Raqs Media Collective

Raqs was invited by Steve Dietz and Joel Slayton of ISEA 2006 and Zero One San Jose (http://www.01sj.org/) to be 'conversationalists' at the Pacific Rim New Media Summit last week. Being outsiders to the Pacific Rim, we decided to make our entry in the form of stories, so we put together what we called 'Pacific Parables' a set of narrative vignettes that ask questions about the world, connectivity and our time, scanning beneath the surface of old and new media.

Here they are.

Raqs Media Collective : 'There Has Been a Change of Plan'
(Selected Works 2002-2006)
Nature Morte Gallery, A 1 Neeti Bagh, New Delhi
August 5 - 26, 2006

Sometimes, adjustments have to be made. Schedules need calibration. There are contingencies, questions, obstinate demands, weak excuses, strong desires. You return to the city you never left. You pause, take stock. Sit still and let a conversation begin. Maybe?

Around you, aeroplanes sit on wooden platforms in a wilderness like widows on a funeral pyre. Clocks measure fatigue, anxiety and modest epiphanies across latitudes. A door to nowhere stands obstinately against the sky. All your cities are a blur.

"Do you like looking at maps?"

Meanwhile, measures are taken, shoes lost and found, ghost stories gather, the city whispers conspiracies to itself, the situation is tense but under control. Someone offers you a postcard.

Now: Let's see what happens.