Practice is the daily ‘work’ (as verb) of art. It represents the sum of all the moves – practical, conceptual, affective, cognitive, philosophical, analytical and aesthetic – that occupies/de-occupies the state of our triangulation at any given point of time. Being contingent, this practice is a shape-shifting thing, prone to surprise itself as much it surprises others. Like a mycelial inhabitation, indeterminate and unbounded, it expands.
.MOV.ESSAYS | .MP4.PLUS | DEVICES | GATHERINGS | INTERFERENCES | INTERRUPTIONS | LEXICA | LOOPS | UNLEDGERED
Unruly Iris of Dissent (U.I.D 2)Shown at: ‘Archeology of the self: Archives, Anarchives & the Artist‘, Art Heritage Gallery, New Delhi (2023) Projection of Video Loop 12 years after The Untold Intimacy of Digits (2011), which animated a nineteenth century Bengali peasant’s handprint found in a London archive into a spectral count towards infinity, Raqs […]
The ghost is here again to be neither witness, nor agent, not even provocateur, to be perhaps just a haunting laugh through time.
Tears are not only for weeping, they lubricate the possibility of vision. Sometimes we see things better when we cry, cry out aloud, or laugh, till the tears come unbidden.
Lalu’s NightmareShown at: FirstSite, Colchester, United Kingdom (2018) | ‘Spinal’, Frith Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019) Looped videoDuration, 2’19” In Lalu’s Nightmare, one of the seated figures from ‘The Group Photo‘ is isolated, and he is haunted by an animated shadow behind him. The shadow suggests a multi-armed divinity which draws its inspiration from […]
Group PhotoShown at: FirstSite, Colchester, United Kingdom (2018) | ‘Spinal’, Frith Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019) Looped VideoDuration, 2′ Performers of an Indian concert party at the Royal Ordnance Corps theatre, Baghdad, ca.1917 is a posed group photograph of a troupe of Indian soldiers and non-combatants near Baghdad, in the Mesopotamia theatre. It is […]
Training CampShown at: FirstSite, Colchester, United Kingdom (2018) | ‘Spinal’, Frith Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019) Looped videoDuration, 2′ 42″ In Training Camp, the time arc of the swinging chandelier that made its appearance in Trenches is extended, and we see soldiers performing seemingly joyous handstands in training camp. Time will crack differently for […]
TrenchesShown at: FirstSite, Colchester, United Kingdom (2018) | ‘Spinal’, Frith Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019) Looped videoDuration, 4′ In Trenches, soldiers from archival images are collaged into film footage from a newsreel fragment titled With the indian Troops at the Front, Part 1, Official Pictures of the British Army in France, and further juxtaposed […]
SweepingShown at: FirstSite, Colchester, United Kingdom (2018) | ‘Spinal’, Frith Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019) Looped videoDuration, 7’12” A performing body enacts the labour of cleaning, much like the working bodies of the non-soldiers in the War. The landscape where the act of sweeping is being performed reaches hand-coloured abstraction.
DreamingShown at: FirstSite, Colchester, United Kingdom (2018) | ‘Spinal’, Frith Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019) Looped video,Duration, 2’19” IIn Dreaming, a sergeant looks on at a spinning shrouded figure, seen against what looks like a moonscape, as he overlooks a performer who is sleeping.
In Three Shadows, the dancing figures in white have been isolated and animated to render them into ghostly spinning specters.
n revisiting and re-staging Cartier Bresson’s photograph in Shanghai, Raqs meet the conditions of the self-fulfilling prophecy invoked by the event captured in the original image.
Can a “dysfunctional” wall structure be imagined so as to question the original intentions of a Government?
The gatekeepers of the treasury have left the gates of the bank to stand guard over the twilight
The Dislocation of Degree Zero is a matter of drawing, erasing, and re-drawing, almost as a repetitive compulsion – lines in the sand.
Nothing more to load.
