"The situation is tense, but under control!"

A conversation between Cornelia Sollfrank and two members of the Raqs Media Collective, Delhi. The conversation took place at the opening of Documenta11 in Kassel where the collective presented their work, and was continued subsequently through e-mail.

 

7 June 2002

 

 

[Cornelia Sollfrank]

What does RAQS mean?

 

[RMC(Shuddhabrata Sengupta)]

It is a word in Persian, Arabic and Urdu and means the state that "whirling dervishes" enter into when they whirl. It is also a word used for dance. Although we are also striving for a state of ecstasy, like the dervishes, we are completely unmystical! At the same time, Raqs could be an acronym, standing for "rarely asked questions"...! (as opposed to "frequently asked questions", or Faqs.)

 

C.S.: What is your professional background?

 

RMC(S.S.): The three of us met in film school, at the Mass Communication Research Centre in the Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi about 11 years ago. We were students together there. Once we graduated we decided together not to enter the dominant media mainstream, but try to work on our own. This was the birth of our media collective.

 

C.S.: What kind of work did you have in mind when you started?

 

RMC(S.S.): Our initial idea was to be independent film makers, and try to work within a relatively autonomous cultural space. That is also what we did for many years. But this space got more and more difficult to work in. We got tired of writing proposals for films that never happened.

 

C.S.: In what way were you organized in the beginning. Did you have an infrastructure like space, equipment, etc.?

 

RMC(S.S.): No, we didn't have anything. And very often we worked as assistants, like when we were hired together as a unit. Monica Narula as cinematographer, and Jeebesh Bagchi, the third member of the collective, and myself doing research, or working as assistant directors. That was the way how we could make a little money, and do smaller independent projects. Sometimes we worked for Television, if they accepted our proposals. But we realized very quickly that dominant mainstream media was not a space where we could do independent work in. So we started to imagine an ideal space, a space for research, for interdisciplinary work, where people like us could work.

 

And for two years we only worked on building the proposal for this. We had a partnership with De Waag (Society for Old and New Media) in Amsterdam, and both, De Waag and us also got funds to start an exchange program.

 

C.S.: What is the source for the funding?

 

RMC(S.S.): It was the Dutch government's development aid funding. You know, you can get development aid funding and do interesting things with it. You don't have to waste it, what unfortunately can be the standard. Later we also got funding from the Daniel Langlois Foundation for the Media Lab and the Interface Zone at Sarai, from the Rockefeller Foundation for some of the research programmes, and from Hivos for aspects of our Outreach programme.

 

C.S.: How did you make the connection to De Waag, because this is already a big step to make from Delhi to Amsterdam?

 

RMC(S.S.): That is one of the interesting things about the internet. Even if you are based in Delhi, you can listen to a lot of interesting conversations, and make connections to people and initiatives you find interesting.

 

C.S.: But that assumes that you were already hooked up to a certain international scene of independent media workers.

 

RMC(S.S.): Well, initially we had one computer, which 17 people shared in a flat. That was how we started to work. Internet connectivity was very low, computers were very expensive, we didn't have money. Still, it was our only way out into the world. We wanted to find out what was going on, what people were thinking, and what happened in this new cultural space. Then we began conversations with Ravi Sundaram and Ravi Vasudevan who are both media theorists, Ravi Sundaram was working on pirate culture, and we all started to exchange ideas about our 'ideal space'.

 

C.S.: Is Sundaram also based in Delhi?

 

RMC(S.S.): Yes, he is scholar at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) (1), and now we are a program of that center, which is an independent research institution. Ravi Sundaram knew people like Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens who are active in Nettime, and were part of the critical new media scene in Amsterdam.

 

What also happened in 1998 there were nuclear tests in India. And that energized a nascent peace movement. A lot of people began gathering regularly in anti nuclear demonstrations in Delhi. It was the beginning of a different political culture which was not part of the mainstream, completely spontaneous in some ways. The Next5Minutes conference in Amsterdam happened the same year. And Ravi Sundarum suggested that one of us should go there, and make a presentation about the state of new media culture in India, particularly with reference to the new political sensibility that had occurred in the wake of the nuclear tests.

 

C.S.: What do you mean when you talk about 'new media'?

 

RMC(S.S.): From the very beginning, it was clear that new media to us meant new ways of thinking about media, and allowed combinations of 'old and new media', print, internet, film. And it was at n5M that we started talking seriously with De Waag.

