SKH Dance open lecture on THE FORESTS’ TRIAL 2024

The Forests Trial’ proposes a space for the human and the more-than-human participants to assemble, a kind of Parliament of all Beings and of all Things, to direct our collective action to safeguarding our planet's conditions of habitability, particularly when our global political representatives appear to have stopped (or at least to be extremely slow in) doing so. The fictional trial that is at the core of the performance in 2024, is based on two case studies: the illegal mining of the Amazonia of Venezuela and the pollution produced by the Cheminova factory in Lemvig/
Denmark.

As part of this years project, Sara created a libretto and book called: The Forest's Imaginary Trial: Dirt Roads of Mercury's Journey. This publication not only builds upon and extends the themes explored in The Forests’ Trial performance but also serves as a libretto that follows the performance from start to finish, allowing readers to experience it fully even if they have not seen it live.

The book is also the continuation of the performance, inviting the audience and/or readers to act as representatives of Nature, assuming the role of judges in identifying the culprits behind two major environmental disasters. The performance continues within the pages of the book, proposing new ways of engaging through participation, performativity, dissemination, and creativity.

Through poetic, performative, and academic texts, as well as images and videos, additional testimonies and knowledge regarding these environmental disasters are shared. As a reader, you are called upon to take the role of judge in this fictional trial, to cast your vote, and to become a guardian of the forest.

Participants will be actively involved in learning basic Dabke dance steps (a folk dance from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq) as a preparation to a collective dance to which the audience is invited in the ‘The Forests Trial’ performance, as well as gaining insight to La Chicharra platform, a collective library of endangered species, to perhaps awaken a need to act and protect our collective natural world from a mass extinction.

The book is published by PAM, Stockholm, a nomadic, curatorial platform for experimental publishing, art, and movement-based practices.

Sara Gebran

Sara Gebran's practices oscillate between choreography, dance, teaching, and writing. She began
writing books in 2017, resulting in four choreographic publications thus far: Another Hole (2019),
Quantum Society (2022), The Forests' Imaginary Trial – 374 Grieving Poems (2023), and The
Forests' Imaginary Trial: Dirt Roads of Mercury's Journey (2024).