STILL HERE: Living Preamble

STILL HERE: Living Preamble is a new phase of the alliance of care for the SZenne River. In this next chapter, Natural Contract Lab envisions to embed  a deeply felt sense of responsibility as Szenne stewards into a creative legal framework that can contribute to contemporary legal practices.

The Living Preamble is an embodied process emerging from the river and its kin — a proposal for an embodied law that transforms the concept from a static legal document into a layered and hybrid experience, reflecting what the more-than-human communities of the SZenne have taught us about stewardship and care. The Living Preamble grows from a Protocol of Reciprocal Care, developed since 2021 across seven phases, which will now give rise to an embodied, Walking-with Preamble — from the source to the confluence — weaving the stories of its kin and activating a Walking Route through River Oracles, Enchoiring-with: a multispecies attunement and a digital companion offering access to the Living Law and the stories of the SZenne people and their kin.

ENCHOIRING-WITH: A MULTISPECIES ATTUNEMENT 

In this cycle, we explore whether our bodies can resonate with the river in stewardship — and transmit stories that have been shared with its beings through attunement and care. How do we sound together? How do voicing and vibration become forms of reciprocity with the Szenne River?

This cycle of workshops is activated by vocal archivist Caroline Daish, singer-songwriter Patricia Van Cutsem, and choreographer Tania Soubry, leading us toward becoming a multispecies choir in resonance with the Szenne.

All the workshops take place in collaboration with the river, as we explore how to reciprocate with its presence and beings, resonating with the atmospheric conditions such as wind, flow, and movement — to create a choir rooted in relationality.

You can click here to register!

Upcoming events

ENCHOIRING-WITH — A New Cycle
Saturday 17 October 2026 in Weerde & Saturday 14 November 2026 in the Maximiliaanpark in Brussels

How can we resonate in reciprocity and stewardship with the river?

We open a new cycle of Enchoiring-with — sensing, attuning and singing together, exploring how our bodies can resonate with the Szenne and transmit stories of connection with its beings through wind, flow and movement.

Activated by vocal archivist Caroline Daish, singer-songwriter Patricia Van Cutsem and choreographic artist Tania Soubry, leading us toward becoming a multispecies choir in resonance with the Szenne.

LIVING PREAMBLE — A Ceremony with SZenne
Saturday November 28th, KANAL Centre Pompidou, Brussels

On the opening day of KANAL Centre Pompidou, we gather in a place where the river runs alive beneath our feet, where attempts to reopen its course have begun — to return, remember and honour the story of the alliance of care for the Szenne.

This gathering marks the emergence of a River Oracle, a collective gesture becoming part of the Living Preamble. Rather than proposing a written document to legitimise the law, we imagine otherwise — a walking route as an embodied experience, sited in kinship with the Szenne — an act of reconciliation, remembrance and ongoing stewardship.

A new river tradition is taking root — we hope you will be there.

Past events

WALKING-WITH — Gestures of Re-emergence
Friday 26 September 2026, 10:00–15:00, Buizingen

As the Szenne slips from collective awareness — hidden underground, engineered, forgotten — the rituals that once kept us in relationship with it risk disappearing too. Over three years of Walking-with, we have become a kind of movement ourselves: returning season after season, taking root in the river’s rhythms of emergence and return.

We gather in Buizingen to walk an ancient meandering arm of the Szenne, and to remember — not only the river, but what it means to tend a relationship across time. What gestures and stories might emerge from this alliance? What new river myths are beginning to take shape through our repeated return?

TIDAL CONFLUENCE
Sunday 13 September 2026 — 14:00, Zennegat

When the moon aligns with the tidal cycle, the water drops far enough to reveal what is usually submerged: a temporary island, belonging neither to river nor bank, existing only in the interval between tides.

This is where we wish to return, year after year, to gather and picnic together, to sing for the river and share its stories. A tradition of stewardship that outlives any single project: commemorating, celebrating, gathering. The Song, as a gesture, is a gift from the river to us — a way of interlacing law, story, place and relation into a shared offering.

Together, we weave a living tradition.

WALKING-WITH SYMPOSIUM
2 May 2026 — VIERNULVIER, Ghent

Please find the detailed program here.

More info on the VIERNULVIER website here: https://tinyurl.com/3at7xnu4

STILL HERE – AN ALLIANCE OF CARE FOR THE SZENNE RIVER
A WALKING-WITH SYMPOSIUM & PUBLIC TRIBUNE 

What does it mean to propose a law rooted in ecological grief, care and embodied relationships — weaving reciprocity, kinship and restorative justice with a river and its more-than-human communities?

Since 2021, Natural Contract Lab has been Walking-with the SZenne River and its kin — trees, people, mud, knotweed, nettles, seen and unseen — from its source under a willow tree in Naast to its confluence at Zennegat (Mechelen). Listening to its waters, attempting to learn modes of care from its beings, experiencing its resilience, and growing an alliance of care with its kin.  

On May 2nd, this ongoing practice opens to a wider public during the Walking-with Symposium at VIERNULVIER in Ghent — a moment in time to share the transdisciplinary Protocol of Reciprocal Care for bodies of water amid deep ecological loss, and the process through which Natural Contract Lab has developed a proposal for the legal recognition of the Szenne River’s rights in the Belgian constitution. We invite guests from the rights of nature, ecological grief, embodied knowledge and water solidarity movement.

BIOGRAPHIES

The River SZenne begins under a willow tree in Naast, humbly seeping to the surface before trickling down the slope and slowly widening into a river that meanders 103 km to its confluence at Zennegat. Here it meets the Dyle, Nete, Rupel and Scheldt and eventually the salt of the North Sea. It is a resilient river — reshaped, redirected, buried and once considered dead as one of the most polluted rivers in Europe. With the solidarity of its companion plants, bacteria and restorative projects, it has been revived. The Szenne teaches us a story of adaptation and survival rooted in the cooperation of the beings that cohabit its waters and the many people who carry its memory.

Natural Contract Lab is a transdisciplinary artistic practice weaving an alliance of reciprocal care with bodies of water undergoing environmental loss. Hybrid and adaptable, NCL’s interventions emerge in dialogue with each river — as collaboration, reciprocal sensing, and a gesture of care. With the intention to fabulate new forms of justice, NCL has developed a Protocol of Reciprocal Care* that entangles restorative justice, river rights, ecological grief, sensory ecoscenography and walking methodologies. NCL is a body of care that invites you to join them for Walking-withs, grief rituals, collective storytelling, Agoras, River Guardian Schools and other actions that emerge in collaboration with the river and its kin.