RAQS Media Collective
RAQS Media Collective was formed in 1992 in Delhi, India by Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. The word ‘raqs’ in several languages denotes an intensification of awareness and presence attained by whirling, turning, being in a state of revolution. Raqs Media Collective take this sense to mean ‘kinetic contemplation’, and a restless entanglement with the world, and with time. Raqs enlists objects such as an early-modern tiger-automata from Southern India, or a biscuit from the Paris Commune, or a cup salvaged from an ancient Mediterranean shipwreck, to turn them into devices to sniff and taste time. Devices unfold thus in order to undertake historical subterfuge, and philosophical query. Raqs practices across several media, making installation, sculpture, video, performance, text, lexica and curation. In 2000, they co-founded the Sarai program at CSDS, New Delhi and ran it for a decade, where they innovated on infrastructural conditions of practices and knowledge production, and also edited the nine-volume Sarai Reader series.
The members of Raqs Media Collective live and work in Delhi, India. They are presently working on toxicity, care, and the luminosity of friendship.
