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September 2002
Newsletter- September 2002
Contents:
1. Sarai Presentation in Indore
2. Sarai team participates in Emoção Art.ficial Exhibition, Sao Paulo.
3. The Making of New Delhi, urban workshop report
4. Films @ Sarai
5. Forthcoming Announcements.
1. Sarai Presentation at the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Indore
Ravikant from Sarai presented a paper at the 54th National Convention of Hindi Sahitya
Sammelan held in Indore between the 17th and 20th August, 2002. Organized
by the Madhya Bharat Hindi Sahitya Samiti, the convention offered a range
of platforms for debates and discussions amongst people who work in Hindi.
These were the four panels: 1. Concerns of Literature, 2. Hindi and
Nationalism, 3. Hindi in Globalized times, 4. Gender Discourse in Hindi
Literature, 5. Hindi Cinema in the world Context. The convention also
hosted a number of ‘Meet-the-author’ sessions. Ravikant spoke on the
‘Media, ICT and Hindi. Some of the other speakers in the panel included
Prabhash Joshi and Ashok Chakradhar (who presented his usual entertaining
package on what computers can do) from Delhi, the editor of Dainik Bhaskar,
Indore and a representative from webdunia.com. Most of these speakers
talked critically about the developments in the Hindi domain.
2. Sarai at the Emoção Art.ficial Exhibition & Symposium at the Itau Cultural
Centre, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
A team from Sarai (Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula,
Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Supreet Sethi) visited Sao Paulo, Brazil earlier
this month to participate in the Emoção Art.ficial Exhibition & Symposium
at the Itau Cultural Centre. (www.itaucultural.org.br)
The Itau Cultural Centre is a space for exhibition, publication and
documentation of contemporary art and cultural practice in Brazil. The
Emoção Art.ficial Exhibition and Symposium was an initiative to showcase
contemporary new media arts practices and had invited several international
new media initiatives, such as Laboratorio Arte Alameda (Mexico City),
Banff New Media Institute (Alberta), Mecad (Barcelona), V2_Organisation
(Rotterdam), WRO Centre for Media Art (Wroclav), ZKM Centre for Art and
Media Education (Karlsruhe), and Ars Electonica Futurelab (Linz).
Raqs Media Collective presented Location (n) - an inter-media installation
produced at the Sarai Media Lab at the exhibition. The installation was
conceived and created by the Raqs Media Collective, software coding was
done by Supreet Sethi, the sound design by Vipin Bhati. Parvati Sharma,
Ashish Mahajan and Pradip Saha, assisted in production.
"Location(n)" is an installation with eight clocks (representing eight
cities located in different time zones), seven computer terminals, a video
projection and a multi layered soundtrack designed to offer the visitor to
the work a critical meditation on simultaneity, time and emotion across the
world. Ravi Sundaram and Monica Narula made presentations at the symposium
that took place in tandem with the exhibition.
3. The Making of New Delhi: Urban Workshop at Sarai
Sarai organised a one-day workshop on August 24th to explore the
possibilities of collaborative research on contemporary and historical
Delhi. The workshop was attended by over 30 young scholars. Ravi Sundaram
and Awadhendra Sharan, Sarai fellows, began the proceedings by outlining
the research projects currently being undertaken at Sarai. This was
followed by presentations by other participants on their research
interests, methodological issues and theoretical approaches to urban
studies. The workshop was conducted in an interactive style, so as to
promote dialogue and seek out possible areas of collaboration.
Labour, violence, planning and welfare emerged as some of the issues on
which there was general interest. Participants agreed that we should meet
regularly, on the last Saturday of the month, to do a set of readings on
these themes. Prabhu Mahapatra,together with Shankar Ramaswamy and Navin
Chander, volunteered to put together the first set of readings on the issue
of labour and the city.
The next meeting is proposed to be held on Saturday,28th September. For
details write to sharan@sarai.net
4. Curated Film series: City in Film Noir
Time: every Friday 4.30 pm
Films @ Sarai: The City in Film Noir
Curated by Ranjani Mazumdar, Film Scholar and Independent Film maker
Noir is the French name for black. As one of the important Hollywood genres
that flourished in the period 1941-1955, film noir emerged in the post war
crisis of American society. The genre used low-key photography to imbue the
cinematic image with darkness in both form and content. Drawing on the
cinematic traditions of German expressionism of the 1930's and French
street realism of the 1920's, film noir absorbs the facts of economic life
and then expresses it in the movies as moods and feelings. Thus experiences
of loss and alienation expressed by many of the characters in film noir can
be seen as a product both of post war depression and of the reorganization
of the American economy. Bringing together the stylistic and narrative
devices of the gangster and the detective genre, film noir was an attempt
to interrogate and explore the dark side of the American city.
Like the expressionists, film noir projects violent emotion on to the world
as all the characters seem to map out their own death wish. The characters
motives are usually furtive, ambivalent and psychologically driven. Their
innermost conflicts are rooted in urban claustrophobia as they walk a
shadowy borderline between repressed violence and vulnerability. The genre
also explores the negative power of sexuality seen primarily as a battle
between the sexes, thus leading to the emergence of the classic femme
fatale of Hollywood cinema.
The city as a maze and labyrinth is crucial to entering the psychological
and aesthetic framework of film noir. The city is seen as a jungle of human
construction, steel, stone and glass, after hour offices, dark alleys,
decaying industrial zones, rain slicked streets, cars and trains. Through a
melancholic and baroque framing, noir seeks to interrogate the monumental
spectacle of the modern city.
The films in the series have been selected as representative of the genre
directed by some of the most well known film makers of the period.
The Series begins with a thematic introduction by the curator on September
6th, 2002 at 4.30 PM.
