What is a river?

Elizabeth Gallon Droste

Is legal personhood a tool to protect the rights and wellbeing of entities of more-than-human-nature? Are “rights of nature” able to halt destructive profit-driven extractivist actions? Or is the granting of rights yet another anthropocentric move?

In this conversation about the relations of mining, law and more-than-human nature, artist Elizabeth Gallón Droste together with legal expert Dr. Christiane Gerstetter discuss the violence of extractivism in relation to the shift towards the “rights of nature”.

Gallón Droste’s work focuses on socio-environmental crises and conflicts around bodies of water, affective geographies and relational ontologies. She is navigating the spokespersonship of the Atrato River, northwestern Colombia, by ethno-territorial organisations, given the recognition of the basin – in the department of Chocó-Colombia – as a Subject of Rights. Additionally, we invite the senior lawyer Dr. Gerstetter, whose research on the role of law in trade and environmental law and policies will help us to understand socio-environmental transformation processes and the building of new legal frameworks aiming at climate justice.

The panel will be moderated by Sina Ribak, researcher for ecologies & the Arts, with Lorena Carràs and Jean-Marie Dhur, founders of Zabriskie, a bookstore specialising in nature/ ecology, subcultures and visions.

Saturday, 30.09.2023, 19:00-20:30

Conversation at Climate Care festival funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds 

Crittercratia is curated by Gilly Karjevsky and Rosario Talevi

Lilienthalstraße 32, 10965 Berlin-Kreuzberg