Copyright for Trees

Can we extend the “we” of a team or a group of friends to trees and more-than-human beings? How do you do that?

Is it possible, as an artist, to grant copyright to the trees you collaborate with, as well as decision-making power and a legal presence within an organization? How do you make this concrete, in communication, materially, and administratively?

Copyright for Trees is a project by Anaïs Berck, a collective of artists, trees, and algorithms. During their residency at C-TAKT, Maria Lucia Cruz-Correira and An Mertens are working on an online publication. They are also inviting other Belgian artists, hoping to create a national network of artists who consciously choose to collaborate with more-than-human beings.

Collaborating with more-than-human beings is part of the zeitgeist. An entire generation of artists is turning to other entities in their search for experiences and stories that no longer center on humans and actively engage in relationships with trees, plants, rivers, birds, bacteria, and fungi. For example, last summer the Kröller-Müller Museum organized the exhibition “Botanischer Wahnsinn” (Botanical Madness), presenting works by artists who examine the rich world of plants from different perspectives. Shortly afterwards, Onomatopee in Eindhoven hosted the exhibition “A Tree,” which showcased research and work in which artists explore the relationship between humans and trees and ways in which we can more closely relate to their timeframe. Documenta 15 in Kassel (2022) also presented a series of works by artists working with more-than-human beings, such as “Beeholder-Beecoin” (ZK/U), “The Book of the Ten Thousand Things” (La Intermundial Holobiente), and “The Story of Half-a-Halfling” (Jumana Emil Abboud), to name a few. Furthermore, there are also writers who openly describe their relationships with trees and other living beings, such as Arjen Mulder (The Friendship of Trees), Maja Kooistra (Living with Trees), and Didier Van Cauwelaert (Les Emotions cachées des Plantes).

For this project, Maria Lucia and An are interviewing twenty national and international artists and writers about their methods for engaging with more-than-human beings, how they arrived at this approach, and how they envision the future implications of this new paradigm. Based on this and other material, they are creating an online publication—a guide for collaborating with more-than-human beings—and a physical publication with speculative ideas on these themes.