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A living work of art, and a new techno-legal entity that reimagines ecological regeneration through collective, blockchain-based ownership.

The Board’s main role is to carry out the decisions made by the Community Council (DAO) provided these decisions are legally sound, maintain the Association’s non-profit status, and align with its mission. It is composed of two to six members, and two of them act together to officially represent the Association. 

The Board is responsible for the day-to-day management of Autonomous Forest and represents it in all legal and administrative matters. The duties include preparing and running General Meetings, organising votes through the Association’s DAO platform, coordinating any type of work needed for the upkeep, as well as overseeing all financial matters. If any decision is uncertain, the Board refers it back to the General Meeting for a final resolution.

Major decisions about the direction and structure of the Association are made in the General Meeting. It is the highest body of the Association (Verein) and acts as its main supervisory organ, whereas the Board holds executive power. The General Meeting can amend the statutes, which define the Association’s purpose and operations. Beyond governance, the General Meeting is also a place for open exchange: members can present proposals, discuss new projects, and collectively shape the Association’s future. This process ensures transparency and that all activities reflect the shared interests of the community.

It has the key responsibility of electing the Board, which manages and represents the Association. If members are not satisfied with the Board’s work, the General Meeting also has the power to dismiss it. After reviewing the Board’s annual report on activities and finances, the General Meeting decides whether to formally approve its performance.

​​The Community Council operates as a permanent, virtual assembly for collective decision-making within the Autonomous Forest. The Community Council's resolutions form the basis for the actions of the Board, ensuring that the wider community actively shapes the direction of the project, contributing to all decisions about the forest’s care and governance. 

All decisions take place online through the DAO platform. Members can exchange ideas, see votes as they unfold, and participate in shaping how the project grows, both as an ecosystem and as a collective experiment in shared responsibility. This setup encourages transparency, dialogue, and collective decision-making within the community.

The membership in the council is designed to keep participation open and accessible. They can speak and vote within the Council but are not bound by the formal obligations of the Association, such as fees or identification. This approach invites a broader community to join the conversation without the barriers of traditional structures.

Ein lebendiges Kunstwerk und eine neue technologisch-juristische Entität, die ökologische Regeneration durch kollektives, Blockchain-basiertes Eigentum neu definiert.

Autonomous Forest removes ecosystems from the economic sphere, protecting them from material- and profit-driven exploitation. Autonomous Forest is an association and a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) dedicated to acquiring and collectively stewarding forest land. Through the DAO, members participate in transparent, decentralized governance, voting on everything from administration to potential expansion. This hybrid structure fuses the legal status of the German Verein with the openness and accountability of blockchain, creating a techno-legal framework in which nature is collectively held, safeguarded from extraction, and allowed to regenerate on its own terms.

Autonomous Forest questions the notion of land ownership. In contrast to models driven by individual and market logic, it establishes a collective legal entity that enables democratic decision-making. Rejecting traditional industrial forestry practices, Autonomous Forest embraces ecological processes that allow the environment to evolve autonomously in response to change. To enable this form of regeneration, a new technological and legal entity was developed that combines German association law with decentralized ledger technology. In this way, this art project builds new digital and ecological spaces for care, experimentation, and shared responsibility. It sets a precedent for ecological responsibility that relies on neither state nor private ownership and designs regenerative, communal futures for human and non-human actors alike.

Autonomous Forest is initiated by the art collective 

. Across their various projects, they explore how economy and ecology intertwine. Since their inception in 2015, terra0 has explored how ecosystems can become economic agents and engages in questions of collective ownership. Their first work, terra0 Whitepaper (2016), proposed a self-utilizing forest which, with the help of sensors and smart contracts, sells logging licenses and ultimately accumulates capital. Later works have iterated and reflected back on the claims set forth in the Whitepaper, continuing to center on emerging technologies’ potential to support new forms of ownership, and the different conceptions of agency they may thus entail. terra0 raises questions around autonomy and agency in culture and law; novel distributions of ownership; and regard for the natural world within and beyond market capitalism.

LAS Art Foundation is a Berlin-based non-profit art foundation, working at the intersection of art, new technology, and science. In 2021, a dialogue began between terra0 and the LAS Art Foundation, which ultimately led to the collaboration on Autonomous Forest. The development, research, and implementation of the project is funded by the LAS Art Foundation. You can read more about the project from their perspective 

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