On Friday 19th March, as part of the Question Time project, I will be reading with Rachel Lois Clapham, Alex Eisenberg and Mary Paterson at Cafe Carbon, an evening exploring art and climate change in the aftermath of COP15. The evening is curated by the The Gluts (Gina Birch, Kaffe Matthews, and Hayley Newman).

Part of our reading involves a representation and reconsideration of our Statements of Intent project. According to the original project description:

Each day Question Time hold a summit somewhere in Copenhagen- in cafes, street corners, domestic apartments, and train stations – after which a new statement of intent is produced towards an alternative declaration of the way forward on climate change. 

I previously wrote about this project  here.  The full archive of the project can be seen here.

Cafe Carbon is the third in a number of projects working with the Question Time archive to think through the implications of our time in Copenhagen. It follows on from two projects commissioned by CSPA (Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts): a curated transcript of our Copenhagen interviews for CSPA Quarterly  and three podcasts from our archive of interviews and encounters. 

My own project since December has been a fictional novella based on being in Copenhagen during COP15. This project uses fiction as a space for  exploring the relationships between politicians, activists, NGO’s, artists, and other groups that made their way to Copenhagen for the conference. It utilises fiction as proposition and provocation, creating a fantastical melding of these diverse groups, separated in actuality but endlessly intertwining in the novella’s never-conversation. We are organising a salon to present this work, and new writings  by Mary Paterson and Rachel Lois Clapham. More details available here soon.

The Ladies of the Press

Also on Friday night The Ladies of the Press will be creating a live magazine. I first worked with LOTP (Ana Čavić and Renée O’Drobinak) at the Permanent Gallery last year, as part of my Testing Grounds performance. In their own words: 

The Ladies of the Press* are Ana Čavić and Renée O’Drobinak: a performative publishing duo based on a contemporary art practice that re-imagines the role of the publisher into a theatrical persona. Each project focuses on ‘enacting’ a publication, extending the act of performance in to the realm of print by citing the page as the primary outlet for the work, thriving on a collaboration between the Ladies of the Press*, each participant and the space that surrounds the publication.

Friday’s Cafe Carbon will also include performance and presentations by  The Planetary Pledge Pyramid; Kristian Buus; The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination; and Emily James .