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--- legal_identity_for_trees [2012-10-15 09:57] – created 83.101.5.51
+++ legal_identity_for_trees [2013-02-14 04:51] – nik
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-===Workshop Notes===
+===="Arboreal Identity" Workshop Notes====
 workshop on 20121012 and 20121013. participants; Heath Bunting, An Mertens, guillaume neu-rinaudo, reg carremans, karin ulmer, lucia penninckx, els de greef, rasa alksnyte, nik gaffney, maja kuzmanovic.
+Concept: Legal identity of trees in period of rapid extinction
+Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157631828144552/
+====Day 1====
+walk and tree identofication in Forest de Soignes / Verdronken Kinderen-Enfants Noyés.
+Different elements of identity we looked at:
+  * origin
+  * age
+  * gender
+  * position/postcode
+General parameters that create a 'normal' identity:
+  * **minimal** for a natural person: name, date of birth, nationality
+  * if you cn provide an answer to the questions: ~ what's your name? where are you from? how old are you?
+Nationality is complex in general, and also for the tree
+in some cases nationality can be replaced by citizenship? Or by 'family'/species the tree belongs to?
+  * //functional//: telephone, email, postal address, gender
+  * //extra//: health insurance number, debit card/bank account, tax number
+  * //actual//: website, facebook, linkedin, myspace...
+  * 'What can x do?'
+proposal to create a 'corporation' around the tree?
+  * A new legal persona is not necessarily a natural persona
+  * Personhood can refer to
+    * a human being (material essence, person living on the street)
+    * a natural person (ID)
+    * an artificial person (corporation)
+Personhood is defined by
+  * institutions
+  * a bureaucratical system
+  * data: if you have enough data you can find/create meaning -> 'invocation' of persona
+'Natural and articifial persons' are considered to be the property of a human being, any property can be
+  * kept
+  * passed on
+  * destroyed
+we could wrap a corporation around the tree, insert some human dna-fragment in it...
+if you don't have a birth certificate, you need a story...
+**How do we proceed?**
+  - **proto-personhood** for trees: 'law', relationships of management & property
+  - **philosophical**: why?
+  - **physicality**: 'functionality', relationships to other people/things
+A lot of trees have numbers (is there a register? how is it managed?), we can presume all trees have a owner in Belgium but owners may have different status (forest, private property, city of brussels)
+So maybe interesting to add the parameter of 'owner/user' to the series of tree-parameters and talk about 'lineage/species' instead of nationality
+Q: who owns it? Who has an interest in using it?
+A tree is defined by lineage but also by 'the context': a tree in the city will be different, climbed, polluted, dependant on humans (candle stick prunage)...)
+Q: where do the seeds come from? where did it grow up?
+We make a checklist and look at it from different perspectives
+Perspective of a tree: does not want to be chopped off & wants the right to light, soil & water
+====Day 2====
+We looked at an 'Oak du marais' in rue des Minimes. it wastransplanted 6 years ago from somewhere else, serves as a 'bar', a meeting place, contains lights from humans, hosts birds...
+Look at the plane trees (platane) in front of the Walvis. they are planned to be chopped down, and a local protest was mounted because they are the 2 only trees at that side of the Boulevard (between Yser & Porte de Ninove). There is a plan to replace them with 3 new trees planted 3,5 m closer to the bar (effect: the terrace will be half as big)
+====discussion on the 'arboresceal persona'====
+  * We can create it and integrate it in our daily language, start taking it into account -> method of 'invocation', it will start to exist
+  * Look at the bigger picture: what if trees have legal identity & rights? How will we co-live with them: as separate entities or as chimera of tree/humans
+  * a way to reconnect with trees, restore the natural-human relationship. e.g in some parts of Lithuania it is unthinkeable to cut a tree.
+  * can we create a map of Brussels' forest?
+  * do we see artificial arboreality as a business? what does it offer in terms of services (oxygen, fruit, fertile soil) - any shared good is value less in the dominant economic ideology of looking at the world -> maybe think differently?
+  * look into the 'personalities' of the trees
+  * Nik reads Ecuador constitution that has integrated the rights for Nature in the law
+  * we are the system: there is no authority imposing a system on us, we're the embodiment of a system, our 'identity' is a position of the system we occupy
+  * Heath's motivation: If we have rules to manage our identity, we can invent the rules to create identity
+  * the human being can occupy most echological niches (of species that disappear)
+Next phase: proof of concept, create prototypes
+  * Look at information & data that exist already
+  * question the frequency & absence of parameters, reconceptualize location, speed, appearance of the aboresceal persona
+=== books/reading ===
+  * Compendium of Symb & ritual plants in Europe
+  * Guide to wild foods
+  * Mycelium running: how mushrooms can help save the world
+  * The revenge of Gaia
+  * The end of the wild
+  * Hildegard's healing plants
+  * A new green history of the world
+  * Deep Survival, Lawrence González