{"id":2787,"date":"2011-09-18T13:27:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-18T13:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/works.raqsmediacollective.net\/?p=2787"},"modified":"2025-07-11T08:52:45","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T08:52:45","slug":"an-afternoon-unregistered-on-the-richter-scale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/works.raqsmediacollective.net\/index.php\/2011\/09\/18\/an-afternoon-unregistered-on-the-richter-scale\/2787","title":{"rendered":"An Afternoon Unregistered on the Richter Scale"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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An Afternoon Unregistered on the Richter Scale<\/strong><\/em>
<\/em><\/strong>Shown at: Art Gallery of York University, Toronto (2011) | The Photographers\u2019 Gallery, London (2012) | National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi (2014)| Tranzitdisplay, Prague, Czech Republic (2014)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

looped video projection
Duration, 3’30”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Afternoon Unregistered on the Richter Scale <\/em>is a looped video projection of an archived  photographic image in which a room full of surveyors is transformed through a series of subtle alterations. The photograph in question is titled Examining Room of the Duffing Section of the Photographic Department of the Survey of India<\/em>. It was taken in 1911 in Calcutta by British photographer James Waterhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We intervene in this image to conjure a constellation of stars onto a drawing board, induce tremors too gentle to disturb the richter scale, reveal a dreamed up desert, make time wind backwards, stain the afternoon with indigo, and introduce a rustle and a hesitation in the determined stillness of the surveyors hard at work mapping an empire. The work functions as a meditation on the condensation of time in the photographic image as well as a gentle  disturbance in the serious enterprise of recording and commemorating the imposition of order on a fractious landscape. The surveying department isunhinged from empire and annexed to the commonwealth of dreams.
 
This work indexes our interest in working with archival traces (which has been a longstanding pre-occupation), entering them to create layers within our experience of time, memory, and duration. However, in a departure from earlier works which reference archival materials (The Surface of Each Day is a Different Planet and The Capital of Accumulation), An Afternoon Unregistered on the Richter Scale <\/em>enters the archive not for investigative and analytical but for poetic purposes, leaving behind a trace leavened by whimsy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Installation | Surjection<\/em>, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto (2011)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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