Een leven goed geleid, is een leven vol verstrengelde belangen waarin je werkt met vrienden, bevriend raakt met opdrachtgevers, je je vriendinnetje versiert terwijl je op het zoontje van een vriend past. Sommigen mensen zijn bang voor belangenverstrengeling. Wij niet. Om de belangen in Amsterdam nog een beetje verder te verstrengelen maakte we een dubbele agenda. Die reist het hele jaar 2011 door de stad, elke week naar een andere gebruiker. 

An agenda, even a regular one, is quite a special book. For sure, on face value it is just a little book with all the days of the year in it. Looking closer, you will find those days are usually in a certain order, and grouped by weeks: an agenda is a tool to plan your life. More essentially, it provides the illusion of order on the one hand, and of comfort on the other: there is always a day following another day. More fundamentally though, an agenda is a symbol of your life. An agenda grows with you; it becomes a cronique of what you did during the year. People usually don't throw an old agenda away: if you lose it, you feel naked and lost.


Apart from the normal agenda functionality (to order your life), this particular version adds reflection and soul searching. This little book not only enables you to structure your appointments, but provokes you to contemplate why you meet people or do things. Over the course of the month, you can map out your own agenda’s, the consciously hidden and outright subliminal ones.

The double agenda is literally a two sided book. One side is more accessible than the other. The more accessible side looks pretty much like an ordinary agenda. But the days here are punctuated by questions that provoke to think about why you do things, why you meet with people.


It has an easy to use code to emotionally qualify the reason why you meet someone (because it makes you happy? Or because you feel guilty if you don’t? Because you think you might have something to win or lose?). Easy to use, grave in consequence.

This getting sucked into contemplation, minute lettering in between the days, pose questions or propose assignments every week. 'Introduce two people you meet this week to each other', 'Underline those moments of this week that could end up in your autobiography one day.'


Ultimate soul searching, finally, is found in the less accessible side. Cahier after cahier of brutally empty pages. Nothing more frightening than nothing to hang on to or react against. It also contains 2300 questions that we feel you should ask yourself every day.

At the time of writing, 28 people have used the agenda. It made hidden agenda’s surface. It made surfaced agenda's compete. It made competing agenda's intertwine.


If you want to delve into the 'why' of your life, and see your life mix with that of others, consider to become part of the double agenda project: send an email to Joost at partizanpublik.nl.