PROFILE: RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE

: : Fiona Trigg

: : printable version 

Having the word ‘collective’ in your name sends out a pretty clear signal that your group favours the collaborative exploration of theory and practice over the promotion of individual members’ work. But any implication of a self-censoring ethic is countered by the plural translations of ‘raqs’ offered on the group’s website. ‘Raqs is a word in Persian, Arabic and Urdu and means the state that ‘whirling dervishes’ enter into when they whirl. It is also a word used for dance. At the same time, Raqs could be an acronym, standing for ‘rarely asked questions’...!

Formed in 1991, in New Delhi, by documentary students Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta, RAQS have gradually widened their sphere of activity from filmmaking to include new media & digital art practice, photography, media theory, criticism and curation.

RAQS is also the instigator of SARAI based at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, and supported by De Waag (Society for Old and New Media) in Amsterdam and Canada’s Daniel Langlois Foundation. SARAI is both a physical and online centre for artists and activists working with new media against cultural standardisation and towards innovative readings of urban diversity.

In 2002, at Documenta XI, RAQS presented The Opus Project (Open Platform for Unlimited Signification). Inspired by the concept of free software, The Opus Project is an online experiment in the sharing of video, images, sound and text on a ‘digital commons’. ‘Here people can present their own work and make it open for transformation, besides intervening and transforming the work of others…i.e. the freedom to view, to download, to modify and to redistribute.’ RAQS offers the analogy of different versions of a myth co-existing within an oral tradition as a way of thinking about the shared use of original materials in a digital environment.

A/S/L (Age/Sex/Location), completed in 2003, is a three-screen video, text and sound installation about the Indian call centre industry, flourishing due to the combination of low wages and the large pool of English language speakers who leave their Indian identity at the door and adopt American, British or Australian personas to chase up credit card bills for global corporations.
RAQS’ projects spring very much from the experience of living in New Delhi, but are increasingly exhibited internationally. Inevitably questions are asked of the artists about how they see themselves in relation to the ‘western’ art world. Monica Narula offers this example of a ‘rarely asked question’ in response:

‘One could ask, why is it quite acceptable for software engineers, scientists, academics, bankers and economists to circulate back and forth between say, new New Delhi and Frankfurt, or New Delhi and Los Angeles, without having their credibility and their bona fides questioned in either location? But somehow … it is as if artists, art practitioners and boat people or refugees … are the only kinds of people who must prove the ‘real’ worth of their movement once they arrive at any place not ordinarily considered to be their own ‘home ground’.'

Fiona Trigg is a Researcher at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. She is a contributor to the forthcoming book, ShortSite: Recent Australian Short Film, and is currently co-producing and directing a documentary film.