Ups and Downs of a Flipped Planet: Iván Argote. Eliza Douglas. Jojo Gronostay.

Ich gehe im Dunkeln
Und ich singe absichtlich,

Weil ich nicht mag,
Was das Dunkel singt –

Vielleicht singt es
Gegen mich.
Die letzten Zeilen. In: Eugène Guillevic. Gedichte. Dt. v. M. Fahrenbach-Wachendorff. Stuttgart. Klett-Cotta, 1991.

Ancient philosophers held the earth to be spherical. Before it was flattened by prejudice, before the Copernican revolution decentered it, our planet stood at the centre of the universe in a system made of spheres englobing one another. Little was known about the other side of the sphere when its name was found: with the term “antipodes”, from the ancient Greek ἀντίπους – opposite foot – a region of the world was named in which people, rightly so, were believed to stand with the feet opposite, as if reflected in a mirror. Over time the word shifted in meaning and the people of the other side, that nobody had ever seen, started to be depicted with inverted feet―either pointing opposite to the body or growing out of the head. A figure for the prejudice against that which is opposed and therefore potentially dissimilar, antipodes became the name for all that stands conceptually below. However, it was precisely to criticise the notions of above and below that more than two millenniums ago Plato first employed the term ἀντίπους: if we were to walk across the globe, the philosopher wrote in the Timaeus, our feet would be both above and below, and it would hence make no sense to use terms implying opposition to describe a place that is both up and down.