The voice of nature

PROJECT

The voice of nature

The voice of nature is a site-specific court piece, in which Maria Lucia investigates ecocide and the possibilities of making a new proposal for the justice-system. For this creation, she will experiment with how law and justice can serve the ecosystem by proposing a “new type of court room” and create a new form of trial in which the voice of nature can be heard. In her futuristic court, she will guide the audience through the realms of fiction, magic and reality. In response to the many legal challenges she faces to represent legally nature, a transformation of the individual is needed. How would a river or a forest talk in court?

As challenging as it may, Maria Lucia is undertaking a durational personification process to be the spokesperson person of nature. The process consists in one year of archiving a series of explorations and rites. This journey will become a collective one, and inspire the trial’s dramaturgy, script, and the performer Anna Mendelssohn to guide the audience through a transformative juridical ritual, in which human and non-humans will come to a new collective language.

Maria Lucia Cruz Correia

Correia's artistic work speaks her deep engagement for ecological crises and climate emergency. She reacts to the environmental crimes of our times by bringing audiences into participatory laboratories that connects the artistic with the voices of scientists, activists and lawyers. Correia’s visual installations, performances and participatory laboratories talks from the idea of
 a complex ecological community, incorporating humans and non-humans, as a reality in which audiences are triggered to connected to a ‘more-than-human-world. Most of her projects are temporary and autonomous platforms proposing utopian and resilient public services as alternatives for the current capitalistic system. Correia's proposes contemporary discourses on the anthropocene, nature colonization and climate emergency and therefore her work is mostly long therm projects as process of radicalization, transformation and restoration. From 2013-19, Correia is an artist in residency in Vooruitkunstcentrum and her work has been supported by Imagine 2020 network. In 2017 she received the Roel Verniers Prijs at the Theaterfestival with her first theater piece Voice of nature: the trial and in 2019 she has been nominated for COAL prize with her new project, Kinstitute.

Credits

Concept, direction: Maria Lucia Cruz CorreiaDramaturgy: Ingrid VrankenPerformance: Caroline DaishSystemic constellation navigator: Luea RitterResearch contribution: Sébastien HendrickxSound design: Joao BentoLight design: Vinny JonesVideo: Mark PozlepAdvice: Jeroen Peeters, StarhawkCostume design: Anne-Catherine KunzLegal fact checker: Hendrik Schoukens & Juan AuzProduction: Tineke De MeyerCo-production: Kaaitheater, Vooruit, Bunker (SL), Workspacebrussels, Het TheaterFestival, t-heater & Circuit X (Roel Verniers Prijs 2017)Produced by: Fo.amResidency & research: No Logar (EC), Center for Creative Ecologies/Tjdemos (US), Artsadmin (UK), BUDA (BE), Workspacebrussels (BE), wpZimmer (BE)Support: Flemish Community, Imagine 2020, and Creative Europe Culture