When Proust Catches the Glare, 2021
Video, Text, Scanned Handwriting. 7 minutes, 45 seconds

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. 

To catch this whiff, and filter it through a prismatic pandemic light, Raqs reverse-engineer the handwriting of Marcel Proust (from scans made of Proust’s letters held by the Kolb-Proust Archive at the University of Champaign Urbana). 

Between the doppelgänger of Marcel’s scrawl and the relayed light of its own voices, Raqs makes a video that finds a half-full hourglass and a rebellion of calendars.