Globe

Globe has no borders. She is a perpetual alien, a foreign body, a meteorite from outer space, a temporary export far form home. Synthesised from stars, she is always on the move.

Globe started life free of imperfections. As she rolled through the streets her exterior degraded and scarred, taking on the impressions of each route travelled; mapping each journey on her surface. Four cameras housed inside portholes filmed each rotation of Globe’s journey, recording encounters with the public in London, Shrewsbury and Delhi.

The recorded narratives have been edited alongside the tumbling topography of Globe’s revolving footage into three films: ‘Here Be Dragons’ (2016), ‘Terra Incognita’ (2017) and ‘Concrete Flowers’ (2019). Edited by Alice Forward.

The project is informed by work on urban dwelling, in which both home and the city are construed as spheres of lived experience as well as sites of memory, nostalgia and the imagination. The films reveal the many ways in which a sense of belonging and home are established in areas that are defined and shaped by migration. It also addresses increasingly polarised attitudes towards immigration and difference in society. Globe challenges perceptions of home territory and geographical boundaries. Each rotation relates to the local and the global, questioning ideas of who falls inside and outside.

Globe is a collaboration with the Schools of Geography and Drama at Queen Mary University of London. The Globe team are Olivia
Sheringham, Alison Blunt, Caoimhe McAvinchey and Janetka Platun. We would like to thank Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, Mulberry School for Girls (Tower Hamlets), Nahra School (Sonipat), O.P Jindal Global University (Sonipat), Torridon School (Greenwich) and The
Community Youth Action Group (North Kensington).

Funded by a Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residence Award, Arts Council England Project Grant, Erasmus Plus and the Science Museum. You can find out more about the project at: www.qmul.ac.uk/globe