[spectre] New podcast: Raqs Media Collective founder Monica Narula talks about raga, the technological body, public domain, the ineffability of time

[Radio Web MACBA]

New podcast: Raqs Media Collective founder Monica Narula
<https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/raqs-media-collective-monica-narula/capsula>
talks about raga, the technological body, public domain, the ineffability
of time, the Mahabharata, politics of language, exhaustion, dilation and
the legibility. Feat. music commissioned to Caterina Barbieri.

Link:
https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/raqs-media-collective-monica-narula/capsula

Raqs is a word in Persian, Arabic and Urdu for the hypnotic state that
whirling dervishes enter when they whirl but it may also be read as an
acronym for Rarely Asked Questions.

Founded in 1992 in Delhi by artists and independent media practitioners
Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta, the Raqs Media
Collective addresses and challenges hardened constructs regarding
temporality, collective intelligence and language through a practice of
“kinetic contemplation” anchored on different modalities of thinking.

The collective’s output places them at the intersections of contemporary
art, philosophical speculation and “concrete” research — and it often takes
the form of exhibitions, installations, books, films, encounters, essays
and online projects. There is neither a clear succession nor distinction
between theory and practice or action and reflection in Raqs’ work process.
As in much of their practice, categories collapse.

In 2000, Raqs co-founded Sarai, an inter-disciplinary space at the Centre
for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, with other academics. A
platform for research and discussion on urban space and contemporary
realities, Sarai allowed the collective to set up media labs in different
neighborhoods of the city and pursue hybrid contexts for creative work.
Since its foundation, Sarai has supported independent fellowship programs,
hosted conferences, workshops and performances and launched the Sarai
Reader book series. It is still very much active today.

*This podcast
<https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/raqs-media-collective-monica-narula/capsula>is
part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of
the European Union.*

*Timeline*
*05:43* Explorations into time
*13:53* Futurities and raga
*17:01* A suicidal robot
*21:48* The submarine horizon
*26:36* Haunted by the future
*30:11* The importance of dilation
*37:22* Sarai: the 'Cybermohalla' project
*45:07* Sarai reader series
*48:24* Delhi and autodidacticism
*51:43* Modalities of thinking
*55:01* Working with language
*56:36* Finding words for that which doesn't exist
*58:33* The play with punctuation
*1:05:35* Mahabharata and the fluid contours of the everyday
*1:16:12* Arguing for illegibility


E/N/J/O/Y
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