IN THE BLIND DISTANCE



Blind distance connotes the void between a radar and its observable range—a space excluded from the envelope of detection.

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 significant role in the French nuclearization effort by monitoring the trajectory of ballistic missiles launched from the western coast of France.

Rearticulating a ruin in Azores to attend to this redacted space—a 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.



This project is ongoing.

Event

Architectures of Control and Resistance 

Venue

Cornell AAP, New York

Organizers

Maria Luisa Palumbo, Eun-Jeong Kim

Date

April 2023




Event

Colonial and Postcolonial Landscapes

Venue

Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon

Session Chair

Samia Henni 

Date

January 2023




With

Raya Leary 




© Tiago Patatas