Maria Lucia Cruz Correia
wpZimmer resident in 2019
Correia’s cross-sectoral and hybrid practice speaks to her deep engagement with the ecological crises and climate emergency. She reacts to the environmental conflicts of our times by bringing audiences and communities into participatory laboratories that connect the artistic with the voices of scientists, activists and lawyers in long term investigation processes.
Correia’s visual installations, performances and participatory laboratories express a sense of cosmopolitics, advocacy and kinship with and for humans and the more-than-human-world. As a designer, Correia proposes temporary utopian services as restorative labs to repair the impact of the anthropocene, extractivism, and climate emergency. As tools and methodologies, her work is informed by practices of systemic constellation, conscious agreement, restorative justice, activism and holism in science.
From 2013 to 2019, Correia’s work was supported as an artistic trajectory by Vooruit kunstencentrum, where she developed “1 Place and 11400 Seconds”, “Urban Action Clinic”, “Common Dreams:Flotation School” and “Voice of nature: the trial”. In 2017 she received the Roel Verniers Prijs at the Theaterfestival with her first theater piece Voice of nature: the trial. In 2019, her new project KINSTITUTE was shortlisted for COAL prize. Her work has been supported by Imagine 2020, and currently she is part of networks such as Displacementjourneys (SW), Be Part (EU) and TerraBatida ( PT). In 2020 she started a trajectory as an artist with Wpzimmer(BE).
projects
Forensic Plant Lab
Forensic Plant Lab In may 2020 the Toxic Detective and the Guardian of Nature started working on their first case under the name ‘Forensic Plant Lab’. The lab investigates crimes involving more-than-humans.
CASE ZERO – De Liereman
On the night of the 23th of May, (an) unidentified subject(s) girdled 117 oak trees in Landschap De Liereman in Oud-Turnhout (Belgium). The police defined it as a crime against public goods (?). The investigation goes on until the perpetrator is caught. Status of the investigation: CLASSIFIED.
The ‘De Liereman’ or ‘the horrible tree murder mystery’ case gathers the interests of the Toxic Detective and the Guardian of Nature. It is a playground for collective experiments. The investigation is not focused on finding the culprit, but on exploring the collaboration and the shaping of the persona of the two researchers by creating tools that challenge dominant understandings of the frameworks of crimes involving more-than-humans.
About the Forensic Researches
The Toxic Detective is a researcher in osmosis, infected, injected, contaminated and fully aware that toxicity is necessary for survival. She is an assemblage of different entities, exceeding classification, she is monstrous. She is looked upon as sick and crazy but at the same time, the intertwining of her body and the landscape she moves through enhances her understanding of the world. That makes her a top notch detective for these changing times. She is at her best when she unleashes the alliances in the assemblages that she embodies and lets them run wild. She injects, infects, contaminates. She deals with her monsters and navigates the chaos.
The Guardian of nature *_*Lucyōkaimononokeshewolf*_*, She/they are a river, a human, a wolf . She/they are a researcher in kinship, metamorphosis and embodiment with the otherness. She/they tries to express their animistic self to discover multiple forms of language between the many natures intertwined between human and more-than-human. She/they advocate for the recognition of other-than-humans as legal entities and ecocide as a crime. She/they focus on restorative justice and rituals of empathy, reconciliation and restoration. Their detective methods go beyond human language, b y practicing deep listening, pagan rituals, indigenous cosmologies, systemic constellations and holism in science.
credits
NATURAL CONTRACT LAB
How can artistic practices reclaim an ecology of repair, and creatively design protocols with a regenerative approach to the loss of landscapes? Do we need other ways of justice, environmental laws and reparative actions? What kind of artistic processes do we need as a gesture of care for the planetary? How are transdisciplinary alliances a response to ecocide?Natural contract Lab is a new service of the Kinstitute, an ongoing (2020), utopian public service for multispecies justice, based on long-term projects dedicated to climate justice, environmental crimes, ecocide and the possibilities of making justice through artistic, juridical, ritualistic and restorative justice practices.
Together we form the BODY OF REPAIR: Maria Lucia Cruz Correia (artist, the initiator of the project), Marine Calmet (environmental law), Prof. Brunilda Pali (restorative Justice), Evanne Nowak (climate grief), Lode Vranken (architecture), Vinny Jones (light sciences), Dave Balle (soil ecology/fertility), Mathias Velle ( outside eye/dramaturg), Mark Pozlep (artist, videographer). Together we focus on finding common tools and strategies to recover, mitigate and restore.
We form the LAB for the research of Sacrifice zones. And we propose a site-responsive artistic intervention on location, that will be in the format of workshops on rights of nature, climate grief and earth contracts. For each study case, we will develop a protocol for the community, both human and more than human. We will design a process of restoration on sites that have been affected by environmental crimes or climate change. Our first study case of ecocide will be the Zenne River, a symbolic start in the heart of Europe. As a methodology we will be researching the impact of the killing of this river on an ancestral and cosmological level but also on the health of communities along the river both human and more than human. The dream is to legally recognize the Zenne River as an entity.
Agenda of residencies and labs:
03/05-22/05/2021 — Open atelier, Kunstencentrum Vooruit, Belgium
June 2021 — Oerol Lab, The Netherlands
credits