The Raqs Media Collective finds varied ways to look at and interpret the world To sum up a world of ideas,emotions,thoughts and analyses in a three-hour lecture cum interaction is next to impossible. Jeebesh Bagchi and Monica Narula of Raqs Media Collective know this,even as they faced the audience as part of the ongoing National Art Week of New Media,talking about their hybrid,poetic practices. The Collective was founded in 1992 by Bagchi,Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta,the last mentioned currently travelling abroad. The three had met in the film school at the Mass Communication Research Centre in Delhis Jamia Millia Islamia. Raqs,in languages like Persian,Arabic and Urdu means the state that whirling dervishes enter into when they whirl. At the same time,Raqs could be an acronym,standing for rarely asked questions, says Narula as she strives to explain their self-declared imperative of kinetic contemplation to produce a trajectory that is restless in terms of the forms and methods that it deploys even as it achieves a consistency of speculative procedures. As practioners of new media,working at art destinations around the world and exploring processes and trajectories,they play several roles creating,thinking,curating exhibitions,editing books,staging events,collaborating with architects. We explore the state of being human,how we are located in this accelerated world,the immense changes that occurred and the post-industrialisation world, says Bagchi. He adds that the encounters with the world,both inside and outside is paramount for them as artists. Their work engages with urban spaces,through a range of domains images,sound,documentary films,software,objects,print,curation,installations-expanding their scope and originality. An example of this is the Architecture for a Temporary Autonomous Sarai (with Atelier BowWow,Tokyo),a portable,multi-use structure made with packing crates for computers,projectors,paper,sound and people. This spatial configuration attempts to be a hospitable place,breaking boundaries,with visitors encouraged to use it, explains Narula. Escapement is another engaging installation of 27 clocks depicting the 24 time zones of the world while The Imposter in the Waiting Room is an installation with video,photography,performance,text,sound and print. The world,say the artists,is encrusted with waiting rooms,spaces for transients to catch their breath as they prepare for the arduous ascent to the high promontory of modernity. Waiting Rooms everywhere are full of Imposters waiting to be auditioned and verified,waiting to know and to see whether they can cross the threshold, adds Bagchi. The KD Vyas Correspondence Vol.1 is an installation with 18 video screens,nine soundscapes,sculpture and narrative. The basis are a set of 18 letters between Raqs and a person who is identified as KD Vyas,sometime redactor of the Mahabharata. The installation manifests the correspondence and the 18 floating fragments of the installationconstructing meaning from fragments,authorship issues,the times we live in,concept of declining time,verification and authenticity of being. In 2001,Raqs co-founded Sarai in Delhi,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. This is an open space for artists to engage,brainstorm,explore, quip the artists. Unusually Adrift from the Shoreline finds the relationship between change and memory that we keep within us. Again,The Rest Of Now is a historical narrative of a 60-year-old factory,for there is nothing that is completely dead or living. The duo leave you with Please Do Not Touch The Work Of Art,a textual interpretation of instructions designed to separate art works from their publics.
