Chromachron

Unexpected arrivals (of a virus in one year) and departures (of a species in another) transform the colour of time. Each year gets a colour signature: a chromachron.

The Sovereign and its Company & The Sovereign Takes a Walk

The Sovereign and its CompanyShown at: Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) Velvet, silkscreen, wallpaper150 cm x 300 cm, 560 cm x 375 cm The Sovereign and its Company are multiple, and multiply formed. Anything can be deputized. The historical glory and moral authority of the sovereign and its company melts away, and then reconstitutes itself, constantly. […]

31 Days

31 DaysShown at: ‘The Laughter of Tears’, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) | ‘The Pandemic Circle’, Stamps Gallery, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, Expo Chicago – online (2020) | ‘CC: World’, Haus der Kulturen der Welt- online, Berlin (2020) Video with calligraphy, pixels, soundDuration, 17’45” A conversation in images, missives to selves and world, mood […]

A Gathering of Birds

A Gathering of BirdsShown at: ‘The Laughter of Tears’, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) Audio loop with 3 SpeakersDuration, 32’41” In the sonic range of the flight-path of a gathering of birds, we momentarily transmit to each other. We surpass contours of containment, and need no translation to be contagious.

Hungry for Time

An invitation to epistemic disobedience with Raqs Media Collective, in the Art Collections of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2021

Freeing the Weight of the Habitual

This essay examines how established practices and ingrained habits can both confine and shape creative and curatorial processes. It poses the question, “What is the mechanism — and how do we seek it — of ‘freeing’ the weights of habitual narrative entrapments?” prompting questions related to the forms and premises of the “system ofgovernance” that […]

Thickets

“Being anywhere inside a thicket means having to deal with a tango between tenses, between the consequences of what yesterday has done, and what tomorrow will bring, and what the present proposes, all at the same time.” Moving between the sit-ins at Shaheen Bagh, the farmers’ protests, and pandemic lockdowns, Raqs invokes the thicket as […]

The Event-Shaped Hole and the Photographic Image

“The image making and processing capacity happen continuously, just as respiration, or digestion does, The new image machines breathe, digest, dream and excrete pictures. they don’t just ‘take’ them.” This essay introduces Raqs’ concept of the “event-shaped hole,” suggesting that photographs can act as pieces of evidence, even when the events themselves are absent from […]