STILL HERE – An alliance of care for the SZenne river between 2023-26 in Belgium. This long-term commitment is a systemic relationship with the river’s ecosystem and local communities to weave an alliance of care for the SZenne as a potential declaration for the recognition of its rights. The process takes place across Wallonia, Brussels and Flanders – from the source of the SZenne in Soignies to its confluence at the Zennegat in Mechelen.
Since 2023, Natural Contract Lab (NCL) has been walking-with* the SZenne river and its kin communities including people, dragonflies, willows, sparrows, rain, knotweed, nettles… seen and unseen. From its source, under a willow tree in Naast to its confluence, where the river bifurcates with other bodies of water.
STILL HERE is an ephemeral process that is trying to recalibrate the sensuous affection for the SZenne and its kin, to acknowledge water ecosystems and its meaningful relationships. STILL HERE attends to the river, and becomes a shared experience to unlearn current systems of governance and management, to let the river teach us the emergent ripples of care. Giving time to grief and acknowledging our hydro losses, through walking-with, sensing and listening to the river, reciprocating and learning from the beings how they care for eachother. Asking how we can prepare our porous bodies to learn other ways of care and governance from the river as our teacher. In 2025, STILL HERE alliance is seeking to become the storytellers and stewards of the Szenne river. Yet, can our water memories, stories, songs, rituals become a legitimate agreement of stewardship? As an artistic experiment, STILL HERE is fabulating a preamble that is both a legal text, a story-telling and a repertoire of scores composed by water memories, songs, oral river histories and ephemeral sculptures.
The relation with the river has been evolving since 2023 and it follows the phases of the ongoing PROTOCOL OF RECIPROCAL CARE for water bodies:
Phase 5: Confluence of Becoming the stewards of Zenne River (2025)
At the confluence, where a mysterious island appear at the convergence of Zenne river, Dyle and Kanal Leuven-Dijle we will celebrate the becoming SZenne stewards. In this gathering, we will flow in the river with canoes and braid the stories of connection with the Zenne River and its ally plant kin that have been witnessing our presence. This is a moment where we acknowledge with gratitude all the teachings and forms of care we have learned from its waters and its beings, our Kin. Here we share the first draft of the SZenne river agreement and the Living Bill, which is partly a written law to recognise the Zenne with personhood and the agreement that comprises the weaving of the living archive the alliance of kin have experience together. Which is comprises the ecossystem of relationships experienced during the last three years in our walking-withs from the source to the confluence. This living archive is already the written law in the territory, it is the river itself, it is the remembering of the moments we made together with our Kin allies and the river, it is the water cerimonies, the ecological grief circles where we shared our lost landscapes, it is the stories of water and river connections, it is the storytelling where we fabulate new forms of care. Here we become the river vessels!
Phase 4: Walking-with “Remembering and becoming” (2025)
How does the stone, the nettles, the trees, the wind, the mud sense our presence? How do we want to be remembered by the river? To remember is to restore knowing. To recall forgotten stories. To collect and mend. To renew our relationship with the river. To restore our capacity to connect. To reclaim ourselves as part of the river. We start braiding our stories collectively with nettles and clay, exploring forms of orality, “histories of listening”, songs and intangible archiving. We become river vessels and weave an agreement of stewardship for the Szenne River.
Phase 3: Szenne Agora “An alliance and a council of becoming” ( 2024)
Can a group of people who have a connection with water, become an alliance of care for the SZenne river? How can our love for the river become legitimate for the recognition of the legal rights of SZenne river? In this gathering the stories of the people and beings from the source to its confluence starts weaving the web of connection and entanglement. The mixing of the waters start reactivating the memory of the river and reviving the flow that connects the river as a whole.
Phase 2: Walking-with “River Kinships, wondering and fabulating forms of care” ( 2024)
How can we learn from river Kinships? As we open the sensing body to the multispecies, we learn the ways of care between its guardians: the trees, nettles, stones, wind, mud, dragonflies… We may not yet embody the concept “I am the river and the river is me” (Maori Whanganui River), but we can evolve into a conversational circle through storytelling and sensory imaginary to open the thinking for non-linear multispecies entanglements to fabulate stories of kinship and stewardship.
Territory: Zennegat (confluence)
Territory: Anderlecht / Zenne Garden
Territory: Lot – Halle
Territory: Soignies
Phase 1: Walking-with “Ecologies of grief, solidarity and care” (2023)
Can grief help us to live more gently and caring in relation to our rivers? As our sensing body starts to align with the deep time of the river, we hold a grief circle to remember and acknowledge the landscapes we have lost. Here, we start moving the flow of solidarity and empathy, to process the entanglement of loss collectively with the SZenne river and emerge in gratitude for the harms inflicted in the SZenne river.
Territory: Weerde
Territory: Naast (source)
Territory: Sewer museum – Maximilian park. Produced by Kanal Pompidou and present in Mollenfest
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