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
