A textual sculpture of the renowned Raqs Media Collective comprising artists Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi and Monica Narula is located on the Baltic Sea.
An outcome of the artists’ investigation of the link between the salinity of water and climate change, the sculpture takes on numerous dimensions physically and ‘evokes’ a certain thought figuratively. The physicality of the work apart, it reminds you of the fact that if there’s not enough salt in the Baltic Sea, it’s bad for the world. It will bring tears in your eyes, says Ms. Narula, as the trio sat for a conversation with The Hindu in Fort Kochi. They were here to do groundwork for their project for the forthcoming Kochi Muziris Biennale in December.
The Raqs has worked across the entire spectrum of art practices, science, technology and contemporary culture. The members of the collective, who describe themselves as ‘cultural producers’, distinguish themselves from dilettanti. “Our emphasis is on being serious artists — a seriousness to open out what the world can be. Open out the world for yourself and for other people,” says Ms. Narula.
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Their ‘different curiosities’ take them to different forms for expression. Mr. Sengupta cites the example of their investigation of capitalism in the current form in the 20 century and what it means to question the displacement it begets. “This took us on a long journey across three cities: Berlin, Warsaw and Mumbai and through the legacy of a historical person, Rosa Luxemburg, and her meditations on the political economy of the early 20 century. As we were approaching it 100 years later, it took the form of a detective work. It was like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. Like reconstructing a crime using forensic methodology. In another work, we designed the pattern of a carpet to reflect on the nature of conversations,” he says.
Mr. Bagchi throws in the film analogy, saying the search is to find the best way to explore a question. “As in a film, it’s all part of the same thing,” he insists.
Between 2000 and 2012, the Raqs hogged the limelight for their Sarai programme, which facilitated engagements with theories, technologies, languages and the like. It offered fellowship programmes for all and sundry, with focus on urban space, urban culture, new forms of communication and media, from the Internet to software cultures, the politics of communication etc. But paucity of funds and philanthropic support in the wake of global slowdown choked it to death.
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“Within Sarai, we initiated a whole process called Cyber Mohalla which created cultural laboratories in working class neighbourhoods in Delhi… It had its day and that’s over. Maybe something else by someone else will replace it,” says the trio.
The group — which just finished a show at Madrid and is grappling with several ongoing projects like a long video ‘The Last International’ (which will be ready in a year) and a series of works that are reworked dominant texts under ‘Correction to the first Draft of History’— is contemplating biological processes, especially the petroleum economy based on forms of life. A la archaeologists who work with ruins and rubbish, Raqs believes in the regenerative capacity of things that are discarded. “They have possible future lives. Everything has other possibilities,” they say.