QUESTION TIME

STATEMENT OF INTENT 2.6

TWICE LOST GLOVES THE FINGER

FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CONVERSATION -Secretariat

CONVENTION-CADRE SUR LA CONVERSATION Secrétariat

For use of the media only.

PRESS RELEASE
Statement of Intent 2.6 from Question Time [QT], Copenhagen, Denmark. Question Time
hold daily summits somewhere in Copenhagen. After each summit a new statement of
intent is issued.

Attending: David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham, Alex Eisenberg, Mary Paterson.
Location: Cafe Zusammen.
Minute taker: David Berridge

We are approaching agreement. An oppressive place. You should subscribe. Its spiral is a slow, continual
gradation. The shape of potential. We have to agree dates. When did we first become aware of this
climate change crisis our own existence in time? One of us proposes 1984. Another says 1989. But each
has their agenda, wishing to sit in their birthday chair, covered in crepe paper.

Maybe these are bargaining positions, the real year two or three years before. I do not yet have a year for
acquiring awareness. Is that why I keep the minutes? How can we achieve agreement? One of us had a
boyfriend who had one testicle. One of us had a boyfriend, born with forceps that slipped and poked out
one eye. Maybe there will be a deal at the last minute.

This is my birthday. But everyone is in the next room watching television. The writers group have
abandoned the democratic process to go off on their own and write villanelles about lego. They fight over
end words, equating their predicament to the fall of the Soviet Union. Stupid writers. Perhaps no deal is
happening but then there is a late intervention: if we have birthmarks we will celebrate them as parts of
our body. Everyone who sees our mark in its entirety – a baroque protestant drape over half the body –
has given us a letter. The letters spell a phrase:

TWICE LOST GLOVES

The story of the performance by the man in the towel at the party at 3AM has been omitted from these
minutes. All his work is about testicular cancer. We chased a convoy – was it Obama? – convinced our
gloves were inside. We were reassured in our failure by a man who gave us fruit and tea and lowered our
bicycle seat so we could ride under the convoys that were everywhere blocking free passage through the
city. Everything was nice. We were all reassured by the unfamiliarly close proximity of our knees and chin.

The agreement takes shape: We wash our hair, and sort audio files, and lose some more gloves and insist
the floor be mopped. We love mopping followed by a multi-bird roast. But this 10 bird monstrosity could be
deal breaking so we must be more concrete:

(a) WHERE WE ARE NOW

The lack of gloves focusses delegates attentions on the hand. An argument is made for focussing solely
on The Finger. The Finger is its own delegating bloc: it points where it wishes, appearing in photographs
of climate change activists and world leaders alike. Nothing about COP15 must be without the finger.

(b) SOME CONTEXT

Individuals highlighted or obliterated by The Finger find me on the internet afterwards and write to
complain. I explain it is a Writers Finger, “saying” more about me than about them, a way of saving time by
laughing at my writing and my finger together, a confessional trumping-perspective moment. Usually they
are reassured enough not to email me again.

(c) OUTSTANDING ISSUES TO BE RESOLVED

(1) I am learning the comic timing of The Finger.

(2) I think the agreement is fine but The Finger should be in bigger type.
(3) The Finger had its third night of terrible sleep.
(4) A shaman called Angelica from Peru.
(5) The Finger gave itself the excuse not to do anything because it was so tired
(6) Drawn there by the food? No, it was more ephemeral.
(7) A sinister finger presence. A device to distract finger people.
(8) The guilt of doing finger and the guilt of not doing finger.
(9) This is the finger for me ( fear of circles).
(10) You can’t repent you just live with The Finger.
(11) We’ll give you this meaningless finger.
(12) Re-define it once The Finger is here.