Borderlands

Borderlands (2024) is a series of seven laser engravings on black sandpaper. Rendered black on black, the hard-to-decipher drawings riff off medieval depictions of animals where the intended creature and its depiction only nominally match.

The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone

The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone, published by Jencks Foundation (2023), takes the form of an artist book, and foregrounds text over image. Mirroring the film’s visual textures, the five voices in the pamphlet register varying distances from what is seen on the screen and its potential elucidations: voiceover, description of images, words on screen, added layers of annotations and meta-annotations.

All, Humans

All, Humans builds itself from uniquely human faculty of language to construct conceptual categories that transverse the human condition. It arcs out like a canopy – suspended between a multiplicity of minds, hearts and hands, sheltering and anticipating the universal human aspiration and claim for freedom, equality and dignity.

An Interview

The Collective Eye interviews Raqs Media Collective and delves deep into their early days, influences, and experiences. They discuss a wide range of works from ‘Coronation Park’ in 2015 to the public commission, ‘All, Human’ in 2023.

The Waves are Rising

The Waves Are Rising features an animated augmented reality (AR) wave on a large scale LED screen, superimposed upon live video feed video of the still waters of The Royal Docks, filling the vista of the usually calm waterscape with an animated surging wave as well as detritus and data from the high seas.

The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone 

The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Parallax Time Cone’ is an investigation into the optics of this strange and specific sensation of time, which has become second nature since 1980. It is a time traveling search, aboard an imagined and remembered bicycle.

1980 in Parallax

1980 in Parallax Exhibition at Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House, United Kingdom (2023) Raqs finds correspondence with Charles Jencks’ work as designer, critic, historian, concrete poet and artist, and with his Post-Modernist manifesto and former home turned Grade I listed museum, The Cosmic House. The concept of parallax describes the changing perception of objects […]

Unruly Iris of Dissent (U.I.D 2), Swamp & Marsh

Unruly Iris of Dissent (U.I.D 2)Shown at: Art Heritage Gallery, New Delhi (2023) Projection of Video Loop 12 years after The Unlikely Intimacy of Digits (2011), which animated a nineteenth century Bengali peasant’s handprint found in a London archive into a spectral count towards infinity, Raqs return to bodily scans as arguments with surveillance. Now, […]

An Infra-vocabulary for Capital

Upright board with an inscribed ‘Infra-Vocabulary’ of a selection from Raqs Media Collective’s synonyms for capital, taken from their work – ‘A Dying Man Sings of That which Felled Him’ (installation with video and inscriptions, 2006) which was subsequently published in their book, ‘Seepage’ (Sternberg Press, 2009) 

Practising Collectivity:
What is possible and
not yet forbidden?

Published in CURARE – Curatorial Studies by Ute Müller-Tischler and Solvej Helweg Ovesen  The CURARE Reader is published as part of the CAMPI Curating and Management in Public Institutions program of the District Office for Mitte in Berlin, Office for Further Education and Culture, The Department of Art, Culture and History 

Yours, Sincerely (2022)

Essay as a part of Half-Life, a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and the Art Institute of Chicago within the context of its exhibition “Static Range” by Himali Singh Soin

Betaal / बे-ताल / Arrhythmic

Betaal / बे-ताल / Arrhythmic instigates an encounter with simulations of arrhythimic presences in an infrastructure-inflected landscape. The landscape of loops, knots, ties, ellipses, holes made of steel wires and metal bar creates a crisscross configuration suspended in space.

Au_racle

Non-fungible, Digital object Video loop connected to fluctuating real-time global price index for gold  Non-fungible Speculations, Nature Morte, New Delhi (2022) 

soDA Magazine Story

soDA magazine 19, Zurich (2002); Casebook (2014, AGYU Canada), Raqs presented the concept of “Event-shaped Hole” which translated into the essay The Event-shaped Hole and the Photographic Image in The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, 2021 Casebook (2014, AGYU Canada) A photograph is an image of an event-shaped-hole, and as witnesses to such perforations we could […]

Hungry for Time

Hungry for Time An invitation to epistemic disobedience with Raqs Media CollectiveArt Collections of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2021-2022) The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna has undergone a fundamental renovation and modernization and returned this summer to its historical building on Schillerplatz. For the reopening, the large exhibition Hungry for Time is being […]

The Laughter of Tears

The Laughter of Tears | 2021 Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany  When we are in the sonic range of the flightpaths of a flock of birds returning to a roosting site, we become intimate with their together-ness. When people are awestruck by wonder, or tickled into laughter, or moved to tears, they momentarily transmit to each other […]

When Proust Catches the Glare

As the earth turns to spin slightly faster than before in 2021, and as the heavens break ranks, involuntary memories return to the beckoning of the lime-tar-fish-jasmine-gasoline-brine smell of a new time. This smell of a new time needs new words – and an old hand – to write it all down. 

