Performance Art and Science Lecture meet in and with the Forest

​Retrospective of the Forest Events in July 2024 in the Schönbuch Forest

Written  by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Riccarda Flemmer
With colaboration from:
Lillian Eichorst - Research Assitant
Zahid H. Zamudio Neme - Research Assitant
Micha Bröckling- Doctoral Student & Research Assistant

See also: https://www.jakobjautz.de/projekte/traces-1

The question "How can we as humans understand and be in connection with non-human living beings in our planetary ecosystem?" brought us together as a political scientist and a performance artist and dancer Jakob Jautz. Following this question, we blended a scientific lecture and performance art at various stations in and with the Kirnbachtal, Schönbuch Forest outside Tübingen. 
With the forest at the centre of the performance, we created a walk along several “stations” to encourage the participants to engage with the different ways of experiencing and knowing the connections between people and the more-than-human natural world. The creative process of planning the events was a rich experience in reflecting on how forms of academic, rational, emotional and embodied knowledge come into play when thinking, feeling and imagining connections between humans and more-than-human life. Adapting our university and theatre “indoor routines” to a space where trees, branches, moss, rocks as well as sun, rain, wind (and: mosquitoes!) set the stage, determine illumination and temperature, the way we dress and move. 
Jakob created traces over several years as a blend of land art, dance, circus performance - and tree climbing. He talked to biologists and foresters to learn about the least invasive ways to perform in forests, obtained a tree climbing licence, rethought what it means to dance and perform in and with the forest, tried out ways of moving and dressing, and read - fiction and non-fiction - and above all spent a lot of time in the forest. All these preparations appear in traces: The protective gear needed to climb trees and the reflection on how people dress up to be protected from nature. A poetic and intimate dance of climbing with closed eyes, after ten days of getting to know the tree. Skulls found in the different woods, reminding us of the passing of life. Reading a branch as a book and quotes from the famous work of the anthropologist Eduardo Kohn "How forests think" written skin of a birch. 
The stations I designed were a combination of academic lectures, storytelling and interactive sensory experiences with the forest. I based my interventions on an international database of Rights of Nature cases, UN documents, academic literature from political science, law, anthropology and sustainability studies as well as activist statements, campaign materials and interviews. However, all of this work is informed by the ways in which the Amazon rainforest has sensitised me to the deeply entangled and ever-changing coexistence of human and non-human beings. To adapt the lecture to the forest, I switched from a beamer presentation to printed posters, from slides filled with references to graphics and artwork from campaigns for Rights of Nature cases. Beginning with some insights into the conceptual and empirical foundations of Rights of Nature and their potential to prioritise and reform climate policy according to more holistic approaches to more-than-human ecosystems. Through inspiring cases from around the globe, I highlighted how the Rights of Natur movement seeks to spark a global socio-ecological transformation that recognises and protects the rights of ecosystems. Drawing on the Ecuadorian legal cases in favour of the Intag Valley against mining and oil extraction, the rediscovery of ten harlequin longnose frogs catapulted the species back from extinction and cemented the claim to protect the valley's biodiversity. Our visitors searched for 2,8cm stones to get a sense of how small you have to be to win a court case.
One of the main aims of our collaboration was to emphasise connections to our physically proximate human and non-human life as well as our entanglement on a global scale. The forest’s climate, a clearing, trees, the smell and sound of leaves and birds, with elements of performance art and science talk, were intended to create a space for collective and creative reflection on our planetary future. For both of us, these forest events were and still are about inspiration and hope.

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We want to move away from a language steeped in the rhetoric of war and catastrophe towards constructive narratives, without "kitschifying" nature or falling into a reactionary "back to nature" rhetoric. Instead, hope needs space to accommodate grief over the current situation, the loss of species, people, and ecosystems, as much as the fascination and appreciation of the richness of the connections that exist on this planet. We belief on a personal and professional level that hope is an essential first step in imagining and shaping our future. Let us begin by believing that it is possible.

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Photos by Eftychia Stefanou and Christoph Stoll

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