Raqs Media Collective

We were invited recently by the Tate Modern to participate in their "Global Photography Now" series of talks. We have been thinking about photographic/image making practice - not as result but as notation - for some time now. So, we consolidated some of these notes and ideas, and presented them..

Here is the entire text of the talk

Recently in London, I was visiting someone who lived in a fairly upscale building in a lovely apartment. Tea and conversation done, i waited for ages for the lift to come and take me down.

Since it seemed to have gone on a luddite-strike, there was little choice but to find the steps and take the old-fashioned route down. Its always surprising how the underbelly of a building reveals itself when this is done.

Not only was this charming chair on a landing, but i espied a woman smoking rolled-up cigarettes with her head almost entirely out of a small back window. Endearingly, the sill was covered with the remnants of her earlier sessions.

Looking both at the chair, what she was smoking and how she was smoking it, one could deduce that smoking and class issues have definitely become overlaid in this tall and narrow part of London...