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22/8/2013

Raqs Media Collective

Chronus Art Center, Shanghai

Curators: Chang Tsong-zung (Johnson Chang) Li Zhenhua

The show brings together new and recent work by Raqs Media Collective (New Delhi, India) focusing on their investigations of time and temporality in different registers that span the spectrum of their diverse practice ranging from performance, to installation, architectural ensembles, video and photography.

For Raqs, time is more than the subject matter of their work. They treat time as if it were an actual medium, using duration, repetition, echo and the traces of our subjective responses to time's passage as raw material for the construction of assemblages that seek to deflect the urgencies proposed by capitalism in favour of more considered ways of thinking about the world.

By creating striking constellations of images, using found and solicited material, quoting and transforming elements of news photography, ubiquitous signage, theatre, architecture and broadcast sports video, Raqs point to their vision of the networked nature of artistic and cultural production in the contemporary world. The works in this show are in several instances distillations of the many ongoing conversations that Raqs maintains and cultivates across disciplines and genres with different kinds of practitioners. These are the embodiments of their dialogues with theatre, with journalistic photography, with architecture, with theory and discourse.

This polyphonic iteration of their thinking process is in keeping with their understanding of our sense of our time and their own practice as being composed of many different elements that need to speak and listen to one another. Extra Time may be seen as a result of this conversation, as a thoughtful analytical tool, a poetic device, a theatrical demonstration as well as a sporting entertainment that unpacks and re-composes these elements into a cogent yet whimsical set of statements and gestures about being alive to the demands of being artists in today's world.

Raqs has been in continuous conversation with West Heavens Project since 2010. This exhibition is also a result of their residency in Shanghai in April 2012, invited by West Heavens. As the first solo exhibition of the group, series of public events will be unfolded with its opening, along with the book launch of their first book in Chinese, Kinetic Contemplation.

This exhibition is hosted by Chronus Art Center, West Heavens and School of Inter-Media Art of China Academy of Art. Special Thanks to Inter-Asia School, Moonchu Foundation, CP Denmark Aps, WTi Group, and Parabola Media Lab.

Opening Performance: Seen at Secundrabagh
Raqs Media Collective and Zuleikha Chaudhari
Scenario for a performance, with video, text and two actors

Friday, 23 August, 7:30–8:30pm
Saturday, 24 August, 3–4pm; 7:30–8:30pm
Admission free

Chronus Art Center
Bldg.18, No.50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai

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