Moon Clock
The Moon Clock is a device to tell the time. At midnight, and at noon, lies the moon. With the passing of the hours, it clocks the waxing and the waning of crimson moon-minutes
The Moon Clock is a device to tell the time. At midnight, and at noon, lies the moon. With the passing of the hours, it clocks the waxing and the waning of crimson moon-minutes
Twisted Time (2024) is formed from two glass bicycle wheels mounted on a mirrored plinth where they rotate slowly
Borderlands (2024) is a series of seven laser engravings on black sandpaper. Rendered black on black, the hard-to-decipher drawings riff off medieval depictions of animals where the intended creature and its depiction only nominally match.
Text by Raqs, published in ‘A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework’ (2024), edited by Jane Chin Davidson and Amelia Jones
A configuration of five graphic ‘imprints’ and three augmented-reality ‘interferences spread across various levels of The Cosmic House, London.
Autoluminous is an index of our awareness of the inscription of energy into every waking, sleeping and dreaming moment.
Hosted at Asia Art Archive’s Library, this year’s Annual Artist’s Lecture welcomes Raqs Media Collective as the guest speakers.
A set of four prints on metallic paper play with imagery from ‘Swamp’, ‘Marsh’, and the ‘Unruly Iris of Dissent’, and add a third element – a magnification of a falling tear drop, with traces of its salt crystals, denoting the salinity of the feelings that have us come undone.
The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time-Cone, published by Jencks Foundation (2023), takes the form of an artist book, and foregrounds text over image. Mirroring the film’s visual textures, the five voices in the pamphlet register varying distances from what is seen on the screen and its potential elucidations: voiceover, description of images, words on screen, added layers of annotations and meta-annotations.
All, Humans is a permanent commission at School of Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Goethe University, Frankfurt.
All, Humans builds itself from uniquely human faculty of language to construct conceptual categories that transverse the human condition. It arcs out like a canopy – suspended between a multiplicity of minds, hearts and hands, sheltering and anticipating the universal human aspiration and claim for freedom, equality and dignity.
The Collective Eye interviews Raqs Media Collective and delves deep into their early days, influences, and experiences
e-flux journal #27, September 2011, Raqs Media Collective
The Waves Are Rising features an animated augmented reality (AR) wave on a large scale LED screen, superimposed upon live video feed video of the still waters of The Royal Docks, filling the vista of the usually calm waterscape with an animated surging wave as well as detritus and data from the high seas.
The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Parallax Time Cone’ is an investigation into the optics of this strange and specific sensation of time, which has become second nature since 1980. It is a time traveling search, aboard an imagined and remembered bicycle.
1980 in Parallax Exhibition at Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House, United Kingdom (2023) Raqs finds correspondence with Charles Jencks’ work as designer, critic, historian, concrete poet and artist, and with his Post-Modernist manifesto and former home turned Grade I listed museum, The Cosmic House. The concept of parallax describes the changing perception of objects […]
Response by Raqs Monuments Must Fall Issue #24, British Art Studies (Conversation Piece convened by Edwin Coomasaru)
Unruly Iris of Dissent (U.I.D 2)Shown at: ‘Archeology of the self: Archives, Anarchives & the Artist‘, Art Heritage Gallery, New Delhi (2023) Projection of Video Loop 12 years after The Untold Intimacy of Digits (2011), which animated a nineteenth century Bengali peasant’s handprint found in a London archive into a spectral count towards infinity, Raqs […]
Upright board with an inscribed ‘Infra-Vocabulary’ of a selection from Raqs Media Collective’s synonyms for capital, taken from their work – ‘A Dying Man Sings of That which Felled Him’ (installation with video and inscriptions, 2006) which was subsequently published in their book, ‘Seepage’ (Sternberg Press, 2009)
Published in CURARE – Curatorial Studies by Ute Müller-Tischler and Solvej Helweg Ovesen The CURARE Reader is published as part of the CAMPI Curating and Management in Public Institutions program of the District Office for Mitte in Berlin, Office for Further Education and Culture, The Department of Art, Culture and History
Essay as a part of Half-Life, a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and the Art Institute of Chicago within the context of its exhibition “Static Range” by Himali Singh Soin
Betaal / बे-ताल / Arrhythmic instigates an encounter with simulations of arrhythimic presences in an infrastructure-inflected landscape. The landscape of loops, knots, ties, ellipses, holes made of steel wires and metal bar creates a crisscross configuration suspended in space.
