RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE
The Indian-based Raqs Media Collective (Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta) is a trio of media practitioners who have, since their formation in 1991, worked in collaboration through documentary filmmaking, philosophy, theoretical writing and digital art practice to reflect on issues such as urbanity, citizenship and the multiple forms of legality and illegality in the contemporary world. As co-initiator of Sarai: The New Media Initiative (www.sarai.net) at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, they support and fuel a think-tank active in the research and publication on issues at the intersection of the social, political, ethical and aesthetic
Their artistic projects invariably emerge from and extend the collective's commitment to research and writing even as it underscores the poetic and affective dimension of contemporary life. Their installation of video, text, sound, print and signage in Entry Permitted. Access Denied (2001), explored the tension between contemporary city spaces and how people inhabit them. The documentary and found material assembled in the work provoked reflections on security survival, the city masterplan and the actual movement of those included and excluded from the city. It was paired with a software and online space for a shared digital creativity, an exploration of another kind of "space" that attempted to translate the principles of cohabitation and sharing on to the fact of authorship.
For a recent work exploring issues of immigration, memory, loss, and legality entitled The Wherehouse (2004), Raqs invited people from the city of Brussels located between the "Petit Chateau" (a immigration detention centre) and the Palais des Beaux-Arts (the location chosen for the first exhibition of the project) to gift a single object that they no longer used, or were willing to discard, to the project. The process also involved collecting objects abandoned on the streets of Brussels.
These objects, which ranged from furniture to notebooks to matchboxes, were arrayed in a grid with tags speculating as to their provenance as if in an archaeological site following a dig,
The Wherehouse is, as the group has described it, an attempt at constituting a "speculative archaeology of/for the present moment," one that reflects on "a world where some people are forced to abandon home, and others can be seen as being imprisoned by their assumptions of stability about their present location thus provoking an encounter between abandoned materials and abandoned memories with a view to the asking of questions, to the sharing of histories and to the necessary labours of memory and reflection - on realities that are often wished away."
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=15122&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://www.sanjitdas.com/vivan/raqs-bio.html
http://www.universes-in-universe.de/car/documenta/11/halle/e-raqs.htm
http://latitudes.walkerart.org/artists/index.wac?id=80
http://www.kunstaspekte.de/index.php?k=1540&action=webpages launch conversation with Raqs Media Collective and Steve Dietz
Founded in 1991 by Monica Narula (Born 1969), Jeebesh Bagchi (Born 1965), and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Born 1968) in New Delhi, India
Based in New Delhi, India
The Wherehouse Project, 2004
Mixed media
Dimension variable
Courtesy the artists
Mixed media
Dimension variable
Courtesy the artists
The Indian-based Raqs Media Collective (Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta) is a trio of media practitioners who have, since their formation in 1991, worked in collaboration through documentary filmmaking, philosophy, theoretical writing and digital art practice to reflect on issues such as urbanity, citizenship and the multiple forms of legality and illegality in the contemporary world. As co-initiator of Sarai: The New Media Initiative (www.sarai.net) at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, they support and fuel a think-tank active in the research and publication on issues at the intersection of the social, political, ethical and aesthetic
Their artistic projects invariably emerge from and extend the collective's commitment to research and writing even as it underscores the poetic and affective dimension of contemporary life. Their installation of video, text, sound, print and signage in Entry Permitted. Access Denied (2001), explored the tension between contemporary city spaces and how people inhabit them. The documentary and found material assembled in the work provoked reflections on security survival, the city masterplan and the actual movement of those included and excluded from the city. It was paired with a software and online space for a shared digital creativity, an exploration of another kind of "space" that attempted to translate the principles of cohabitation and sharing on to the fact of authorship.
For a recent work exploring issues of immigration, memory, loss, and legality entitled The Wherehouse (2004), Raqs invited people from the city of Brussels located between the "Petit Chateau" (a immigration detention centre) and the Palais des Beaux-Arts (the location chosen for the first exhibition of the project) to gift a single object that they no longer used, or were willing to discard, to the project. The process also involved collecting objects abandoned on the streets of Brussels.
These objects, which ranged from furniture to notebooks to matchboxes, were arrayed in a grid with tags speculating as to their provenance as if in an archaeological site following a dig,
The Wherehouse is, as the group has described it, an attempt at constituting a "speculative archaeology of/for the present moment," one that reflects on "a world where some people are forced to abandon home, and others can be seen as being imprisoned by their assumptions of stability about their present location thus provoking an encounter between abandoned materials and abandoned memories with a view to the asking of questions, to the sharing of histories and to the necessary labours of memory and reflection - on realities that are often wished away."
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=15122&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://www.sanjitdas.com/vivan/raqs-bio.html
http://www.universes-in-universe.de/car/documenta/11/halle/e-raqs.htm
http://latitudes.walkerart.org/artists/index.wac?id=80
http://www.kunstaspekte.de/index.php?k=1540&action=webpages launch conversation with Raqs Media Collective and Steve Dietz