Maria Lucia Cruz Correia: VOICES OF NATURE: THE TRIAL

About Maria Lucia Cruz Correia

Correia’s artistic work speaks her deep engagement for environmental issues. She reacts to the ecological crimes of our times by bringing audiences into a participatory environment that connects the artistic with the voices of scientists, activists and lawyers. Her actions tackle utopian healing by proposing clinical esthetics that unveil human and non-human interconnectivity. Correia’s work is informed by contemporary discourses on the anthropocene, colonialism of nature, climate change and pollution. Correia proposes participatory articulations by creating temporary autonomous platforms which create moments of disruption and harmony between seemingly disparate bodies of knowledge, cultural traditions, resilience, value systems and social transformation.

Since 2012, Correia is a city resident in Vooruitkunstcentrum and her work is being supported by Imagine 2020 network. In 2017 she received the Roel Verniers Prijs at the Theaterfestival with the project Voices of Nature: THE TRIAL. 

VOICES OF NATURE: THE TRIAL

An artistic proposal for Environmental justice

‘Ecocide’ is a term referring to the crime of damaging, destructing or annihilating ecosystems, wether by human agency or other. Despite the global reality of it, this crime remains currently unmentioned in the Rome Statute of the international Criminal Court.

As an answer to this vacuum, Voices Of Nature: the trial – a site-specific court piece – investigates ecocide and the possibility of a new proposal for environmental justice. How can we grant personhood to non-humans? How do we make a mountain or a river into a legal entity?
In order to propose a new type of ‘verdict’, we experiment with combining elements from a conventional court, restorative justice practices as well as transformative processes. We unveil hidden stories of traumatic environments, and their correlation to colonialism and power. In our trial, humans and non-humans come together to find a collective language, focused on inter-being, intersectionality and restoration.

Credits:
Concept, direction and set: Maria Lucia Cruz Correia
Dramaturgy: Ingrid Vranken
Writer: Sébastien Hendrickx
Systemic Constellation Navigator: Luea Ritter
Performance Maria Dafneros
Sound Designer Joao Bento
Light Designer Vinny Jones
Video  Mark Pozlep
Costume Design Isabelle De Vos
Legal fact checkers: Hendrik Schoukens & Juan Auz
Research documentation: Mark Pozlep & Hana Vodeb
Advisors: Jeroen Peeters, Starhawk
Production: Tineke de Meyer
Co-production: Vooruit (B), Kaaitheater (B), Bunker (SL), Workspacebrussels (B),  Het TheaterFestival, t-heater & Circuit X (Roel Verniers Prijs 2017)
Produced by: Fo.am
Residency & Research: No Lugar (EC), Center for Creative Ecologies /Tj Demos(US), Artsadmin (UK), BUDA kunstcentrum (BE), WP Zimmer(BE), Bunker (SI)
With the support of: Imagine 2020 and the Flemish Community

Premiere:

March 2^nd 2019 SameSamebutDifferent Festival /Vooruit, Belgium

Next performances:

August 2019, in the frame of Mladi levi festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia

More information: www.mluciacruzcorreia.com, www.thevoiceofnature.org

The performance has been made possible by: