Seminar: Neither natural nor posited: the contemporary journey toward an ecological jurisprudence & The Forests Trial

About the seminar

PART I

’Neither natural nor posited: the contemporary journey toward an ecological jurisprudence’

The first part consists of an academic presentation by Dr Alessandro Pelizzon on the emergence of an ‘ecological jurisprudence’ over the past two decades. Since the momentous passing of the Montecristi Constitution of Ecuador in 2008, which enshrined Nature, or Pacha Mama, as a subject of constitutionally-protected rights, the number of legislative initiatives, judicial decisions and constitutional provisions that engage with Nature as a legal subject has grown exponentially. Former UN Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, David Boyd, has called this the fastest growing legal movement of the 21st century, and the number of provisions mapped by the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature Eco-Jurisprudence Monitor seems to confirm his assertion, with over 520 initiatives over more than 42 jurisdictions around the globe by early 2024.

But what does it mean to speak of Nature as a legal ‘subject’? Who is the ‘environmental subject’? Are the current legal constructs of personhood sufficient to capture such a distinct legal subjectivity, or should a new form of ‘environmental personhood’ arise instead? What about representation and agency? Who ‘speaks for’ (or perhaps ‘with’) the environmental legal subject? Far from being daunting, these questions have proved to be a fertile ground in which to interrogate the very nature of law itself. In this pursuit, a novel ‘grand narrative’ of law has slowly emerged, as well as a novel pluralistic terrain within which radically distinct legal orders can intersect and communicate. Perhaps, this emerging space in which the ‘law of Nature’ and the very nature of law intersect may provide a novel epistemological avenue to interrogate anew Hume’s Guillotine, and to imagine a more-than-human normativity pervading the many nomospheres we all consistently inhabit.

PART II

’The Forests Trial’’

The second part of the seminar consists of an introduction of the preparatory steps of the ‘The Forests Trial’ performance, which will premiere 7-12 October 2024 at Metropolis Festival in Copenhagen, and which is directed and choreographed by Sara Gebran.  ‘The Forests Trial’ proposes a space for the human and the more-than-human participants to assemble, a kind of Parliament of all Beings and of all Things, to direct our collective action to safeguarding our planet's conditions of habitability, particularly when our global political representatives appear to have stopped (or at least to be extremely slow in) doing so. The fictional trial that is at the core of the performance is based on two case studies: the illegal mining of the Amazonia of Venezuela and the pollution produced by the Cheminova factory in Lemvig. Participants will be actively involved in learning basic Dabke dance steps (a folk dance from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq) as a preparation to a collective dance to which the audience is invited in the ‘The Forests Trial’ performance, as well as gaining insight to La Chicharra platform, a collective library of endangered species, to perhaps awaken a need to act and protect our collective natural world from a mass extinction.

 

 

About the speakers

Dr Alessandro Pelizzon

Dr Alessandro Pelizzon completed his LLB/LLM at the University of Turin in Italy, specializing in comparative law and legal anthropology with a field research project conducted in the Andes. His Doctoral research, conducted at the University of Wollongong, focused on native title and legal pluralism in the Illawarra region. Alessandro has been exploring the emerging discourse on rights of nature, Wild Law and Earth Jurisprudence since its inception, with a particular focus on the intersection between this emerging discourse and different legal ontologies. His most recent book, titled Ecological Jurisprudence: Law, Representation and Environmental Metaphysics is about to be published by Edinburgh University Press. 

Alessandro is a co-founder and an Executive Committee Member of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and an expert member of the UN Harmony with Nature Programme, as well as an Associate Professor in  the School of Law and Society at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.

Alessandro’s main areas of research are legal anthropology, legal theory, comparative law, ecological jurisprudence, constitutional law, sovereignty, and Indigenous rights.

Sara Gebran

Sara’s works are situated within performance art, exploring medias such as video, text, sound, and architecture, mediated by the dancing body, present or not. She has been studying how power works and forms of collective empowerment, through her performances, teaching and writing, specifically with the projects developed in refugee camps in the West Bank - Vertical Exile and Vertical Gardening (2009-2011), while being the director of the Education in Choreography at the Danish National School of Performing Arts (2012-16), and the last 8 years, through performances, lectures, teaching and her three publications.

Her interest in movements lead her to the study of Quantum Physics, from which she developed the Theory for a Quantum Society, Quantic Dance, Social Intimacy and Theory of the Gap, within the publications 'Quantum Society' (2022) & 'Another Hole' (2029). Her 625 practices and invented theories are taught in various Academies in Copenhagen as Literature school, Danish Royal Fine Art Academy and Royal Academy of Design, Craft and Architecture, and in Stockholm at Stockholm University for the Arts.

Her ongoing writing practice is part of her ongoing research on what she calls Choreographic-Publications, as Critical Space for Choreographic Practices and Self-Governance. Saras’ current research aims to protect and defend the forests of the world, called “The Forests Imaginative Trial” 2023-2026. It began in 2023 with the first year performance “Mediating Nature” and the publication “The Forests Imaginary Trial-374 Grieving Poems”, followed this year by The Forests Trial, with premier the 07th of October 2024, at Metropolis Festival in Copenhagen. 

Registration

Please register here no later than Monday, September 11, 2024 at 12:00.