An Interview
The Collective Eye interviews Raqs Media Collective and delves deep into their early days, influences, and experiences. They discuss a wide range of works from ‘Coronation Park’ in 2015 to the public commission, ‘All, Human’ in 2023.
The Collective Eye interviews Raqs Media Collective and delves deep into their early days, influences, and experiences. They discuss a wide range of works from ‘Coronation Park’ in 2015 to the public commission, ‘All, Human’ in 2023.
In The Theatre of Memory: The Work of Contemporary Art in the Photographic Archive Text by Raqs
The Laughter of Tears | 2021 Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany When we are in the sonic range of the flightpaths of a flock of birds returning to a roosting site, we become intimate with their together-ness. When people are awestruck by wonder, or tickled into laughter, or moved to tears, they momentarily transmit to each other […]
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.
Text and image essay by Raqs, published in The Drama Review, Volume 65 Issue 4, 2021
Text by Raqs, published in Curatography, Issue 2, Curators Living Rooms, Curating Asia International, 2021
Text by Raqs, published in “Slow Reader: A Resource for Design Thinking and Practice”, 2021
Text by Raqs, published in the Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 30 No. 61-62 (2021): The Changing Ontology of the Image
Making bets while knowing nothing Text by Raqs, published in The Collections Book, Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary
Text by Raqs (and extracts from essays), in the first publication accompanying “Afterglow”, Yokohama Triennale 2020, curated by Raqs Media Collective
Dohas for Doha Five Videos, LED screens, variable dimensions Still More World, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art | Doha (2019) Dohas woven by Kabir, Rahim sees them in the Stars Raqs finds them everywhere, in Doha and in Mars This doha talks in shadow speech Where words fail Raqs, let commas reach When nothing […]
Text by Raqs, published in Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm, editors Cameron Cartiere + Leon Tan, 2021
Text by Raqs, published by the Goethe Institut, 2020
Text by Raqs, for Untranslatable Terms of Cultural Practices: A Shared Vocabulary, 2021
The Course of Love Sculpture using faceted Lenticular panels, with Found Boat Setouchi Triennale | Honjima (2019) Setouchi Triennale | Honjima wataru funa-bito / the boatman lost the rudder. kaji-wo tae / the boat is now adrift yukue mo shiranu / not knowing where it goes. koi no michi kana / is this the course […]
In the Open or in Stealth Installation MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2018) A realignment of resources, technologies, and energies is taking place. The intimationof this emergent ensemble, however, is faint and tangled.The exhibition is a fabricatory tracing indeterminate spaces and moving between tenses, all of which murmur at each other like distant lovers. […]
Sometimes, the finding of an antidote to the most basic and lethal form of amnesia, ‘the forgetting of air’, may require the undertaking of a deep dive.
Dohas for Doha Five Videos, LED screens, variable dimensions Still More World, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art | Doha (2019) Dohas woven by Kabir, Rahim sees them in the Stars Raqs finds them everywhere, in Doha and in Mars This doha talks in shadow speech Where words fail Raqs, let commas reach When nothing […]
Text by Natasha Eaton, on Raqs’s work. Published in Third Text online Forum: Decolonial Imaginaire
Not Yet At Ease premiered at FirstSite, Colchester as part of the 1914-18 Now Commissions: a series of new artistic works commemorating a century of the First World War.
Provisions for Everybody Shown at: AV Festival, Newcastle (2018)| Project 88, Mumbai (2018)| Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2019) Single screen, Video, FurnitureDuration, 50′ Provisions for Everybody inscribes an eccentric itinerary on and off the trail of George Orwell that accompanies a reading of ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’. Traveling between Northern England, Eastern India, […]
Provisions for Everybody Installation: 3 Videos, large drawing print, 3 dhurrie banners, drawings on vinyl, found furnitureAV Festival, Newcastle (2018), ‘Still More World’ Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2019) “Coal Mine. Windmill. Sugarcane Field. Words. Pictures. Memes. It’s all about energy; everything is burning.” “How not to write slow poisoning love letters to life?”, […]
Interview with Raqs by Melissa Karmen Lee, published in ASAP/Journal vol. 3.2, 2018
To Ask when Empty, To pour when Full Text by Raqs, “On the aestheticization of Politics”
Text by Raqs, published in Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory, Critical Times (2018) 1 (1): 272–276
The Necessity of Eternity recounts what must be one of the most exciting yet neglected exchanges (Al-As’Ilah Wa’L-Ajwibah/Questions and Answers) in the intellectual history of the world.
The Blood of Stars invites us to think about the relation between the presence of iron, a fugitive from the stars, sleeping deep inside the earth and the veins of warm-blooded mammals.