 

C.S.: What is the relation between RAQS and Sarai?

 

RMC(S.S.): Well, the three of us, RAQS Media Collective, are co-initiators of the Sarai programme, along with Ravi Sundaram and Ravi Vasudevan at CSDS. We, Raqs Media Collective, continue to maintain our identity, and we work as a media collective, based at Sarai. Now, Sarai consists of about 30 people who work there, about 20-25 independent researchers and practitioners supported by Sarai, then there are visitors, we have residency programs. For instance, Silvan Zurbreugg and Bauke Freiburg, two students from Zurich and Amsterdam, who have been very active in collaborating with us and the media lab team at Sarai. They were in residency at Sarai for 6 months recently to help with the OPUS project. And they are part of our team at Documenta, as is Pankaj Kaushal, from Sarai, who worked with Silvan on the coding for Opus.

 

C.S.: The work you contribute to Documenta11 consists of different parts. Could you please describe the various parts in short, and say how they correlate?

 

RMC (Monica Narula): There are two primary parts: One is within the space of Documenta, and one is an online application. The latter is a place for sharing cultural material. People can put up their work, name the source or the author, and keep the authorship if it's theirs, but everybody can download, interpret, use, modify, and load up again the material. The project comes from the idea of Free Software, and is based on the same principles. We want to create a digital commons, and try to find out if people are willing to share work in this area.

 

C.S.: What is the name of this application?

 

RMC(M.N.): It is called OPUS, we just mentioned it earlier. And it is a kind of a contrary concept to what we explore in our installation here in Documenta hall. This installation is about the question how space is constructed, and how masterplans determine what you can do within an urban space. The construction of barriers within city movement, the notion of people as encroachers and trespassers, how everyday life has to negotiate these terminology. An important part of the installation is a text element which is on screen. We edited this material over time from laws, and all kinds of legal writings, and it is mostly about defining people and sites, about finding categories, for example definitions of what a 'slum' is.

 

C.S.: What else is part of your contribution to Documenta?

 

RMC(M.N.): The third part is much more portable. It's a series of stickers we have been sticking all over the town of Kassel, and which are meant to be another interface to the city. And the last thing is a 4-page broad sheet, which is again exploring the concepts that I have been talking about.

 

C.S.: What do the stickers say?

 

RMC(M.N.): You do not just speak about the city, but the city also talks back to you. You find all kinds of things: job offers, promises of sexuality, ... We are trying to take some of those, and echo back what the city is saying. When we came here, we saw the graffiti Kassel has; it is always the same kind of text everywhere, either an expression of rebellion and anger, or it is advertising. And we wanted to add something different: texts which have the notion of control.

 

C.S: Could you give an example?

 

RMC(M.N.): "Be careful. Abandoned objects might contain explosive devices." Something we were living with in Delhi for a long time. No matter where you go in the city, you have these "Don't pick up anything", "Don't do this", "Don't do that" all over the place. Now, if somebody leaves a bag and goes off, everyone's first response is not, "Shit, he forgot his bag", and tell him/her, but "Shit, maybe there's something inside that might blow up." It really becomes a condition of fear, that you live in, all the time.

 

Another very typical expression is "The situation is tense, but under control." Whenever something happens in the country, like a riot, communal riot, or some kind of violent situation in the city, the typical reaction of the government is:"The situation is tense, but under control." And you know it is an euphemism for everything.

 

For us, and many other people it became a kind of idiom... When something is not working, or when you have serious problems, you say "The situation is tense, but under control".

 

Another slogan is "Do not be afraid of the discharge of dreams. Help is at hand". - (Talking about your personal sexuality is difficult, if you are afraid of wet dreams. Don't worry. We can take care of this.) It is a promise... These are the kind of texts we are using. 18 different stickers, four different languages: English, Hindi, Turkish, and German.

 

Here in Kassel we went to north town which is a more Turkish area, where Thomas Hirschhorn (2) has also worked, and all the kids loved the stickers, and asked for more.

 

C.S.: Did they talk back already?

 

RMC(M.N.): Yes, they did, in their way. The way they used the stickers is very interesting: They made patterns, sometimes the Hindi is upside down, as they cannot read it, or they sort them by colours, or they did cut outs, and the things they make out of them do no longer look like the stickers did. That's fun. If you go to Thomas Hirschorn's work in north town now, you will find a lot of what the kids did with our stickers.