September 6, 2002, 4.30 pm
Double Indemnity (1944), 107 minutes
Director: Billy Wilder
Double Indemnity directed by Billy Wilder has been called a cynical, witty
and sleazy thriller. Narrated in the past tense, Double Indemnity is the
story of Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara
Stanwyck) involved in a plot to kill the latter’s husband for lustful
desire and financial gain. The perfect crime leads to guilt, suspicion,
betrayal and thrilling intrigue.
September 13, 2002, 4.30 p.m
Out of the Past (1947), 97 minutes
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Out of the Past directed by Jacques Tourneur is considered one of the
greatest multi-layered film noirs of all times. An ex-detective,
Jeff(Robert Mitchum) has traded his .38 for the ownership of a gas station.
Suddenly Kathie Moffet (Jane Greer), a woman from Jeff’s past comes back
into his life, forcing him to confront old enemies including gangster Kirk
Douglas.
September 20, 2002, 4.30 pm
Kiss Me Deadly (1955), 106 minutes
Director: Robert Aldrich
Kiss Me Deadly directed by Robert Aldrich follows the exploits of Mike
Hammer(Ralph Meeker). Hammer is searching for a mysterious box that leads
him and his assistant Velda (Maxine Cooper) into a convoluted network of
murder, shadowy deceit and military conspiracy.
September 27, 2002 4.30 pm
Touch of Evil (1958), 106 minutes
Director: Orson Welles
Touch of Evil directed by Orson Welles is an exceptional film noir portrait
of corruption and morally-compromised obsessions starring Welles himself as
Hank Quinlan, a perfect police chief who frames a Mexican youth as part of
an intricate criminal plot. Charlton Heston plays an honorable Mexican
narcotics investigator who clashes with the bigoted Quinlan after probing
into his dark past.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forthcoming Announcements
i. Announcements for Short Term Independent Research Fellowships:
Applications Invited for Short Term Independent Research Fellowship
The Sarai Programme: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi
What is Sarai?
Sarai is a public initiative of media practitioners and scholars looking at
media cultures and urban life. Sarai's interests are in the field of old
and new media, information and communication Technologies, free software,
cinema, and urban space - its politics, built form, ecology, culture and
history, with a strong commitment to making knowledge available in the
public domain. It is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies, Delhi. For more information visit www.sarai.net
Who Can Apply
Sarai invites independent researchers, media practitioners, software
designers and programmers, urbanists, architects, artists and writers, as
well as students (post graduate level and above) and university and college
faculty to apply for support to research driven projects.
Why Research ? What do we mean by Research? What is a Seed Grant?
Sarai is committed to generating public knowledge and creativity through
research. Hence the support for research driven projects and processes. The
fellowships are in the nature of seed grants in order to emphasize the
initiation and founding of projects that would otherwise go unsupported
Here by research we mean both archival and field research, and forays into
theoretical work as well as any process or activity of an experimental or
creative nature - for instance in the audiovisual media, as well as in
journalism or the humanities and social sciences, or in computing and
architecture.
The Experience of Last Year
This is the second year in which Sarai has called for proposals for such
fellowships. We would like to spell out the way in which the process worked
during the first year, as an indication of what applicants should expect.
The first year saw the selection of twenty proposals, which included work
towards projects based on investigative reportage of urban issues, essays
on everyday life, a history of urban Dalit performance traditions, a
soundscape of an industrial suburb, a graphic novel about Delhi, a
documentation of the free software movement in India, research on
displacement and rehabilitation in cities, and an interpretative catalogue
of wall writings and street signs.
Successful applicants included free lance researchers, academics, media
practitioners, writers, journalists and activists.
The projects were submitted in English, Hindi or a combination of the two
languages. We have seen that projects that set important but practical and
modest goals were usually successful, whereas those that may have been
conceptually sound but lacked sufficient motivation to actually persue a
research objective on the field, usually did not take off beyond the
interim stage.
Sarai interacted closely with the researcher over the period of the
fellowship and the grantees made interim and final presentations at Sarai
which us to trace the development of work during the grant period and the
grantees to obtain structured but informal feedback from us at Sarai in
stages during the course of their work. Submissions by grantees included
written reports and essays, photographs, tape recordings, pamphlets, maps,
drawings and html presentations.
What we are Looking For
Like last year, this year too we are looking for proposals that are
imaginatively articulated, experimental and methodogically innovative, but
which are pragmatic and backed up by a well argued work plan which sets out
a time table for the project, as well as suggests how the support will help
with specific resources (human and material) that the project needs.
Suggested Themes
Sarai's interests lie in the city, and in media. Broadly speaking any
proposal that looks at the urban condition, or at media is eligible. More
specifically, themes may be as diverse as habitation, sexuality, labour,
social/digital interfaces, urban violence, street life, technologies of
urban control, health and the city, the political economy of media forms,
histories of particular media practices, migration, transportation, or
anything that the applicants feel will resonate with the philosophy and
interests that motivate Sarai's work.
Sarai supports innovative and inventive modes of rendering work into the
Public Domain. Proposals, which pay attention to this, will be particularly
valued.
Preferred Approaches
Innovative and interdisciplinary methodologies, that combine research,
practice, and delivery or rendition methods will be especially welcome.
Conditions
Applicants should be resident in India, and should have an account in any
bank operating in India.
The research fellowship would be available for up to six months and for a
maximum amount of Rs. 60,000.
The fellowships do not require an every day presence at Sarai. These are
support fellowships and fellowship holders will be free to pursue their
primary occupations, if any.
What you need to send
There are no application forms. Simply post your
- Proposal (not more than1000 words)
- A brief workplan (not more than one page)
- An updated CVs (not more than two pages)
- Work samples (maximum two)
- Envelopes should be marked - "Attention : Short Term Independent Research
Fellowship" [Email proposals will not be entertained]. Proposals may be
sent in English or Hindi.