Salt

Raqs works with salt, or that refers to salt, as material or concept. The inquiry started from “Salt”, a photo-essay published in The Drama Review, Volume 65 Issue 4, 2021. Salt, The Drama Review, Volume 65 Issue 4, 2021 (download) A Planet Turns on its Axis Without Permission Single screen, Video, 18:04 minutes “Provisions for Everybody” at […]

Intimate Intimidation 

Intimate Intimidation Readymade canopy, radiation hazard sign inscribed as a pattern in salt on the floor (240 x 240 cm) The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) Every willful misstep, every greedy grab, is an intimate intimidation to our own longer future. How do we stay together, in care of each other, when the fold of […]

Tears (are not only from weeping)

Tears (are not only from weeping) Video loop, LED panel Duration: 05:59 “Laughter of Tears”, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) Tears are not only for weeping, they lubricate the possibility of vision. Sometimes we see things better when we cry, cry out aloud, or laugh, till the tears come unbidden.

Do Harmonious Friends cause dissonance?

Do Harmonious Friends cause dissonance?Blackboard paint, newspaper, chalk, text, silkscreen, glass eyes6 frames of 55 x 70 cm each The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) An owl and a donkey interpolate themselves, indicating the simultaneity of leaving and returning. Tyll of Braunschweig teaches us the trick of being on both sides of a […]

Comic Contempt

As time refracts, its shatter illuminates differing strands. A comic’s contempt, her whisper of laughter, threatens the consensus.

Ferment

If the big, open sky is a canopy for the tumult of birds and angels, then under which roof does the flight of the ferment of our times soar? Tent cities spring from the streets and in squares like so many umbrellas of refuge and rebellion. This can be a way to re-read the history […]

Parade

Parade Gold and silver screen print on velvet. 2021 310cm x 147.5cm Delhi Contemporary Art Week (DCAW), Nature Morte, Bikaner House, New Delhi (2021) One thing after another. Everything in and out of step. The parade sidesteps the question of where it is headed. 

Memes and Fables

Memes and Fables: …tick tock Newspaper, blackboard ink, chalk and screen print. 2021 70cm x 54.5cm Memes and Fables: …tock tick Newspaper, blackboard ink, chalk and screen print. 2021 68cm x 55.5cm Memes and Fables: …wicked Newspaper, blackboard ink, chalk and screen print. 2021 70cm x 57.5cm Memes and Fables: …let it be Newspaper, blackboard […]

Chromachron

Unexpected arrivals (of a virus in one year) and departures (of a species in another) transform the colour of time. Each year gets a colour signature: a chromachron.

The Sovereign and its Company & The Sovereign Takes a Walk

The Sovereign and its CompanyShown at: Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) Velvet, silkscreen, wallpaper150 cm x 300 cm, 560 cm x 375 cm The Sovereign and its Company are multiple, and multiply formed. Anything can be deputized. The historical glory and moral authority of the sovereign and its company melts away, and then reconstitutes itself, constantly. […]

31 Days

31 Days, 2020 Video with Calligraphy, Pixels, Sound Duration: 17:45 mins The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021); The Pandemic Circle at Stamps Gallery, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, Expo Chicago – online (2020) and CC: World, Haus der Kulturen der Welt- online, Berlin (2020) A conversation in images, missives to selves and world, […]

A Gathering of Birds

A Gathering of Birds Audio loop with 3 Speakers Duration: 32:41 In the sonic range of the flight-path of a gathering of birds, we momentarily transmit to each other. We surpass contours of containment, and need no translation to be contagious.

