Document Actions
March 2003
Newsletter- March 2003
CONTENTS:
I EVENTS -
3-5 Crisis Media Workshop
12 Media Art Presentation - Activating the Public
14 Launch of 'Sarai Reader 03: Shaping Technologies'
Inaugural Siddhartha Ghosh Memorial Lecture
The Home & Beyond: Domestic and Amateur Photography by Women in India
(1930 - 1960)
II FRIDAY FILM @ SARAI -
Asian Film Cultures : Japanime
21 'My Neighbour Totoro'
28 'Perfect Blue'
III ANNOUNCEMENTS -
City One Audio CD
Arundhati Roy Supports Sarai
Film Studies @ Sarai
----------------------------------------------------------------
I EVENTS
March 3-5, 2003
Crisis/Media: The Uncertain States of Reportage
Sarai-Waag Workshop
The 'Crisis/Media' Workshop at Sarai opens framed by the memory of one crisis,
and the anticipation of another. Exactly a year ago, at the end of February
and the beginning of March 2002, we witnessed a pogrom in Gujarat, in western
India. Today, as we write this statement, the world stands a hair's trigger
away from a war in Iraq, the consequences of which on a global scale seem too
difficult to even imagine. These are times for sober reflection, and that,
precisely, is what we often find missing as we open the newspaper, listen to
the radio, or continue to be lobotomised by television. Yet, a variety of
different, dissident, passionate and sane voices are also making themselves
heard, through combinations of new and old media, as never before. The 'Paid
For' news of the mainstream media is often exposed for what it is, even
before it appears, by an increasingly vigilant network of independent
local-global media initiatives. The numbers that turn out on the streets of
the world's major capitals to protest against the plans for war against Iraq
seem to suggest that despite huge propaganda efforts, 'the spin' isn't
working, at least not all of the time. We live, as the Chinese curse has it,
in 'interesting times'.
For more information and detailed programmes of the workshop please check out
http://www.sarai.net/events/crisis_media/crisis_media.htm. Unfortunately
registration is closed but detailed reports of the workshop will be available
on the site.
March 12, 2003, 4:30 pm
MEDIA ART PRESENTATION @ SARAI
Activating the Public: Action Research on Urban Public Space
by Astra Howard, artist and designer
The relationship people develop with their internal body and external urban
environments is dependant upon the particular capabilities, limitations and
operative structures inherent in these spatial systems. Alternate interactions
form when either a system is challenged revealing the malleability,
fragility, contest and ambiguity that exists inside and between both body and
space environments.
Astra Howard, artist and designer from Australia, speaks on her research on
the transitional nature of urban public space environments. She has been in
residency at Sarai with support from the Anne Gordon Samstag International
Visual Arts Scholarship programme.
March 14, 2003
Launch of 'SARAI READER 03: SHAPING TECHNOLOGIES'
"Shaping Technologies " sets out to ratchet our engagement with the
contemporary moment a notch higher, in directions that are sober,
exhilarating and discomfiting, all at once. The book brings to the fore a
series of situations and predicaments that mark the encounter between people
and machines, between nature and culture, and between knowledge and power.
The issues covered span a wide range - from the cognitive and ethical dilemmas
that beset the engineer, to the legal and cultural implications of copying in
a digital realm, from software as art to the history of science fiction, from
wireless manifestoes to the domestication of photography, from kitchen
utensils to airplanes, from mobile phones to kerosene lamps, from body nets
to biotech, from reproductive technologies to technologies of reproduction,
from computers to radios and from coal mines to call centres.
A cutting edge collection of original writing and images by theorists,
critics, photographers, philosophers, engineers, activists, artists,
designers media practitioners and programmers from many parts of the world.
Contributors include Arun Mehta, Biella Coleman, Ana Viseu, Raqs Media
Collective, Rabindranath Tagore, Phanishwarnath Prasad Renu, Sabina Gadihoke,
Steve Dietz, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Amanda McDonald Crowley, Debjani
Sengupta, Siddhartha Ghosh, McKenzie Wark, Andrew Feenberg, Eugene Thacker,
Joanne Richardson, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, subRosa, Rupsa Mallik, Veena Das et al
Interviews with : Arash Zeini, Janos Sugar
Photo Essays by: Shahid Datawalla, Monica Narula, Srinivas Kuruganti
Published by Sarai/CSDS, Delhi, and the Waag Society, Amsterdam.
