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Posts Tagged ‘Question Time’

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EVENT: QUESTION TIME AT CAFE CARBON ON FRIDAY 19th MARCH

In Uncategorized on March 17, 2010 at 11:57 pm

 

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 .

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VSK PROJECT (1): RACHEL LOIS CLAPHAM: THE FINGER

In Uncategorized on February 23, 2010 at 11:46 am

The above video is FINGER by Rachel Lois Clapham, made for The Diagram at London’s FormContent project space. See  images of the day and the full program  here.  

RL describes THE FINGER as “focussed on non verbal physical gestures as writing… made in response to a continued dialogue with David Berridge and Alex Eisenberg regarding writing on and as performance.”

We discussed the video via SKYPE and the following words and phrases, written in my notebook at the time, are a preliminary frame for thinking through and out and into the ways of The Finger:

How can it mean as writing. Diagrammatic. Doing what we were talking about. Pointing. Connecting. Liveness. Task. It has to respond. Hand work. Lowly. PLOUGHING. Hand. Base. Ground.  Finger. Action/Text. RL’s having fun. Bataille’s BIG toe. 

A summary of my presentation – which this video concluded – is here.

Go here for more on Rachel Lois’ work.  

Her video essay THE SCORE  – part of our Question Time project (also with Mary Paterson and Alex Eisenberg)  here.

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QUESTION TIME: STATEMENTS OF INTENT TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE DECLARATION OF THE WAY FORWARD ON CLIMATE CHANGE

In Uncategorized on February 21, 2010 at 2:55 pm

 

Activist No.1, Monday 13th December, Demonstration, Copenhagen (photo: Alex Eisenberg)

 

As part of  Question Time, which took place in Copenhagen during the COP15 Climate Change negotiations in December 2009, I took part in the writing project STATEMENTS OF INTENT with Rachel Lois Clapham, Alex Eisenberg, and Mary Paterson. We described this project as follows: 

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. 

Statements were written by the person taking minutes during the daily meetings, and would have to be completed and published the same day . They were initially published on the project blog. My own first statement read as follows: 

Summit Date: 8 December 2009
Attending: David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham, Alex Eisenberg 
Location: Red Cross Cafe Zusammen
Minute Taker: David Berridge

Tuesday 8th December 2009

We chance encounter. We design. We subject to change. We smallness and the individual voice. We social. We ambition. We abandon. We aim for higher emission targets. We post-global meltdown universe. We writing machine.

We embrace the uncertainty of our position – participate or die – within a community of hosts and guests in Copenhagen, within economies and governments and global climate systems. We collective voice. We minute. We proliferate.

We never ask a question we know the answer to. We work as artists, reclaiming the interview as about more than information or jobs, politicians or celebrities. The interview is about encounter and conversation as ecological systems on the edge of collapse, but full of suggestions towards prosperity.

We social sculpture. We propose categories holding clusters of related ideas, ever adaptable to any particular situation. These categories are: (1) START; (2) COP15; (3) SOCIAL SCULPTURE; (4) HOSPITALITY; (5) ACTION; (6) PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE; (7) HOME; (8) ENDING; (9) CHANCE AND FUTURE; (10) WILD CARD.

We graphic continuity. We draft. We disaster. We turn thought into manifesto. We New Life. We globe. We guilt. We science fiction. We don’t know. We host. We tone. We light up through pedal power. We wild card. We deal with urban development. We preparatory.

__________

Activist No.2, Saturday 12th December, 2009, Demonstration march to the Bella Centre, Copenhagen (photo: Alex Eisenberg)

 

When it was my turn to be minute taker again my sense of the Question Time project, COP15, and being in Copenhagen, seemed to be finely balance between presence and negation:

DATE: 11/12/09

LOCATION: FotoKaffe

PRESENT: David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham, Alex Eisenberg, Sara Seerup Laursen, Sarah Wingate.

MINUTE TAKERS: David Berridge and Sarah Wingate.

STATEMENT 4: “Boring Rhetoric Your Question”

Boring rhetoric destroying the house of cards. Destroys questions. Destroys the room of space. Destroys music.

Boring rhetoric binds non-verbal actions. Boring rhetoric the action of now. Boring rhetoric not lived out yet.

Boring rhetoric can get weird. Boring rhetoric “with my mind.” Boring rhetoric pledge mimics boring rhetoric.

Boring rhetoric magic of choice. Boring rhetoric utopia becomes two statements: “Boring and “Rhetoric.” Begins with ending. Refuses to answer question. Boring rhetoric turn over. Let’s all jump up and down at the same time.

Boring rhetoric meets one person and everything changes. Boring rhetoric self publishing. Boring rhetoric more important than the interviewee. Boring rhetoric New York.

RIP UP BORING RHETORIC! EVERYONE! PLAYING! WITH! DECLAMATORY! STATEMENTS! BORING RHETORIC THROUGH ABSENT MINDEDNESS DESTROYED!

WE SAY: THE BORING RHETORIC EMERGENCY COULD BE A BORING RHETORIC CRISIS! RHET YOUR CONFIDENT BOR AND TOR AND IC AND ING!I CAN’T MAKE OUT IF YOU’RE HAVING A TERRIBLE TIME. IS EVERYTHING OKAY?

WE SAY: BORING RHETORIC THE MOST CRYSTALLISED! TAKE A PHOTOGRAPH! DESTROY! BORING RHETORIC WHAT PEOPLE TAKE IT AS! WE SAY:

 

BORING RHETORIC WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION?

 

The statements were later re-formatted as a set of downloadable press releases. A sample of the project is below. You can read the full set of Statements of Intent here. 

Statement o.o

Statement 2.3

Statement 2.4