From dak at sarai.net Mon Jun 3 21:23:39 2002 From: dak at sarai.net (dak at sarai.net) Date: Mon, 03 Jun 2002 15:53:39 GMT Subject: [Sarai Newsletter]June 2002 Message-ID: <20020603.15533900@saumya.sarai.kit> Contents I Seed Grant Fellowship Presentations II Launch of Online Labour Archive III New Initiatives @ SARAI IV Website Updates V Hindi Website VI Films @ SARAI: "A Cinema of Anxiety Series: The Living Dead" --------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------- I Seed Grant Fellowship Presentations Last year we had provided support to independent researchers studying forms and practices in contemporary media and urban experiences. The projects delved into and critically probed varied urban environments and experiences, issues of law and justice, cultural practices and representational strategies. Much of the material and the insights generated from these fellowships will feed into ongoing projects at Sarai and form part of the urban archive that is simultaneously being put together at Sarai. The effort, we also hope, will stimulate public interest and activity in these areas. The researchers have been visiting Sarai and presenting the work done so far. Below is a brief outline of some of the projects. 1. Shahar ke Nishan: Politics of Visual Spaces in Delhi Reading everyday signs of the city to decipher urban micro-politics. Sadan Jha & Prabhas Ranjan Sadan and Prabhas have been studying hoardings, posters and wall-writings in Delhi, Patna and Jammu. They have tried to capture the complexities in these local forms of advertisement which are both products as well as producers of a relationship between agencies of globalization and traditional culture. These advertisements lead them to those processes in and through which local symbolic spaces work hand in hand with standard symbolic spaces. 2. Bangla Urban Folk Songs Exploration of the Bangla urban folk/rock/pop music in contemporary Calcutta. Avishek Ganguly Avishek traces the recent upsurge of Urban Music in Calcutta to 'Moheener Ghoraguli', a little-known band formed in 1977. Their music, the first successful articulation of a globalized late-modernity in Bangla urban songs, dissipated quietly. The last decade saw a revival of experimental Bangla modern songs with Suman Chattopadhyay. While the success of Suman's experiments emboldened veterans like Pratul Mukhopadhyay and Ranjan Prasad to take up their guitars once again, it also set the stage for a host of new performers: bands like Poroshpathor, Chondrobindoo, Cactus, Abhilasha, Bhoomi and soloists like Anjan Dutta and Nachiketa. This music, says Avishek, is the cultural expression of the contemporary metropolitan. 3. Sahibabad Sounds A media project concerned with youth mandali [performative gang cultures] Hansa Thapliyal & Vipin Bhatti Hansa and Vipin have been a building a soundscape based on the experiences of a group of boys growing up in Sahibabad - a suburb of Delhi which also borders a village. The complex set of identities borne out of this "village-city difference" find expression in comic storytelling that is a form of group entertainment. 4. Local Hero: David Dhawan's Govinda Concerned with the mofussil aesthetic and ideology of Bollywood's enduring popular cast. Achal Prabhala While studying 'Govinda', the character created by David Dhawan in his films Achal finds that it conforms largely to patterns of the outsider-insider battle, and the patriarchal hirearchy of the Hindi film in general even while seemingly departing from Hindi film norms. He also finds the treatment of Govinda by the english language media remains that accorded to a subaltern, assuming an audience of similar class inclinations. He draws a parallel in the treatment of Laloo Prasad Yadav, the Bihar politician. 5. Project MilJul: Alternative Interfaces for Mobile Phones Interface design concerned with vernacular visual idiom for mobile phone interfaces. Priya Prakash Priya has been looking at the possibility of designing mobile phones for ordinary citizens. She conducted a detailed survey in spaces inhabited by the working class in Mumbai eg. market places, local trains etc. Her study looked at existing forms of tele-communication, need for mobile phone usage and threw up interesting possibilities and situations where wireless communication technology could be used. 6. Graphic Novel (Comic-Manga) on a City A proposal to create a graphic novel on city life in Delhi. Sarnath Banerjee Sarnath has tried to draw on his experiences in Delhi to create characters and plots for his comic novel. The "narrative" is centered around a roadside bookstall located in Connaught Place. Characters come and go, interact with the eccentric owner and draw from their experiences in other locations. There is an attempt to capture the dispersed character of Delhi, and experiment with new forms in the graphic novel. The novel is under production. II. Launch of Online Labour Archive May 1st, 2002 saw the launch of the first public domain digital archive on labour in India. Sarai provided technical consultancy to V.V.Giri National Labour Institute, Noida, to set-up the online version of the archive. The archive's user database is customised from Greenstone, a software under General Public License. To check out the archive log on to http://www.indialabourarchives.org or click on http://www.sarai.net/archive/archive.net III. New Initiatives @ SARAI i. IPR and the Knowledge/ Culture Commons Towards a cultural interrogation of law New media and its movements like the open source movement is challenging traditional notions of property, authorship, originality and ownership. The project, initiated by Lawrence Liang & Sudhir Krishnaswamy, looks at ways in which these challenges affect our understanding of Intellectual Property Rights and explores alternate accounts of IPR that may be required to argue for a larger notion of the public domain or commons. The