Te Moana Meridian (opera) is a 70-minute-long experimental opera based on a UN policy proposal titled: Te Moana Meridian: How the Prime Meridian Shapes the World, and the Case for Relocating It. An essay that makes a case for why the UN should officially relocate the international prime meridian from Greenwich, London, to the international waters of Te Moana-Nui-ā-Kiwa South Pacific Ocean, and thus establish a new prime meridian or a new world. One connects us rather than divides us.

As an arbitrary reference point for reckoning universal time and space systems (such as UTC & GPS), the prime meridian could be anywhere on Earth. Its location doesn’t technically matter. What matters is how its location inherently becomes the de facto center of the world. And how that implicitly shapes our worldview, and in turn, influences how we shape the world at large. 

Thus, when considering where to locate the prime meridian, the real question is: What kind of worldview do we want it to project? 

Are we really OK with the old colonial, capitalist, and white supremacist worldview that London has projected since coercing the outcome of the 1884 Conference of the Prime Meridian in Washington, D.C.? 

Or are we ready for a new dominant worldview? One that helps us see and move toward a future not beholden to the trappings of the past. A worldview established through and on the principles of multilateral mutuality. A worldview tethered to, and defined by, our most vital global commons.

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As an opera, this text takes form as a bilingual libretto sung respectively in English and Te Reo Māori by esteemed vocalists Holland Andrews (NYC) and Mere Tokorahi Boynton (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Ngāi Tūhoe, Aotearoa/New Zealand). Orbiting this twin star system, like mechanisms of a celestial clock, are solo dancer yuniya edi kwon (NYC) performing a ritualised recalibration of time and space and a (local) 26-50 person chorus “singing” like the ocean. All of which unfolds beneath the glow of a dramatically slow, imposing, and austere kinetic light sculpture suspended above the stage, while a small acoustic ensemble steeps the space in hypnotic, undulating microtonal sound fields.

Mixing the polemic with the primal, these sparing elements slowly coalesce over the course of the opera to amplify its central determination: to calmly but confidently call a better world into being. 

To Avoid Drowning, Become the Ocean