The Agreement, 2012
A work in collaboration with Mexico City artist collective Laboratorio 060
Project commissioned for the exhibition The Workers
MassMOCA, Massachusetts, USA
May 2011 - March 2012
As part of a long-term project that investigates the seemingly inconsequential gestures –minor tactics of resistance—that individuals from labor organizations get into when bargaining collectively with their employers for better working conditions, Laboratorio 060 set up a workshop with ex-union members within the premises of MassMOCA, once the site of Sprague Electric Company. During these interchanges, it became clear that the collective contracts that Unions usually defend are in fact unique cultural objects that agglutinate individuals around certain practices and expectations, worldviews and ideals of mankind in a search for the appropriation of their own work force. The contract was thoroughly analyzed, specially comparing different historical labor cultures and global economic structures, and a fictional labor contract was drafted, which envisions an alternate utopic economic value system which properly endows workers with right to access the fruits of their own labor. Link to contract in QR Code below.