project also looks at expanding this study to similar social movements in the form of open technologies, open art and open law. http://www.sarai.net/mediacity/newmedia/essays/ipr.htm ii.New Discussion Lists Sarai has been hosting several online discussion lists in the past few months. There are two new additions: a. The Digi Archive mailing list is a platform to discuss procedures, problems and possibilities of digital archives. This a collaboration with Ashish Rajadhyaksha, CSCS (Bangalore), NLI (Noida) & Sarai. To subscribe click on http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/digi-archive b. The Commons Law mailing list is an extension of the IPR & Knowledge/Culture Commons Project. This list seeks to build a community interested in the Public Domain/Commons and law. For more information click on http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law IV. Website Updates The website has undergone many changes in content and design. New sections have been added and much of the content has been updated. 1. The Language/Popular Culture segment is a space for engagement with the public domain, constituted by creative production and critical reflection in and on languages in India and elsewhere. New essays have been added to this section: Language in the Prison-House of Nationalism Ravikant reviews 'Hindi Nationalism' written by Alok Rai http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/ravikant_alok.htm Hindi's Unhappy Consciousness Aditya Nigam's review article takes off from Alok Rai's 'Hindi Nationalism' to talk of larger issues facing contemporary Hindi http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/adiyta.htm "I'm trying to counter the Babhani takeover of the Hindi belt" A discussion between Alok Rai, Shahid Amin & Palash Krishna Mehrotra http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/interview_tahelk a.htm The Writer of Middles A collection of previously published middles by Anuradha Roy http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/anuradha.htm Contests Around Obscenity in Late Colonial North India [pdf] The article by Charu Gupta explores the idea of obscenity in the Hindi print domain of the 1920's and 30's http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/dirty_hindi.pdf Loneliness of a Long Distance Bihari A reflection on the idea of 'Bihariness' by Tarun Bhartiya http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/lonely_tarun.htm Dilli Mein Uneende (Sleepless in Delhi) A translation of Gagan Gill's journey with a Delhi autodriver http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/gagan_sleepless. htm 2.Free Software Kit We introduce the 'Free Software Kit' on our website. The Kit is an attempt at building a user manual for free software. It will carry technical reviews, usage guidance, user comments and information on new softwares. We invite contributions and comments from you to build on the exisiting material and make this a comprehensive manual. For more details log onto http://www.sarai.net/freesoftware/software_kit/intro.htm 3. Ibarat 'Ibarat' is a wall magazine taken out by the eight members of the CyberMohalla Project. The participants, between 14 to 20 years of age, plan to print it once every two months. This month the 'Ibarat' was pasted on almost 25 walls in their neighbourhood - LNJP Colony, near Ajmeri Gate in New Delhi. CyberMohalla is part of the Outreach programme of Sarai to help shape processes of reflection and expression in the local community. Along with Ankur, an NGO which runs an experimental education project, CyberMohalla has set up a tactical media lab on free software, which is now dubbed "CompuGhar"(ComputerHouse). The 'Ibarat' is available on our website in Hindi and is also translated into English. For the Hindi link click http://www.sarai.net/community/cybermohalla/iabrat01/page1.html If you have problems reading the Hindi text then download the font - 'shusha' - from http://hindi.sarai.net/download.htm To access the English version click on http://www.sarai.net/community/cybermohalla/iabrat01/english.htm V. Hindi Website The Hindi site now gets its own URL. Simply type in http://hindi.sarai.net to log on. i. Websadhan updated Many new links have been added to the Hindi site. Check them out at http://hindi.sarai.net/websadhan/websadhan.htm ii. Lok Sanskriti This is a platform for concepts, ideas and writings on themes not usually addressed by either mainstream academics or mainstream media. This month's additions include essays by Aditya Nigam on political culture, globalisation and identity politics, especially issues related to dalit identity. Click on the following links to read them. http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/viswayan_aditya.pdf http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/paschim_aditya.pdf http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/marx_aditya.htm http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/dalit1_aditya.pdf http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/dalit_aditya.pdf http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/jamana_aditya.htm http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/adhunikta_aditya.htm We welcome comments on the website. Do write in with ideas, suggestions and material that you may wish to display on our site. VI. Films @ SARAI: "A Cinema of Anxiety Series: The Living Dead" Curated by Ravi Vasudevan In its Cinema of Anxiety Series, Sarai celebrates the realm of the undead, a zone of anxiety in human perception stalked by zombies, ghosts and phantoms, characters who refuse to rest easily in their graves. This spectral universe emerges from a variety of psychological and soci-political motivations, from persistent feelings of guilt, a lingering unease about the violence attending civilizational processes, fears and anxieties erupting from human loss sustained in warfare and ethnic cleansing, and the continued power exercised by old societies over the new. This is an idiosyncratic assembly of films, ranging from the exquisite work of Andrey Tarkovsky, through the horror films of low budget American independent film maker George Romero and the French auteur Georges Franju, and the atmospheric films of Hindustani cinema's Kamal Amrohi in the reincarnation genre. Long live the uncanny, let the ravaged souls of the undead stalk and cast fear over this barbarous society! Please note: All screenings are on Fridays, 4:30 pm, at the Seminar Room, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054. The films are listed in the order of screening. 