From dak at sarai.net Wed Jul 10 10:46:37 2002 From: dak at sarai.net (dak at sarai.net) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 05:16:37 GMT Subject: [Sarai Newsletter]July 2002 Message-ID: <20020710.5163700@saumya.sarai.kit> Contents: I New Initiatives @ Sarai: i. OPUS ii. Linux Access Project iii. Workshop on New Delhi II New @ www.sarai.net III Book Launch @ Sarai: 'Galiyon Se / by lanes' IV Documenta Platform @ Kassel V Talk @ Sarai VI Film @ Sarai Dear Friends, Necessary renovation at the CSDS have forced us to cut down on some of our public activities in the next couple of months. We have scheduled a few events this month to keep the momentum going and hope to continue as before in the coming months. Do bear with us for the time being and drop in whenever you can. And now on to the newsletter where among other things we proudly announce the launch of OPUS and `Galiyon Se / by lanes', the first book from the Compughar. I New Initiatives @ Sarai: i. Introducing OPUS OPUS is an acronym for "Open Platform for Unlimited Signification!" It is a unique online space and software for people, machines and codes to share, create and transform images, sounds, videos and texts. The basic idea of the OPUS project is to create an online community of creative people from all over the world. OPUS allows anyone who logs on to present their work to an international public and invite other members to comment and reflect on that work through the attached discussion boards. Other members are also free to take elements within the original artwork and use them as the starting point for a new artwork, without affecting the original. In this sense OPUS is a platform for open publishing and follows the same rules as those that operate in all free software communities. The source (code), in this case the video, image, sound or text, is free to use, to edit and to redistribute as is the code, i.e. the software itself that lies behind OPUS. OPUS is inspired by the free software movement and is an attempt to transpose the principles that govern the creation of free software on to general cultural production. Each media object archived, exhibited and made available for transformation within OPUS carries with it data that can identify all those who have worked on it. This means that while OPUS enables collaboration, it also preserves the identity of Authors/Creators (no matter how big or small their contribution may be) at each stage of a work's evolution. In this way, OPUS can become a model for a practical realization of the idea of a Digital Commons of  creative work on the Internet. OPUS users are governed by a license that protects them from their work being taken out of the commons and into the regimen of proprietary protocols.   OPUS, which  has been written using PHP and MySQL is the first comprehensive free software  application and environment dedicated to cultural production to come out of the free software movement in South Asia. OPUS has been conceived and produced entirely at the Sarai Media Lab. Work on it began in September 2001 and the Beta version was uploaded in April 2002.  OPUS was launched as a publicly available free software application, in June 2002 at Documenta 11. The coding of OPUS was undertaken by Silvan Zurbruegg (from the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, Zurich who was on a residency at Sarai), with Pankaj Kaushal (the Garage Project at Sarai) . Joy Chatterjee (Sarai Media Lab) worked on the design of the OPUS Interface.  Bauke Freiburg (a student at the New  Media Department of the University of Amsterdam, also on a residency in Sarai) assisted the Raqs Media Collective on the documentation and worked alongside on the architecture of OPUS. www.opuscommons.net ii. Linux Access Project Sarai, in association with Linux Users Group, Delhi, recently initiated the Linux Access Project. This project attempts to generate awareness and use of Free Software in schools in Delhi. As a first step the Free Software team at Sarai is creating a Red Hat-based distribution network that will be easily available on a CD. A few schools willing to start using Linux-based systems have been identified and a series of workshops are planned through the year to introduce and familarise students to Free Software programs. The Free Software Kit prepared by Supreet Sethi and Pankaj Kaushal at Sarai will be distributed. Members of the project will also extend technical support. iii. Workshop on New Delhi Sarai will be organising a workshop on August 23 and 24, 2002, to explore new directions for research on "New Delhi". This will be a preliminary gathering to examine the possibilities of developing a collective that could engage with both new themes in Delhi's historical and contemporary life - environment, consumption, leisure - and also ways in which more traditional research subjects such as planning, housing, markets, transport, labour, identity and community relations etc. can be thought anew. We would welcome all those who are interested in pursuing research in these areas to join us. Please e-mail your interest to sharan at sarai.net. II. New @ the Sarai Website Time Travel to a Possible Self: Searching for the alternative cosmopolitanism of Cochin A cultural/psychological journey into Cochin by Ashis Nandy http://www.sarai.net/compositions/texts/works/cochin.PDF III. Book Launch @ Sarai: Release of `Galiyon Se / by lanes' 'Galiyon Se / by lanes' is a bilingual (Hindi & English) compilation of writings by a group of eleven 15 to 20 year-old young adults (mostly school drop outs) from the Compughar (Cybermohalla Project) at LNJP colony, Delhi. Emerging from interaction that these young adults have had with some people at Sarai, the book is in the form of diaries reflecting on their lives in the basti (colony), sharing their lived realities, through conversations and play with words, ideas, concepts and images, to form a narration of the everyday. The diary entries are about city spaces, and the basti in the city - roads, lanes, water, elections, perceptions, celebrations, accidents, dislocations, evictions, work situations, technology, selves, construction, travelling, time, life stories. They include interviews, stories, essays, write-ups and photographs of the basti. In this sense, the diaries are layers of images, words and writings, with each word and entry connected with a whole world of ideas, conversations and narratives. To us at Sarai and Ankur, this selection evokes a sense of the everyday that gestures towards an intricate social ecology - a specific mode of writing the city that has rarely before been explored. 