Research

In the Blind Distance

April 23, 2023
Architectures of Control and Resistance Symposium
Cornell University
Ithaca (US)

January 19, 2023
International Congress, Colonial and Postcolonial Landscapes
Gulbenkian Foundation
Lisbon (PT)
Session Chair: Samia Henni

Blind distance connotes the space between a radar and its target range; a gap in perception.
In April of 1964 France entered an agreement with the Portuguese dictatorship to erect a military installation in Azores. Now abandoned, the facility once performed a crucial role in the French nuclearization effort by observing the trajectory of ballistic missiles launched from the western coast of France.

Rearticulating a ruin in Azores to attend to this redacted space we call blind distance unfolds a continuum between the nuclear and the colonial, where the relentless pursuit of nuclearization became at once a vehicle for, and a product of, expanding frontiers of colonial violence—from the atolls of the South Pacific, to Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau.

In collaboration with Tiago Patatas

Raya Leary

Work