(part 2)
Published October 2024
This Libretto-Book is part of the performance “The Forests’ Trial” 2024 and its the continuation of this live performance on the 2D spaces of the page.
Both “The Forests’ Trial” performance and the book, invite the reader/audience to be a judge, to emit their verdict or vote on who they think is (are) responsible(s) for the crimes committed against Nature in the two case studies presented in the performance, which you could re-enact in the Libretto inside this book. Here you will find more testimonies, and the knowledge you may need to take on the role of judge.
The information selected, as well as our verdict (chapter 3) reflects our perspective – there is no claim for truth – we claim to speak on behalf of those who can’t: Nature.
After reading/performing this book you will be ready to vote as judge and become a guardian of the forest, if you wish, by voting in the QR CODE in the end of the book.
In this fictional and speculative trial we propose to undertake collective representation, thereby ‘simulating’ political representation and representing ourselves, since our politicians stopped doing that long ago. In “The Forests’ Trial” projects, we are working with theatrical tribunals, creating a space for an alternative jurisdiction. We use the theater space as a courtroom to rethink the law, to rethink who creates laws, who they serve, who the law protects, and how to unveil and annul laws written by men to protect certain men, as if they are gods or divine monarchs.
We aim to re-establish the idea of a courtroom to defend the rights of all existing beings on earth, their rights to self-determination, and to be protected.
Therefore, the power of a theater space is the creation of fictional scenarios to test, develop, and practice new strategies, giving us new insights into how to live together on the planet, for the planet.
In this courtroom we gather to practice politics, since we have inadvertently been removed from politics by our representatives who changed their priorities many years ago, or, to be more accurate, they sold us out in favor of the economic interests of national, and multinational, corporations, i.e. ensuring their incomes and infinite surplus, entrenched in our tax payments, at the expense of our taxes, on our behalf, without our consent, to the detriment of all of us civilians, and all of Nature.
This courtroom exists to re-engage politically with our studies, and to vote in a temporal fictionalization, looking into the future for an opening, even if only in our imaginations, to practice how to implement our demands, or at least prepare ourselves to be ready in the event that our actions start to matter and our creative ideas do become solutions. Then we will be ready, and we will know how to answer.
This courtroom’s response is:
Leave us and go to Mars. We’ll take care of your mess, but without you. We take your money and properties. We confiscate them all. You didn’t earn that immeasura- ble wealth cleanly. You did all the most shitty, unimaginable, possible things against us.
Together, we create new politics, trusting in our creativity.
Translated to: spanish & english.
with articles contribution by:
Yaku Perez (international Judge of the Rights of Nature, Defender of Water, Kichwa Kanari/Ecuador), Alessandro Pelizzon (environmental lawyer and environmental researchers affiliated with The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature), Catherine Haas and Caitlyn Sutherlin (Australia & USA), and Marie-Louise Stentebjerg (choreographer, DK)
Spanish translator: Javier Orozco, with support by Sara Gebran
Editor: Izabella Borzecka
English text revision: Michael Langan
Graphic Design: Susanne Cleworth
Book publisher: PAM
Support:
The Danish Art Foundation, Nordic Culture Point, Danish Actors Union, Knud Højgårds Fond, Sonning Fonden, William Demand Fond and Copenhagen Municipality.
Co-production: Metropolis.
Residency: Forsøgsstationen and Trevor Davis.
Thanks: Alessandro Pelizzon, for one year coaching on the implementation of The Rights of Nature, the video interview at the end of this film and the seminar pre- sented on the 13th of September, 2024 at Copenhagen University. Johanne Mygind for the use of the book “Stemmer fra Høfde 42”, and for suggesting the Cheminova scandal as a case study. Thorbjørn Brunander Sund for aerial image of Cheminova. Ida Elisabeth Larsen for joining the initial research of this project.
Produced & Fundraised: Sara Gebran/Public Eye
Adquire at: Charlottenborg Kunsthall or saragebran@yahoo.com