Raqs Media Collective

Osama in New York

While the whole world looks for Osama bin Laden, I found him here in New York, somewhere on Broadway, in the general direction of Soho, tagged as the 'Best of New York'

A friend who studied in the UK told us this:

In a UK medical education you begin with anatomy. 18 year old kids arrive at university, and are assigned a dead body to work on. They work on this body for six months before it is taken away and cremated. These bodies are either those of people who have donated their bodies to science or of people who cannot be identified. The relationship that forms between these young people and "their" body is very intense. The bodies are given names and become a dominant force in the students' lives. During this time the students smell perpetually of the chemicals used to preserve the body. Nearly all medical students have regular emotional breakdowns during this period, triggered especially by things they discover about the life of the person concerned. All personal markings etc are supposed to be removed, but certain signs remain. One body had a tattoo and pink nail polish. One student was traumatised to find shit in the colon of her body, because it signified life.

At the end of the period of study, the body is released for burial or cremation. Students attend these events and often give speeches about what the body has meant to them, especially if the body has been donated to science. Families also attend, if the identity of the body is known, and students ask endless questions about the life of the person concerned. They are usually no less emotional at the cremation than the families.

There are many theses of "vanguards" playing on the ambiguity of modernity. But here i propose a thesis on "rearguard". This should be seen as a cultural-practical conceptualization that is working on an idea of history that takes the residue seriously and has the ability to see the fire of a pyre, not just the ash and burnt wood.

"Rearguard" takes the offensive of capital as given. The mad and dynamic expansion and intensification is given. It is not amazed or disoriented by it. Nor does it need corpses and debris in higher numbers to prove that same point over and over again. It takes the world of euphoria and cruelty for granted. It knows that it is important to not only interpret but also to change the world and also that an unexamined life is not worth living. It works between these knowledges. It acknowledges both these impulses and then decides how to act and think.

(Scratchy notes, being still thought through)

Three meanings of the word Incremental from the dictionary:
# The process of increasing in number, size, quantity, or extent.
# Something added or gained: a force swelled by increments from allied armies.
# A slight, often barely perceptible *augmentation*.

Here, proceeding from augmentation:
Augmentation: Barely perceptible and then the question of force swelled.
There are a few more similar words like accession, accretion, accrual, accrument.

We have, on the one hand, a kind of an acceretive process - a growth. But there is also a sudden force of appearance - an imperceptible yet sudden visibility. (it will be important to probe into this suddenness of appearance, this slight paradox of impercebtible/visible)

Lets take this as one end of a polar point. The other end of the pole can be seen as the plan - a design before growth, a footprint before the foot.

Hands on Wall (Southend on Sea)

A picture found by chance while browsing inside my computers lost files. Taken, then forgotten, then remembered again. Continuing in the spirit of building a body from the surfaces of walls. Walls had ears, walls have eyes, walls have hands.

I always knew walls had ears. Recently, I have come to know that walls have eyes too. Once you begin looking for them you notice walls looking back at you, inquisitively. It is quite remarkable to think of the kind of things that a wall just stands back and watches. Here is a wall in Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi that stared right back at me some weeks ago. (It also advertises an 'Eye Camp' for free ocular check up)

And here is another wall with eyes - this time looking out into the middle distance behind me in Paghman, Afghanistan.

I got back a few days ago from Kabul, from five intense days of leading a workshop on image making and the city organized by the Goethe Institute in Kabul. Kabul felt strangely familiar, like a North Indian small town grafted on to a desolately beautiful landscape. Looking up, I could see mountains, looking ahead, I would see barbed wire, looking around, I would see security guards armed with AK 47s.

Yet the city (and the people) had a strange gentleness, which I am still trying to think through in my head.