The forests trial (2024)

The Forests’ Trial is a fictional trial performance, inviting the audience as representatives of Nature to take on the role of judges pointing out the responsibles for two environmental disasters: the pollution caused by the Cheminova factory in Lemvig and by the illegal mining of the Amazon rainforests in Venezuela. By transforming the theater into a courtroom, The Forests’ Trial creates a space for both human and more-than-human voices to assemble – with reference to Bruno Latour – a kind of “Parliament of all Beings” and of all Things, to direct our collective action to safeguarding our planet’s conditions of habitability.

The Forests’ Trial is the second part of a four year project dedicated to defend and protect the worlds’ forests and advocating for the Rights of Nature. The Forests’ Trial explores a radical concept — Nature as a legal subject with constitutionally-protected rights. In this immersive theatrical tribunal, participants engage in a creative process of political self-representation, taking action where our local and global political systems appear to have stopped, or at least to be extremely slow in doing so. The power of this fictional courtroom is to test, develop, and practice new strategies, and to be prepared in the remote case that our opinions begin to matter, and our creative ideas do become solutions. Dance, text, film, song, and a sound installation (Nature’s Symphony) are media used to create this fictional courtroom. The 35 minute film is narrated and sung live by the 4 performers and sometimes by the audience, as Nature’s Representatives. The film implicates those responsible for the environmental disasters in the two case studies presented. Audience members will receive a book with a libretto that follows the performance’s progression and a guide to continue the trial at home, extending the courtroom into their own lives and communities.