Context

Created for the 22nd Biennale of Sydney: NIRIN as part of her Sydney Observarory residency, this virtual walk retraces Sydney’s invisible Meridian line. Through a series of 24 posts, originally published on the Observatory blog, the walk reveals the history of Sydney’s Meridian, a north-south line transecting the Observatory’s Transit telescope, and the role it played in imposing an empire of regulated time on the colony as well as its connection to surveying and laying claim to the land.

Presented by Powerhouse Museum as part of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney: NIRIN 2020.

This project was supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

Remapping Sydney Meridian

Starting from Sydney Observatory, each post below is a station in a guided walk along the Sydney Meridian line, one station a day for 24 days, until we arrive at Sydney Town Hall. As we retrace Sydney Meridian line, we discover that it has substantially shifted over time. This fact suggests that neither time nor territory can be bound by absolute rules. In this rift of time and space lies a paradox: neither technological nor colonial impositions can change the reality that time itself is impossible to pin down – that time is always changing.

Time Projects