Te Moana Meridian: How The Prime Meridian Shapes The World And The Case For Relocating It

Sam Hamilton/Sam Tam Ham (b. 1984, Auckland, New Zealand/Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa) created Te Moana Meridian as a vessel for proposing a radical new United Nations General Assembly Draft Resolution to formally relocate the prime meridian from Greenwich, London, to Te Moana-Nui-ā-Kiwa/the South Pacific Ocean. Since its inception at an 1884 conference in Washington D.C., the prime meridian has functioned to implicitly serve the ambitions of the British colonial empire. Rather than serving as a "beacon of humanity," the prime meridian today more resembles a bygone imperial relic. As an original operatic performance and five-channel video installation, Te Moana Meridian proposes to elect a new "center of the world" while acknowledging that doing so has the potential to reframe the dynamics of global power.

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