A walking-with symposium & public tribune

What does it mean to recognise a river as a bearer of rights?

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. 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 Belgium. We invite guests from the rights of nature, ecological grief, embodied knowledge and water solidarity movement.

The day unfolds in three movements. Beginning outside, Walking-with in solidarity with the waters of Ghent —  a site-specific flow that activates listening, sensing, storytelling and song. Next, at VIERNULVIER, we immerse in a gathering with River allies for a transdisciplinary conversation, weaving together reflections with invited guests. Finally, a conversation with Natural Contract lab will share  the restorative principles of SZenne’s Living Law alongside the emerging alliance — the people who have been Walking-with the SZenne and its beings. 

The tribune culminates in an Enchoiring-with, where we are invited to become a multispecies choir voicing the Living Law through song. Together, we explore how to resonate our stewardship, share stories of connection with the river and its beings, and carry this living testimony to the parliament through attunement and care.

The day unfolds in three movements:

Location: underneath the bridge Ter Platenbrug, Ghent (51°02’17.5″N 3°43’47.1″E) https://maps.app.goo.gl/9CWcGMNAEmCE9vtf9?g_st=iw

10h – 12h30 WALKING-WITH: IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE WATERS OF GHENT

We begin outside, Walking-with the waters of Ghent. These site-responsive walks are at the heart of NCL’s practice — moving narratives that activate listening, sensing, storytelling and grief, while turning participants into witnessing bodies giving and receiving care alongside the river.

12h30 – 14h LUNCH BREAK 

14h – 16h  A CONVERSATION WITH RIVER ALLIES 

We then gather at VIERNULVIER for a transdisciplinary conversation weaving together a reflection with invited guests from rights of nature, ecological grief, embodied knowledge and solidarity between water bodies— moderated by Brunilda Pali (Natural Contract Lab). 

GUEST SPEAKERS

Youngsook Choi 

‘Isn’t silence the most precise common language? Eco-literacy from ubiquitous wetness’ 

Instead of rushing into solutions, this lecture urges full immersion into ecological grief — staying with the loss, organising communal witnessing, and opening space for an interspecies solace rooted in relational knowing and planetary love.

Xandra van der Eijk 

‘Meeting a river on their own terms’

Drawing on two years of artistic practice with the Rhine, this talk considers what it means to engage a river as a living system — and what sustained, practice-led collaboration with a waterbody produces: not only methods, but grief, injustice, and an uncertainty that does not resolve with time.

Hendrik Schoukens

‘The right to have rights: does nature already have rights in Europe, and what can we learn from Hannah Arendt?’ 

Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s concept of « the right to have rights », this talk examines whether nature already holds rights in Europe, and what this framework reveals about the current backlash against environmental regulation.

Christiane Bosman  ‘Rethinking human and non-human water relations in Europe’

The climate crisis calls for reimagining ecosystems not as resources, but as legal and moral subjects with intrinsic value. Led by the Embassy of the North Sea and supported by TBA21–Academy, the Confluence of European Water Bodies unites grassroots movements across Europe to advance the Rights of Nature and represent rivers, seas, and wetlands as living entities.

Click here for the longer versions of the guest speakers’ bio, title and lecture content:

16h – 17h Break with nourishment

17h EMBODYING THE LIVING LAW 

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?

We open with a conversation with founding members of Natural Contract Lab, Maria Lucia Cruz Correia, Vinny Jones, Brunilda Pali and Lode Vranken, moderated by Christel Stalpaert, in which they unfold their Protocol of Reciprocal Care and its transdisciplinary roots. 

The day closes with a tribune, where Brunilda Pali and Jef Seghers share the restorative  principles of the Living Law alongside the emerging alliance, people who have been Walking-with SZenne and its beings. The tribune culminates in an Enchoiring-with, inviting all participants to become a multispecies choir voicing the Living Law through song. Together, we explore how to resonate our stewardship, share stories of connection with the river and its beings, and carry this living testimony to the parliament through attunement and care.

What is the Living Law?

The Living Law is both a legal document and a Living Preamble — not written to represent the river, but to emerge from its remembrance as an embodied knowledge to become stewards. A sensing cartography of stories, songs and memories that remembers the SZenne river as an ecosystem of meaningful relationships, as a living entity. A proof of evidence: of reciprocal care, of kinship, of a legitimate alliance calling for the river’s recognition in Belgian law.

* Protocol for Reciprocal Care Rooted in an environmental restorative justice proposal by Brunilda Pali (2021), this evolving framework adapts continuously to the waters and communities NCL collaborates, exchanges and learns with. It holds together the transdisciplinary knowledge within the group — rights of nature, ecological grief, sensory scenography, embodied literacies and ancestral cosmology — flowing and mutating like a river through an ecosystem.

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.

Youngsook Choi is an artist, researcher, and eco-grief advocate with a PhD in feminist/queer geography. Their socially engaged, site-specific practice explores aesthetics of solidarity and collective healing under the theme of “political spirituality,” positioning feeling and compassion as ways of knowing. Ecological grief is central, framing collective witnessing as a socio-political autopsy, while fostering eco-literacy as emergent pedagogy. Key projects include The Book of Loss(2022), commemorating seven lost glaciers; Slow Sips with Earth (2023), tea-blending as grief-literacy; and In Every Bite of the Emperor (since 2021), tracing neo-colonial extraction impacts. Youngsook founded the eco-grief council Foreshadowing and co-founded Decolonising Botany.

Xandra van der Eijk is a Dutch artist and researcher working with the fluid, networked actors that constitute water bodies. Central to their practice is the concept of Materiality of Place — how site-specific actors embody ecological, cultural and political worlds, uncovered through artistic fieldwork, material experimentation and technological mediation. As founder of Ecology Futures at Avans University of Applied Sciences, they have shaped ecological art education in the Netherlands. Their long-term project Hydroformations engages the Rhine as a living entity with its own rhythms and agency. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Biennale of Sydney and ZKM Karlsruhe.

Hendrik Schoukens is a part-time professor of environmental law at Ghent University and a lawyer at the Brussels Bar. His research focuses on nature restoration, environmental impact assessment, climate litigation, and sustainable development. Over a twenty-year legal career, he has developed particular expertise in strategic environmental litigation, contributing to landmark rulings in areas including nitrogen pollution, species extinction, PFAS contamination and pesticides. He served six years as an alderman responsible for environment and spatial planning in Lennik. Hendrik regularly publishes opinion pieces in De Standaard, De Morgen and Knack, and is a frequently consulted media expert on nature protection and climate litigation.

Christiane Bosman has over 15 years of experience developing cultural interventions in the public realm, with a background in art history and heritage studies. Since joining the Embassy of the North Sea in 2019, her practice has focused on human–non-human relations and how art can deepen ecological awareness. She leads the Confluence of European Water Bodies — a transdisciplinary solidarity network of over 35 grassroots initiatives exploring the cultural, legal and political representation of aquatic ecosystems across Europe. As an independent curator and producer, she has initiated public art interventions addressing gentrification, ecology, democracy and future thinking at organisations including TAAK cooperative and Ministry for the Future.

Christel Stalpaert studied German philology and Theatre Studies at Ghent University, where she earned her PhD in 2002. Her dissertation proposed a post-semiotic analytical method drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Luce Irigaray, offering new insights into postdramatic theatre. Since 2003, she has lectured in Theatre Studies (Performing and Media Arts) at Ghent University. She has published widely in journals and books and serves on several editorial boards. Stalpaert co-edited key volumes on contemporary performance and co-directs the S:PAM research group. She is also active in multiple international theatre and performance research networks.