Raqs Media Collective Workshop

Information

This group is to discuss, engage, and prepare for the artist lecture/workshop given by Raqs Media Collective on Sept. 24th/25th. Introduce your work, research, and interests and work together with Raqs on developing the workshop's content further....

Members: 12
Latest Activity: Nov. 24, 2008

Lecture and workshop (dates and place not 100 % confirmed yet.)

Workshop schedule:

Day 1: TALK - "Talking to KD Vyas" (the talk uses a recent work we did, THE KD VYAS CORRESPONDENCE VOL.1, as a starting point)

'Every witness is also an actor. All actors are also witnesses. All witnesses are redactors.'

The KD Vyas Correspondence Vol. 1 is an attempt to render a unique exchange between Raqs and the figure of a retired redactor who goes by the name of KD Vyas. The person or entity named Vyas, in his letters to Raqs, originally delivered to the Dead Letter Office in New Delhi, makes a claim to being the compiler of the Mahabharata, an epic originally narrated in Sanskrit, probably around 300 BC in the northern part of South Asia.
The letters themselves function as provocations and indices for Raqs' continuing investigations on the theme of 'declining time', on the protocols of the production and transmission of narratives, on the vexed questions of the verification and authenticity of being, and on some methods for remaining sane in the early years of the twenty first century.

Day 2: WORKSHOP – The workshop will look at the use of what Raqs calls 'minor media' within their practice of engaging with contemporary realities through art work and other continuing investigations. Here, participants may use found materials, notebooks, memory work, narratives, photographs, collage and other strategies to construct small, dense works that can be very layered. After an introductory session in which participants introduce their work and interests, two discussions will contextualize the theme of the workshop: the relationship of the artist with the city (as well as how to think about city space as an artist) and the usage of documentary material in contemporary cultural practices.

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From the Wikipedia Entry on Raqs Media Collective: http://en.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.

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visit Raqs' website:
http://www.raqsmediacollective.net

Discussion Forum

Reading the KD Vyas Correspondence Vol.1 2 Replies

Started by KAYA. Last reply by Sarah Rifky Sep. 30, 2008.

RAQS-related imagery

Started by mikala Sep. 27, 2008.

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Comment by KAYA on November 24, 2008 at 12:32pm: Here a link to a recording of a reading Monica and Shuddha from RAQS gave at Frieze Art Fair just after returning from our project. Their narrative begins with a view on Damascus from Mount Qasyoun and their experience being in the city.

http://www.friezeartfair.com/podcasts/details/transhumance/#When

Comment by Ashkan Sepahvand on September 13, 2008 at 3:51pm: what ways would you suggest following it? or, better, HOW would you want to follow it? are you more interested in the exchange with Raqs, what information/concepts they present, or what activity comes out of the workshop portion?

we could think about incorporating the workshop into next week's assignment, like with 98weeks and Interruptions Magazine.

what do you find interesting about Raqs' work/approach?

Comment by Isa Andreu on September 11, 2008 at 6:15pm: it sound very interesting the workshop. but would be a way of following it for the people who will not be in damascus?

i was also asked for an invitation letter and they tried to ask for the confirmed flight, and at the end when i went to the consulate, they almost forgotted to check the invitation letter. I had the impression they just enjoyed bothering people asking for papers.:)

Comment by Ashkan Sepahvand on September 11, 2008 at 2:38pm: Interview with Homi Bhabha, cultural theorist & excerpt from his book "The Location of Culture" (*see .pdf attachments)
Bhabha_Homi_interview.pdf

Bhabha_Homi_culture.pdf

Comment by Ashkan Sepahvand on September 11, 2008 at 2:11pm: trying to get raqs media collective to Damascus has been challenging because of all the red tape.

before getting their visa, they had to show hotel confirmations and flight reservations. (i did not have to do this for my visa)

we found a flight on air arabia for a good price. however, they would have had to spend one night in Sharjah, UAE on their way to and back. for this, they would need a letter of sponsorship to get a transit visa.

"This is what happens when you have the wrong passport", Monica told me over the phone, as we talked about this...

What is the wrong passport????

