Diver’s at Work
Shown at: Raqs’ solo exhibition, ‘Twilight Language’, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester (2017)

Performance with diving helmet within ‘Activo y Pasivo (Assets and Debts)’, synchronized video diptych
Duration, 6′
[With thanks to Anibal Condé & Magdalena Leité, and MUAC, Mexico City ]

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 diver’s body, the technology of the diving bell, and the bare facts of diving –  depth and pressure – combine to create the perils and possibilities of each dive. Our immersion in the contemporary moment is a similar combination of the limits of our bodily and experiential capacities, the way in which we deploy prosthetic and transformative technologies to transcend bodily limitations and the perils and possibilities of our time. We are all deep-sea divers in the present moment, even inside dreams and on dry land, with our breathing measured, our descent calibrated, our time rationed.