Googled Earth
A collaborative work with Negin Ehtesabian using Google Earth VR to visit forbidden or inaccessible countries.
Googled Earth began when Negin Ehtesabian and I used Google Earth VR to visit each other’s countries: Iran and the United States. For political and legal reasons, these places were difficult or impossible for us to visit together physically, so the virtual globe became a strange substitute for travel, memory and witness.
What we found was not neutral information. The Google Earth landscapes were partial, distorted, melted and incomplete. They reflected the mediated images we already carried from news, family stories, political rhetoric and imagination. The virtual world became a place where distance was visible as error.
The project has taken the form of video, painting, drawing, machine drawing, tapestry and reflective works. It is about travel, but also about the impossibility of travel; about seeing, but also about the politics of who gets to see what.