“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 […]
To have a conversation only with questions is like playing a game(chess), like a player is looking for a realm
The Course of LoveShown at: Setouchi Triennale, Honjima (2019) Sculpture using faceted Lenticular panels, with Found Boat 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 of love? – Sone-no […]
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
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 video works Dohas for Doha are illuminated proverbs that play with linguistics, light, and the transmission of knowledge
Listening: Active Presence of Aura of the Ordinary Suraj, Shamsher and Neelofar were part of the Cybermohalla Ensemble (2001-13), and co-authrored innumerable books, broadsheets, and art works with the Ensemble. Notable among them are Trickster City: Writings from the Belly of the Metropolis (Penguin-India, 2010, English translation of Bahurupiya Shehr, Rajkamal Prakashan, 2007), and Cybermohalla […]
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’
To PeopleShown at: Mathaf, Doha (2019) 11 Textile and 2 Prints on paper,100 x 500 cm each Eleven hand-woven carpets and two paper prints are hung throughout the gallery, cascading to the ground. The forms that inhabit the woven textiles represent a mass, a collective, or a network of people as an interlaced, connected weave. […]
“One question that stayed with us and has proven to continue getting exponentially more complex is that of time. The 90s had posed the scrambling of time in ideas of development, progress, or modernity.During that time, as very young people, we examined and re-examined what progress could even mean. We have, from then, been unpacking […]
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