals instead of dealing with the merits of the facts of a case, those attorneys may be seen as subverting judicial processes in that particular local judicial ecosystem.

This appears to harm “the local rule of law” in ways that are not academic or abstract, but rather by directly impacting and harming real human lives, real families, and basic fundamental rights that the public expects our human-made laws and human courts to respect and provide.

Several of Daley Wilson’s "artist-placed document" performative acts have revealed, through the resulting on-display-to-the-public performances of public institutions and public actors, the existence of these and related harms to the local rule of law.

The works to date have appeared to show a distinction and a duality between the singular and uniform “rule of law” concept and the more reality-based “local rule of law” concept. The closest theoretical analogue appears to be the dual-state system, though the relationship between dual-state theory and local rule of law theory remains unclear and subject to further analysis and critique.

Within and Extending Established Traditions

From a conceptual art perspective, each and all of the above points may be seen as conceptually synthesizing aspects of certain fundamental human thought-processes—particularly law-making, art-making, and theory-making—into a single broader conceptual art practice that shows elements found within established traditions of conceptual art, post-conceptual art, text-based art, and performance art.

From a perspective of human law-making, the legal work in Daley Wilson’s “artist-placed public document art” may be understood as not just law, but also art, including possibly something analogous to post-theory art, because it appears to involve original theory-making by an artist that is communicated to other humans.

In addition, it may land in the head, heart and body all at once (depending on the nature of the public interest at issue and its resonance). Further, as discussed, the artist-lawyer-action of filing may be understood as a artistic performance.

All of these concepts are rooted in 1960s conceptual art traditions and post-conceptual, neo-conceptual, and new genres art traditions since then.

At the same time, from a perspective of human art-making, the art may be understood as law because it operates by logical argument, and application of law to fact (evidence), through legitimate legal mechanisms and doctrines as required by the distinctly human field of law.

This includes because “law” is literally made by humans, be they legislators or judges. Certainly no one is (yet) suggesting that AI may take the role of judge, and judge the fate of another human. At least not quite yet.

This is another reason why courts may be one of our last human places, making it all the more important that courts not become public institutions that allow or enable harm to the local rule of law.

And, finally, the theories may be both art-as-law, and law-as-art, because the underlying theories of “the local rule of law” and “artist-placed public document art” appear to exist not just in duality, but also simultaneously.

Both, at the same time, are equally valid legal argument and valid artistic concept, within traditions established by both public interest law (the legal tradition of filing test cases to improve the law), and at the same time within traditions established by conceptual artists over the past half-century.

Those artists, like this art here, considered the placement of ideas over objects, and experimented with combinations of the two to see how they might combine as art-as-thought, art-as-documentation, and art-as-public act.

Two Unique Elements of “Artist-Placed Public Document Art”: Dual Performances, Procedural Compulsion

Performance One: The Artist's Act of Placement

The first of two performances occurs when Daley Wilson files a legal complaint in court—a physical act of submitting documents, paying fees, serving defendants. This act has legal significance: it initiates a lawsuit and start proceedings.

This performance can be executed by any artist, through pro se rules. The performance appears to function simultaneously as legal action and artistic action—an approach that draws from conceptual art traditions of the 1960s and 1970s where artists questioned what art could be.

The complaint is a form of text-based art—similar to the recognized journalism-as-art: It is authored language constructed to convey facts and theories, likely with emotional content.

The courthouse may then function as an artist space or art gallery; the docket as art archive or art catalog—conceptualizations of art into new public spaces that extend institutional critique traditions established by conceptual artists such as Haacke, Asher, and others in the late 1960s.

Performance Two: Institutional Actors By Compelled Response, Mandated By The Institution’s Own Rules.

The second performance—and what may be a novel extension of conceptual art traditions—appears to occur through procedural compulsion. Once Wilson files, the rules of any court then mandate responses. Attorneys for defendants must formally appear in court and are required to substantively respond within specified time frames, even if only to file a substantive motion to dismiss, or else face default judgment as to the substance of the complaint.

Similarly, courts themselves must follow their own procedural rules, including by rule on motions filed by attorneys for the defense, or attorneys for the state.

This may be seen as an artist creating what could be understood as public procedural compulsion—institutional actors becoming participants in a performative piece, on a matter of public interest, not by choice but by legal mandate under the rules that courts apply to all.

In addition, these institutional actors are required to directly engage with the artist’s placed text-based artwork in the form of the valid legal pleading.

For example, defense attorneys who are officers of the court must file at least one substantive motion—documents which themselves are human-authored texts that are either engaging with or in some way attempting to avoid the artist’s theory.

As another example, judges must consider the pleadings and motions and issue orders and reasoned opinions—another type of authored texts that engage with both the artist’s pleading and the defense attorneys’ responding filings.

All of this is both within, and an extension of, the conceptual art tradition of using written words to document performance art—as seen in both the performative works and the happenings that originated in conceptual art during the 1960s and 1970s.

