Re Run

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.

Foreground Manoeuvres

This essay investigates how the “foreground” of late capitalism—defined by ubiquitous automation, productivity triumphalism, and competitive edges—both shapes and erases social landscapes. Through a two‑act framework, Raqs first analyses the seismic shifts in the dispersal and connections in theproduction process and technology deployment. The second act examines the “production of residue”: which expressed itself with […]

WHAT TIME IS IT

Published in conjunction to the Technologies of Life in the Contemporary (14th – 16th December, 2017), Sarai-CSDS, Delhi and Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi

Diver’s at Work

The diver, maybe she is a specter, maybe he is a submarine apparition. Diving, we are  closer to the surface of the earth than an astronaut, but the paradoxical nature of a submarine horizon makes for an experience that envelopes and recedes at the same time. We could recognize this paradox as key to an awareness of our experience of the contemporary. 

The necessity of Infinity

The Necessity of Eternity recounts what must be one of the most exciting yet neglected exchanges (Al-As’Ilah Wa’L-Ajwibah/Questions and Answers) in the intellectual history of the world.

The Blood of Stars

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 warm-blooded mammals.

The Emperor’s Old Clothes & Hollowgram

The Emperor’s Old Clothes (2017)Shortlisted for The Fourth Plinth on Trafalgar Square 3D printed PLA Plastic and cast polyester resin What, would the departure of power from a Trafalgar Square pedestal look like? The Emperor’s Old Clothes is an answer to this question in sculptural form. What we intend to place on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square is […]

Twilight Language

Twilight Language signals a lighthouse semaphore for all that is lost and found between errant longitudes, infected histories and contagious futures. This is the time when everything changes; memorials defect, communards bake biscuits, moths mutate, divers rise, clocks speak in tongues. Animals, machines, and humans recover grounds of equality and conversation. Words turn incandescent, enigma shadows everything, twilight finds its language. 

The Translator’s Silence

Fragments of texts by three South Asian poets, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Rabindranath Tagore, and Agha Shahid Ali, are presented in Urdu, Bengali and English, in lenticular 3D prints

Utsushimi

Utsushimi Site-specific installation at Suzu City, Oku-Noto Triennale, Japan (2017 – ongoing)  Materialized Architectural Drawing in Illuminated Wireframe  Utsushimi (Tr:double image/token/emanation) traces the outline of a now-defunct railway station in the Noto Peninsula of central Japan, capturing its essence through a ‘drawing sculpture’ that renders the station’s form as an exoskeleton. This skeletal emanation stands slightly […]