Prevailing economic theories, no matter how rational they pretend to be, attribute a quasi-mystical power to the force that is imagined as governing the continuing fluctuations of production and exchange. Often this force is named an ‘invisible hand’. Any invisible hand may also be thought of as a phantom limb, a lingering memory of an amputated arm. In Misadventures of A Phantom Limb Raqs gives form to this spectre as a shadowy, liquid trace of an arm. Which, even as it conducts a grand orchestra from one movement to another, from clamour to silence and back again, wonders —like phantom limbs often do—about how to scratch the future it doesn’t have.

Even as it conducts
a grand orchestra –
from one movement to another
from clamour to silence
and back again –
the invisible hand,
the phantom limb,
wonders how to scratch the future
it doesn’t have.
 
– Phantom Limb from Untimely Calendar (077)