For enquiries contact publications at sarai.net. The Sarai Reader 03 is a
copyleft publication.
PROGRAMME FOR MARCH 14
2:30 pm This Year/This City
a public conversation between concerned citizens on how they have
witnessed Delhi in 2002-2003 followed by an open discussion.
5:30 pm Siddhartha Ghosh Memorial Lecture Series
Inaugural Lecture -
The Home and Beyond: Domestic and Amateur Photography by Women in India
(1930-1960)
by Sabina Gadihoke
The Siddhartha Ghosh Memorial Lecture Series is an attempt on our part to
inaugurate a process of serious public reflection by practitioners,
researchers, theorists and critics on the interface between practice,
technology and creativity in the making of a history of the media in India.
The lecture series commemorates 'Siddhartha' (Amitabha) Ghosh (1948-2002).
Siddhartha Ghosh was a fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in
Calcutta. He contributed immensely to scholarly work on the visual culture of
colonial Bengal through his writings as well as his vast collection of old
photographs, advertisements, lithographs, song book covers and other
pamphlets associated with Bengali popular culture.
Ghosh studied Mechanical Engineering at Jadavpur University. During the
seventies he was drawn to the Naxalite movement. During those turbulent days
he took care of the publication of political literature and started his
writing, by translating key texts of international socialist movements in
Bangla. He also began writing fiction under the pen name of Siddhartha Ghosh.
With over thirty works to his credit, Siddharth wrote primarily in Bengali.
He began his professional life at the Birla Industrial Museum, and then joined
the Glass and Ceramic Research Institute as a maintenance engineer. By then
he was known to a small circle of scholars as a pioneering historian of
technology for two of his major works, 'Cchobi Tola: Bangalir Photography
Charcha', (Taking Pictures: The Cultivation of Photography by Bengalis), and
'Kaler Shahar Kolkata' (Calcutta: City of Machines). Ghosh also wrote essays,
science fiction, short stories and writing for children apart from being a
prolific translator and designer. He was closely associated with the
initiative to found Khetro, a network of media practitioners interested in
urban issues and ecology in Calcutta, and contributed to the visual materials
archive of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
II FRIDAY FILM @ SARAI -
Asian Film Cultures : Japanime
March 21, 2003, 4:30 pm
MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO (1988),
87 minutes
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Set in the 1950's 'My Neighbour Totoro' tells the
story of Satsuki, aged ten, and Mei, aged four, and their father who move to the
Japanese countryside to provide a healthy environment for their mother when
she is able to leave the hospital. The children spend their days exploring their
new home and neighbourhood, which is when Mei discovers the existence of
Totoros - magical forest spirits which only children can see.
What follows are a series of delightful and often surreal adventures set among
Miyazaki's sublime summary landscape.Totoro is not based on any exact Japanese
mythological or folk character, but does spring from the idea of nature spirits
in Japanese culture. Miyazaki's vision encompasses both a nostalgia for a lost
lifestyle since most of these rural areas near Tokyo have been converted into
crowded suburbs by now and also an exploration of the natural world that is
central to his work. While his later works grapple more directly with questions of
ecology in 'My Neighbor Totoro', Miyazaki reveals through the enormous detail
and perceptive quality of his work a seamless interaction that appears to him to
be crucial to it.
March 28, 2003, 4:30 pm
PERFECT BLUE (1999),
80 minutes
Directed by Satoshi Kon
Mima abandons her pop star career to opt for a career in television soaps,
alienating the male fans of her sugar-candy past. When she accepts a part that
involves her being raped, her life begins to fall apart. She discovers internet
sites describing every detail of her life. Helpless and afraid, she watches as her
associates are threatened and killed by a mysterious stalker, who she sees
everywhere. When Mima's TV drama begins mimicking her everyday life, she
can no longer tell the difference between television, hallucination and real life.