The Emperor’s Old Clothes (2017) Shortlisted for fourth plinth on Trafalgar Square 3D printed PLA Plastic and cast polyester resin What, would the departure of power from a Trafalgar Square pedestal look like? The Emperor’s Old Clothes is an answer to this question in sculptural form. What we intend to place on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square is […]
The Translator’s Silence Three lenticular panels, 22 inches x 36.6 inches each Lines of Control: the Partition as Productive Space, Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca (2012)
Utsushimi (2017 – ongoing) Double Image / Token / Emanation Materialized Architectural Drawing in Illuminated Wireframe Site specific installation at Suzu City, Oku-Noto Triennale, Japan
Undoing Walls| 2017 1’ 55” Animation loop, Variable Dimensions Can a “dysfunctional” wall structure be imagined so as to question the original intentions of a Government? Can a “welcoming” and useful wall be created; one that serves the communities that it is meant to separate and which proposes an alternative solution to human segregation, when […]
A hard tack biscuit from the Paris Commune of 1871 was 3D scanned, 3D printed, a mould made and facsimile biscuits baked.
Text by Raqs, published as a monograph for “The Contemporary Condition” series, series editors Geoff Cox + Jacob Lund, 2017
Text by Raqs, published under “Superhumanity” for the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial
Text by Raqs. Published in Art History in the Wake of the Global Turn. Editors Jill H. Casid + Aruna D’ Souza. Clark Studies in the Visual Arts, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown & Yale University Press, 2014
Will you, Beloved Stranger? is a performance piece for two readers in a designed setting featuring a rendition of two bodies of poetic work — those of the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai (writing in Hebrew) and the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (writing in Arabic)
Extra Time Conversation between Chang Tsong-Zung and Raqs Media Collective Published in ‘Extra Time’, editor Chen Yun. Featuring contributions by Raqs Media Collective, Chong Tzung Chang, Huang Chien Hung, Lu Xinghua, Gao Shiming, Mou Sen & Li Zhenhua, 2013
Fruits of Labour (2012) 100 orange fruit trees, industrial sizes fans, framed copies of the Faridabad Majdoor Samachar | Public Art Project at REAKT: Olhares e Processos, Guimaraes Approaching the sense of exhaustion and hopelessness of the end of a factory’s life cycle, the artists established a link between a call published in a newspaper […]
Three unwritten books, each marking a whimsical relationship to specific influential texts (by Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Illyich Lenin and Antonio Gramsci) in the canon of Marxism, find their place amongst a set of echoing titles in a carefully laid out miniature library
Euphoria Machine is the name we give to the apparatus of desire and cognition that seeks to create a consensus within society for boundless energy and wealth, and effaces all doubts and dissent about the ways in which this energy and wealth must be acquired.
After Hours : Art, Imagination and the Residue of the Working Day Text by Raqs
Text by Cuauhtémoc Medina, eflux journal #38
A letter to Amália Jyran, who will be fifty-four in 2061 CE Text by Raqs, written to accompany Raqs’ contribution to the Momentum Nordic Biennale of 2011
Revoltage Shown at: Project 88, Mumbai (2010) | Reading Light’, Festival d’Automne, Espace Oscar Niemeyer, Paris (2011) | Art Unlimited Basel (2012) | Tel Aviv Museum (2012) | Zentrum für Internationale Lichtkunst, Unna (2014) | NGMA, New Delhi (2014) Text, lightbulbs, fixtures, acrylic, wire, synchroniser Revoltage fills the space it occupies with warmth, light, and […]
Proverbs Cured MDF, LED lights, wooden frame, lighting sequencer Surjection, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto (2011). Lado A Lado (India – Side by Side), Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (2012). “Proverbs” is a series of textual sculptures that express a set of ambiguities about transactions and relationships. Money, Power, Time, Emotion, Regret, Laughter, Memory are the […]
An Afternoon Unregistered on the Richter Scale looped video projection (3:30 minutes) Exhibited at Surjection, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto (2011); The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2012)
A Frame of Mind: Researching Documentaries Text by Raqs
Yaksha Prashna: The Riverbank Episode Text by Raqs
Published in conjunction with the exhibition Surjection by Raqs Media Collective of New Delhi, held at the Art Gallery of York University from 22 September through 4 December, 2011, and curated by Philip Monk.
36 Planes of Emotions extends the palette of emotions to include states of collective potential.
‘Strikes at Time’ is a lucid dream. It takes readings from an occasional anonymous journal, and a long walk at the edge of the city of the night to take back the night.
