Forensic Plant Lab

Forensic Plant Lab is an ongoing collaboration between Gosie Vervloessem (The toxic detective) and Maria Lucia Cruz Correia (guardian of nature). The lab investigates crimes involving more-than-humans dissecting the complex concept that nature is, by unfolding it’s queerness. It focuses on destructive actions against plants and on how these actions entangle us in dense relationships with our environment. It researches on slow violence, tentacular murders and the disappearance of ecosystems with tools that are inspired by radical botany, ecosexuality, witchcraft, haunted osmosis, monstrosity, grief and magical kinship.

© Maria Lucia Cruz Correia & Gosie Vervloessem
© Maria Lucia Cruz Correia & Gosie Vervloessem

The Open Forensic Plant Labs are moments of exchange with a small public to discuss the crime and test the tools. During these moments, the guests become colleagues, witnesses and evidences.

The Lab’s research methodology revolves around the shaping of our personas (The sick detective and the guardian of nature), as they become characters intertwined with the subject of the research, each in their own way. Combining dialoguing techniques to listen to more than humans based on animistic rituals (T7STIMTHV ), we use elements of Forensic Botany through observing the roles of plants. This includes the study/mapping/drawing of leaves, plants, flowers, wood and plant biology, genetics and physiognomy.

Profiling the forensic researchers:

The Toxic Detective is a researcher inosmosis, 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.

Guardian of nature *_*Lucyōkaimononokeshewolf*_*. They are a river, a human and 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. They advocate for the recognition of other-than-humans as legal entities and ecocide as a crime. Their focus is on restorative justice and rituals of empathy, reconciliation and restoration. Drawing methodologies of investigation that goes beyond human language, by practicing deep listening, pagan rituals, indigenous cosmologies, systemic constellations and holism in science.

A collaboration between Gosie Vervloessem (The toxic detective) and Maria Lucia Cruz Correia (guardian of nature) — Research supported by Wpzimmer and workspacebrussels

Residencies

21.06.2021 - 10.07.2021

workspacebrussels