The Visiting Artists Program resource guides contain upcoming speakers' biographies, articles, video and audio content, related publications in the Flaxman Library, and additional online resources. These guides may be used in the classroom in preparation for the event, research, or post-lecture discussion.
Raqs Media Collective: Tuesday, November 17, 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. CT
Click here to join via Zoom, Passcode: SAICVAP (closed captions available)
Tune in to view a virtual presentation by Raqs Media Collective followed by a Q&A with Srimoyee Mitra, director of the Stamps Gallery at Stamps School of Art and Design.
Raqs Media Collective, formed in 1992 by Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta, argues for a mode of “kinetic contemplation” that rides a restless entanglement with the world. This translates into working with moving images to unsettle ways of ordering space and time through timelines, life-lines, latitudes, and longitudes. Raqs practices across several media, including installation, sculpture, video, performance, text, and lexica. In the video 31 Days (2020), Raqs takes the predicament of quarantine and seclusion caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to offer a meditation on a restless world in a quiet time. Raqs takes traces of materials in order to breach the boundaries and limits of historical time by intensifying the experience of a sensory encounter with the immeasurability of life forms. In the video The Blood of Stars (2018), blood, meteorites older than the earth, and iron mines in the arctic circle combine to offer a way of thinking concretely and materially about the intimacy of life, death, mining, war, and the pulse of the cosmos.
From 2000–2013, Raqs spent time at Sarai, which they co-founded at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in North Delhi, and where they were members of the Editorial Collegiate of the Sarai Reader Series. Raqs’ work has been shown in museums and exhibitions across the world, including Documenta 11, Venice, Istanbul, Sydney, Shanghai, and Sao Paulo Biennales, and in solo exhibitions at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Tate Modern, London; Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), México City; Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; K21 Ständehaus, Düsseldorf; and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, among others. Curatorial projects by Raqs include The Rest of Now, Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain, 2011; Sarai Reader 09, Devi Art Foundation, Gurugram, India, 2012; Insert2014, IGNCA, Delhi, 2014; Why Not Ask Again, Shanghai Biennale, 2016; Five Million Incidents, Goethe-Institut, Delhi & Kolkata, 2019–2021; and Afterglow, Yokohama Triennale, 2020.
Co-produced with the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series and the Stamps Gallery at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Image Credit: Raqs Media Collective. From left to right: Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Monica Narula, and Jeebesh Bagchi. Courtesy of Raqs Studio.
Raqs Media Collective’s Website
http://www.raqsmediacollective.net
Gallery Representation
https://www.frithstreetgallery.com/artists/raqs-media-collective
Raqs Media Collective: ‘We have been questioning the boundaries of knowledge and art’
Vandana Kalra | The Indian Express | August 23, 2020
Raqs Media Collective offers a unique vision as the Curator of Yokohama Triennale 2020
Rahul Kumar | STIR | June 17, 2020
December Art Issue: Making of the cover
AD Staff | Architectural Digest | December 10, 2018
Raqs Media Collective
Cleo Roberts | Art Review | December 3, 2018
2017: An Oscillation Between 2000 Years After and 1000 Years Before
Raqs Media Collective | Frieze Magazine | December 21, 2017
Invoking the Translator: A Conversation with Raqs Media Collective
Avishek Ganguly | Public Books | August 1, 2016
Three and a Half Conversations with an Eccentric Planet*
Raqs Media Collective | Third Text, vol. 27 (1) | p.108-114 | Jan 2013
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Protest as Polyphony: An Interview with Raqs Media Collective*
Melissa Karmen Lee, Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta | ASAP/Journal. vol. 3 (2) | May 2018
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Raqs Media Collective: Casebook by 
Raqs Media Collective by 
Seepage by Announcement: Yokohama Triennale 2020: Afterglow
Curator’s note from Raqs Media Collective for the 2020 iteration of the Yokohama Triennale, Afterglow.
Yokohama Triennale 2020: Afterglow
Afterglow, which exists in-person and as a website, is open July 17 – October 11, 2020.
Episōdo X – Yokohama Triennale
Curatography: The Study of Curatorial Culture
Raqs Media Collective are contributors to Curatography, an online platform for discourse of contemporary art and curatorial culture.
Visiting Artists Program Lecture Recordings from the Archive
SAIC Visiting Artists Program video and audio lecture recordings (1977–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.
SAIC Digital Collections: Visiting Artists Program
SAIC Visiting Artists Program publicity archive and audio recordings (1977-98).