- Mail these to: Ranita Chatterjee, Coordinator, Programmes, Sarai, Centre
for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India.
Enquires: dak at sarai.net
Last date for submission: October 5, 2002.
Note: Proposals from teams, partnerships, collectives, faculty are welcome,
so long as the grant amount is administered by a single individual, and the
funds are deposited in a single bank account in the name of an individual,
partnership, registered body or institutional entity.
Applicants who apply to other institutions for support for the same
proposal will not be disqualified, provided they inform Sarai that support
is being sought (or has been obtained) from another institution. The
applicants should inform Sarai about the identity of the other institution.
ii. Call for Proposals:
City One Conference: cityone@sarai.net
City One, The First South Asian Conference on the urban experience is being
held in Delhi from January 9-11th, 2003. We hope to bring together most
people working on the South Asian city, both in India and around the world.
The design is to push the idea of the urban seriously in the South Asian
context, within the framework of a cross-disciplinary conference, bringing
people from different areas (history, sociology, anthropology, cultural
studies, urban design, architecture, film and media studies) and also
including practitioners like architects and urban designers, as well as
representatives of urban social movements.
The conference is organised by Sarai (www.sarai.net), a programme of the
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. Sarai's research
emphasis is on urban culture and media.
The broad themes for the conference are as follows:
Modernity and the South Asian city
Urban History
Social Theories of the South Asian City
Colonial Urbanism in South Asia
Architecture and Spatial transformations
Critiques of Urbanism and Modernist Planning
Urban Memory and Narratives of Violence
Urban Ecologies
Traditions of Urban Demography
Urban Social Movements
New forms of differentiation
Literature and Urbanism
Cinema and the City
The future of Public Space
Media-Cities and Globalisation
Alternative Urban Visions
Labouring in the City
Visual Culture
Urban Crisis and Governance
City Panels: Bombay/Mumbai, Calcutta/ Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Lahore,
Delhi, Karachi, Kathmandu, Colombo, Dhaka.
These themes are by no means exhaustive and new may emerge after the
abstracts have come in. Also the 'city' panels overlap with the main
conference themes in line with the cross-disciplinary format. In the case
of some cities there may be more than one panel.
There are still a few slots available for presentations, and we are calling
for proposals. The abstracts must not be more than 150 words and must reach
us latest by October 1th. 2002. Be sure to also include your full mailing
address and contact information.
October 1: last date for abstracts. Please send abstracts to
cityone at sarai.net.
We will cover all travel and local hotel costs for abstracts that are
accepted from South Asia. We would like to urge international scholars with
institutional affiliation to secure travel costs from their
institution. This will help us fund travel for participants in India, who
lack such support. Sarai and CSDS will cover all local costs for
international scholars whose abstracts are accepted: including room and board.
Pre-Registration
If you are not presenting a paper but wish to attend the conference, you
can pre-register by sending an email to cityone at sarai.net. Registration
costs are Rs 300 per person, and Rs 100 for students.
iii. Call for Contributions to Sarai Reader 03 : "Shaping Technologies"
Sarai, (www.sarai.net) an interdisciplinary research and practice programme
on the city and the media, at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
and Waag Society, (www.waag.org) a center for culture and technology based
in Amsterdam, invites contributions to Sarai Reader 03: Shaping Technologies.
We also invite proposals to initiate and moderate discussions on the themes
of the Sarai Reader 03 on the Reader List
(http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list) with a view to the
moderator(s) editing the transcripts of these discussions for publication in
the Sarai Reader 03.
The Sarai Reader is an annual publication produced jointly by Sarai/CSDS
(Delhi) and the Waag Society (Amsterdam). Previous Readers have included :
'The Public Domain' : Sarai Reader 01,
2001(http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader1.html)
and 'The Cities of Everyday Life' : Sarai Reader 02, 2002,
(http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader2.html ).
The Sarai Reader series aims at bringing together original, thoughtful,
critical, reflective, well researched and provocative texts and essays by
theorists, practitioners and activists, grouped under a core theme that
expresses the interests of Sarai in issues that relate media, information
and society in the contemporary world. The Sarai Readers have a wide
international readership.
Editorial Collective for Sarai Reader 03 : Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram,
Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Sarai) and Geert
Lovink & Marleen Strikker (The Waag Society)
>> >> >> >> >> >> >> >>
The Concept - Shaping Technologies
Today, technology is second nature to us. If the landscape of earlier times
could be ideally represented by images of naturally occurring objects, the
landscape of the contemporary is one that can only be imagined as being
peopled by machines. The 'nature' of our times is technological - we are
embodied, articulated, located and governed by the machines we make to extend
our lives, bodies and faculties. We shape the technologies that surround us
and the technologies that surround us shape the contour of our lives. This is
what we mean by the term 'Shaping Technologies', which as a term with two
senses suggests both a subjective, social appropriation of technological
creativity, as well as the impact of technologies on society and life in
general.
One may even say that the technological ubiquity has gone so far as to make
it nearly impossible for us to reflect upon technology as a phenomena
separate from the general conditions of global urban life. We are what we
work, play and think with, and today we work, play and think with our
machines. We are users, inventors, practitioners, artists, hackers and
artisans who work with technologies; we are technology's consumers and users,
we are hobbyists, enthusiasts and addicts just as we are critics, prophets,
and analysts. We are masters, slaves, victims and rebels of technology. No
one remains untouched by the 'machine'.
Yet, we do not have an adequate language with which to understand and
articulate the presence of technology in culture, society and in politics. We
are accustomed to construct utopian and dystopic technological imaginaries,
even as we neglect the task of a sober and considered reflection of the
ethical and cognitive dilemmas that the presence of technologies in everyday
life confront us with. And even as technology becomes increasingly
ubiquitous, even as it touches wider populations, even as an immersion in
technoculture becomes the condition of the contemporary moment, it becomes
simultaneously the discursive monopoly of experts and specialists, or of
geeks and hobbyists, far removed from the concerns that animate scholars,
public intellectuals, and the average curious person. Technology is the
underpinning and the shadow of the public domain. Technology is ubiquitous,
yet discursively invisible.