Time Travel is not a typical board game, although it looks quite ordinary: it consists of a board, instructions, and alphabet squares.
In The Theatre of Memory: The Work of Contemporary Art in the Photographic Archive Text by Raqs
soDA magazine 19, Zurich (2002); Casebook (2014, AGYU Canada), Raqs presented the concept of “Event-shaped Hole” which translated into the essay The Event-shaped Hole and the Photographic Image in The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, 2021 Casebook (2014, AGYU Canada) A photograph is an image of an event-shaped-hole, and as witnesses to such perforations we could […]
An invitation to epistemic disobedience with Raqs Media Collective
Art Collections of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2021-2022)
The Laughter of Tears | 2021 Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany When we are in the sonic range of the flightpaths of a flock of birds returning to a roosting site, we become intimate with their together-ness. When people are awestruck by wonder, or tickled into laughter, or moved to tears, they momentarily transmit to each other […]
As the earth turns to spin slightly faster than before in 2021, and as the heavens break ranks, involuntary memories return to the beckoning of the lime-tar-fish-jasmine-gasoline-brine smell of a new time. This smell of a new time needs new words – and an old hand – to write it all down.
Raqs works with salt, or that refers to salt, as material or concept. The inquiry started from “Salt”, a photo-essay published in The Drama Review, Volume 65 Issue 4, 2021. Salt, The Drama Review, Volume 65 Issue 4, 2021 (download) A Planet Turns on its Axis Without Permission Single screen, Video, 18:04 minutes “Provisions for Everybody” at […]
The ghost is here again to be neither witness, nor agent, not even provocateur, to be perhaps just a haunting laugh through time.
Every wilful misstep, every greedy grab, is an intimate intimidation to our own longer future.
Tears are not only for weeping, they lubricate the possibility of vision. Sometimes we see things better when we cry, cry out aloud, or laugh, till the tears come unbidden.
Do Harmonious Friends cause dissonance?Blackboard paint, newspaper, chalk, text, silkscreen, glass eyes6 frames of 55 x 70 cm each The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) An owl and a donkey interpolate themselves, indicating the simultaneity of leaving and returning. Tyll of Braunschweig teaches us the trick of being on both sides of a […]
As time refracts, its shatter illuminates differing strands. A comic’s contempt, her whisper of laughter, threatens the consensus.
The only actually shared sensation is the present continuous tense. It reconstitutes, everyday, the coarse fabric of being human, rearranging the atoms of collective experience.
If the big, open sky is a canopy for the tumult of birds and angels, then under which roof does the flight of the ferment of our times soar? Tent cities spring from the streets and in squares like so many umbrellas of refuge and rebellion. This can be a way to re-read the history […]
Memes and Fables: …tick tock Newspaper, blackboard ink, chalk and screen print. 2021 70cm x 54.5cm Memes and Fables: …tock tick Newspaper, blackboard ink, chalk and screen print. 2021 68cm x 55.5cm Memes and Fables: …wicked Newspaper, blackboard ink, chalk and screen print. 2021 70cm x 57.5cm Memes and Fables: …let it be Newspaper, blackboard […]
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 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, 2020 Video with Calligraphy, Pixels, Sound Duration: 17:45 mins The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021); The Pandemic Circle at Stamps Gallery, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, Expo Chicago – online (2020) and CC: World, Haus der Kulturen der Welt- online, Berlin (2020) A conversation in images, missives to selves and world, […]
A Gathering of Birds Audio loop with 3 Speakers Duration: 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.
Unledgered Installation Portals, Stories, and Other Journeys curated by Michelle Wong Tai Kwun Contemporary, JC Contemporary, Hong Kong (2021) The exhibition was based on Asia Art Archive’s research since 2014 into the personal archive of the late Hong Kong–based artist Ha Bik Chuen (1925–2009) In 2016, when Raqs Media Collective first visited Ha’s studio in […]
An invitation to epistemic disobedience with Raqs Media Collective, in the Art Collections of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2021
Text and image essay by Raqs, published in The Drama Review, Volume 65 Issue 4, 2021
Text by Raqs, published in Curatography, Issue 2, Curators Living Rooms, Curating Asia International, 2021
Text by Raqs, published in “Slow Reader: A Resource for Design Thinking and Practice”, 2021
Text by Raqs, published in the Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 30 No. 61-62 (2021): The Changing Ontology of the Image
Making bets while knowing nothing Text by Raqs, published in The Collections Book, Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary
The first publication accompanying Afterglow, Yokohama Triennale 2020, curated by Raqs Media Collective.
