In Agreement (Good Intention Works #1)
‘In Agreement’ shows the original, signed, final versions of a selection of trade agreements that the EU has negotiated and closed with other parties. Traditionally and historically the concept of ‘trade’ is collaboration, friendship and exchange between partners; above all it is generally believed that ‘trade keeps peace’. Nowadays trade agreements may also arouse discussion among certain groups in society, as these complicated agreements seem unwieldy, regulate too much and may not bring the expected benefits for the people.
The documents in the photographs are the basis for regulation of world-wide human economic activity. They set the rules for import and export, taxes, custom tariffs, working conditions, sharing of knowledge and information, arbitration, collaboration and international peace and stability. All the images show the physical hard copy of an original agreement in one language. The documents are shown upside-down, last page up: the signature is the actual beginning, after this the good intentions need to be proven. The ‘wet’ signatures that validate the agreement of hundreds of pages after sometimes years of work and negotiation, seem to humanize these large, complicated documents.
Through the audio installation soft voices are reading out parts of different agreements in different languages. It symbolizes and adds in the experience of multiplicity, complicated matter, air of distance, dreary, friendly, soothing, passiveness, acceptance…