The film develops a complex structure for Mima's psychosis, exaggerating elements
of pop and Manga as product and form, and interweaving elements from her different
realities to consider the relationships between media, celebrity and technology.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warm Wishes,
Ranita
The Sarai Programme
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
www.sarai.net
CONTENTS:
I EVENTS -
3-5 Crisis Media Workshop
12 Media Art Presentation - Activating the Public
14 Launch of 'Sarai Reader 03: Shaping Technologies'
Inaugural Siddhartha Ghosh Memorial Lecture
The Home & Beyond: Domestic and Amateur Photography by Women in India
(1930 - 1960)
II FRIDAY FILM @ SARAI -
Asian Film Cultures : Japanime
21 'My Neighbour Totoro'
28 'Perfect Blue'
III ANNOUNCEMENTS -
City One Audio CD
Arundhati Roy Supports Sarai
Film Studies @ Sarai
----------------------------------------------------------------
I EVENTS
March 3-5, 2003
Crisis/Media: The Uncertain States of Reportage
Sarai-Waag Workshop
The 'Crisis/Media' Workshop at Sarai opens framed by the memory of one crisis,
and the anticipation of another. Exactly a year ago, at the end of February
and the beginning of March 2002, we witnessed a pogrom in Gujarat, in western
India. Today, as we write this statement, the world stands a hair's trigger
away from a war in Iraq, the consequences of which on a global scale seem too
difficult to even imagine. These are times for sober reflection, and that,
precisely, is what we often find missing as we open the newspaper, listen to
the radio, or continue to be lobotomised by television. Yet, a variety of
different, dissident, passionate and sane voices are also making themselves
heard, through combinations of new and old media, as never before. The 'Paid
For' news of the mainstream media is often exposed for what it is, even
before it appears, by an increasingly vigilant network of independent
local-global media initiatives. The numbers that turn out on the streets of
the world's major capitals to protest against the plans for war against Iraq
seem to suggest that despite huge propaganda efforts, 'the spin' isn't
working, at least not all of the time. We live, as the Chinese curse has it,
in 'interesting times'.
For more information and detailed programmes of the workshop please check out
http://www.sarai.net/events/crisis_media/crisis_media.htm. Unfortunately
registration is closed but detailed reports of the workshop will be available
on the site.
March 12, 2003, 4:30 pm
MEDIA ART PRESENTATION @ SARAI
Activating the Public: Action Research on Urban Public Space
by Astra Howard, artist and designer
The relationship people develop with their internal body and external urban
environments is dependant upon the particular capabilities, limitations and
operative structures inherent in these spatial systems. Alternate interactions
form when either a system is challenged revealing the malleability,
fragility, contest and ambiguity that exists inside and between both body and
space environments.
Astra Howard, artist and designer from Australia, speaks on her research on
the transitional nature of urban public space environments. She has been in
residency at Sarai with support from the Anne Gordon Samstag International
Visual Arts Scholarship programme.
March 14, 2003
Launch of 'SARAI READER 03: SHAPING TECHNOLOGIES'
"Shaping Technologies " sets out to ratchet our engagement with the
contemporary moment a notch higher, in directions that are sober,
exhilarating and discomfiting, all at once. The book brings to the fore a
series of situations and predicaments that mark the encounter between people
and machines, between nature and culture, and between knowledge and power.
The issues covered span a wide range - from the cognitive and ethical dilemmas
that beset the engineer, to the legal and cultural implications of copying in
a digital realm, from software as art to the history of science fiction, from
wireless manifestoes to the domestication of photography, from kitchen
utensils to airplanes, from mobile phones to kerosene lamps, from body nets
to biotech, from reproductive technologies to technologies of reproduction,
from computers to radios and from coal mines to call centres.
A cutting edge collection of original writing and images by theorists,
critics, photographers, philosophers, engineers, activists, artists,
designers media practitioners and programmers from many parts of the world.
Contributors include Arun Mehta, Biella Coleman, Ana Viseu, Raqs Media
Collective, Rabindranath Tagore, Phanishwarnath Prasad Renu, Sabina Gadihoke,
Steve Dietz, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Amanda McDonald Crowley, Debjani
Sengupta, Siddhartha Ghosh, McKenzie Wark, Andrew Feenberg, Eugene Thacker,
Joanne Richardson, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, subRosa, Rupsa Mallik, Veena Das et al
Interviews with : Arash Zeini, Janos Sugar
Photo Essays by: Shahid Datawalla, Monica Narula, Srinivas Kuruganti
Published by Sarai/CSDS, Delhi, and the Waag Society, Amsterdam.