 

C.S.: Now I would like to take a closer look at the two main parts of your work. First the installation. It consists of three screened videos; next to one screen we have a kind of board with the stickers again, on the floor we can see a projected map ...

 

RMC(M.N.): The name of the piece is "28°28″ N / 77°15″ E : An Installation on the Coordinates of Everyday Life" (3). The numbers are the latitude and longitude of Delhi. We are very located in our city. It is the basis of our work. All what we do, and how we do it has to do with the place. At the same time, we are not just talking about Delhi. We are working on general questions like "What is land","What is a slum", "Who is an encroacher". These are categories which can be used, and worked with all over. We could do a similar thing for example here in Kassel, or in Berlin. That's why we decided not to use the name of a place, but the coordinates.

 

And the projected map on the floor is a satellite image of Delhi. The idea was to place people physically in or on Delhi. It is meant to be walked on, although nobody is doing so.

 

C.S.: Because of the aura of the art work.

 

RMC(M.N.): Yes, seems so. They all think It's art, and one should not step on art. And when WE do so, people give us dirty glances, like "What are you doing there?".

 

C.S.: Back to the projections. One is text only. You have mentioned above it is excerpts of legal ritings?

 

RMC(M.N.): Yes, it is extracts from legal cases, and we were focussing on definitions, for example "What is land?". It is a series of definitions of how land is looked at. Then the Delhi masterplan. How does the masterplan imagine the city? Then it moves on to "What is a slum?", looking at that category. At the end we have extracts from a municipal log book which contains for example the numbers of demolition houses, of trees planted, that kind of thing. Then it moves on to extracts from people who make masterplans, and judgements on how the city should be looked at. There you realize the constant increase of the numbers of bans, and also the increase in the degree of hardness.

 

C.S.: What do the other screens show? Are the three projections in sync?

 

RMC(M.N.): One screen shows the arrival in the city by train. Trains are very important in India, the primary means of transport, because they are affordable and you can get anywhere by train. In our video, the train is constantly moving. Train is a metaphor for movement into urban space, it symbolizes the moment of becoming migrant - another person who has to be located within the city by the plan. The selection of the images also stands for what seduces people to come into that space, the city at night, the transmission of signals, transactions of information, the commerce with data. And the soundspace of this movement is also a very important part of the installation.

 

The third screen is about everyday life in the city, about walking and working, about demolition. There are images that you see from spaces that have been demolished, as well as from a space that might be demolished. At Sarai, we have been working together with an NGO called Ankur for more than a year now in the Cybermohalla Cyber-Neighbourhood) Project, which is based around working with young people in a free software digital lab in precisely such a space - a squatter settlement in the centre of the city. There are constant rumours that the whole settlement will be demolished. So we know how rumor is present in the field of demolition. You can see some images from that settlement on this screen.

 

And you see images from another place - the "re-settlement" colony, which has been constructed by the city authorities for those who already have been evacuated from "illegal" spaces that have been demolished. As you can see quite clearly, it is not as if this space that is held out as the promise (of 're-settlement") is a space where that promise really meets fulfillment. For some people it is important to leave because they get some land. But that's only for a few. And the way the space is imagined and realized is very grid like. The new space is completely different from where people are coming from. They are forced to leave a settlement and come into an empty map, an abstract grid.

 

So the piece is mostly about space, and legality, about what is legal and what is not. What you can do, and how you can negotiate. And the three screens are not in sync. This constantly produces new constellations, and new associations.

 

C.S.: I am wondering why you have chosen the format of a video installation. So far you have worked as film makers, and now presenting at an art exhibition you are using a new format, a format which has a lot of tradition within the arts. Did you think this format would better fit the needs of the white cube which in fact very often is a black cube at this show?

 

RMC(M.N.): We have always been working in film, that's true. The thing about film is that it is linear, and there has always to be an argument which starts somewhere, and ends somewhere. What we do in the installation is using arguments which are not resolvable, they do not end somewhere. The fact that you are simultaneously inhabiting the legal scene, the everyday life of work, the seduction of and the transport to the city, makes a difference. And you do not see all three screens at the same time. You have to move, physically, in the installation, between the screens. We wanted people to keep moving while they are in the installation.

