We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted To Be

 

We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted To Be | Ruth Ewan

‘We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted To Be is a  decimal clock which divides each day into ten hours, each hour into one hundred minutes and each minute into one hundred seconds.  Ewan’s work references the attempt by Napoleon’s Republican government to rationalise the day after the French revolution. Old regimes were abandoned and new systems were adopted.  They established  anew social order based on freedom and equality.  On 5 October 1793 the Gregorian calendar was abandoned in favour of a decimal version.  It became France’s official calendar for the next thirteen years.  Time was briefly reordered in an expression of revolutionary optimism.’

We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted To Be is part of  ‘The Time is Now’ exhibition running at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield from 5 October 2019 – 19 January 2020

Also at the same exhibition is Totality featured earlier on Postcard Cafe HERE

‘We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted To Be’ also happens to be the title of a song from Bugsy Malone…