From newsletter-admin at sarai.net Thu Jul 12 17:02:00 2001 From: newsletter-admin at sarai.net (newsletter-admin at sarai.net) Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 11:32:00 GMT Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Sarai Newsletter 04 Message-ID: <20010712.11320000@saumya.sarai.kit> Table of Contents 1.Call For Proposals 2.IT and Civil Liberties Meeting Report 3.Coding Collaboration 4.Translation Unit At Sarai 5.Writing the City 6.Picturepost List 7.New @ Sarai Website i) Ravi Vasudevan essay on Satyajit Ray ii) CameraWorking: Cinematography Project iii) Digital Art: Renu Aiyar iv) Readerlist Archive Link v) Film at Sarai vi)Review on Sarai --------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- 1. Call For Proposals Sarai is a public initiative of media practitioners and scholars looking at media cultures and urban life. It is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. For more information check our website www.sarai.net Print Media Fellowships We are offering three print media fellowships to write on the urban experience. Sarai would encourage the fellows to report upon concerns such as new and old media, environment, informal labour, spatial transformations, travel and domesticity while examining relationships between people, practices and spaces. These themes are indicative rather than exhaustive and fellows will be free to examine other facets of the contemporary everyday urban experience. Fellows would be expected to pursue a particular story/ theme or report on a particular locality over a ten-month period.The medium of expression can be either English or Hindi. A maximum amount of Rs. 10,000/- per month (over a ten month period) will be awarded for each fellowship. We are looking for people with an ability to critically investigate daily life in cities and towns, with a strong field-work component. People with a background in print and writing are preferred. Seed Grants Sarai would like to encourage innovative research and practices concerning the contemporary urban and media experiences. We invite artists, media practitioners, journalists and scholars to reflect upon the forms and practices through which these experiences are manifest, with a view to developing a critical framework for further research. Sarai's interests are in the field of old and new media, cinema, environment, language and art, with a strong commitment to making knowledge available in the public domain. Grantees are however encouraged to pursue other lines of enquiry that have a bearing upon the urban and media experiences. The seed grants may be used to develop larger proposals, enquiries that are not conventionally possible, interesting ideas that could flow into other initiatives. The seed grants would be available for up to six months and for a maximum amount of Rs. 60,000. Sarai supports innovative and inventive modes of rendering work into the Public Domain. Proposals which pay attention to this will be particularly valued. Last date for submission: August 30 2001. There are no application forms. Simply post your - proposal (approximately 1000 words) - a brief workplan - updated CVs - work samples (maximum two) - envelopes should be marked attention Print Media Fellowships OR Seed Grants which ever applicable. [Email proposals will not be entertained] Mail these to Saumya Gupta, Coordinator, Programme and Research, Sarai, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India. 2. Report on the Meeting on Civil Liberties, the Internet and Electronic Surveillance at Sarai An exploratory meeting to discuss the ramifications of the new IT and Information related laws, regulations and other aspects of information-politics for civil liberties was held at Sarai on the 15th of June, 2001. Those attending included people associated with the Linux Users Group, Peoples Union for Democratic Rights, Mind Bend Programmers Collective, OneWorld.Org and the Centre for Science and Environment. The meeting began with a presentations by Sarai on the emerging regime of surveillance in India and then moved on to an open discussion. The meeting discussed the new surveillance online and offline mechanisms being put into place in India within a broader framework of information as a tool of power and a site of resistance. The proposed schemes to construct 'citizen databases' and introduce multi-purpose identity cards and other tagging mechanisms that are currently being tried out were also looked into. The issue of whether 'Privacy' was a relevant issue in an Indian context also came up for debate. An interesting thread of discussion that emerged in the context of 'hacking' was as to whether the right to free expression could be held as being of greater significance than the right to property. Those present at the meeting agreed that there is a great need for creating tools for awareness about information politics. Amongst the suggestions offered were the setting up of an online resource where materials relevant to Information Politics and Civil Liberties could be collected and commented upon, gathering and generating articles for the mainstream press, and the creation of illustrated pamphlets or comic books on the issues to attract the attention of a lay audience. It was also agreed by those present that we need to lay the ground for a public meeting on information politics and civil liberties, preferably in the university, perhaps as a starting point for a future public campaign on the issue. This will be an ongoing concern with Sarai. We will welcome responses, comments, or anything else that you may want to report on this. Please address them to the reader-list at sarai.net, or write to shuddha at sarai.net. 3. Inviting Coding Collaboration http://www.sarai.net/freesoftware/tools/tools.htm Sarai invites anyone interested in coding to collaborate with us in creating 'social software '(for want of a better term!). As you are aware, a primary outreach programme of Sarai is the Cybermohalla project. Cybermohalla is a project that is primarily trying to develop a computing culture within non-elite social spaces. Our first experimental lab has been set in the LNJP basti (between Ajmeri gate and Delhi gate). This is one of our projects that will benefit a lot of people and especially demands addressing by programmers. Some possible areas of collaboration will include developing network based collaborative tools, programming tools for beginners, games reflecting our conditions and environment, a good Hindi desktop and a database interface. What interests us is that in collaboration we can create possible approaches and possibilities that will facilitate the establishment of an interesting computing culture. A culture that speaks to a wider audience by creating social software .All the software that will be generated will be put under GPL and we would be very keen to support a long term development plan for each/any of these softwares. If there are any other suggestions and ideas, we would be happy to begin joint thought on those as well. Student projects are especially welcome. Please mail any queries to jeebesh at sarai.net 4. Translation Unit At Sarai (http://www.sarai.net/hindiweb/index.htm) In order to engage with a wider audience, we are setting up a translation unit at Sarai. This unit will primarily work on a freelance basis to create Hindi texts on the themes and concerns of Sarai (the experience of the urban space, media practice, films, issues of technology, and free software ). Sarai invites interested translators to join us in this endeavour. The idea is to build a community of people working for a long term. The work is expected to generate ideas, issues and challenges that we can address through workshops and seminars. The contributions in terms of new coinage, etc. will add to the richness of the Lexical resource Project at Sarai. The work will be made available in the public domain through the Sarai website and syndicated columns/features in the mainstream print media. Overtime these writings will form the core of a Sarai Reader on Technology and Media in Hindi. For details about remuneration and terms and conditions, write to ravikant at sarai.net 5. Writing the City http://www.sarai.net/compositions/texts/texts.htm As part of its on going creative engagement with urban culture. Sarai, invites writers to reflect on urban space on its website www.sarai.net. While Sarai, being located in Delhi, India, is especially interested in writing on Delhi itself, it is also open to reflections on cities elsewhere, and on the city as a generic global form of cohabitation. We are looking for subjective encounters with the city that also happen to transcend and transgress genres. We are particularly keen to provide a space for experimental and hypertextual forms of writing, that utilise the unique non-linear narrative possibilities and opportunities of dispersed or collaborative authorship that are opened out by the Internet. This focus on 'writing the city' will work in tandem with a series of explorations of experimental writing activities that will be hosted soon at Sarai through workshops and collaborative/online writing projects. We hope that these activities can mature into a regular electronic discussion list on "Writers, Writing and the City". For a more detailed account, read the "Street Signs" invitation to write on the city as well as three new pieces on living in the city by Hansa Thapliyal (Mumbai), Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Sarai) and Sampurna Chatterji (Mumbai) on the Sarai web site. 6. Picturepost List http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/picturepost Sarai has started a new list, called