[Reader-list] There has been a change of plan: Raqs Media Collective

[Monica Narula]

dear Jose-Carlos

Thanks for your mail. It opens up many questions. Some responses, far  
from 'explanatory' and perhaps starting strands of thought...

- The art context in India is primarily around what is termed as the  
"visual arts". 95% of the works shown and transacted are paintings.  
Followed at a distance by sculptures/objects and then the rare  
photographic show. Photography has yet to find a stable space, though  
there is some important work being done in this domain. It is only in  
the last few years that there has been somewhat of a shift towards  
the showing of video works and some installation work. These works  
are emerging both from established and newer artists, and basically  
have a wider circulation outside India.

- It is extremely difficult for someone with a non-visual arts  
background to enter the art context here. The reasons for this are  
yet to be researched and understood. The recent entry of some  
documentary practitioners in to this context is due more to their  
international presence rather than any serious rethinking of the  
values and consensus that run the art contexts here. (The documentary  
film on the other hand has had for many years a decent and at times  
controversial public presence, and a committed public around it.)

- This situation will hopefully change over the next few years, with  
more diverse kinds of practitioners making interesting works and  
staking a claim in the art space - which we think has begun. This  
process will be interesting as it will mean changes in the ways 'art  
practice' sees itself in relation to other practices and also to ways  
in which new publics can and will emerge around the domain of the  
'art context'.

- We have shown our CD works (GVHM, No_des and Ectropy) in Delhi and  
Bangalore and these works have a circulation (also as cds). Also many  
of our works travel - lightly - through publications and the web. In  
terms of installation, we could not find a context to show (we have  
shown a few works within means affordable to us in Sarai). This is  
slowly going to loosen up over the next decade, as art contexts will  
probably become more curious to practices from other domains.

- It is an interesting process how many of our installation works  
emerge, and expectedly a complex one. Works have emerged through  
conversations and the sharing of ideas and questions with some  
extremely curious and sharp people in many parts of the world. (I  
would not club them all together in any one idea of an institutional  
context.). In this let me share a recent interaction. A young curator  
located between Lithuania and Sweden has been in dialogue with us for  
more than two years. We share ideas, critiques, questions, resources  
etc. Over this period he has invited us to think on an idea that has  
been exciting and troubling him for some time. This process of  
thinking may find an expression in an installation to be first hosted  
in a place that he has access to, which will definitely by outside  
India. As a process, we find this exciting and challenging, along  
with our work here in Sarai/Delhi. And i do think that such an  
interaction - whether from a 'local' context or a 'global' one -  
deserves respect and engagement.

- Some of our work has emerged from collaboration and in 'neutral'  
grounds. This made possible very intriguing dialogues and processes.  
Sometimes I do wish that we could ourself host a few of these  
unpredictable encounters.

- We are yet fully to understand the complex processes that we are  
all part of in today's world and will give ourselves a few more years  
before we find ourselves able to speak definitively on 'publics' and  
'places'. We have found very demanding and challenging interlocutors  
and viewers in many different ways and places. This has made our own  
map of the world more dense and knotty, and not merely defined by  
national borders.

best
M

On 30-Jul-06, at 7:32 AM, Jose-Carlos Mariategui wrote:

> Dear Monica:
>
> Thanks for the information on the Raqs solo-exhibition in Dehli.  I  
> just
> must say that it is in my perspective strange to see that this is  
> the first
> solo exhibit of Raqs in Dehli, taking into consideration that Raqs  
> is Indian
> and that it has been exhibiting internationally for many years.   
> Perhaps as
> in the case of many of us (that we face as non-westerns), it is more
> feasible to develop projects in Europe or the US.
>
> To which factors you attribute this situation?  Has Raqs exhibited  
> in other
> cities of India or in cities of neighbouring countries?   How  
> difficult is
> it?
>
> I am not criticising the situation but questioning it, because when  
> we do
> 'something for abroad' it may dissociate the project with immediate  
> reality.
>
> I believe there is a need (and an struggle) to present works in  
> local and
> regional contexts and there may be strategies for its deployment.   
> I had
> recently curated a screening of recent video art from Latin America
> (www.videografiasinvisibles.org) that went first to Europe too but  
> now is
> going to be presented in all Latin America (thanks to the support  
> of the
> Spanish Cooperation Agency's network of Cultural Centres of Spain  
> in all
> Latin America).  Sometimes these supranational organizations may be  
> very
> useful (more than national organizations).
>
> Perhaps this would be an interesting topic of discussion during the  
> Pacific
> Rim New Media Summit at ISEA 2006.  Specially on how we can develop  
> parallel
> networks in the Pacific Rim.
>
> All the best,
>
> Jose-Carlos
>
>
>
>
> on 7/29/06 2:33 PM, Monica Narula at monica at sarai.net wrote:
>
>> Raqs Media Collective : 'There Has Been a Change of Plan'
>> (Selected Works 2002-2006)
>> Nature Morte Gallery, A 1 Neeti Bagh, New Delhi
>> August 5 - 26, 2006
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> ---
>> ----------------------------------------
>> Sometimes, adjustments have to be made. Schedules need calibration.
>> There are contingencies, questions, obstinate demands, weak excuses,
>> strong desires. You return to the city you never left. You pause,
>> take stock. Sit still and let a conversation begin. Maybe?
>>
>> Around you, aeroplanes sit on wooden platforms in a wilderness like
>> widows on a funeral pyre. Clocks measure fatigue, anxiety and modest
>> epiphanies across latitudes. A door to nowhere stands obstinately
>> against the sky. All your cities are a blur.
>>
>> "Do you like looking at maps?"
>>
>> Meanwhile, measures are taken, shoes lost and found, ghost stories
>> gather, the city whispers conspiracies to itself, the situation is
>> tense but under control. Someone offers you a postcard.
>>
>> Now: Let's see what happens.
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> ---
>> ----------------------------------------
>> Raqs Media Collective is pleased to announce its first solo
>> exhibition in Delhi - 'There Has Been A Change of Plan' at Nature
>> Morte Gallery. The exhibition features selected works (2002 - 2006)
>> in the form of cross media installations with networked computers,
>> objects, postcards, video, sound, prints and projections.
>>
>> Works exhibited include: 'Lost New Shoes', selections from 'A Measure
>> of Anacoustic Reason', 'Location (n)', '28.28 N / 77.15 E :: 2001/02
>> (Co-Ordinates of Everyday Life, Delhi 2001-2002)', 'Erosion by
>> Whispers', 'Preface to a Ghost Story' and 'There Has Been a Change of
>> Plan'. (See Details in PDF attatchment with this mail)
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> ---
>> ----------------------------------------
>> About Raqs Media Collective
>> www.raqsmediacollective.net
>>
>> (Excerpt from the Wikipedia Entry on Raqs Media Collective -
>> www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raqs_Media_Collective)
>>
>> Raqs Media Collective was formed in 1992 by independent media
>> practitioners Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata
>> Sengupta. Based in Delhi, their work engages with urban spaces and
>> global circuits, persistently welding a sharp, edgily contemporary
>> sense of what it means to lay claim to the world from the streets of
>> Delhi. At the same time, Raqs articulates an intimately lived
>> relationship with myths and histories of diverse provenances. Raqs
>> sees its work as opening out a series of investigations with image,
>> sound, software, objects, performance, print, text and lately,
>> curation, that straddle different (and changing) affective and
>> aesthetic registers, expressing an imaginative unpacking of questions
>> of identity and location, a deep ambivalence towards modernity and a
>> quiet but consistent critique of the operations of power and  
>> property.
>>
>> In 2001 Raqs co-founded Sarai (www.sarai.net) at the Centre for the
>> Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi where they coordinate
>> media productions, pursue and administer independent research and
>> practice projects and also work as members of the editorial
>> collective of the Sarai Reader series. For Raqs, Sarai is a space
>> where they have the freedom to pursue interdisciplinary and hybrid
>> contexts for creative work and to develop a sustained engagement with
>> urban space and with different forms of media.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Monica Narula
>> Raqs Media Collective
>> Sarai-CSDS
>> 29 Rajpur Road
>> Delhi 110054
>> www.raqsmediacollective.net
>> www.sarai.net
>>
>>
>
>
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Monica Narula
Raqs Media Collective
Sarai-CSDS
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi 110054
www.raqsmediacollective.net
www.sarai.net