Multispecies Assembly

On Friday 3 October, the first Multispecies Assembly took place in Amstelpark. During this Assembly, 25 participants experimented to see what tree management in Amstelpark could look like from the perspective of a multispecies society. They practised how the importance of all life is taken into account in this city park.

Multispecies Assembly is an initiative of artist Elmo Vermijs in collaboration with Zone2Source, a testing ground for art and ecology in Amstelpark. The origins of this project dates back to 2022, when the project “De Bomen Vertellen hun verhaal” (The Trees Tell Their Story) took place. In the installation Parliament of Trees artist Elmo Vermijs explored how we can represent non-human entities such as trees and thus better defend their rights, in collaboration with environmental lawyers Jessica den Outer and Jan van de Venis and various artists.

Multispecies Assembly is a sequel to The Parliament of Trees (2022) and now took place in the context of Zoöp Amstelpark, which was launched on 4 October. Zoöp Amstelpark is a collaboration between Zone2Source, the Zoönomisch Instituut and the Municipality of Amsterdam. Zone2Source has challenged the municipality to manage Amsterdam for the next 750 years as a city of billions – human and more-than-human inhabitants – and thus do justice to the city’s ecological diversity. The Amstelpark will become a testing ground where we can learn together how multispecies policy, legislation, design, planning, etc. can take shape.

Multispecies Assembly is a series of installations and performative events in which we practise how to make decisions that take into account the interests of both human and non-human lives. This first MultiSpecies Assembly focused on a management issue in Amstelpark, raised by gardener Nicole de Rop: how can we view the tree pruning policy, for which safety considerations are an important factor, from the perspective of multiple species – humans, trees and everything that lives on them and depends on them.

Interested to join future Multispecies Assemblies? Send an email to info@zone2source.net, stating MultiSpecies Assembly. Include your name, age, place of residence and profession/study, and a short motivation for why you would like to attend.

Team
Artist: Elmo Vermijs/ Soil expert and ecologist: Tanja Dekker/ Interdisciplinary artist: Anne Jesuina (Tobias de Andrade)/ Amsterdam City Council management: Nicole de Rop/ Dramaturg: Marieke Nooren/ Zone2Source: Alice Smits