 

C.S.: After having worked as film makers for a long time, you now have been invited to the legendary art show 'Documenta', and you make a video installation for the show. I was wondering if the invitation probably changed your self-conception. Did you turn into artists?

 

RMC(M.N.): I don't care much about calling myself an artist. I consider myself to be a media practitioner. I work with film, with text, with space, with the internet. I have done that before, and I will go on doing it. You can call me whatever you want to, and I will use whatever I want to in order to say what I have to say. For example with OPUS, the other project we have here, the medium we use is the Internet. The work is about creating a digital commons, which is not, or maybe not yet, determined by masterplans. It is about all of us putting something in, and being allowed to use it.

 

C.S.: We'll go into detail with this immediately. But before, I would like to ask another art question, sorry, when I am boring you... Does it have any relevance for you to present your work at Documenta? And if yes, in what way? As I've said before, Documenta is THE legendary art show, one of the biggest in the world, and certainly the one with most prestige- all of this, of course, in reference to the western oriented art system, and art market.

 

RMC(M.N.): We really do not know so much about what you refer to as the art system or the art market, (here, or in India) we have not had to have a relationship with it till now. If we were to talk about Documenta in India, most people would ask what Documenta was. For most people there it does not really matter. I personally had heard about it, but it certainly is not something I had been dreaming of doing. What it is for us now, is that it's a space, and one where we see that there are a lot of people coming.

 

C.S.: It is exactly 640,000 people expected to come in the next one hundred days ...

 

RMC(M.N.): Yes, it will be crowded.

 

C.S.: For me, reflecting the space where I am, where I operate, is also part of my work. As an artist, it is the art system which I am interested in. I cannot see Documenta hall, for example, just as a neutral space where I would install my work. It is part of a complex operating system. In that sense I would like to know what your reference to this operating system is. Although Documenta11 is meant to break with traditional standards, and open up in various ways, it nevertheless stands in the tradition of modernism. And other Documentas before had similar ideas in terms of opening up. Do you care about the history of a western coined understanding of art? Or are you just happy to take the opportunity to enter the changing field at this point, to become part of it, and be able to "say what you have to say"?

 

RMC(S.S.): The term 'western' is problematic for us in the sense that 'the west' is part of our history, and we always know more about Europe and North America than Europe and North America knows about us. And the history of Europe is closely related to our history. We are entangled in it, and are conscious of our entanglements. Perhaps what you refer to'as the 'western oriented art system' is not aware of the extent of this entanglement, (with European history and culture) even though it has very little, or nothing to do with our relationship, or lack of it with the art system of art market here. Anyway, it is very difficult for us to keep to the categories 'east' and 'west', as concepts to work with. I think philosophically they do not reflect back on these complex connectivities.

 

RMC(M.N.): I think there have been a lot of important influences for us coming from the tradition you refer to. Often it is not there as the original but as some form of popular reproduction, earlier available very cheaply. But we basically come from a film background. And persons we were fascinated with, and who have been influential for us were Harun Farocki, and Hartmut Bitomski, for example. When we were film students this was really exciting work to look at. And it definitely had an influence on us. Thinking about the essay form of film making helped us a lot in the evolution of our own work. And I think you can see this more directly in the intellectual as opposed to the visual or formal content of our work. Visually, I don't think that we have any direct influence from a classical, canonically European tradition, or from any other tradition for that matter, except the certain relationship to the history of the documentary image, in film and in photography, because of our training and our earlier work background.

 

And because we are not what you would regard as mainstream artists, we haven't thought about it in that sense, in the sense of locating ourselves vis-a-vis the canon of 'European', or 'Western' Art. In a way one could call our aesthetics improvisational, on the other hand it developed through our dialogic way of working, which makes us very sure about what we do.

 

We don't really care where it is coming from, it might come from half way across the world, or it might spring from under our feet, and both can be valid. One thing is for sure, certainly we know more about the west and western thinking and tradition than people over here know about us.

 

C.S.: I would like to know how you perceive the western dominated art system, because as I see it, it is clearly driven by certain most of all economic motives. It is a rigid, highly exclusive, hierarchical system, which only opens up, and changes rules when it can profit itself.

