The K.D.Vyas Correspondence, Vol.1 | 2006
18 screens, 9 soundscapes, architecture.
Dimensions variable
Architectural Collaborators: Nikolaus Hirsch
and Michel Muellar
Museum für Kommunikation| Frankfurt
“Untimely calendar” | National Gallery of Modern Art | New Delhi
“The KD Vyas Correspondence Vol. 1” is an installation embodying an epistolary enigma. The basis of this work are a set of eighteen ‘letters’ between Raqs and a person or entity who is identified as KD Vyas, sometime redactor of the Mahabharata.
The installation manifesting the ‘Correspondence’ brings together eighteen video enigmas that could be an abbreviated contemporary concordance to the eighteen cantos of the Mahabharata, densely encrypted messages, annotations to the letters themselves, or memories of places and times where they may have been read — once, twice or an infinite number of times.
The work involves videos, sound, a dossier and a dialogue with the architects Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Muller that results in a structure ‘The Node House’ that holds the images and sounds, hovering like the disembodied memory of an instance of the epic’s hyperlinked incantation.
An edition of the piece is in the TBA21 Collection.
LETTERS BETWEEN KD VYAS AND RAQS
The Letter found in the Dead Letter Office
Another Letter on Declining Time
The Letter of the Haunted Warrior
The Letter of Things Lost and Found
The Letter of Estimates and Accounts
The Letter Made Heavy by Regret
The Letter Apprehending Disclosure
The Letter of the Fugitive
The Letter Never Posted
The Letter Dispatched in Haste
The Letter of Bitter Peacetime
The Letter Made Brittle by Repeated Reading
The Letter Forsaking All Claims
The Letter of Verification and Authenticity
The Letter of Disavowal
The Letter of Disguise and Longing
The Letter Incriminating the Reader
The Letter of Continuing Bewilderment
