The word ‘para’ suggests a relationship to something that stands beside or runs tangential to another. Our ‘para-practices’ include writings and conversations that unfold in proximity—alongside other works, ideas, and processes. These may take the form of a ‘Sourcebook’ that helps stage public, discursive moments for a world with plural knowledge; a ‘Curation,’ the process of which unfolds with many, over time, to reapprehend the world; or a ‘Studio’ with students to reimagine the generative potential of margins and thresholds.
“This paradox of memory is a negotiation between having to remember, the obligation tomourn, the uncertainty of moments and conditions of its activation, the inability to recall, andthe slow grinding requirement to forget and move on.“ This essay reflects on the complex relationship between memory, war, and public art. Drawing upon historical events and personal […]
In this essay, Raqs Media Collective frames COVID‑19, noting that an estimated 10³¹ (ten nonillion) viral particles float in the air at any moment, making viruses the planet’s most abundant “bad news” relative to human ‘newsworthiness.’The text underscores how a seemingly invisible entity can reshape global social and biological networks. Through these reflections, Raqs probes how […]
This essay uses the concept of “recension”—ongoing revision—to reflect on three decades of Raqs Media Collective’s practice amid economic turmoil, social unrest, and a mounting pandemic. Tracing moments from the creation of Sarai’s public‑sharing infrastructures and early social‑software experiments, it argues that creative and curatorial work is sustained through collective re‑apprehension, infrastructural generosity, and the […]
This essay takes a Bengali term anta(h)shira, used to denote an intravenous vein, as its starting point, treating it as a metaphor for the subtle, capillary-like currents that run through bodies and social imaginaries. The text unpacks how such culturally embedded words defy neat translation, revealing fissures in our shared vocabularies. It argues for a practice […]
Video, sculpture, pottery and conversation Deep Breath Shown at: Pamphilos, Athens (2019) FilmDuration, 25′ 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. The site of descent is what it’s really all about, isn’t it? Where and […]
A realignment of resources, technologies, and energies is taking place. The intimation of 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
21 Personae is an extension of the 51 Personae project curated by Raqs Media Collective for the 11th Shanghai Biennale (2016–17)
Text by Natasha Eaton, on Raqs Media Collective’s work. Published in Third Text’s online Forum, ‘Decolonial Imaginaire’
Everything Else is Ordinary delves into the elusive, multifaceted nature of time and how it shapes our existence. Raqs explores the concept of time not as a singular, linear force but as a series of intersecting moments that reflect our complex relationships with labor, memory, and each other. The exhibition interweaves various elements of daily life with philosophical reflections.
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.
With Provisions for Everybody, Raqs offers a weave of thoughts found on the the road; as well as images, calculations, texts, textures and textiles which accompany and aid the the task of re-imagining the relation between potential and plenitude.
Solo ExhibitionTate Exchange (December 14-20, 2016) A thicket is a concentration of living matter. In forests, gardens, and fields, thickets rise where different plant species find it possible to thrive together in a wild celebration of life itself. Conversations too can have thickets; points of intersection of lines of force. Through an interactive, participatory installation, […]
Project 88 (Mumbai) 2018 “everything is burning” Raqs Media Collective returns to Project 88, Mumbai with “Provisions”, an exhibition that brings together the premiere in India of an ambitious recent video travelogue, ‘Provisions for Everybody’ (2018), as well as a new body of work — photo/text/objects that embody an agile and playful skepticism towards the […]
An 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”
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