Unledgered

Unledgered Installation Portals, Stories, and Other Journeys curated by Michelle Wong  Tai Kwun Contemporary, JC Contemporary, Hong Kong (2021) The exhibition was based on Asia Art Archive’s research since 2014 into the personal archive of the late Hong Kong–based artist Ha Bik Chuen (1925–2009) In 2016, when Raqs Media Collective first visited Ha’s studio in […]

Hungry for Time

An invitation to epistemic disobedience with Raqs Media Collective, in the Art Collections of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

salt

Text and image essay by Raqs, published in The Drama Review, Volume 65 Issue 4, 2021

Thickets

Text by Raqs, published in “Slow Reader: A Resource for Design Thinking and Practice”, 2021

Sharing our Sources

Text by Raqs (and extracts from essays), in the first publication accompanying “Afterglow”, Yokohama Triennale 2020, curated by Raqs Media Collective

Afterglow

Yokohama Triennale 17 July – 11 October 2020 Afterglow presents works that turn space into complex diagrams of thought and feeling. It comes into close contact with the ancient, rubbing against time to discern untested futures. It reconstructs objects of wonder by piecing together the broken shards of archaeological remains. It blooms like a giant […]

Still more World

Dohas for Doha Five Videos, LED screens, variable dimensions Still More World, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art | Doha (2019) Dohas woven by Kabir, Rahim sees them in the Stars Raqs finds them everywhere, in Doha and in Mars This doha talks in shadow speech Where words fail Raqs, let commas reach When nothing […]

The Course of love

The Course of Love Sculpture using faceted Lenticular panels, with Found Boat Setouchi Triennale | Honjima (2019) Setouchi Triennale | Honjima wataru funa-bito / the boatman lost the rudder. kaji-wo tae / the boat is now adrift yukue mo shiranu / not knowing where it goes. koi no michi kana / is this the course […]

In the Open or in Stealth

In the Open or in Stealth Installation MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2018) A realignment of resources, technologies, and energies is taking place. The intimationof this emergent ensemble, however, is faint and tangled.The exhibition is a fabricatory tracing indeterminate spaces and moving between tenses, all of which murmur at each other like distant lovers. […]

Deep Breath

Sometimes, the finding of an antidote to the most basic and lethal form of amnesia, ‘the forgetting of air’, may require the undertaking of a deep dive.

Dohas for Doha

Dohas for Doha Five Videos, LED screens, variable dimensions Still More World, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art | Doha (2019) Dohas woven by Kabir, Rahim sees them in the Stars Raqs finds them everywhere, in Doha and in Mars This doha talks in shadow speech Where words fail Raqs, let commas reach When nothing […]

21 Personae

21 Personae is an extension of the 51 Personae project curated by Raqs Media Collective for the 11th Shanghai Biennale (2016–17). In Barcelona, the project coincides with the In the Open or in Stealth 2018 – 17 March 2019), curated for MACBA by Raqs Media Collective and coordinated by Hiuwai Chu

To People, Demos & Prostheses for the History of Insurgent Crowds

To PeopleShown at: Mathaf, Doha (2019) 11 Textile and 2 Prints on paper,100 x 500 cm each Eleven hand-woven carpets and two paper prints are hung throughout the gallery, cascading to the ground. The forms that inhabit the woven textiles represent a mass, a collective, or a network of people as an interlaced, connected weave. […]

Time Devices (2011- 18)

Whenever the Heart Skips a Beat | 4 min 31 seconds Animated Horological Video, Words Click here to watch the video (email us on studio@raqsmediacollective.net to request access) A Day in the Life of Kiribati Clock, nameplate, tape Exhibited at Asamayavali/Untimely Calendar at National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi (2014) The Ecliptic | […]

Everything Else is Ordinary

Everything Else is Ordinary delves into the elusive, multifaceted nature of time and how it shapes our existence. Raqs explores the concept of time not as a singular, linear force but as a series of intersecting moments that reflect our complex relationships with labor, memory, and each other. The exhibition interweaves various elements of daily life with philosophical reflections.


Not Yet At Ease

Not Yet At Ease premiered at FirstSite, Colchester as part of the 1914-18 Now Commissions: a series of new artistic works commemorating a century of the First World War. 

Provisions for everybody (film)

Provisions for Everybody Shown at: AV Festival, Newcastle (2018)| Project 88, Mumbai (2018)| Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2019) Single screen, Video, FurnitureDuration, 50′ Provisions for Everybody inscribes an eccentric itinerary on and off the trail of George Orwell that accompanies a reading of ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’. Traveling between Northern England, Eastern India, […]

Provisions for everybody

Provisions for Everybody Installation: 3 Videos, large drawing print, 3 dhurrie banners, drawings on vinyl, found furnitureAV Festival, Newcastle (2018), ‘Still More World’ Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2019) “Coal Mine. Windmill. Sugarcane Field. Words. Pictures. Memes. It’s all about energy; everything is burning.” “How not to write slow poisoning love letters to life?”, […]

Three Shadows

In Three Shadows, the dancing figures in white have been isolated and animated to render them into ghostly spinning specters.

