QUESTION TIME

QUESTION TIME
‘towards an alternative statement of the way forward on climate change’

QUESTION TIME is a series of 1000 interviews, conducted throughout Copenhagen during the UN COP15 conference, towards an alternative statement of the way forward on climate change. In a context of inter-governmental debate and negotiation, QUESTION TIME explores an alternative approach to climate change based on anecdote, neurotic behaviors, misunderstandings, and gossip.

QUESTION TIME involves four UK artists, ranging in mood from the mildly neurotic to the apocalyptic, looking to discuss climate change with as wide a spectrum of Copenhagen residents as possible, mapping its presence in the individual and collective psyche. Each day, parallel to the conference, the four artists will conduct a series of programmed and random interviews across the city - in cafes, conference centres, parks, street corners, shopping centres, museums, universities, and domestic residencies.

Initially, the questions will be our own - formulated as a pack of 30 playing cards, dealt out in ever new combinations at the start of each conversation. But, of course, each encounter will bring new (mis-) information to light. So each day ends with a public summit at which the days discoveries are presented, and the next days questions are formulated. In the manner of the COP15 itself, we will each day use the material we have collected to formulate a statement on climate change and the way forward for us, Copenhagen, and the world.

These summits will be open events, held in various locations around the city, with a feel that combines performance, seminar, poetry reading and a shared meal - an alternative, convivial, artists led version of the discussions taking place at COP15. The unfolding statement will appear online as a series of podcasts, adapted with new material daily. The accumulated questions will map a web of concerns and also provide a score for future research projects into the area of climate change.

QUESTION TIME will conclude with a final summit, to which all participants will be invited to share in a final declaration. The final summit will also launch the next stage of the project, where each artist develops their own project - be it performance, exhibition, event, or written text - from the archive of material collected throughout COP15.


QUESTION TIME is a collaboration between David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham, Alex Eisenberg and Mary Paterson as Open Dialogues. QUESTION TIME is programmed as part of New Life Copenhagen, featuring in the official United Nations COP15 artistic programme.


BACKGROUND

Open Dialogues

Open Dialogues is a UK based collaboration, founded by Mary Paterson and Rachel Lois Clapham, that explores critical writing as debate and practice. www.opendialogues.com

New Life Copenhagen

Produced by Wooloo Productions, and cntered around themes of activism and transnational communities, New Life Copenhagen comprises of 5.000 people living in and around Copenhagen opening their homes to 5.000 environmental activists during the UN Climate Change Conference in Denmark this December.

New Life Copenhagen will utilize this large-scale human meeting as its exhibition platform on which to stage participatory art works by artists Superflex (DK) and Signa (DK/A) among others. More details about the festival can be found at the Wooloo Productions online network http://www.wooloo.org/festival or at http://www.newlifecopenhagen.com/index_lofi.php

The UN Climate Change Conference 2009 (COP15)

From December 7th to 18th 2009, representatives from 192 nations will gather in Denmark for the UN Climate Change Conference to reach an agreement on a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. In addition to the large number of official UN delegates, thousands of activists and Non-Governmental Organizations are bound for the conference. More details on http://en.cop15.dk/

If you are interested in contributing to QUESTION TIME either during or after New Life Copenhagen and COP15 please contact opendialogues@gmail.com