Sarai Reader 03 seeks to contribute to the termination of this discursive
vacuum by asking what other imaginary space there may be, besides the
imperative to consume, the irrepressible desire to shop for the next gadget
that comes our way, and the whine of the perennial victim of the machine,
with which we can envision technology's presence in our lives ?
In this third volume in the Sarai Reader series we will also look into
alternative approaches towards technology, strategies to revitalize forgotten
concepts (and their authors), re-readings of past debates and anticipations
of future ones. We will weigh the utopian visions against the dystopic
nightmares, perhaps to arrive at assessments that suggest sobriety and a
'cool' consideration of the cold touch of the machine, as well as of the heat
of the fuel that animates it.
If you feel these issues and questions are of interest to you. If your
practice, thought, curiosities, research or creative activity has impelled
you to think about some of these issues, we invite you to contribute texts to
Sarai Reader 03 : Shaping Technologies.
The Reader will have the following broad areas of interest:
I. Technologies of Urbanism : Making the City
II. The Everyday Experience of Technology
III. Philosophies of Technology - Being the Machine
IV. Technologies in History
IV. Imagining Technologies - The Machine in Art, Literature and Cinema
V. Technologies of the Body
VI. Gender and Technology
VII. Tactical Tech : Technologies of Power and Resistance
VIII. D.I.Y (Do it Yourself)
IX. Social Software
X. Technology and the Environment
XI. Networks and Transmissions
There will also be three additional special sections:
i. Selections from the Reader List on the violence in Gujarat in
February/March 2002,
ii. Design, Technology and the Urban Info Sphere : Case Studies from Amsterdam
iii. The book (like Readers 1 and 2) will end with the Alt/Option section,
which offers manifestos and alternative perspectives
>> >> >> >> >> >> >>
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSIONS
Word Limit : 1500 - 4000 words
1.Submissions may be scholarly, journalistic, or literary - or a mix of
these, in the form of essays, papers, interviews, online discussions or
diary entries. All submission, unless specifically solicited, must be in
English only.
2.Submissions must be sent by email in rich text format (rtf) or star-office
documents. Articles may be accompanied by black and white photographs or
drawings submitted in the tif format.
3.We urge all writers, to follow the Chicago Manual of Style, (CMS) in terms
of footnotes, annotations and references. For more details about the CMS,
please see the Florida State University web page on CMS style documentation
at : http://www.fsu.edu/~library/guides/chicago.html
4.All contributions should be accompanied by a three/four line text
introducing the author.
5.All submissions will be read by the editorial collective of the Sarai
Reader 02 before the final selection is made. The editorial collective
reserves the right not to publish any material sent to it for publication in
the Sarai Reader on stylistic or editorial grounds. All contributors will be
informed of the decisions of the editorial collective vis a vis their
contribution after December 1, 2002.
6.Copyright for all accepted contributions will remain with the authors, but
Sarai and the Waag Society reserve indefinitely the right to place any of the
material accepted for publication on the public domain in print or electronic
forms, and on the internet.
7.Accepted submissions will not be paid for, but authors are guaranteed a
wide international readership. The Reader will be published in print,
distributed in India and internationally, and will also be uploaded in a pdf
form on to the Sarai website. All contributors whose work has been accepted
for publication will receive two copies of the Reader.
Last date for submission - December 1st 2002.
(but please write as soon as possible to the editorial collective with a
brief outline/abstract, not more than one page, of what you want to write
about - this helps in designing the content of the reader)
We expect to have the reader published by mid February 2003.
________________________________________
Please send in your outlines and abstracts
1. (for articles) to
Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Co Ordinator, Sarai Reader 03 Editorial Collective
(shuddha at sarai.net)
2. (for proposals to moderate online discussions on the Reader List) to
Monica Narula, List Administrator, the Reader List
(monica at sarai.net)
iv. Call for Student Stipends for Research on the City
Sarai, invites applications for short term studentships to
facilitate preparation of research projects on contemporary urban life in
South Asia. Applicants are asked to submit a bio data and short statement
of research interests in this field. Selected candidates will attend
the City One Conference in 9-11th January, 2003, South Asia's first
conference on the urban experience. They will also participate in an
orientation workshop, `Researching the contemporary city'. The studentship
provides candidates Rs.10,000/- for the preparation of a preliminary
research proposal to be presented at a workshop in June 2003. Travel
expenses, board and lodge, as well as a modest per diem, will be provided
to the candidates for attending the workshops and the Conference. The
candidates may be from any social science or humanities discipline, and
could be enrolled in an MA, M.Phil or Ph.D programme.
Sarai would like to encourage research in the following areas:
Colonial Urbanism in South Asia
Architecture and Spatial transformations
Modernist Planning
Alternative urban visions
Migration and demographic transformations
Urban Memory and Narratives of Violence
Urban Ecologies
Urban Social Movements
New forms of social differentiation
Literature and Urbanism
Cinema and the City
Visual culture
The future of Public Space
Media-Cities and Globalisation
Labouring in the City
Sarai would like to support a diverse range of projects, but would
particularly like to encourage proposals which, while conversant with
theoretical debates, have developed a strong sense of the research
material, whether of archival/ethnographic/anthropological nature. We hope
that, through this modest programme of support, we would encourage research
in as yet underdeveloped fields.
