Échange de devises
BDP - Biennale de Paris 2004
(In french, "devise" means currency but can also designate a country's motto.)
Échange de devises will have a prosperous business with its exchange office of motto such as Je me souviens, Liberté Égalité Fraternité, etc...
Though passerby thinking to make a deal will be taken by surprise.
The political tone and the trompe l'oeil style of the ATSA will be given. Échange de devises, set in Europe, will emphasize the memory of the life before and after the EEC, the difference since the slicing of the economical borders by positioning the passerby in the center of this world movement.
The Quebec's motto which we have to exchange is very appropriate in that sense: Je me souviens ("I remember"). It contains its share of nostalgia and dream. The discussions in the street around our office of exchange should tell us much on Parisian urbanity, the European Community and on the evolution of this rising identity of "citizen of the world". Citizenship, membership, differences, comparisons, conflicts of identities, alliances are key words which will guide our exchanges.
For its deployment Échange de devises comprises only one collapsible table and some country's motto printed on Monopoli money, a currency toy that everyone knows and who will be used as pretext for exchange by the two artists of the ATSA, Pierre Allard and Annie Roy.
slideshow
Photos : © ATSA
