The Mock Trial for The Blued Trees Symphony Almost One Year After Beginning My Fellowship with The Blade of Grass

When I received my fellowship, I identified that my most important goal was a legal test case for the premises in my project for The Blued Trees Symphony. While I waited for that opportunity, the Mountain Valley Pipelines went through the Appalachias like the Romans cutting down the Oak forests of the Druids.

Tree Killing Fields on Brush Mountain, VA April 2018 Photo by Aviva Rahmani

I wanted to challenge the categories protected by the Visual Artists Right Act under copyright law. I wanted to eliminate the boundaries between habitat specific environmental sciences and art that is integral to the local ecosystem. I wanted to press the development of an art that was profoundly synesthetic, a simultaneously symphonic and a vast painterly installation: sonified biogeographic sculpture. As it turned out, no lawyer was willing to venture into the courtroom without the case law precedents. So we are staging a Mock Trial April 25, 2018 at the Cardozo School of Law: www.abladeofgrass.org/events/mock-trial/

These are more details to attend:

There will be several options for taking part in the Mock Trial April 25, 2018:

Be part of the live audience at the Cardozo School of Law, Wednesday 6:00-8:00 PM at 55 5th Ave., NYC.

rsvp@abladeofgrass.org and then participate in the live discussion with litigators and witnesses afterwards.

Watch the live stream from the A Blade of Grass (ABOG) Facebook page with friends, colleagues or students, in real time. https://www.facebook.com/events/1663688143724968/

Follow the ABOG twitter feed while multi-tasking.
Wait for release of the documentation of the evening by RAVA Films for A Blade of Grass TBA.

Argue with us in real time about how Earth rights and the spirit of art could merge to assert a new definition of public good in this Mock Trial. The Blued Trees Symphony, will be the plaintiff against a natural gas corporation bent on destroying art, habitat, and communities, for private profit. The trial will take place with real lawyers, witnesses, a jury, a real judge, a real decision and be followed by a conversation with the audience. The goal is to inspire other lawyers to establish new case law. The defense will be represented by Gale Elston and co-counsel Steven Honigman.

Learn more about the legal issues in this article: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1268&context=njtip