Raqs Media Collective Collective

Raqs Media Collective was formed in 1991 by independent media practitioners Jeebesh Bagchi (b. 1965), Monica Narula (b. 1969) and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (b. 1968).  Based in New Delhi, Raqs collaborates on projects which synthesize video, theory, performance, photography, and the graphic arts.  Raqs’ work is an attempt to be present and attentive to the world as they find it and to the histories that preface and prepare their encounters with the world.  By exploring the mutable interrelationships between urban landscapes and modes of living, they highlight the tensions that determine how individual and global realities are constructed. Traversing across a lexicon of images, gestures, and inscriptions, Raqs has successfully invented novel visual concepts that question artistic conventions, systems of representation, and multiplicity of space. They are now working on Sarai: The New Media Initiative, in which they are examining the changing relations between old and new media and tactical media practices in the city of Delhi. Raqs has participated in important exhibitions of new-media art throughout Europe and Asia including Documenta 11 in 2002 and the 2003 Venice Biennale.

While in residence at the Lucas Artists Programs, Raqs worked on a project for iCon: India Contemporary, a pavilion representing Indian artists at the 2005 Venice Biennale titled “A Measure of Anacoustic Reason.” This work is conceived as an installation dedicated to the task of being attentive to utterances that are generally just out of earshot or that are difficult to listen to.