Dohas for Doha Five Videos, LED screens, variable dimensions Still More World, Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art | Doha (2019) Dohas woven by Kabir, Rahim sees them in the Stars Raqs finds them everywhere, in Doha and in Mars This doha talks in shadow speech Where words fail Raqs, let commas reach When nothing […]
Text by Raqs, published in Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm, editors Cameron Cartiere + Leon Tan, 2021
Text by Raqs, published by the Goethe Institut, 2020
Text by Raqs, for Untranslatable Terms of Cultural Practices: A Shared Vocabulary, 2021
To have a conversation only with questions is like playing a game(chess), like a player is looking for a realm
The Course of Love Sculpture using faceted Lenticular panels, with Found Boat Setouchi Triennale | Honjima (2019) Setouchi Triennale | Honjima 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 […]
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’s work. Published in Third Text 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 […]
Sleep, Clock reflects the intimate rhythm of existence through a pair of synchronized clock faces.
Everything Else is Ordinary delves into the elusive, multifaceted nature of time and how it shapes our existence. Raqs explores the concept of time not as a singular, linear force but as a series of intersecting moments that reflect our complex relationships with labor, memory, and each other. The exhibition interweaves various elements of daily life with philosophical reflections.
Not Yet At Ease premiered at FirstSite, Colchester as part of the 1914-18 Now Commissions: a series of new artistic works commemorating a century of the First World War.
Provisions for Everybody Shown at: AV Festival, Newcastle (2018)| Project 88, Mumbai (2018)| Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2019) Single screen, Video, FurnitureDuration, 50′ Provisions for Everybody inscribes an eccentric itinerary on and off the trail of George Orwell that accompanies a reading of ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’. Traveling between Northern England, Eastern India, […]
Provisions for Everybody Installation: 3 Videos, large drawing print, 3 dhurrie banners, drawings on vinyl, found furnitureAV Festival, Newcastle (2018), ‘Still More World’ Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2019) “Coal Mine. Windmill. Sugarcane Field. Words. Pictures. Memes. It’s all about energy; everything is burning.” “How not to write slow poisoning love letters to life?”, […]
In Three Shadows, the dancing figures in white have been isolated and animated to render them into ghostly spinning specters.
Turning, and turning around, on the Rann does not alter the white horizon. Salt– brilliant under the sun–dazzles the eyes, opens the lachrymal canals. We taste our own salinity as time seasons us.
A thicket is a concentration of living matter. In forests, gardens, and fields, thickets rise where different plant species find it possible to thrive together in a wild celebration of life itself. Conversations too can have thickets; points of intersection of lines of force. Raqs Media Collective’s presence at Tate Exchange (December 14 – 20, […]
Project 88 (Mumbai) 2018 “everything is burning” Raqs Media Collective returns to Project 88, Mumbai with “Provisions”, an exhibition that brings together the premiere in India of an ambitious recent video travelogue, ‘Provisions for Everybody’ (2018), as well as a new body of work — photo/text/objects that embody an agile and playful skepticism towards the […]
The clock in the poster is an embodiment of assurance, the opposite of alarm
An imagined conversation between real, embodied and artificial forms of intelligence, set in a moment of respite on a working day.
A suite of six uniquely colourful lenticular prints offer a dance of terse imperatives at the intersection of will and necessity
A singular array of surfaces in materials that range from leather to metal celebrate the essential instability of all substances
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.
Interview with Raqs by Melissa Karmen Lee, published in ASAP/Journal vol. 3.2, 2018
To Ask when Empty, To pour when Full Text by Raqs, “On the aestheticization of Politics”
Text by Raqs, published in Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory, Critical Times (2018) 1 (1): 272–276
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
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 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 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.
This architectural installation speaks to the evolution of materials and living forms across alternative time epochs.
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