Raqs Media Collective Exposes Capitalist Roots of Climate Crisis

The Raqs Media Collective exhibition which was on display at the Seed130 art gallery in London, explores the deep entanglement of unquiet water, trade, risk, capital, extreme weather, climate and human emotion. By Almas Sadique

As natural disasters continue to inundate lives, livelihoods and daily headlines, people are increasingly growing disillusioned with the state of infrastructural provisions and disaster management mechanisms in their vicinity. Besides, with the proliferation of unchecked capitalism, the global population, 72% of which is currently living under autocratic rule and is hence endued with censorship, struggles to critically perceive how advertised notions of sustainable development differ from ecologically conscious modes of progress. Even in situations where the common populace manages to learn about the causations behind the climate crisis and its violent impact on the ecosystem, it is often too inundating to arrive at an actionable solution that can be adopted by the masses without simultaneously risking their civil liberties. In situations such as these, individuals often become hopeless and slowly become ignorant even as the climate crisis surges in impact and intensity.

As important as it is to develop plausible mechanisms to counter extractive projects harming the ecosystem, it is also pertinent to ensure that conversations around climatic catastrophes do not dissipate with time. To prevent this collective amnesia amongst an increasingly disillusioned populace, it becomes important to usher them into spaces, both figurative and literal, that can creatively engage whilst catalysing critical introspection.

A recent exposition that manages to do just that is the Cloud Messengers showcase by India-based Raqs Media Collective at the Seed130 art gallery in London, UK. Cloud Messengers comes after the showcase of two other exhibitions, namely The Waves are Rising and The Tides of Our Tears, by Raqs Media Collective, developed in collaboration with Invisible Dust. All three shows explore the deep entanglement of unquiet water, trade, risk, capital, extreme weather, climate and human emotion.

On view from October 15 to December 2, 2025, the show was curated by Jeanine Griffin and Alice Sharp of Invisible Dust. Founded in 2009, Invisible Dust collaborates with artists and scientists to produce work addressing critical environmental issues.

Raqs Media Collective, on the other hand, is an art practice that engages with themes of identity, location, power and history via new media installations, performance art, research, filmmaking, writing and curation. Based in Delhi, the practice is named to denote a state of higher awareness achieved through raqs or the sufi practice of whirling dervishes.

Alternatively, Raqs also expands to Rarely Asked Questions, which is the guiding theme for the studio’s work. Raqs Media Collective’s Cloud Messengers is part of Invisible Dust’s ‘Forecast India’ programme designed to platform novel forms of storytelling responding to our planet’s future.

Based on Cultural Research

Cloud Messengers rests on extensive scientific, literary, artistic, cultural and journalistic research done by the collective. Encompassing video, print, sound and performance appended with edifying notes, the exhibition serves as a space ripe for discourse and introspection.

It intrigues visitors with images of yesteryear art and accompanying anecdotes, ascertaining a cultural connection, a latent familiarity. In fact, the name of the exhibition references the allegorical cloud messengers that signalled the coming rain via the image of peacocks, as depicted in archaic Indian paintings. The arrival of monsoons has historically been celebrated in the subcontinent as a time of renewal and regarded as a constant friend. However, with this new season gaining an increasingly erratic and volatile nature during current times, monsoons are no longer a reliable companion.

To understand this disparity, it becomes imperative to sit with historical, literary and artistic depictions of monsoons and weigh it up against its extant temperament. The exposition also confronts its viewers with pertinent questions about one’s ability to decode what the cloud messengers are saying and then sustaining a city amidst these violent deluges.

Meanwhile, displays of mathematical calculations and storyboards hinting at the linkages between the climate crisis and changing economies and power structures in the world prompt varied discourses about the climate crisis in novel ways. Raqs Media Collective reconnects the idea of stormy weather to the turbulence of capitalism.

During the early days of the insurance industry, news of shipwrecks, fire and storms were used as the basis for securing capital against unforeseen misfortunes born of inclement weather. However, today, these cycles of climatic instability are augmented by capitalistic (read: extractive) practices themselves. Even as climatic catastrophes increase financial risk and lead to material destruction, the widespread losses continue to be incurred not by capitalist giants but by individuals and communities already existing in precarious conditions.

“It is as if Capitalism were itself a cloudburst, always hovering, waiting to break and upturn every forecast and augury,” the collective asserts.

Cloud Messengers raises various inquiries. However, it does not essentially present easy answers or solutions on the issue of the climate crisis.

For instance, it does not promote the dissipation of plastic usage in the environment or the adoption of green practices as mandated by governments, organisations and regulatory bodies.

The collective believes that pushing such narratives can only usher fleeting solutions, until something worse comes to take the place of plastics and toxins. Raqs Media Collective, instead, pushes for visitors to holistically and critically engage with the issue of climate crisis in a way that allows them to absorb information and narratives about the past, gauge the extractivism that pervades our current context and derive inferences retrospectively.

Cloud Messengers, hence, pushes us to think about our perception of risk in an uncertain world. The exposition is dominated with prompts that challenge visitors to rethink what it means to own, or to predict anything, when the only constant is change.

While the formula to calculate risk as hazard x vulnerability x exposure took shape near the site of the exhibition in 17th-century London, this codified formula falters amidst planetary instability exacerbated by capitalist greed today.

In conclusion, the exposition manages to confront capitalist tendencies and its impact on people: their lives, livelihoods, memories and cultures.

Transcending the material impact that fluvial disasters incur on sentient beings, Cloud Messengers showcases how extractive practices ultimately steal away man’s connection with nature, turning moments of celebration and joy into cautionary signs.