1. 7th June, 2002 Night of the Living Dead (1968), USA, B&W, 96 mins Directed by George Romero In 'Night of the Living Dead', a brother and sister, estranged and ill at ease with each other, mourn the loss of their father in a rural graveyard. A figure, shuffling towards them from the edge of the frame suddenly lurches forward murderously. The dead are coming back to life, their purpose singular and relentless, to consume the living. In the long night of unceasing terror which follows, several people barricade themselves inside a rural house in an attempt to survive the hordes of shambling zombies. George Romero re-invents the low budget horror film, casting superior unknowns and gnawing away at anxieties and fears produced by an age of large scale warfare and mass annihilation. He lights and photographs the piece almost as if it were an avant-garde underground film. The crisscrossing light beams, the shadows, the darkness set ablaze by fires are sharp compliments to the mood and events in the film. Use of 8mm image, reminiscent of home videos, intensifies the uncanny scenario, associating amateur family documentation with nightmare imaginings.   2.  14th June, 2002 Mahal (1949), India, B&W, 162 mins Directed by Kamaal Amrohi 'Mahal', Amrohi's first independent directorial venture and one of Bombay Talkies' last and biggest hits, is a complicated ghost story psychodrama. Shankar moves into an abandoned mansion with a tragic history. He notices his resemblance to a portrait of the mansion's former owner and sees the ghost of the man's mistress, Kamini. As in his remarkable Meena Kumari films, 'Daera' (1953)and 'Pakeezah' (1971), Amrohi shows his great skills in evoking a mysterious universe peopled by figures who live in the shadows of previous lives and decaying societies. Attentive to the slowing cadences of stillness, circularity and repetition, his films are eerie, sombre testaments to a dying world which will not let go, draining away the life of his protagonists, transmuting them into somnambulists and wraiths who restlessly wander the graveyard and the ghostly haveli. Ashok Kumar, who headed Bombay Talkies in these fading years of the once powerful studio, conjures up a fine performance as the obsessive, haunted figure drawn by Lata's beckoning voice, presaging an important tradition of protagonists, as with Dilip Kumar in 'Madhumati' (1958) and Guru Dutt in 'Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam' (1962). 3.  21st June, 2002 Eyes Without a Face (1959), France,  B&W ,  87 mins   Directed by Georges Franju "This is Franju's art to turn the camera's gaze on faces and objects just long enough to brand them deeply." Godard Parisian police puzzle over the bodies of young women found with their faces mutilated. Behind these crimes is the renowned surgeon Genessier, whose daughter Christiane's face was badly mutilated in an accident. Genessier keeps her alive in his country home, seeking to reattach the mutilated women's faces to his daughter through a hetero-graft technique. However each attempt keeps ending in disaster as her body rejects the grafts. Georges Franju co-founded the Cinémathèque Francaise with Henri Langlois in 1937, and in 1949 completed his first film, 'The Blood of the Beast/Le Sang des Betes', a short unflinching documentary on the Paris slaughterhouses. Franju's childhood love for intoxicating stories of violence and savage villainy in pulp novels such as Fantomas and Judex later inspired him to create mystical thrillers like 'Eyes Without a Face', 'Judex' and 'Shadowman'. The clear, dreamlike texture of his films puts him in the circle of Cocteau, Buñuel and the other Surrealists. 'Eyes Without a Face', was written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, the French thriller writers whose work furnished films such as 'Les Diaboliques' (1955), Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' (1958) and the disembodied limbs horror film 'Body Parts' (1991). 4.  28th June, 2002 Solaris (1972), USSR, Colour, 167 mins Directed by Andrey Tarkovsky Based on a novel by the noted Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, Tarkovsky's 'Solaris' is often described as the Soviet 2001 - "Star Trek as written by Dostoevsky". The film concerns a troubled, guilt-ridden scientist sent to investigate strange occurences on a space station orbiting Solaris, a mysterious planet with an intelligent ocean capable of penetrating the deepest recesses of the subconscious. Confronted on his arrival by the incarnation of a long-dead lover, the protagonist is forced to relive the greatest moral failures of his past. The film is magnificently mounted in widescreen and colour and offers a fascinating, felicitous marriage between Tarkovsky's characteristic moral/metaphysical concerns and the popular format of science fiction, a genre for which the director expressed  no particular affection, but to which he would return again, more obliquely, just as cerebrally in 'Stalker' and 'The Sacrifice'. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- That's all this month. We hope to see some of you at the screenings. As always waiting to hear from you at dak at sarai.net 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: