The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone

The first iteration of Raqs Media Collective’s chronogram The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone – was conceived as a result of a specific invitation, and in response to the Jencks Foundation’s first research theme, ‘1980 in Parallax’, which took as its starting point the year 1980. The second iteration of The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone takes the form of an artist book, and foregrounds text over image. Mirroring the film’s visual textures, the five voices in the pamphlet register varying distances from what is seen on the screen and its potential elucidations: voiceover, description of images, words on screen, added layers of annotations and meta-annotations. This cascading stream of interpretations reveals an affinity with Charles Jencks’ use of the format of the hyper-text even before the internet, an attempt to develop a more polyphonic method of writing history in dialogue, with the aim to undo dominant meta-narratives.