This invisible line

Tartu, Estonia is the origin of the Struve Geodetic Arc, a chain of points used to measure the meridian line which passes through the heart of the city and stretches far beyond, from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea. Nearly 200 years ago, it provided the first accurate dimensions of the size and shape of the planet, resulting in maps that could precisely describe the Earth’s topography and exactly where you were upon it.

 

Map of the Struve Geodetic Arc, Tartu Tähetorn, Estonia

 

I wanted to acknowledge the city of Tartu as the starting point of what I consider to be an ambitious, but perhaps invisible, planet-scaled earthwork. I was struck by various 19th century maps of the arc and related topographic surveys I saw at the Tähetorn—the old observatory perched on a hill above the city, which is also the arc’s first measured point—and wanted to make something similar. Using historic letterpress machines in TYPA’s unusual studio where I was an artist-in-residence, I made an accordion-folded map of the meridian line as it passes through buildings, parking lots, parks and cemeteries in the contemporary city. As I walked through Tartu to make this map, I thought about how such ordinary points in the landscape lead to places much larger and further away and how the significance of a site can be so easily overlooked or unknown.

 

 

I left maps at various points in the city along the meridian line for passers-by to find and take. I’m interested in printed ephemera as a kind of public art that reveals your surroundings and can be put in your pocket to take with you.