This publication accompanies the exhibition Time Zone Protocols (April 4–18) and the Prime Meridian Unconference symposium (April 15–17), 2020–2022 Vera List Center Fellowship-commissioned projects by Rasheedah Phillips that trace the written and unwritten political agendas, social agreements, and protocols that underlie Westernized time constructs. Time Zone Protocols is curated by Carin Kuoni and Eriola Pira with curatorial assistance by Camila Palomino. The Prime Meridian Unconference is curated by Rasheedah Phillips.

The exhibition and the accompanying Unconference, both held at the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery at Parsons School of Design, explore the implications of the 1884 International Meridian Conference (IMC), a convening that established a prime meridian, enforcing a universal time standard. Tracing the “Protocols of the Proceedings,” the written and unwritten political agendas and social agreements that underlie Westernized time constructs, Phillips examines the protocols by which dominant time structures regulate, catalyze, and perpetuate systems of oppression that deny marginalized people access to and agency over the temporal domains of the past and present, with a focus on Black communities in the US.