the Sarai PicturePost List (picturepost at sarai.net). In principle, the idea is to begin a forum where images are exchanged and discussed amongst the people on the list, and cause as much excitement or consternation as the text discussions do. These images could be personal work, or material that you found interesting on the web. These could be photos, images, illustrations, drawings, posterdesigns, cartoons or critical/ reflective commentaries. Basically, the main packet being sent has to be the image, and along with your personal annotation/ comments or notes as well. We plan to collate some of the original work that is posted on this list and publish it on our website. Also, all these images and the discussion will be a part of the Sarai Archive and will create a critical imagebank that will be available in the public domain. We realise that the process of sending photographs can be a little difficult for some people, but we are happy to provide advice and virtual help. Basically there will be a limit of 120k on the size of your image. In case of images picked from the web, there is no problem, as those images are always scaled down. (For those who wish to download images from the web: rightclick on the image, save it on your hard disk, and then attach that image to the email you are sending the Picturepost List). If however, you are sending an image that is your own, please scale it down - even though the quality loss will hurt! Please try to send jpeg, gif or png files, and please avoid tiff and bmp formats. To join the list, please go to http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/picturepost or email at monica at sarai.net 7. New @ Sarai Website i) Ravi Vasudevan: Nationhood, Authenticity and Realism in Indian cinema: The Double Take of Modernism in the Work of Satyajit Ray http://www.sarai.net/mediacity/filmcity/essays/Ray.PDF Ravi Vasudevan's article on Satyajit Ray is an invitation to reflect upon an earlier time in modern Indian history. 'The political transition to independence was interrogated in various ways by the cinema of the time. The period was seen as a momentous one, and there was considerable debate about how images and sounds could capture the intricate passages and negotiate the larger pressures and sensorial wonder of a rapidly transforming world. With Ray, we can discern an endeavour to develop an insistent politics of memory, in which the onward momentum of modern experience could not afford to relegate past worlds. ...' Comments, responses to the article are welcome. Please post them to raviv at sarai.net. ii) CameraWorking: Cinematography Project http://www.sarai.net/cinematography/camera.htm If you are curious about how images in cinema are created and about the tangled histories of cinema technology and individual curiosity, then you can find a new space on the Sarai website to satisfy your curiosities. We have a new section called 'Cameraworking: Materials for the History of Cinematographic Practice in India' - about the shadowy world of all those who work with light, behind the camera . 'Cameraworking' is an collection of interviews with veteran and working cameramen, texts, archival photographs and other resources on the history of cinematographic practice in India. The collection is a first ever compilation of valuable oral histories of the making of some of the finest visual moments in the history of Indian Cinema. Here you will find first person accounts by V.K. Murthy, Jaywant Pathare, Jal Mistry, Soumendy Roy, and a host of other cameramen about their lives, their work, their relationship to technology and their favourite moments in cinema. This collection emerged out of a five year long research and documentation project on the history and practice of cinematography in India undertaken by Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta of the Raqs Media Collective, Delhi with C.K. Muralidharan of Cinematographers Combine, Mumbai. The project received support from the India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore. iii) Digital Art: Identity - back? forward? search? STOP? Renu Iyer from Mumbai presents her digital work on identity and identification http://www.sarai.net/compositions/images/images.htm iv) Readerlist Archive Link Go straight to the ReaderList Archive from the Sarai home page, or go to the You&Sarai section of the Community page http://www.sarai.net/community/you&sarai.htm v) Film@ Sarai Easy to access listing of the Sarai Film Series from the Sarai home page, or go to the Calendar page http://www.sarai.net/calendar/calendar.htm vi) Review on Sarai http://members.ozemail.com.au/~opencity/rt43/crowley.html Thanks Saumya --------------------------- If you received this in error or would like to be removed from our list, please return us indicating: remove or un-subscribe in 'subject' field. From