Greenwich Degree Zero

Description:

Greenwich Degree Zero was an exhibition presented by Western Front as part of Set, a curatorial series produced in collaboration with Artspeak that explored the concepts of rehearsal and re-enactment and how they related to social roles, institutions, and histories. 

Greenwich Degree Zero featured artist Rod Dickinson and writer Tom McCarthy and revisited Joseph Conrad’s novel, The Secret Agent (1907). Set in 1894, the novel follows an out-of-work French tailor named Martial Bourdin who blew himself up in front of the Greenwich Observatory. Found in his pockets were a membership card for the Autonomie Club in London, two tickets to a masked ball in aid of the Revolutionary Party, and several recipes for explosives. 

Greenwich Degree Zero reimagined the attack as a success, with the observatory and the meridian line damaged or destroyed. The exhibition included a reconstructed film of the bombing, video interviews with contemporary explosives experts and political historians, and an invented archive of newspaper articles, pamphlets, and police files installed in the gallery. These reconstructed chronicles included the speculation that Bourdin was working for the police, who wanted to help pass into law Lord Salisbury’s “Aliens Bill,” which proposed a weakening of asylum rights by tying the bombing to foreign undesirables. Hovering between credibility and contrivance, Dickinson’s archival documents and film footage reframed events at the time represented in press and media coverage.

Curated by Lorna Brown and Jonathan Middleton.