A text I happened to read, “The Art of Environmental personhood and the possibility of environmental statehood” by Devon Ward, published in Artnodes in 2023 contains an interesting analysis of two approaches to art. According to the abstract the text “examines the impact that the concept of environmental personhood has had on art and culture, and suggests that projects such as The Embassy of the North Sea hint at the possibility of environmental statehood” (Ward 2023, 2), which would potentially “provide greater protections for natural entities that span multiple countries” and theoretically “also provide greater representation in supra-governmental assemblies such as the UN General Assembly.” (ibid)
 
What caught my interest was a section called “A framework for the art of environmental personhood: the agency-personhood continuum (APC)”, where the author proposes “two typologies for artworks that amplify agency: agentials and performances of personhood.” (Ward 2023, 4) According to him “Agentials are works that amplify the ac¬tivity of a localised subject – an organism, object, or process – into our range of our sense perception. However, the agential subject does not have enough complexity to rise to the level of personhood.” (ibid) He uses as an example a project that amplifies microbic activities and translates them into sound audible for humans, thereby highlighting the activity and agency of the microbes. At the other end of the scale “performances of personhood are projects that amplify the agency of complex actor networks such as a river, swamp, or forest.” (ibid) As an example, he uses a durational video of a walk along a trail in a swampland speeded up to give a glimpse of the larger ecosystem. He emphasizes that “the APC is a sliding continuum in which complexity builds from left to right, from agential to performances of personhood.” (ibid)
 
Ward then presents two case-studies as examples of the latter strategy, Terra0 and The Embassy of the North Sea, and notes “three common patterns… in addition to the amplification of agency.” (Ward 2023, 5) First they “often rely on ephemeral performative acts created by humans or nonhumans… preserved using documentation strategies like photography, time-based media, and the presentation of artifacts.” (ibid) Second, audio-video representations …rely on time compression or expansion” which “translates the nonhuman timescale into the human umwelt” (Ibid.) And third, “tropes of metonymy are used: one part of an ecosystem stands in for the whole environmental entity.” (ibid). He concludes by emphasizing “the agency-personhood continuum (APC) as a fluid framework to or¬ganize and understand different creative practices, ranging from art¬works that amplify the agency of nonhuman actants to performances that embody notions of environmental personhood and environmental statehood.” (ward 2023, 9)
 
Terra0, “an artwork that proposes using blockchain technology and smart contracts to create an automated steward for a forest” (Ward 2023, 5) is based on “a thought experiment that investigated how environmental personhood might be achieved through market-based solutions.” (Ward 2023, 6) The Embassy of the North Sea, “a Dutch organization… founded by an interdisciplinary collective” with “the idea that the North Sea ‘owns itself’ and requires greater social and political representation”, basically “acts as an intermediary between the North Sea and the public.” (Ward 2023, 6) Ward focuses on some of its projects A Voice for the Eel and F/EEL (Ward 2023, 7-8). Overall, the examples he analyses rely on the idea of representation in both senses of the word, as audio-visual representation but especially political representation and the challenges arise from the extensive size and complexity of the represented entities. His main proposal concerns environmental statehood as a possible new stage.
 
My own interests fall outside these examples, but the scale seems nevertheless very useful, especially if we don’t think only in terms of size and complexity. If agentials are works that amplify the ac¬tivity of an entity into our range of our sense perception” the lack of personhood does not have to be the result of the lack of complexity in the agential subject, but rather in our attitude and approach. We “give” them agency rather than subjectivity or personhood by showing their activity. And performances of personhood need not be limited to projects that amplify the agency of complex actor networks but could include all kinds of works that either “subjectify” non-human entities or consider them as legal persons, or even anthropomorphise them in some manner. This latter approach I find relevant for my own work in writing to trees are talking to them, thereby emphasizing their personhood, which is so clearly distinguished from the mainstream of plant performances, which usually function like ‘agentials’.
 
 
Ward, Devon. 2023. “The art of environmental personhood and the possibility of environmental statehood”. In: Pau Alsina & Andrés Burbano (coords.). “Possibles”. Artnodes, no. 32. UOC. https://doi.org/10.7238/artnodes.v0i32.411208