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

Look at trees 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: name, date of birth, nationality ~ what's your name? where are you from? how old are you?

→ nationality is complex in general, and also for the tree

→ can nationality 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?'

→ 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?

1. “proto-personhood” for trees: 'law', relationships of management & property
2. “philosophical”: why
3. “physicality”: 'functionality', relationships to other people/things

A lot of trees have numbers, all trees have a owner in Belgium but with different status (forest, private property, city of bssls)

So maybe interesting to add the parameter of 'owner/user' to the series of tree-parameters and talk about 'lineage/species' instead of nationality

→ 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)…)

→ 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

- looked at 'Oak du marais' in rue des Minimes, transplanted 6 years ago from somewhere else, serves as a 'bar', a meeting place, lighted by humans, hosts birds…

- look at trees in front of Walvis, planned to be chopped: platans, protest because they are the 2 only trees at that side of the Boulevard (between Yser & Porte de Ninove), and because they will be replaced by 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 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 f.ex. in Lithuania it is unthinkeable to cut a tree

→ create a map of Brussels' forest?

→ 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

1. Look at information & data that exist already
2. question the frequency & absence of parameters, reconceptualize location, speed, appearance of the aboresceal persona

• 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