Overview

This lecture performance by Raqs Media Collective unpacks the notion of ‘the canopy’ which they have described as ‘a disposition, a practice of gathering—in joy, togetherness, celebration and anger’. The artists elaborate on what the canopy offers with regard to rethinking interconnected political and creative modalities of engagement and to reformulating networks of human association.

The canopy offers a point of departure for challenging the limited view of collectivity as relating merely to a temporal event or transient response to incendiary times. Instead, we are invited to consider how collectivity can be seen as a sustained way of being in the world, where associative life becomes a foundational aspect of human, social and creative interaction and of navigating the crises we commonly face.