The accompanying texts, however, manifest an increasing tangentiality to the imagery of protagonists arranging and aligning themselves in readiness for the camera. For, tabulating, examining, even dissecting, the body as well as the gaze have now assumed seminal importance in this trio of works. The forms in which each work was realized are indebted to various popular culture genres, including pulp fiction, TV soap operas, and photo romances. Weaving references drawn from film, from drama, and from painting, Coleman situates his trilogy in a hybrid realm, one that allows him to comment obliquely on these canonical art forms and their traditions without, however, fully subscribing to any. Presented in darkened rooms with soft, carpeted floors, Coleman's works refuse to ascribe fixed viewpoints, preferred sight lines or standardized positions.
Spectators move through the rooms finding their own preferred vantage points.
As they locate themselves temporarily and provisionally, they become aware that they have in large part negotiated the positions they adopt. Simultaneously, as subjects, they undergo a process of decentering. Having implicated viewers into their audiovisual texts by means of shifting perspectives and changing modes of address, these works deconstruct the mechanisms that inform their audiences' methods of comprehension and apprehension. By thus rendering the ascription of meaning a self-conscious act, Coleman is able to continually readjust his viewers' relations to reality and to competing modalities of subjectivity.