Comment by Ashkan Sepahvand on September 10, 2008 at 4:49pm: TABULA RASA: 111 DAYS ON A LONG TABLE Denis Isaia, in conversation with Raqs Media Collective
Tabula Rasa – blank slate – a situation awaiting a presence, an act or an inscription – a space of potency, ripe with anticipation, ready for imminence. Tabula Rasa is a special project of Manifesta 7 within The Rest of Now. It is intended to animate a series of interactions and a network of conversations with the people of Bolzano / Bozen and the broader region. The project will be realized over 111 days on a long, clean table – a “blank slate” – in the empty space of Room 124 in the ex-Alumix building.
NEXT EVENTS

* Monipodio, a cartoonists’ collective, Bolzano / Bozen – Interpretation Laboratory I
Saturday, September 6 to Sunday, September 14
A group of cartoonists respond to The Rest of Now.

* Interpretation Laboratory II
Wednesday, September 10, 3pm
Oral review on Manifesta 7 by 10 curators, moderated by Elvira Vannini, Bologna
After a private conversation, 10 young Italian curators will present to the public a review on Manifesta 7.

* Andrea Caranti – How to stabilize a wobbly table, or the Bolzano Theorem
Thursday, September 11, 6pm
A mathematics performance illustrating the Bolzano theorem and its peculiar applications.

* Espen Sommer Eide (Bergen) -Building Instruments: The Bolzano / Bozen Sessions
Espen Sommer Eide, an artist, musician and philosopher based in Bergen, has designed a method for the collective building of improvised instruments for electronic music, using gramophone records, turntables, bits of amplifiers, sub-woofers, etc. The process of making the instruments continues into the making of the music itself. In The Bolzano / Bozen Sessions, Sommer Eide teams up with friends, acoustic hobbyists and local electronic music enthusiasts to build instruments and make music on, and around, the long table.

Friday, September 12
* Floating Territories: Book Presentation
Saturday, September 13, 6pm
Presentation of a book edited by Nico Dockx, Germana Jaulin and Chiara Parisi based on a logbook of conversations between Nico Dockx, Yona Friedman, Helena Sidiropoulos and Jochem Vanden Ecker, arising from their work on the Floating Territories project.

* Building Transmissions: Sound Performance
Saturday, September 13, 9pm
A live sound performance by Kris Delacourt, Nico Dockx and Krist Torfs, and the release of a 12” vinyl record connected to the TEUFELSgroup installation in The Rest of Now.

* Rosarot und Himmelblau I
Sunday, September 14 to Friday, September 19
Object collections from Bolzano / Bozen, curated by Lisa Trockner, Bolzano / Bozen

* Dictionary of War
Platform: Saturday, September 20 and Sunday, September 21
Exhibition: Monday, September 22 to Thursday, September 25
A collaborative platform for discussing concepts about war, to be invented, arranged and presented by scientists, artists, theorists and activists at a public, two-day event. The aim is to pinpoint key concepts that play a significant role in current discussions about war, as well as those that have been neglected, or have yet to be created. Over the past two years, 125 key concepts have been produced in previous editions of the Dictionary of War, developed in Frankfurt, Munich, Graz, Berlin and Novi Sad. The sixth edition, to be developed at Manifesta 7, will be a remix of concepts from former editions, as well as an exhibition of a number of newly created concepts and their live presentations. (www.dictionaryofwar.org)

* Art Magazines: What Now?
Friday, September 26
Panel discussion on editing, publishing and writing for independent and emerging Italian art magazines, broadsheets and occasional publications. In collaboration with Undo.net, an independent online art network.

* Residual Hopes: Table-Top Theatre Weekend
Saturday, September 27 and Sunday, September 28
Theatre performances on the table, curated by Il Funambolo, cultural producers, Trento

* Roaming
Tuesday, 30 September
www.roaming-art.it, a project by Ermanno Cristini, curated by Alessandro Castiglioni, Emanuele Becheri and Vincenzo Cabiati, with the participation of Armin Linke, Ermanno Cristini, Microcollection. ROAMING is a series of exhibitions lasting only for the time of the opening as flashes that live in the photographers' cameras, and then float in the fuzzy dimension of the web. This edition will be photographed by Casaluce/Geiger – synusi@

