The Earth is flat, right?

I am often asked how I got started with this ‘flat-earther’ project… So I guess this would be a good starting point.

Back in 2015, I slowly noticed that people around me started to believe some conspiracy theories and more notably anti-vax theories. At the same time, I was following a science-driven forum who were making jokes about the rising flat-earther community. I was truly concerned about this lack of trust in facts and began to collect data.

A year later, Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency and the term ‘Fake news’ spread as fast as he tweets. But it was his inauguration in January 2017 and the related crowd controversy that made me dive full into the project.

There was now a clear link between the flat-earther community and the Trump administration; their distrust in ‘higher’ institutions and how they used images to alter narratives.

Flat-earthers use a lot of images to share their ideas and theories. First, they make images of their experiments that are meant to disprove the globe model. They are, in their point of view, the absolute truth. And they share images from institutions like space agencies, which are then mandatory fake, to prove that people are lied to.

Image 2: © Emily Barnes

Image 3: © Lucas Jackson

You can find more information on the crowd controversy in the article From Obama to Trump: How the inaugurations looked in 2009 and 2017 by The Washington Post.

Philippe Braquenier is part of »Guest Room: Daniel Boetker-Smith & Tanvi Mishra«.

Check out his Artist Feature “Earth Not a Globe”.