How This May Extend Conceptual Art Traditions

Initial research to date suggests that no prior artist has been documented as attempting to compel institutional responses in this particular manner within conceptual art, post-conceptual art, or text-based art traditions.

For example, while Haacke used prior-made legal documents, he did not file documents, nor did he attempt a performative act that would result in requiring institutional response.

More recently, Guerrilla Girls created external pressure on a particular type of quasi-public institutions—museums, but notwithstanding Guerrilla Girls’ path-breaking external pressure methods, it remained that museums could ignore Guerilla Girls’ art.

While Young creates experimental and non-real legal instruments as artworks, they are not actual court filings and could not result in a mandatory institutional response.

Based on these examples and others, prior institutional critiques that fell within conceptual art traditions were such that (a) institutions have retained control (they could refuse participation, cancel exhibitions, and ignore or deflect pressure); and (b) it was the artist alone who engaged in the performative acts.

With artist-placed document art, it is the institutional actors that perform, for the press and public to see, and, unless they are prepared to wholly disregard the rule of law, the institutional actors are required to publicly perform to the end of the case—revealing not just legal outcomes (and possibly new public interest law made) but also how the institutional actors comport themselves, properly or not, in the framework of human ethics, legal ethics, intellectual honesty, and officer-of-the-court professional responsibility.

In sum, Daley Wilson's artist-placed document art practice and his local rule of law theories are not just legal theories and practices, but also art theory and practices.

As art practice, they may extend the traditions established in the 1960s and continuing through neo-conceptual art of the 1980s and 1990s, and now new genres art and other traditions arising from conceptual art, by using an institution’s own procedural rules in ways preclude the institution’s ability to decline or evade before at least some substantive analysis is engaged.

Courts cannot refuse properly filed complaints. Defense attorneys cannot choose not to respond without facing default. An artwork invokes binding procedural force.

This seems to be among what may be the first documented instances within conceptual art, post-conceptual art, performance art, activist art, and text-based art traditions where an artist appears able to compel institutions to respond to artistic statement through procedural force.

If so, it represents an approach that appears to extend institutional critique traditions in novel ways while still referencing, and working within, established conceptual art practices. It does not claim to be a new type of art; it is the logical extension of existing conceptual art practices, just as the theories presented to the courts are logical extensions of existing law, offered to the courts in the interest of the public good and the preservation of the local rule of law.

. . .

Prior Updates Below

May 28, 2025 — A description of the show “This Is Post-Theory Art” appearing in Chicago’s The Visualist, which “highlights the work of cultural producers such as artists” in Chicago. 

Categories of Theory Art and Post-Theory Pieces at ENGAGE Projects Gallery Chicago

Oil Text Paintings

Abstract Personal Writing System Paintings

Oil Text Paintings On Photography

Installations and Performance

Selected Press and Publications

Third solo show THIS IS POST-THEORY ART reviewed in New City Art (Chicago) June 26, 2025

Second solo show THIS IS TEXT BASED ART featured in Mousse Magazine (Italy) in its “curated roundup of the best contemporary art exhibitions and events held by galleries, museums, and institutions in town during [EXPO Chicago 2023],” 4/10/23

Second solo show THIS IS TEXT BASED ART on Artforum’s must see list, 2023

First solo show ALREADY GONE on Artforum’s must see list, 2021

First solo show ALREADY GONE reviewed in New Art Examiner (Chicago), March 2021

NBC New Center Maine features, 2/16/21 and 2/23/21

Conceptual Theory Art as a Method for Interdisciplinary Research, Hypothesis, and Critical Analysis Both Within and Beyond Traditional Western Social Sciences (August 01, 2024). Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4913371

Selected Performance Pieces and Happenings 

If You Let Yourself Think About It (Theory Art Piece 1). Artist’s physical act of placing a VARA-qualifying text-based visual artwork, about a social justice legal theory of first impression in the United States, within the Supreme Court of a State, causing the justices to be both audience and actors in a happening about journalism as art and legal theory as art, 2023-2024.

Theory As Art, Journalism As Art, Law As Art (Theory Art Pieces 2, 3, 4). Ongoing placements of VARA-qualifying text artworks within judicial branches and courts, each causing happenings within courts as to the art of journalism, the art of law, and theory as art, 2023-2026.

Look At What We Have Created II. Live creation of personal writing system painting and happening with roughly 20 viewer-participants, second solo show, during EXPO Chicago, 2023.

Do You Own Conceptual Ownership? 4-day performance with video, installation, tangible art ownership experiment, and conceptual social justice ownership experiment. Guest artist project by invitation. The Other Art Fair New York, Nov. 8-11, 2018.

Some Feelings And Thoughts I’ll Have Any Second. 4-day performance with installation and conceptual video. The Other Art Fair New York, Nov. 18-22, 2017.

Look At What We Have Created. 12.25-hour performance walk through New York City, overnight, playing 6 tracks of audio from artist’s backpack, creating layers of words from academics personally known by the artist discussing issues from mass incarceration to LGBTQ+ rights, until the overlapping audio layers rendered the spoken words meaningless, Nov. 22-23, 2017.