The coastal French landscape that holds the World Wwar II bunkers that so fascinated architect Claude Parent (1923–2016) and philosopher Paul Virilio (1932–2018) of the Architecture Principe group in the 1960s is once more a contested site; it acts as a holding area for migrant workers hoping to travel to England. The sense of skewed (de)horizontal (de)stabilization that Parent and Virilio identified so adeptly now extends beyond the bunker into the societal landscape. Where Parent once attempted to use the oblique to shock late capitalist consumers out of their sense of order and calm, certain subjects might now be considered to be always already obliqued. This interdisciplinary art research project takes as a given Parent’s insistence that space is necessarily active, rather than passive, working within a postcolonial framework to examine the way in which it is active. How does space act upon certain subjects differently? Can we recognize these effects? Just what do we owe those who enter our spaces?

Coleman Collins is an interdisciplinary artist and writer who explores the ways that small, iterative processes can have outsized effects over time. His work often identifies technological developments and relationships of debt and obligation as the modes through which these processes are enacted. Recent exhibitions and screenings include Carré d’Art, Nîmes; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Nothing Special, Los Angeles; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York; ltd los angeles, Los Angeles; Artspace, New Haven; and Human Resources Los Angeles. Collins was a 2021 recipient of a NYFA Artists Corps Grant. He received a master of fine arts from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2018, and was a 2017 resident at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. In 2019, he participated in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program. He lives in New York, where he is currently serving as the inaugural artist-in-residence at Stony Brook University’s Future Histories Studio.