Last date for applications: 1 November 2002
Please submit a bio-data and short statement in a cover marked `Sarai
studentships' to
Ranita Chatterjee, Coordinator Programmes, Sarai-CSDS
Cheers,
Ranita
The Sarai Programme
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054.
www.sarai.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents:
1. Sarai Presentation in Indore
2. Sarai team participates in Emoção Art.ficial Exhibition, Sao Paulo.
3. The Making of New Delhi, urban workshop report
4. Films @ Sarai
5. Forthcoming Announcements.
1. Sarai Presentation at the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Indore
Ravikant from Sarai presented a paper at the 54th National Convention of Hindi Sahitya
Sammelan held in Indore between the 17th and 20th August, 2002. Organized
by the Madhya Bharat Hindi Sahitya Samiti, the convention offered a range
of platforms for debates and discussions amongst people who work in Hindi.
These were the four panels: 1. Concerns of Literature, 2. Hindi and
Nationalism, 3. Hindi in Globalized times, 4. Gender Discourse in Hindi
Literature, 5. Hindi Cinema in the world Context. The convention also
hosted a number of ‘Meet-the-author’ sessions. Ravikant spoke on the
‘Media, ICT and Hindi. Some of the other speakers in the panel included
Prabhash Joshi and Ashok Chakradhar (who presented his usual entertaining
package on what computers can do) from Delhi, the editor of Dainik Bhaskar,
Indore and a representative from webdunia.com. Most of these speakers
talked critically about the developments in the Hindi domain.
2. Sarai at the Emoção Art.ficial Exhibition & Symposium at the Itau Cultural
Centre, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
A team from Sarai (Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula,
Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Supreet Sethi) visited Sao Paulo, Brazil earlier
this month to participate in the Emoção Art.ficial Exhibition & Symposium
at the Itau Cultural Centre. (www.itaucultural.org.br)
The Itau Cultural Centre is a space for exhibition, publication and
documentation of contemporary art and cultural practice in Brazil. The
Emoção Art.ficial Exhibition and Symposium was an initiative to showcase
contemporary new media arts practices and had invited several international
new media initiatives, such as Laboratorio Arte Alameda (Mexico City),
Banff New Media Institute (Alberta), Mecad (Barcelona), V2_Organisation
(Rotterdam), WRO Centre for Media Art (Wroclav), ZKM Centre for Art and
Media Education (Karlsruhe), and Ars Electonica Futurelab (Linz).
Raqs Media Collective presented Location (n) - an inter-media installation
produced at the Sarai Media Lab at the exhibition. The installation was
conceived and created by the Raqs Media Collective, software coding was
done by Supreet Sethi, the sound design by Vipin Bhati. Parvati Sharma,
Ashish Mahajan and Pradip Saha, assisted in production.
"Location(n)" is an installation with eight clocks (representing eight
cities located in different time zones), seven computer terminals, a video
projection and a multi layered soundtrack designed to offer the visitor to
the work a critical meditation on simultaneity, time and emotion across the
world. Ravi Sundaram and Monica Narula made presentations at the symposium
that took place in tandem with the exhibition.
3. The Making of New Delhi: Urban Workshop at Sarai
Sarai organised a one-day workshop on August 24th to explore the
possibilities of collaborative research on contemporary and historical
Delhi. The workshop was attended by over 30 young scholars. Ravi Sundaram
and Awadhendra Sharan, Sarai fellows, began the proceedings by outlining
the research projects currently being undertaken at Sarai. This was
followed by presentations by other participants on their research
interests, methodological issues and theoretical approaches to urban
studies. The workshop was conducted in an interactive style, so as to
promote dialogue and seek out possible areas of collaboration.
Labour, violence, planning and welfare emerged as some of the issues on
which there was general interest. Participants agreed that we should meet
regularly, on the last Saturday of the month, to do a set of readings on
these themes. Prabhu Mahapatra,together with Shankar Ramaswamy and Navin
Chander, volunteered to put together the first set of readings on the issue
of labour and the city.
The next meeting is proposed to be held on Saturday,28th September. For
details write to sharan@sarai.net
4. Curated Film series: City in Film Noir
Time: every Friday 4.30 pm
Films @ Sarai: The City in Film Noir
Curated by Ranjani Mazumdar, Film Scholar and Independent Film maker
Noir is the French name for black. As one of the important Hollywood genres
that flourished in the period 1941-1955, film noir emerged in the post war
crisis of American society. The genre used low-key photography to imbue the
cinematic image with darkness in both form and content. Drawing on the
cinematic traditions of German expressionism of the 1930's and French
street realism of the 1920's, film noir absorbs the facts of economic life
and then expresses it in the movies as moods and feelings. Thus experiences
of loss and alienation expressed by many of the characters in film noir can
be seen as a product both of post war depression and of the reorganization
of the American economy. Bringing together the stylistic and narrative
devices of the gangster and the detective genre, film noir was an attempt
to interrogate and explore the dark side of the American city.
Like the expressionists, film noir projects violent emotion on to the world
as all the characters seem to map out their own death wish. The characters
motives are usually furtive, ambivalent and psychologically driven. Their
innermost conflicts are rooted in urban claustrophobia as they walk a
shadowy borderline between repressed violence and vulnerability. The genre
also explores the negative power of sexuality seen primarily as a battle
between the sexes, thus leading to the emergence of the classic femme
fatale of Hollywood cinema.
The city as a maze and labyrinth is crucial to entering the psychological
and aesthetic framework of film noir. The city is seen as a jungle of human
construction, steel, stone and glass, after hour offices, dark alleys,
decaying industrial zones, rain slicked streets, cars and trains. Through a
melancholic and baroque framing, noir seeks to interrogate the monumental
spectacle of the modern city.
The films in the series have been selected as representative of the genre
directed by some of the most well known film makers of the period.
The Series begins with a thematic introduction by the curator on September
6th, 2002 at 4.30 PM.
