étalon is a dichotomous construct. It is both the French word for ‘standard of measure’, and a term used to describe a stallion; the male exemplar – a breeding horse.
In the Summer of 2018, Sara Morawetz and a team of female artists will traverse 1,500 km (900 mi) across France and Spain to measure the Earth’s unseen curvature and create a new ‘metre’ derived through physical action. Over 100 days she will walk the meridian arc from Dunkerque to Barcelona, joined weekly by different partners who will aid in the creation of a new standard. Each step taken will be an act of (re)evaluation and (re)consideration – examining the lived act of measurement and scientific exploration through the female gaze. étalon is conceived as a counter-measure, privileging a feminist perspective distinctly lacking within the historical narrative of science. This new ‘metre-étalon’ will be formed by a collective of voices – brought together to expand upon existent forms of knowledge and to focus on a mode of production [as much as that which is produced]. This new standard is intended as something more than a fixed and immutable construct — it is to be a shared phenomenological encounter; an assemblage of time passed and distance travelled; a measuring of self against the limits of our domain.
