Harriet Partridge

sorting time

Portuguese explorers and cartographers navigated vast sea territories by constructing arbitrary grids, ‘rhumb’ lines and anchors: tested by the elements and informed by the astronomical world above. No other collective quest eclipsed the search to measure longitude, the oblique meridian, tackled via peculiar methods and astronomical assurances, proven eventually by time: the H-1 clock’s successful 1753 journey from Portsmouth to Lisbon.

The ‘imaginary’ line at the Portuguese|Spanish border, ‘A Raia|La Raya’, constructs a time difference of +|- 1 hour. This seam parting the nations has a dimension in itself, blurred at the disputed zone, Olivença|Olivenza … an in-between territory of ambiguities: streets with two names, families with two surnames, generations with two languages, a river with two bridges, one broken, one new, inhabitants perpetually adjusting to constructed time.

Postmen collectively navigate the borderlands daily, individually re-tracing their distinct territories through delivery and collection like clockwork, capturing daily glimpses of households, moments and journeys … the unmapped, the temporal, the overlooked. An exhibition of their photographs captures a sample of fleeting observations, echoing studio twelve’s survey strategy onshore from Trafalgar and subsequent [re]viewing of the sample topography.

An in-between sorting office, conceived as an island, facilitates postal routes across this unique territory, reducing the illogical navigation imposed by the Raia|Raya. Upstream from the broken bridge, it operates at actual in-between time, demarcating its unique orientation exactly half an hour in sun-time from 0°, +|- half an hour, ‘uphill’ towards Spain, ‘downhill’ towards Portugal. Adjusted grid floor plates calibrate the sun round and the postal round, capturing the earth’s rotation through shifting densities of posted light, reinforced by the grid of postal frames replicating and mapping the physical postal territories beyond … filling during sorting, emptying for delivery. The island conceit celebrates co-operative and bi-lingual distinctions, bridges similarities, accommodates difference … postmen lingering after their round in an in-between of reconciliation before slipping back into national time …