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
The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone Chronogram/ film Duration: 25:05 minutes Commissioned by Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House, United Kingdom (2023) The Bicyclist who fell into a Time Cone oscillates between fact and fiction while hovering over the year 1980. It was a crepuscular time. A time of thresholds and transience. The memory of a […]
When Proust Catches the Glare, 2021Video, 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 – […]
“Together, this suite of poignant and poetic videos grapple with the pervasive and dispersed impact on daily routines and relationships with one another, and beyond, in the age of the Coronavirus. In the summer of 2020, Raqs Media Collective released 31Days (18 minutes, video, calligraphy, text) three months after the predicament of quarantine and seclusion caused by the Covid-19 pandemic […]
Deep Breath | 2019Film (25 minutes) Pamphilos | Athens 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 when to dive into the […]
Provisions for Everybody Single screen, Video, 50 minutes, Furniture 2018 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, Myanmar (Burma) and Catalonia, Raqs pause at Wigan Pier (in England) where Orwell queried […]
Three Shadows Video, loop Exhibited at The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021); Not Yet At Ease FirstSite, Colchester, United Kingdom (2018); ‘Spinal’, Fifth Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019) In Three Shadows, the dancing figures in white have been isolated and animated to render them into ghostly spinning specters. This is in keeping with […]
A Planet Turns on its Axis Without Permission Single screen, Video, 18:04 minutes “Provisions for Everybody” at AV Festival, Newcastle (2018), ‘Still More World’ Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2019) Turning, and turning around, on the Rann does not alter the white horizon. Salt– brilliant under the sun–dazzles the eyes, opens the lachrymal canals. […]
The Blood of Stars Single screen, Video, 13 minutes Extracts from a Future History | Lulea (2017); The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) 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 […]
Dyeing Inayat Khan (2016) 2- channel video installation, color and sound New Sensorium, ZKM, Karlsruhe (2016) | Nature Morte, Bikaner House, Delhi (2021) Animation and editing: Ikroop Sandhu and Rajan Singh Click here to watch the full video (email us on studio@raqsmediacollective.net to request access)
Eccentric Orbits Four looped videos featuring pixels and the cosmos (1’07”, 1’ 15”,1’ 18”,1’ 31”) A Different Gravity Art Fair, Delhi How different would things be if they were subject to another gravity? Eccentric Orbits is a suite of four videos featuring mysterious activities in a world that weighs things differently than the one we think […]
Strikes at Time 2 synchronized video projections with sound, 18’ 32” Centre George Pompidou, Paris (2011) Strikes at Time is a lucid dream, readings from an occasional anonymous journal, and a long walk at the edge of the city of the night. In that no man’s land annexed by the awakening mind from the fatigue […]
Capital of Accumulation 2010/ Installation with 2 channel video projection and audio, 2 books in glass-fronted bookcase. Duration: 50:00 minutes The promised city, Hebbel Am Ufer, Berlin (2010); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2010); The Capital of Accumulation, Project 88, Mumbai (2010), Manifesta 9, Genk, Belgium (2012) The Capital of Accumulation is a video installation […]
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 […]
Ceasural Variations I & II 2 Videos: Ceasural 1: 03:18; Ceasural 2: 3:53 Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh (2007-08). Re:Frame, Lowave, Paris (2009) Two short video meditations set in the post-industrial landscape of the steel town of Pittsburgh. Memory, the permanence of steel, the impermanence of industry and an invocation of the silent aftermath of decades of […]
