In 2017 the RGS-IBG annual international conference played host to Globe, an artistic project created by Janetka Platun as part of a Leverhulme Artist in Residence Award in collaboration with the Schools of Drama and Geography at Queen Mary University of London.
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.