RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE

PHOTOESPAÑA AT MATADERO.  The videoart competition invites participants to create works based on the theme of The Absent Image chosen by the Indian collective Raqs Media which, given the proliferation of images all around us, urges creators to think about the infinite elements still to be recorded. Raqs Media will select the pieces to be exhibited, and will judge the winning entry, whose creator will be awarded a one-month residency –between August and December 2012 – to work with the Sarai programme (www.sarai.net) at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, (CSDS), a New Delhi research institute. The exhibition, also to be screened on Internet, will comprise four pieces by guest artists Suchismita Ukil & Ishaan Sadhanand (New Delhi), Zheng Bo (Hong Kong), Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme (Ramallah) and Yota Ioannidou (Athens).

Raqs Media Collective was founded in 1992 by Jebesh Bagchi (India, 1966), Monica Narula (India, 1969) and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (India, 1968). Raqs is a Persian, Arabic and Urdu word denoting kinetic contemplation of the world. The collective is a thought laboratory which takes aesthetics as the starting-point for social and political reflection.