September 6, 2002, 4.30 pm
Double Indemnity (1944), 107 minutes
Director: Billy Wilder
Double Indemnity directed by Billy Wilder has been called a cynical, witty
and sleazy thriller. Narrated in the past tense, Double Indemnity is the
story of Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara
Stanwyck) involved in a plot to kill the latter’s husband for lustful
desire and financial gain. The perfect crime leads to guilt, suspicion,
betrayal and thrilling intrigue.
September 13, 2002, 4.30 p.m
Out of the Past (1947), 97 minutes
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Out of the Past directed by Jacques Tourneur is considered one of the
greatest multi-layered film noirs of all times. An ex-detective,
Jeff(Robert Mitchum) has traded his .38 for the ownership of a gas station.
Suddenly Kathie Moffet (Jane Greer), a woman from Jeff’s past comes back
into his life, forcing him to confront old enemies including gangster Kirk
Douglas.
September 20, 2002, 4.30 pm
Kiss Me Deadly (1955), 106 minutes
Director: Robert Aldrich
Kiss Me Deadly directed by Robert Aldrich follows the exploits of Mike
Hammer(Ralph Meeker). Hammer is searching for a mysterious box that leads
him and his assistant Velda (Maxine Cooper) into a convoluted network of
murder, shadowy deceit and military conspiracy.
September 27, 2002 4.30 pm
Touch of Evil (1958), 106 minutes
Director: Orson Welles
Touch of Evil directed by Orson Welles is an exceptional film noir portrait
of corruption and morally-compromised obsessions starring Welles himself as
Hank Quinlan, a perfect police chief who frames a Mexican youth as part of
an intricate criminal plot. Charlton Heston plays an honorable Mexican
narcotics investigator who clashes with the bigoted Quinlan after probing
into his dark past.
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Forthcoming Announcements
i. Announcements for Short Term Independent Research Fellowships:
Applications Invited for Short Term Independent Research Fellowship
The Sarai Programme: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi
What is Sarai?
Sarai is a public initiative of media practitioners and scholars looking at
media cultures and urban life. Sarai's interests are in the field of old
and new media, information and communication Technologies, free software,
cinema, and urban space - its politics, built form, ecology, culture and
history, with a strong commitment to making knowledge available in the
public domain. It is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies, Delhi. For more information visit www.sarai.net
Who Can Apply
Sarai invites independent researchers, media practitioners, software
designers and programmers, urbanists, architects, artists and writers, as
well as students (post graduate level and above) and university and college
faculty to apply for support to research driven projects.
Why Research ? What do we mean by Research? What is a Seed Grant?
Sarai is committed to generating public knowledge and creativity through
research. Hence the support for research driven projects and processes. The
fellowships are in the nature of seed grants in order to emphasize the
initiation and founding of projects that would otherwise go unsupported
Here by research we mean both archival and field research, and forays into
theoretical work as well as any process or activity of an experimental or
creative nature - for instance in the audiovisual media, as well as in
journalism or the humanities and social sciences, or in computing and
architecture.
The Experience of Last Year
This is the second year in which Sarai has called for proposals for such
fellowships. We would like to spell out the way in which the process worked
during the first year, as an indication of what applicants should expect.
The first year saw the selection of twenty proposals, which included work
towards projects based on investigative reportage of urban issues, essays
on everyday life, a history of urban Dalit performance traditions, a
soundscape of an industrial suburb, a graphic novel about Delhi, a
documentation of the free software movement in India, research on
displacement and rehabilitation in cities, and an interpretative catalogue
of wall writings and street signs.
Successful applicants included free lance researchers, academics, media
practitioners, writers, journalists and activists.
The projects were submitted in English, Hindi or a combination of the two
languages. We have seen that projects that set important but practical and
modest goals were usually successful, whereas those that may have been
conceptually sound but lacked sufficient motivation to actually persue a
research objective on the field, usually did not take off beyond the
interim stage.
Sarai interacted closely with the researcher over the period of the
fellowship and the grantees made interim and final presentations at Sarai
which us to trace the development of work during the grant period and the
grantees to obtain structured but informal feedback from us at Sarai in
stages during the course of their work. Submissions by grantees included
written reports and essays, photographs, tape recordings, pamphlets, maps,
drawings and html presentations.
What we are Looking For
Like last year, this year too we are looking for proposals that are
imaginatively articulated, experimental and methodogically innovative, but
which are pragmatic and backed up by a well argued work plan which sets out
a time table for the project, as well as suggests how the support will help
with specific resources (human and material) that the project needs.
Suggested Themes
Sarai's interests lie in the city, and in media. Broadly speaking any
proposal that looks at the urban condition, or at media is eligible. More
specifically, themes may be as diverse as habitation, sexuality, labour,
social/digital interfaces, urban violence, street life, technologies of
urban control, health and the city, the political economy of media forms,
histories of particular media practices, migration, transportation, or
anything that the applicants feel will resonate with the philosophy and
interests that motivate Sarai's work.
Sarai supports innovative and inventive modes of rendering work into the
Public Domain. Proposals, which pay attention to this, will be particularly
valued.
Preferred Approaches
Innovative and interdisciplinary methodologies, that combine research,
practice, and delivery or rendition methods will be especially welcome.
Conditions
Applicants should be resident in India, and should have an account in any
bank operating in India.
The research fellowship would be available for up to six months and for a
maximum amount of Rs. 60,000.
The fellowships do not require an every day presence at Sarai. These are
support fellowships and fellowship holders will be free to pursue their
primary occupations, if any.
What you need to send
There are no application forms. Simply post your
- Proposal (not more than1000 words)
- A brief workplan (not more than one page)
- An updated CVs (not more than two pages)
- Work samples (maximum two)
- Envelopes should be marked - "Attention : Short Term Independent Research
Fellowship" [Email proposals will not be entertained]. Proposals may be
sent in English or Hindi.
- Mail these to: Ranita Chatterjee, Coordinator, Programmes, Sarai, Centre
for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India.