newsletter-admin at sarai.net Wed Jul 25 12:05:16 2001 From: newsletter-admin at sarai.net (newsletter-admin at sarai.net) Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 06:35:16 GMT Subject: Sarai Film Series IV Message-ID: <20010725.6351600@saumya.sarai.kit> Sarai Film Series IV: A Cinema of Anxiety Amongst its many attractions, the cinema revels in precipitating film audiences into states of fear, disorientation and escalating paranoia. Rather than anchor the spectator to stable character perspective, coherent social mores and clear spatial and temporal orientations, this cinema thrusts us into a state of uncertainty, anxiety, and dread. We don't always know who's look the camera simulates, we don't know where we are, sometimes we don't even know when we are in the temporality of the narrative world. Characters behave unpredictably, suspicion abounds, bodies mutate, new spaces and senses of space induce a perceptual vertigo. Thriller and horror genres mine this field as their mainstay, and the variegated field of urban experience provides us with one of its characteristic settings. With its concern for city experience and the radical transformations in perception effected by film form and media experience, the Sarai programme introduces an occasional film series devoted to the exploration of a cinema of anxiety. Interspersed and occasionally dovetailing with our Asian film cultures series, we hope to move towards a short retrospective and workshop on intimations of anxiety and dread in the contemporary Bombay cinema later this year. [We are thinking of the following films: Parinda/Vidhu Vinod Chopra, 1989, Darr/Yash Chopra, 1992, Gardish/Priyadarshan, 1993, Is Raat ka Subah Nahin/Sudhir Mishra, 1994, and Satya/Ram Gopal Varma, 1998]. Asian Film Cultures : This series will continue from mid August with a set of Iranian films, in collaboration with the Iranian Cultural Centre. The Schedule for Sarai Film Series IV follows. All films will be screened in the Seminar Room, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi, 110054, at 4: 30 pm. 1. Friday, July 27, 2001, 4:30 pm After Hours USA, 1985, 97 minutes Director: Martin Scorsese, We are pleased to start the series with Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985), a comedy about urban paranoia. A meek word-processing operative ventures forth to date a neurotic blonde in New York's Soho district, and is ensnared by a nightmare bohemian city in a cascading series of strange encounters, uncannily recurring visual motifs and a careening sexual paranoia. Catching the master of visceral cinema in an uncharacteristic comic mode, After Hours also showcases the arresting camera work and editing of long term collaborators Michael Ballhaus and Thelma Schoonmaker. 2. Friday, August 3, 2001, 4:30 pm Don't Look Now, UK/Italy, 1973, 110 minutes Director: Nicholas Roeg Roeg's psychic thriller out of a Daphne du Maurier short story develops a tactile, intricate weave of associations amongst bodies, memories, imaginative projections, aural and visual textures. Its remarkable opening passage develops perceptual linkages amongst the placid surfaces of a pond, shards of glass, reflections in a mirror, and the colour red as it seeps from an obscure figure on an architect's slide into the doom laden narrative world. Readable as a meditation on the folly of seeking to bring about order and ward off intimations of mortality through the linear sequencing of film narrative, it's also hauntingly effective taken straight up as an occult film. 3. Friday, August 10, 2001, 4:30 pm Peeping Tom UK 1960, 103 minutes Director: Michael Powell The great British director Powell became the object of a hate campaign in the British press with his last film, an essay on the relations between cinema, sexual aggression and the film spectator. Released just before Hitchcock's Psycho, Peeping Tom has a protagonist, Mark, who photographs nudes for the pornographic press and is focus puller on a film set. This marginal man had a traumatic childhood at the hands of a father whose clinical experiments with his son's emotions are captured in a stunningly shot home movie; his subjectivity becomes inseparable from that of the camera as vehicle of aggression and fear in a culture whose secret passion is the degraded female body. Strange dissonances abound, as when the English protagonist is played by the Austrian actor Karl Boehm, evoking associations across film history with Peter Lorre's tortured child murderer in Fritz Lang's M (1931). And some of the reaction against the director must have come from the portrait of British society, as the film penetrates the banal surfaces of everyday life to uncover a seedy underbelly of an under-the-counter dirty magazine trade supplied by murky soft porn studios. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: