The Dislocation of Degree Zero
Shown at: Sharjah Biennial 11, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2013) | National gallery of Modern Art. New Delhi (2014)
Video loop
Duration, 6′
In the present world, ever since the adoption of Greenwich Mean Time, the system of longitudes beginning and ending at an arbitrarily decided degree zero located at the Greenwich Observatory near London creates a notional global central axis and degrees of peripherality. This convention is based on an arbitrary decision that indexed Great Britain’s power during the nineteenth century, but in truth, the location of the prime meridian could be anywhere at all. One could, for instance take any point in the Arabian desert, draw a line and declare it to be a prime meridian, insisting that the periphery of the desert is now a new centre of the world. It is a matter of drawing, erasing, and re-drawing, almost as a repetitive compulsion – lines in the sand.
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