Comment by Ashkan Sepahvand on September 10, 2008 at 4:44pm: from the Manifesta 7 website, the exhibition curated by Raqs Media Collective:

BOLZANO/BOZEN
RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE: "THE REST OF NOW"

“The extraction of value from any material, place, thing or person, involves a process of refinement. During this process, the object in question will undergo a change in state, separating into at least two substances: an extract and a residue. With respect to residue: it maybe said it is that which never finds its way into the manifest narrative of how something (an object, a person, a state, or a state of being) is produced, or comes into existence. It is the accumulation of all that is left behind, when value is extracted… There are no histories of residue, no atlases of abandonment, no memoirs of what a person was but could not be.”
(Raqs: With Respect to Residue, 2005)

What transpires in the course of a second, closer look at the narrative of progress and the velocity of our times?

Our effort is to subject these realities to critical reappraisal. The setting of part of Manifesta 7 in a disused aluminium factory in Bolzano – a space of abandonment and residue – raises many questions about the after-life of extraction. What gets left behind when everything is taken away? What can be retrieved, and what can be remembered? How can the residual become the engine of meaning?

We are interested in thinking about what happens when things are rendered as valuable in this world. It involves a slowing down, aconcentration of attention on some processes that might otherwise attempt to obscure those traces that are left behind. In one sense, it is an attempt to come to terms with the self-fulfilling amnesia of Capitalism, and to see what can be salvaged from the oblivion to which the residues of Modernism are normally consigned.

The task of creating a network of processes and art works inside an abandoned industrial site seems to us to be the perfect opportunity to invite artists – and some participants who do not practise as artists – to enlarge the horizons of this conversation.

While Europe is already known for art spaces and events that occupy abandoned industrial sites, there still remains the question of what the combination of remembered industrial energy and a more current melancholia of abandonment actually means today. In some ways this is symptomatic of Europe’s unwillingness to come to terms with aspects of its own difficult path into, and through, the 20th century.

Raqs Media Collective

THE REST OF NOW
ARTISTS

David Adjaye, Stefano Bernardi, Kristina Braein, Yane Calovski, Candida TV, contemporary culture index, Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska, Harold de Bree, Latifa Echakhch, Marcos Chaves, etoy.CORPORATION, Anna Faroqhi, Ivana Franke, Matthew Fuller, Francesco Gennari, Ranu Ghosh, Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty, Anawana Haloba in collaboration with Francesca Grilli, Graham Harwood, Nikolaus Hirsch & Michel Müller, Hiwa K, Emre Hüner, Helen Jilavu, Sanjay Kak, Zilvinas Kempinas, Reinhard Kropf and Siv Helene Stangeland, Anders Krueger, Lawrence Liang, Charles Lim Yi Yong, m-city, Teresa Margolles, Walter Niedermayr, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Martin Pichlmair, Piratbyrån Party (featuring a performance by Jem Noble), Jaime Pitarch, Prof. Bad Trip, Kateřina Šedá, Dayanita Singh, TEUFELSgroup, Meg Stuart, Melati Suryodarmo, Jörgen Svensson, Hansa Thapliyal, Alexander Vaindorf, Judi Werthein, Graham Harwood, Richard Wright, Matsuko Yokokoji,
Darius Ziura

SPECIAL PROJECTS
Hot Desking: Four broadsheets, four cities, four events
A project in collaboration with Konstfack Curator Lab
Hot Desk Paris: J’aime beaucoup ce que vous faites
Hot Desk Istanbul: Muhtelif
Hot Desk Stockholm: Site Magazine
Hot Desk Rome: Nero Magazine

Tabula Rasa: 111 days on a long table
A project by Denis Isaia in conversation with Raqs Media Collective

“The Rest of Now” will be accompanied by a print publication edited by novelist Rana Dasgupta containing texts and images by Irina Aristarkhova, Ursula Biemann, Ingrid Book and Carina Hedén, Espen Sommer Eide, Lakhmi Chand Kohli, Anders Kreuger, Ove Kvavik, J Robert Lennon, Lawrence Liang, Daniel Magnusson, Christien Meindertsma, Naeem Mohaiemen, Jeffrey Schnapp, Ravi Sundaram, Jeet Thayil, Cédric Vincent, and others.