Speaking Terms

Works in Jan’s Totems series present icons, objects, and scenes as metaphors for reflection on current events and themes relevant to contemporary living.

Speaking Terms is a critique of the 2019 trade war carried on by the then-President of the United States, particularly as regards foreign steel from Canada and China, and this particular President’s frankly-immature, combative, and anti-social approach to the world in general.

The work, in the form of a giant golden see-saw, is made of rolled steel, the same steel that was tariffed in the trade war, and is intended as a meditation and commentary on the possibility and importance of having positive working relationships even with people you may be diametrically opposed to on any given issue.

“it is possible,” says Larsen, “to have positive, productive relationships with people on various sides of various issues, even those with positions that are diametrically opposed to your own, and important to have the wherewithal for negotiating effectively with such parties without taking a reckless, antiquated ‘hard-ball’ approach, which generates net-negative impacts on the welfare of people around them, even apart from the deals being negotiated, and even far from the site of the negotiation, as we have seen in the case of the US electoral chaos in early 2021, bringing the then-incumbent’s reckless approach ‘home to roost.’”

”It is possible, powerful, and effective to have the capacity to develop positive and productive working relationships with a broad and diverse range of people, ‘across-the-board,’ as it were, and in the worst case, to have the capacity to ‘disagree without being disagreeable.’”