Enquires: dak at sarai.net
Last date for submission: October 5, 2002.
Note: Proposals from teams, partnerships, collectives, faculty are welcome,
so long as the grant amount is administered by a single individual, and the
funds are deposited in a single bank account in the name of an individual,
partnership, registered body or institutional entity.
Applicants who apply to other institutions for support for the same
proposal will not be disqualified, provided they inform Sarai that support
is being sought (or has been obtained) from another institution. The
applicants should inform Sarai about the identity of the other institution.
ii. Call for Proposals:
City One Conference: cityone@sarai.net
City One, The First South Asian Conference on the urban experience is being
held in Delhi from January 9-11th, 2003. We hope to bring together most
people working on the South Asian city, both in India and around the world.
The design is to push the idea of the urban seriously in the South Asian
context, within the framework of a cross-disciplinary conference, bringing
people from different areas (history, sociology, anthropology, cultural
studies, urban design, architecture, film and media studies) and also
including practitioners like architects and urban designers, as well as
representatives of urban social movements.
The conference is organised by Sarai (www.sarai.net), a programme of the
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. Sarai's research
emphasis is on urban culture and media.
The broad themes for the conference are as follows:
Modernity and the South Asian city
Urban History
Social Theories of the South Asian City
Colonial Urbanism in South Asia
Architecture and Spatial transformations
Critiques of Urbanism and Modernist Planning
Urban Memory and Narratives of Violence
Urban Ecologies
Traditions of Urban Demography
Urban Social Movements
New forms of differentiation
Literature and Urbanism
Cinema and the City
The future of Public Space
Media-Cities and Globalisation
Alternative Urban Visions
Labouring in the City
Visual Culture
Urban Crisis and Governance
City Panels: Bombay/Mumbai, Calcutta/ Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Lahore,
Delhi, Karachi, Kathmandu, Colombo, Dhaka.
These themes are by no means exhaustive and new may emerge after the
abstracts have come in. Also the 'city' panels overlap with the main
conference themes in line with the cross-disciplinary format. In the case
of some cities there may be more than one panel.
There are still a few slots available for presentations, and we are calling
for proposals. The abstracts must not be more than 150 words and must reach
us latest by October 1th. 2002. Be sure to also include your full mailing
address and contact information.
October 1: last date for abstracts. Please send abstracts to
cityone at sarai.net.
We will cover all travel and local hotel costs for abstracts that are
accepted from South Asia. We would like to urge international scholars with
institutional affiliation to secure travel costs from their
institution. This will help us fund travel for participants in India, who
lack such support. Sarai and CSDS will cover all local costs for
international scholars whose abstracts are accepted: including room and board.
Pre-Registration
If you are not presenting a paper but wish to attend the conference, you
can pre-register by sending an email to cityone at sarai.net. Registration
costs are Rs 300 per person, and Rs 100 for students.
iii. Call for Contributions to Sarai Reader 03 : "Shaping Technologies"
Sarai, (www.sarai.net) an interdisciplinary research and practice programme
on the city and the media, at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
and Waag Society, (www.waag.org) a center for culture and technology based
in Amsterdam, invites contributions to Sarai Reader 03: Shaping Technologies.
We also invite proposals to initiate and moderate discussions on the themes
of the Sarai Reader 03 on the Reader List
(http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list) with a view to the
moderator(s) editing the transcripts of these discussions for publication in
the Sarai Reader 03.
The Sarai Reader is an annual publication produced jointly by Sarai/CSDS
(Delhi) and the Waag Society (Amsterdam). Previous Readers have included :
'The Public Domain' : Sarai Reader 01,
2001(http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader1.html)
and 'The Cities of Everyday Life' : Sarai Reader 02, 2002,
(http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader2.html ).
The Sarai Reader series aims at bringing together original, thoughtful,
critical, reflective, well researched and provocative texts and essays by
theorists, practitioners and activists, grouped under a core theme that
expresses the interests of Sarai in issues that relate media, information
and society in the contemporary world. The Sarai Readers have a wide
international readership.
Editorial Collective for Sarai Reader 03 : Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram,
Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Sarai) and Geert
Lovink & Marleen Strikker (The Waag Society)
>> >> >> >> >> >> >> >>
The Concept - Shaping Technologies
Today, technology is second nature to us. If the landscape of earlier times
could be ideally represented by images of naturally occurring objects, the
landscape of the contemporary is one that can only be imagined as being
peopled by machines. The 'nature' of our times is technological - we are
embodied, articulated, located and governed by the machines we make to extend
our lives, bodies and faculties. We shape the technologies that surround us
and the technologies that surround us shape the contour of our lives. This is
what we mean by the term 'Shaping Technologies', which as a term with two
senses suggests both a subjective, social appropriation of technological
creativity, as well as the impact of technologies on society and life in
general.
One may even say that the technological ubiquity has gone so far as to make
it nearly impossible for us to reflect upon technology as a phenomena
separate from the general conditions of global urban life. We are what we
work, play and think with, and today we work, play and think with our
machines. We are users, inventors, practitioners, artists, hackers and
artisans who work with technologies; we are technology's consumers and users,
we are hobbyists, enthusiasts and addicts just as we are critics, prophets,
and analysts. We are masters, slaves, victims and rebels of technology. No
one remains untouched by the 'machine'.
Yet, we do not have an adequate language with which to understand and
articulate the presence of technology in culture, society and in politics. We
are accustomed to construct utopian and dystopic technological imaginaries,
even as we neglect the task of a sober and considered reflection of the
ethical and cognitive dilemmas that the presence of technologies in everyday
life confront us with. And even as technology becomes increasingly
ubiquitous, even as it touches wider populations, even as an immersion in
technoculture becomes the condition of the contemporary moment, it becomes
simultaneously the discursive monopoly of experts and specialists, or of
geeks and hobbyists, far removed from the concerns that animate scholars,
public intellectuals, and the average curious person. Technology is the
underpinning and the shadow of the public domain. Technology is ubiquitous,
yet discursively invisible.