Published in Gimme Shelter: Global Discourses in Aesthetics, editors: Jos de Mul + Renée van de Vali, 2011
Additions, Subtractions: On Collectives and Collectivities Text by Raqs, in Manifesta Journal #8, 2009
Now and Elsewhere e-flux journal #12 2010 Text by Raqs
The Rest of Now Text by Raqs, published in “Manifesta 7 COMPANION”, one of three publications accompanying Manifesta 7, co-curated by Raqs Media Collective
In early April 2009 the last of the distinctive Titan cranes from the Tyneside Swan Hunter shipyard in northern England were loaded up onto a heavy load vessel and sailed out of the River Tyne.Raqs treats found footage of the last voyage of the ship-building cranes down the Tyne river (shot by an engineer and amateur shipyard enthusiast) to create a world of passages, transitions and departures.
The Things That Happen When Falling in Love brings together suggestions of words, and people on the move to create an image of a world where the fortunes of both love and labour are framed and dismantled by global forces.
The Capital of Accumulation is a video installation that writes an oblique narrative of the relationship between metropolises and the world in counterpoint to Rosa Luxemburg’s exceptional critique of global political economy, ‘The Accumulation of Capital’.
The Surface of Each Day is a Different Planet | 2009Film (38 minutes)Art Now: Lightbox | Tate Britain Stories leak, histories collide. Bones, bodies, faces, and handwriting blur. Crowds gather and move. Open-ended and anti-documentary, The Surface of Each Day is a Different Planet builds sequential scenarios that move across time and space, while considering collectivity, anonymity […]
Acceleration and Conflicts Comments on the Cinematic Object in the 1990s and After Text by Raqs
EMOTIONAL CARTOGRAPHY TECHNOLOGIES OF THE SELF Text by Raqs
When the Scales Fall from Your Eyes dismantles our obsessions with measurement and quantifiable evaluation by gathering scales that set out to weigh impossibilities.
How to be an artist by night Text by RaqsPublished in in Art School : Propositions for the Twentieth Century, Edited by Steven Madoff. MIT Press, Boston, 2009
The Flights of the Pink Flamingo or Historiae Sub-Rosae of Capital and the Twentieth Century Text by Kaushik Bhaumik, on Raqs Media Collective’s video diptych “The Capital of Accumulation”, published in ‘Art India’, Vol XV, Issue III, Quarter III, 2010
STAMMER, MUMBLE, SWEAT, SCRAWL, AND TIC Text by Raqs, published in e-flux journal #0 November 2008
Every factory has a time book. The time book is an index of the value of a worker’s time. It records hours, minutes and money, and acts as the memory machine of a factory.
However Incongruous | 2011 Fibreglass (160 x 92 x 320 cm) | Print Albrecht Dürer came across rumors of the Indian rhinoceros named Gainda sometime in 1515 that he would immortalize in his woodcut, Rhinoceros. Gainda the rhinoceros, far from his native habitat in the grasslands of Gujarat (where no rhinoceroses remains today), was sadly lost at […]
Text by RaqsPublished in System Error: War is a Force that Gives us Meaning, Silvana Editoriale, Milan, 2007
The Mathematics Of Anacoustic Reason Inkjet print, 182 x 120 cm Print containing images, text and mathematical symbols arranged in the form of an equation. “Out of the Equation: Roads to Reality” (a project curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist), NOW WHAT: Democracy and Contemporary Art, Space Hamilton and Insa Art Space, Seoul (2006) The Mathematics […]
The KD Vyas Correspondence Vol. 1 is an installation that embodies 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 K.D. Vyas, sometime redactor of the Mahabharata.
Turn left from the community centre and walk fifty yards Text by Raqs
Text by RaqsPublished in The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe, 2006
Once again, to the distant observer Text by Raqs, published in SubContingent: The Indian Subcontinent in Contemporary Art, Catalogue accompanying the exhibition
A Measure of Anacoustic Reason | 2005Installation with 1 projection, 4 screens, 4 dialogues, 4 lecterns, 4 benches with embedded speakers, lightbox | Exhibited at India Contemporary, Venice Biennale (2005), Thermocline of Art, Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe (2007), There has been a change of plan, Nature Morte, New Delhi (2006) A Measure of […]
Text by Raqs. Published in ‘Impostor in the Waiting Room’, the publication accompanying the eponymous exhibition, Bose Pacia Gallery, New York, 2004
5 Pieces of Evidence | 2003/ Installation with 5 video screens, audio, and steel armature 5 Pieces of Evidence reflects on missing persons, urban myths, transitoriness, maps, and global networks. The five screens are narratively organized along the lines of a “whodunit.” Missing persons notices, street maps, demographic statistics, and images of pipelines, rail tracks, harbours, and […]
New Maps & Old Territories: A dialogue between Yagnavalkya and Gargi in Cyberia Text by RaqsPublished in Sarai Reader 01, The Public Domain, Sarai CSDS, Delhi 2001
Global Health Village Manual
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Made with Mrityunjay Chatterjee
Print.com, Delhi (2000); Kingdom of Piracy (2002); ISEA (2004)