'Galiyon Se...' will be released on the 10th of July, 2002. It will also be available as PDF files on our website.  http://www.sarai.net/community/cybermohalla/book01/bylanes.htm IV. Documenta Platform @ Kassel Sarai is one of the co-producers for Documenta11, an extensive international exhibition of contemporary visual arts, currently being held in Kassel, Germany. The Documenta exhibition (since its inception in the 1950s) is widely regarded as being a benchmark for contemporary aesthetic concerns and practices. This year, Documenta 11, curated by Okwui Enwezor and his team of six co curators - Carlos Basualdo, Mark Nash, Octavio Zaya, Sarat Maharaj, Susanne Ghez and Ute Meta Bauer, brings together the work of 116 artists from all over the world. To know more about Documenta11, log on to www.documenta.de i. Installation An inter media installation (28.28N/77.15E::2001/2002) on the mark of law on the urban space by the Raqs Media Collective, as well as OPUS in a media lab environment, are being shown at Documenta11 till September 15, 2002. ii. Mailing List Sarai is also hosting a mailing list - - an online discussion on artistic and cultural practices in relation to Documenta11. This online discussion is being initiatied by the scholarship holders of the education project team at Documenta 11. The list is administered by Elisabeth Gerber and Olga Kopenkina. For more information on this list, log on to http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion-d11 or contact the administrators at d11educationproject at yahoo.com iii. Discussion Platform "The Making of the Digital Commons in the Contemporary" This is a three day forum of discussions scheduled to be held in Kassel from the 18th to the 20th of July. The broad theme for discussion is as follows - "The imperative, challenges and possibilities of media practice in the context of repression, legal violence and new enclosures in the contemporary". Themes & speakers include: 1. The Culture of the Copy Ravi Sundaram, City/Media Scholar, Sarai, Delhi 2. The Cultural Politics of Shared Creativity in the Digital Public Domain Nancy Adajania, Art Critic & Editor 'Art India', Mumbai 3. Intellectual Property Rights, Law and Cultural Creativity Lawrence Liang, Lawyer and Legal Scholar, Alternative Legal Forum, Bangalore 4. The Digital Commons Geert Lovink, New Media Theorist, Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam /Sydney This event is co-ordinated by Raqs Media Collective & Sarai, Delhi, with Roomade, Brussels and Documenta11, Kassel. For more details, contact Luise Essen at Documenta11 le at documenta.de and Raqs Media Collective, at Sarai raqs at sarai.net V. Talk @ Sarai The talk will take place at 3:30 pm in the Seminar Room, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054 Urban Cultures and Politics Seminar July 25, Thursday Ecosocialist Manifesto a talk by Joel Kovel Department of Social Studies, Bard College, New York VI. Film @ Sarai The film screening will take place at 4:30 pm in the Seminar Room, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054. Focus on the Documentary July 26, Friday The Men in the Tree, Colour, 98 minutes directed by Lalit Vachani in Hindi/English/Marathi/Sanskrit with English subtitles In early 1993, Lalit Vachani and the Wide Eye Film team completed a documentary film, The Boy in the Branch. Set at the headquarters of the RSS in Nagpur, the film was about the indoctrination of young Hindu boys by the RSS branch. Eight years later, Vachani returned to Nagpur to meet the characters from his earlier film. At one level, The Men in the Tree is a film about memory. It is a documentary in the form of a personal revisit where a filmmaker returns to the issues, the locations and the subjects of an earlier film. At another level, The Men in the Tree is a political documentary on the RSS. It is about some of the individuals, the stories and the myths, the buildings and the branches that enable the growth of Hindu fundamentalism. Cheers, Ranita The Sarai Programme Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054. Tel: 3960040, 3951190 Fax: 3928391, 3943450 www.sarai.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dak at sarai.net Mon Jul 22 18:40:57 2002 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 18:40:57 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter]Talk by Joel Kovel Message-ID: <02072218405706.00972@saumya.sarai.kit> Dear Friends, Sarai is happy to announce the revival of its `Urban Cultures and Politics Seminar' series with a talk on ECOSOCIALIST MANIFESTO by Joel Kovel, Professor of Social Studies, Bard College, New York on Thursday, July 25, 2002, 3:30 pm at the Seminar Room, CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 54. Joel Kovel is the co-author, with Michael Lowy, of the `Ecosocialist Manifesto', an attempt to build bridges worldwide between radicals who look to an ecological society beyond capital. He has also authored nine books and over a hundred essays spanning a wide range of issues. His books include `White Racism' (1970); `The Age of Desire: Case Studies of a Radical Psychoanalyst' (1981); `Against the State of Nuclear Terror' (1984); `Red Hunting in the Promised Land: Anticommunism and the Making of America' (1994); and most recently, `The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World' (Zed, 2002). He is also an editor of the journal, `Capitalism, Nature, Socialism'. His other interests include work with the anti-war movements, and soldarity with the Nicaraguan and Cuban revolutions. In the US he has been active with the Green Party. He ran for the United States Senate from New York in 1998 and also challenged Ralph Nader for the Presidential nomination in 2000. His recent essay, Passage to India, reflects on a visit to India earlier this year. Warm regards, Ranita Programme Coordinator The Sarai Programme Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054. Tel: 3960040, 3951190 Fax: 3928391, 3943450 www.sarai.net