 

RMC(S.S.): We pirate it. We claim it as our own. As I said earlier, we are outside, and we are entangled. We claim all the problems, all the tragedy of European Modernity. They are tragedies to think about, and there are also all the elements which we would celebrate as part of an open, democratic, critical culture. Whenever I have read European philosophy, I never have thought that it is different from the questions that we have to address. However, of course it is different...

 

And in terms of presenting our work at Documenta11, it is a predicament of dealing with something that is both, strange and familiar. Some of the the works shown (not the new ones, but the works of well known artists) here are the works we always have known about from the side lines).

 

C.S.: This Documenta celebrates itself particularly for having opened the rigid westerncentered art system to a multitude of geographical, ethnical, and political voices.

 

RMC(S.S.): What is particularly good about this show is that there is a lot of works and practices which are not 'high art', not the mainstream of art production. And from what I can say, the reason why people from different parts of the world contribute to this show is not only because they are from different parts of the world. I mean, some of the work may be here because of a certain geographically representational imperative. A certain expectation of what a 'transnational' cultural space 'ought' to be imagined as. But I find it odd that this 'anxiety about representation, and debates about inclusion/exclusion' is something that is visible, or talked about, only now. After all, the history of Documenta, one could argue, is about post second world war Europe (and North America) representing itself, to itself. The same 'representational anxiety and debates about inclusion/exclusion' could, retrospectively be factored back into any discussion of the history of Documenta itself.

 

But apart from that, there's works, like for instance Tsunamii.net from Singapore, that is interesting in and of itself. It only coincidentally comes from Singapore.

 

C.S.: What I have read in the German newspaper DIE ZEIT this morning was a critic saying:

"... What happened is that, unintentionally, this Documenta even intensified the colonial patterns, because now Documenta became desirable for people who did not even know about its existence before. Now, also artists from New Delhi and Lagos declare an invitation to Kassel to be the goal of their career." (4) Do you share this estimation?

 

RMC(S.S.): First of all, I am not even sure what an artist is. We are called artists, so I think we have to accept it responsibly, but still it is strange for us. I guess we are more interested in thinking through practices in many forms, and art practice is one of the forms, but not everything. And I carry an Indian passport, but I doubt that the word 'Indian' means more than that to me. It is the name of a nation state, and I do not believe in nation states. I am a person who works in a collective, and lives in a city called Delhi.

 

C.S.: Going back to the question, what this critic wanted to say, I guess, is that what happened in Delhi for example was not part of the discussion 'here', it was not included in the reference system of the western art world. And the other way round, what Documenta was showing was not part of the discussion amongst Indian artists...

 

RMC(S.S.): Let me try and answer this as best as I can. I think what is happening 'here' in this show, is an attempt at trying to understand a very complex and a very difficult moment in the world's history. When many people in different parts of the world are trying to simultaneously think through different images of a world in crisis. The image of the world from Lagos, and the image of the world from Berlin are adjacent to each other, and they are addressing each other. This is quite different from the history of inter-cultural dialogue till now. Until now, some parts of the world, the "metropolises" of global culture spoke, others listened, and if their turn came to speak, the 'others', be they in New Delhi, or Rio De Janeiro, or Minsk could speak about their corners, their 'specific' histories. While the artist from Paris, or New York, or Berlin, or Tokyo was at liberty to be as specific, as local, or as global in the sweep of his or her address.

 

This Documenta changes that equation. Now, we find that the artwork, or the artist whose antecedents are in Lagos or New Delhi, also offers a picture of the world, or a metaphor with which to think through the world, just as the one from New York does. We can debate elsewhere about whether these pictures of the world are adequate, whether or not they are incisive, or satisfying as per any other criterion, but we have to admit to the fact that the Documenta this time compels you to encounter that what Enwezor calls the "Will to Globality" is not the preserve, or the patrimony of the Western European, North American, or Trans-Pacific cultural practitioner alone.

 

That there can be conflicting, parallel, tangential, entangled, wills to globality, in the plural. We see this Documenta as a response to this situation. And the plurality of "wills to globality" can be confusing for someone, say in Europe, or North America, who is accustomed to thinking that they alone have the cognitive breadth that can create an imaginary that embraces the whole world. Their may be some transmission loss going on here, an artist say in South America is actually offering a picture of the world, whereas a person in Europe is reading it, or wishes to read it, as only a fragment that encompasses only a specific locale.