media, information, the contemporary

The Sarai Archive

The materials available in the Sarai archive map older audiovisual and new digital media networks (of production, circulation, and consumption) in markets, cinemas, courts/legal paradigms, police stations, big data infrastructure, government archives, and factories. All of these sites, in their profusion across space, constitute the fraught fabric of the media city, and intertwining networks of curtailment and circulation. The archive expresses these findings, as a corpus of field postings, archival documents, and finished texts.

The Sarai archive invites thinking about how diverse materials open up engagement with contemporary media research. The materials produced in various Sarai projects link to new and different modalities of critique. What is striking about the Sarai archives is the focus on producing methodologies of research through immersive ethnographic and critical practice.The Sarai archive includes artist materials, experimental interventions, and archaeologies of everyday life deposited by researchers, fellowship holders and various projects.

We are in the process of making digital access possible to the archival catalogues and materials. At the moment, materials can be accessed in-person at Sarai. Items already digitized can be accessed through this linkIf you would like to visit the archive please drop us a mail at dak@sarai.net telling us about the kinds of materials you would like to look at and when you would like to visit, and we'll be happy to help!