Thicket

A thicket is a concentration of living matter. In forests, gardens, and fields, thickets rise where different plant species find it possible to thrive together in a wild celebration of life itself. Conversations too can have thickets; points of intersection of lines of force.  Raqs Media Collective’s presence at Tate Exchange (December 14 – 20, […]

Provisions

Project 88 (Mumbai) 2018 “everything is burning” Raqs Media Collective returns to Project 88, Mumbai with “Provisions”, an exhibition that brings together the premiere in India of an ambitious recent video travelogue, ‘Provisions for Everybody’ (2018), as well as a new body of work — photo/text/objects that embody an agile and playful skepticism towards the […]

The Assurance Clock & Toxicare 

Featured in digital posters It’s Urgent! Part II & III, Luma Westbau, Zurich 2018 The Assurance Clock The clock in the poster is an embodiment of assurance, the opposite of alarm. This is an attitude that could be seen cultivated as an antidote to the epidemic of caution and false-alarms that characterizes our time. The […]

To Ask, When Empty

To Ask, When Empty |2018 5 Lenticular Panels, 1ft. X 2ft each Project 88 | Mumbai A suite of six uniquely colourful lenticular prints offer a dance of terse imperatives at the intersection of will and necessity: “to ask when empty, to pour when full.”

Toxicity in Equal Measure

Toxicity in Equal Measure Layered sheets with perforations on felt, leather, rubber, copper, steel, cardboard, fabric and acrylic, with gold impressions. 22 frames, 1 ft. X 1 ft. each Project 88 | Mumbai (2018) A singular array of surfaces in materials that range from leather to metal celebrate the essential instability of all substances. Nothing […]

Re Run

n revisiting and re-staging Cartier Bresson’s photograph in Shanghai, Raqs meet the conditions of the self-fulfilling prophecy invoked by the event captured in the original image.

WHAT TIME IS IT

Technologies of Life in the Contemporary (14th – 16th December, 2017), Sarai-CSDS, Delhi and Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi; Conference Conveners: Ravi Sundaram, Ravi Vasudevan (Sarai-CSDS) + Raqs Media Collective (Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi, Shuddhabrata Sengupta); Conference Coordinators: Farah Batool (Goethe-Institut/ Max Mueller Bhavan), Satakshi Sinha (Sarai-CSDS)

Diver’s at Work

The diver, maybe she is a specter, maybe he is a submarine apparition. Diving, we are  closer to the surface of the earth than an astronaut, but the paradoxical nature of a submarine horizon makes for an experience that envelopes and recedes at the same time. We could recognize this paradox as key to an awareness of our experience of the contemporary. 

The necessity of Infinity

The Necessity of Eternity recounts what must be one of the most exciting yet neglected exchanges (Al-As’Ilah Wa’L-Ajwibah/Questions and Answers) in the intellectual history of the world.

The Blood of Stars

The Blood of Stars invites us to think about the relation between the presence of iron, a fugitive from the stars, sleeping deep inside the earth and the veins of warm-blooded mammals.

The Emperor’s Old Clothes & Hollowgram

The Emperor’s Old Clothes (2017) Shortlisted for fourth plinth on Trafalgar Square 3D printed PLA Plastic and cast polyester resin What, would the departure of power from a Trafalgar Square pedestal look like? The Emperor’s Old Clothes is an answer to this question in sculptural form. What we intend to place on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square is […]

Twilight Language

Twilight Language signals a lighthouse semaphore for all that is lost and found between errant longitudes, infected histories and contagious futures. This is the time when everything changes; memorials defect, communards bake biscuits, moths mutate, divers rise, clocks speak in tongues. Animals, machines, and humans recover grounds of equality and conversation. Words turn incandescent, enigma shadows everything, twilight finds its language. 

The Translator’s Silence

The Translator’s Silence Three lenticular panels, 22 inches x 36.6 inches each Lines of Control: the Partition as Productive Space, Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca (2012)