For enquiries contact publications at sarai.net. The Sarai Reader 03 is a
copyleft publication.
PROGRAMME FOR MARCH 14
2:30 pm This Year/This City
a public conversation between concerned citizens on how they have
witnessed Delhi in 2002-2003 followed by an open discussion.
5:30 pm Siddhartha Ghosh Memorial Lecture Series
Inaugural Lecture -
The Home and Beyond: Domestic and Amateur Photography by Women in India
(1930-1960)
by Sabina Gadihoke
The Siddhartha Ghosh Memorial Lecture Series is an attempt on our part to
inaugurate a process of serious public reflection by practitioners,
researchers, theorists and critics on the interface between practice,
technology and creativity in the making of a history of the media in India.
The lecture series commemorates 'Siddhartha' (Amitabha) Ghosh (1948-2002).
Siddhartha Ghosh was a fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in
Calcutta. He contributed immensely to scholarly work on the visual culture of
colonial Bengal through his writings as well as his vast collection of old
photographs, advertisements, lithographs, song book covers and other
pamphlets associated with Bengali popular culture.
Ghosh studied Mechanical Engineering at Jadavpur University. During the
seventies he was drawn to the Naxalite movement. During those turbulent days
he took care of the publication of political literature and started his
writing, by translating key texts of international socialist movements in
Bangla. He also began writing fiction under the pen name of Siddhartha Ghosh.
With over thirty works to his credit, Siddharth wrote primarily in Bengali.
He began his professional life at the Birla Industrial Museum, and then joined
the Glass and Ceramic Research Institute as a maintenance engineer. By then
he was known to a small circle of scholars as a pioneering historian of
technology for two of his major works, 'Cchobi Tola: Bangalir Photography
Charcha', (Taking Pictures: The Cultivation of Photography by Bengalis), and
'Kaler Shahar Kolkata' (Calcutta: City of Machines). Ghosh also wrote essays,
science fiction, short stories and writing for children apart from being a
prolific translator and designer. He was closely associated with the
initiative to found Khetro, a network of media practitioners interested in
urban issues and ecology in Calcutta, and contributed to the visual materials
archive of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
II FRIDAY FILM @ SARAI -
Asian Film Cultures : Japanime
March 21, 2003, 4:30 pm
MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO (1988),
87 minutes
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Set in the 1950's 'My Neighbour Totoro' tells the
story of Satsuki, aged ten, and Mei, aged four, and their father who move to the
Japanese countryside to provide a healthy environment for their mother when
she is able to leave the hospital. The children spend their days exploring their
new home and neighbourhood, which is when Mei discovers the existence of
Totoros - magical forest spirits which only children can see.
What follows are a series of delightful and often surreal adventures set among
Miyazaki's sublime summary landscape.Totoro is not based on any exact Japanese
mythological or folk character, but does spring from the idea of nature spirits
in Japanese culture. Miyazaki's vision encompasses both a nostalgia for a lost
lifestyle since most of these rural areas near Tokyo have been converted into
crowded suburbs by now and also an exploration of the natural world that is
central to his work. While his later works grapple more directly with questions of
ecology in 'My Neighbor Totoro', Miyazaki reveals through the enormous detail
and perceptive quality of his work a seamless interaction that appears to him to
be crucial to it.
March 28, 2003, 4:30 pm
PERFECT BLUE (1999),
80 minutes
Directed by Satoshi Kon
Mima abandons her pop star career to opt for a career in television soaps,
alienating the male fans of her sugar-candy past. When she accepts a part that
involves her being raped, her life begins to fall apart. She discovers internet
sites describing every detail of her life. Helpless and afraid, she watches as her
associates are threatened and killed by a mysterious stalker, who she sees
everywhere. When Mima's TV drama begins mimicking her everyday life, she
can no longer tell the difference between television, hallucination and real life.
The film develops a complex structure for Mima's psychosis, exaggerating elements
of pop and Manga as product and form, and interweaving elements from her different
realities to consider the relationships between media, celebrity and technology.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warm Wishes,
Ranita
The Sarai Programme
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
www.sarai.net