The term Year Zero applies to the takeover of Cambodia in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge. The idea behind Year Zero is that all culture and traditions within a society must be completely destroyed or discarded and a new revolutionary culture must replace it, starting from scratch. All history of a nation or people before Year Zero is largely irrelevant, as it will (as an ideal) be purged and replaced from the ground up. As activists such as Naomi Klein have argued, this form of cultural eradication is almost impossible anywhere in the world as no such ‘reset’ button exists in humanity.

Sonny Sanjay Vadgama’s ‘Year Zero’ features an image of a digital countdown clock that has been photographed on a slow exposure. The clock repeatedly counts down from 10 mins, however, as it approaches 00.01 secs the clock restarts thus never reaching 0. The resulting image acts as trigger to consider how many times in history segments of mankind have attempted to force a ‘reset’ or annihilation of another group.

Year Zero (2009)  841 mm x 594 mm Lambda Print