FORENSIC PLANT LAB
Ongoing collaboration between Gosie Vervlossem and Maria Lucia Cruz Correia
The lab investigates crimes involving more-than-humans, as undefined cases which dissects nature queerness, ecosexuality, witchcraft, haunted, osmosis, monstrous, magic, kinship, slow violence, tentacle murders, tree surgeries.
CASE ZERO – De Liereman
In may 2020 the Toxic Detective and the Guardian of Nature started working on their first case the attempt of homocide of 117 oak trees.
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_, They are a river, a human, a wolf . A researcher in kinship, metamorphosis and embodiment with the otherness. Guardian of nature tries to express their animistic self to discover multiple forms of language between the many natures intertwined between human and more-than-human. They advocate for the recognition of other-than-humans as legal entities and ecocide as a crime. They focus on restorative justice and rituals of empathy, reconciliation and restoration. Their methodologies of investigation go beyond human language, by practicing deep listening, pagan rituals, indigenous cosmologies, systemic constellations and holism in science.
