• 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.

• workshop on 20130406 and 20130407. participants: Rasa Alksnyte, Heath Bunting, An Mertens, Karin Ulmer, Christel Dusoleil, Mie Demin, xxxx.

Concept: Legal identity of trees in period of rapid extinction

Photos:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157631828144552/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/sets/72157633224778197/

• http://status.irational.org/
• http://fo.am/identity-bureau/
• http://fo.am/blog/2012/07/03/arboreal-identity
• http://fo.am/blog/2012/10/17/legal-identity-trees-workshop
• http://bessst.org/en/

walk and tree identofication in Forest de Soignes / Verdronken Kinderen-Enfants Noyés.

Different elements of identity we looked at:

• origin
• age
• gender
• position/address/postcode

General parameters that create a 'normal' identity:

• minimal for a natural person: name, date of birth, nationality
• if you can 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 could be replaced by citizenship. could this equate to the family or 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, for example a person living on the street)
  • a natural person (for example, someone able to produce a state issued ID)
  • an artificial person (a corporation)

Personhood is defined by

• institutions
• a bureaucratic 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 a 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 (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' or '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, it can be climbed, polluted, dependant on humans ('candle stick' pruning)

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

We looked at an 'Oak du marais' in rue des Minimes. it was transplanted 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)

• 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 live alongside 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
• Ecuadorian 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 in the system we occupy
• Heath's motivation: If we have rules to manage our identity, we can invert 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

UK barrister Bob Colover and Heath Bunting discuss the legal issues around identities. What constitutes a person? What is the difference between an artificial and a natural person? And what are the legal aspects of buying an identity? in “Natural and Artificial Identities, or The Ease of Interaction.” A conversation between Heath Bunting (artist), Bob Colover (UK barrister) and Annet Dekker (SKOR) » http://www.skor.nl/nl/site/item/interview-heath-bunting-bob-colover

• Compendium of Symbolic & 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

• the oak
• the colonialised tree: beech of 1882 with an enormous gall, first impression is that of a strong powerful tree, when you look behind it, you see it is invaded by the parasite mushroom Ustulina Deusta → possible stories: the forest is considered to be a museum because of its 'beech cathedral' but the actual museum is underground, authentic forest soil (never has been used for agriculture, unique for Belgium, interest of archeological researchers), testimony of all layers of geological changes & host for large networks of fungi: parasites, saprotrophics, commensalism, mutualism.
• The solidary and the miraculeus: 2 beeches along the pond, one has a scar that is 20 years old (method to cut a tree: you make a camembert to indicate the direction, you cut half through to make it fall over). The guard wanted the tree to fall in the pond and serve as an ecological habitat, he stopped half way, because the solidary lent his branch to lean on → possible stories: about forest management since 14th century, le code forestier in 1854, contemporary situation (1 guard for 200ha in Brussels Region, 9000 visitors/ha/year; forest is distributed over 3 regions (40% Brussels, 54% FLanders, 6% Wallonia), accepted as protected area in framework of EU-project Natura 2000 since 2007, 1st collaborations between regions, future as Unesco World Heritage?)
• Prince charming: hornbeam/haagbeuk/carpinus betulus: how could it grow like this? The French way to differentiate a beech from a hornbeam: 'le charme d'Adam est d'être à poils' or NL 'Knoppen behagen de twijgen'
• The Quadruplet: hornbeam, is it one tree that fell off and got new sprouts? or is it a fairy ring of trees (usually mushrooms)?
• The kissing trees
• other trees: the larch (fast grower, encourages the young beeches to grow), the lime tree, the birch with fungi …

Books

* Colin Tudge, The Secret Life of Trees, Scala, 2009

Law & Management Links

• Brussels Capital Region law & management:
  • BIM Brussels Instituut voor Milieubeheer - Responsable permissions Forest de Soignes: Anne Borremans aborremans@environnement.irisnet.be - 02/775 7738
  • Ruimtelijke Ordening wetgeving
  • Monumenten en Landschappen
  • Monumenten en Landschappen inventary of remarkable trees in Brussels Region
  • Monumenten en Landschappen: Heeft u een opmerkelijke boom?

• Brussels City (1000), Cel Groene Zones - responsable for choosing, planting & maintaining trees in 1000 Brussels: Patrick Maes Patrick.Maes@brucity.be 02/2796006

• Le code forestier Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels (not changed since 1854, paper copy is with An)
• Garde Forestier Verdronken Kinderen: Mr Willy Vandevelde (FR): 0497/599 463