Raqs Media Collective
A Myriad Marginalia
March 17–May 31, 2015
RISD Museum
224 Benefit Street
Providence, RI 02903
T +1 401 454 6500
A Myriad Marginalia is an exhibition and experimental studio course at the RISD Museum led by the members of Raqs Media Collective during their residency as the Vikram and Geetanjali Kirloskar Visiting Scholars in Painting at Rhode Island School of Design. Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta explore manuscript marginalia with RISD students to develop a body of artistic, philosophical, and narrative resources and produce an experimental manuscript together. A gallery becomes the working space while Raqs is in residency, featuring source material, work in progress, and eventually the final manuscript along with related projects. Visitors are encouraged to attend class discussions and events, and interact with materials.
A Myriad Marginalia celebrates the “marginalist”—usually an apprentice or scribe—who inspires new ideas by constructing a counter-narrative to the main body of a text. The project’s source material ranges from the figures, creatures, and allegorical allusions living in the margins of medieval illuminated manuscripts to the ways contemporary graphic design can impose order upon text. Overlaying A Myriad Marginalia is Raqs’s longtime interest in historical and contemporary issues, and in drawing out analyses in their characteristic role as restless provocateurs.
Opening reception
April 9, 5:30–6:30pm
Join Raqs Media Collective for the culmination of their residency and opening of an installation of the work created during their time at RISD. Celebrate the launch of Manual issue 4: Blue available for purchase with a limited edition folio by Raqs Media Collective. The evening of April 9 also includes a screening of Raqs Media Collective’s film The Capital of Accumulation (2010) as part of the Projections Film and Video Program.
Raqs Media Collective: The Capital of Accumulation
April 9, 6:30–8:30pm
Introduction and post-screening discussion with Raqs Media Collective and A. Will Brown, curatorial assistant of contemporary art, RISD Museum
The Capital of Accumulation (2010) is a video essay offering an oblique narrative in counterpoint to Rosa Luxemburg’s 1913 critique of global political economy, The Accumulation of Capital. Raqs Media Collective’s haunting, dreamlike montage pairs still and moving images with multiple narrator voices that meditate on Luxemburg’s legacy, the uncertain fate of her body, and the processes by which capitalism seeks to pervade the globe.
Raqs Media Collective is based in Delhi, India. The group’s varied work locates them at the intersection of contemporary art, historical inquiry, philosophical speculation, research, and theory—often taking the form of installations, online and offline media, performances, and encounters. Exhibitions at major international spaces and events include solo and group exhibitions at Tate Britain (London), Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw), Documenta 11 (Kassel), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and Serpentine Gallery (London). As members of the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader series, they curated The Rest of Now and co-curated Scenarios for Manifesta 7 (2008).
The Raqs Media Collective residency and exhibition are made possible through the endowed Vikram and Geetanjali Kirloskar Visiting Scholar in Painting program at RISD, and presented through collaboration between the RISD Museum, the Painting Department, and RISD Global. The Kirloskar Visiting Scholar Program is the result of a gift to RISD to establish an endowed fund to support visiting artists and scholars in the Painting Department to create a deep connection between our campus and contemporary art and culture in India. The endowment highlights RISD’s growing emphasis on global engagement and positions the Painting Department to further that commitment by attracting visiting artists and scholars from India or the U.S. who have a strong connection to Indian culture.
About the RISD Museum
Southeastern New England’s only comprehensive art museum, the Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design—also known as the RISD Museum—was established in 1877. Its collection of more than 92,000 objects includes paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, costume, furniture, and other works of art and design from all over the world, from ancient times to the latest in contemporary art.