Sarai Reader 03 seeks to contribute to the termination of this discursive
vacuum by asking what other imaginary space there may be, besides the
imperative to consume, the irrepressible desire to shop for the next gadget
that comes our way, and the whine of the perennial victim of the machine,
with which we can envision technology's presence in our lives ?
In this third volume in the Sarai Reader series we will also look into
alternative approaches towards technology, strategies to revitalize forgotten
concepts (and their authors), re-readings of past debates and anticipations
of future ones. We will weigh the utopian visions against the dystopic
nightmares, perhaps to arrive at assessments that suggest sobriety and a
'cool' consideration of the cold touch of the machine, as well as of the heat
of the fuel that animates it.
If you feel these issues and questions are of interest to you. If your
practice, thought, curiosities, research or creative activity has impelled
you to think about some of these issues, we invite you to contribute texts to
Sarai Reader 03 : Shaping Technologies.
The Reader will have the following broad areas of interest:
I. Technologies of Urbanism : Making the City
II. The Everyday Experience of Technology
III. Philosophies of Technology - Being the Machine
IV. Technologies in History
IV. Imagining Technologies - The Machine in Art, Literature and Cinema
V. Technologies of the Body
VI. Gender and Technology
VII. Tactical Tech : Technologies of Power and Resistance
VIII. D.I.Y (Do it Yourself)
IX. Social Software
X. Technology and the Environment
XI. Networks and Transmissions
There will also be three additional special sections:
i. Selections from the Reader List on the violence in Gujarat in
February/March 2002,
ii. Design, Technology and the Urban Info Sphere : Case Studies from Amsterdam
iii. The book (like Readers 1 and 2) will end with the Alt/Option section,
which offers manifestos and alternative perspectives
>> >> >> >> >> >> >>
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSIONS
Word Limit : 1500 - 4000 words
1.Submissions may be scholarly, journalistic, or literary - or a mix of
these, in the form of essays, papers, interviews, online discussions or
diary entries. All submission, unless specifically solicited, must be in
English only.
2.Submissions must be sent by email in rich text format (rtf) or star-office
documents. Articles may be accompanied by black and white photographs or
drawings submitted in the tif format.
3.We urge all writers, to follow the Chicago Manual of Style, (CMS) in terms
of footnotes, annotations and references. For more details about the CMS,
please see the Florida State University web page on CMS style documentation
at : http://www.fsu.edu/~library/guides/chicago.html
4.All contributions should be accompanied by a three/four line text
introducing the author.
5.All submissions will be read by the editorial collective of the Sarai
Reader 02 before the final selection is made. The editorial collective
reserves the right not to publish any material sent to it for publication in
the Sarai Reader on stylistic or editorial grounds. All contributors will be
informed of the decisions of the editorial collective vis a vis their
contribution after December 1, 2002.
6.Copyright for all accepted contributions will remain with the authors, but
Sarai and the Waag Society reserve indefinitely the right to place any of the
material accepted for publication on the public domain in print or electronic
forms, and on the internet.
7.Accepted submissions will not be paid for, but authors are guaranteed a
wide international readership. The Reader will be published in print,
distributed in India and internationally, and will also be uploaded in a pdf
form on to the Sarai website. All contributors whose work has been accepted
for publication will receive two copies of the Reader.
Last date for submission - December 1st 2002.
(but please write as soon as possible to the editorial collective with a
brief outline/abstract, not more than one page, of what you want to write
about - this helps in designing the content of the reader)
We expect to have the reader published by mid February 2003.
________________________________________
Please send in your outlines and abstracts
1. (for articles) to
Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Co Ordinator, Sarai Reader 03 Editorial Collective
(shuddha at sarai.net)
2. (for proposals to moderate online discussions on the Reader List) to
Monica Narula, List Administrator, the Reader List
(monica at sarai.net)
iv. Call for Student Stipends for Research on the City
Sarai, invites applications for short term studentships to
facilitate preparation of research projects on contemporary urban life in
South Asia. Applicants are asked to submit a bio data and short statement
of research interests in this field. Selected candidates will attend
the City One Conference in 9-11th January, 2003, South Asia's first
conference on the urban experience. They will also participate in an
orientation workshop, `Researching the contemporary city'. The studentship
provides candidates Rs.10,000/- for the preparation of a preliminary
research proposal to be presented at a workshop in June 2003. Travel
expenses, board and lodge, as well as a modest per diem, will be provided
to the candidates for attending the workshops and the Conference. The
candidates may be from any social science or humanities discipline, and
could be enrolled in an MA, M.Phil or Ph.D programme.
Sarai would like to encourage research in the following areas:
Colonial Urbanism in South Asia
Architecture and Spatial transformations
Modernist Planning
Alternative urban visions
Migration and demographic transformations
Urban Memory and Narratives of Violence
Urban Ecologies
Urban Social Movements
New forms of social differentiation
Literature and Urbanism
Cinema and the City
Visual culture
The future of Public Space
Media-Cities and Globalisation
Labouring in the City
Sarai would like to support a diverse range of projects, but would
particularly like to encourage proposals which, while conversant with
theoretical debates, have developed a strong sense of the research
material, whether of archival/ethnographic/anthropological nature. We hope
that, through this modest programme of support, we would encourage research
in as yet underdeveloped fields.
Last date for applications: 1 November 2002
Please submit a bio-data and short statement in a cover marked `Sarai
studentships' to
Ranita Chatterjee, Coordinator Programmes, Sarai-CSDS
Cheers,
Ranita
The Sarai Programme
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054.
www.sarai.net
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