From dak at sarai.net Mon Sep 1 12:46:19 2003 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2003 12:46:19 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Call for Contributions to Sarai Reader 04 : Crisis/Media Message-ID: <200309011246.19387.dak@sarai.net> Call for Contributions to Sarai Reader 04 : Crisis/Media (apologies for cross posting to subscribers of Sarai Reader List, Nettime, FibreCulture, BytesforAll & Commons-Law) I. Introducing the Sarai Reader Sarai, (www.sarai.net) an interdisciplinary research and practice programme on the city and the media, at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies invites contributions (texts and images) to Sarai Reader 04: Crisis/Media We also invite proposals to initiate and moderate discussions on the themes of the Sarai Reader 04 on the Reader List (http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list) with a view to the moderator(s) editing the transcripts of these discussions for publication in the Sarai Reader 04. For an outline of the themes and concerns of Sarai Reader 04, see concept outline below. To know about the format of the articles that we invite, see 'Guidelines for Submissions' below. The Sarai Reader is an annual publication produced by Sarai/CSDS(Delhi). The contents of the Sarai Readers are available for free download from the Sarai website (see urls below) Previous Readers have included: 'The Public Domain': Sarai Reader 01, 2001 (http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader1.html) 'The Cities of Everyday Life': Sarai Reader 02, 2002, (http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader2.html). And 'Shaping Technologies': Sarai Reader 03, 2003 (http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader3.html) The Sarai Reader series aims at bringing together original, thoughtful, critical, reflective, well researched and provocative texts and essays by theorists, practitioners and activists, grouped under a core theme that expresses the interests of the Sarai in issues that relate media, information and society in the contemporary world. The Sarai Readers have a wide international readership. Sarai Reader 04 will be partly based on the presentations made at a workshop jointly organized by Sarai - CSDS and the Waag Society - "Crisis/Media: The Uncertain States of Reportage". The workshop was held at Sarai-CSDS, Delhi in March 2003. For more details of the contents of this workshop, see http://www.sarai.net/events/crisis_media/crisis_media.htm Editorial Collective for Sarai Reader 04: Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Sarai, Delhi) and Geert Lovink (Media Theorist & Internet Critic, Brisbane) II. Crisis/Media: Concepts & Themes From the very beginning of this century we have hurtled on as if from crisis to crisis. As if all the ghosts of the 19th and the 20th centuries, decades of war, colonial plunder, totalitarian repression and the hardening of sectarian animosity had suddenly decided to come home to roost in a frenzied attempt at revisiting on the present all the accumulated tragedies of the past that we had thought we had left behind us as we gingerly made our way into our times. The images of planes crashing into skyscrapers, of entire cities being bombed into submission from the air, of occupying armies and fleeing civilians, of suicide bombers, ethnic cleansing and riot police assaulting unarmed demonstrators have branded themselves on to our consciousness with mounting frequency. These are the substance of the meditations of all our mornings, as we pick up the day's newspaper, switch on the radio in the kitchen, or the television in the living room, or log on to the internet, We have witnessed flash floods, epidemics, economic collapse, mass migrations and an intensification of the regimes of surveillance and control on a near global scale. Our newspapers, our television sets, our radios, our websites and our minds have become prisoners of war, and there seems to be no sign of a ceasefire in sight, at least as of now. The world we live in has also witnessed an enormous increase in the scale and complexity of communicative possibilities. An explosion of the means of delivering news, comment and images at rapid speed over diverse media has meant dispersal as well as amplification of the dynamics of any event or process, anywhere in the world. Satellite communications, a new telecom revolution, cheap electronic devices, computers and the Internet ensure that no moment goes un-reported. There is no moment that is not potentially global anymore. 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 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 war 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'. This accumulation of situations of crisis in the first three years of our century, and their rapid, almost real time dissemination in the media, have no doubt precipitated new opportunities for communicative action and global reflection, just as they have signalled an onset of a severe crisis within the media - a crisis of over-stimulation and under-statement, of exaggeration and exhaustion, of censorship and spin-doctoring, of fear and favour. More than at any other time before, the power and reach of the media, the potential of the usage of technologies of information and communication for control or for freedom, and the several intertwined professional, cognitive and ethical dilemmas that media practitioners face on a daily basis. All these require us to pause and take stock of the fact that the crises reported in the media have a bearing on the crisis of reporting in the media - That the media and the crisis that media require to be themselves today can no longer be seen as distinct categories, hence - CRISIS/MEDIA. We are interested in recognizing the fact that media today are located precisely along the intersections and fault lines that connect and divide representations (media events and processes) and structural problems. The Reader aims to excavate the relationships between these structures and the representations that accompany them. Crisis Media respond as much to wars and ongoing ethnic conflicts as they do to environmental crises or the AIDS epidemic and the SARS panic. Given this situation, how can Crisis/Media go beyond their historically framed task of 'correcting' mainstream opinions and actually experiment with other narratives? How can the global rise of mobile devices be utilized to 'receive, transmit and broadcast' peoples' stories as they occur, and by doing so, break the separation between reporters and the reported? Further, is it possible for us to begin to debate and problematize the whole notion of 'representation' itself, positing more immediate forms of testimony that resist mediatization? These are open questions, with no satisfactory and coherent answers, but Sarai Reader 04 would like to take them on, so as to map new territories of thought about media practice. A Preliminary List of Themes (these are not chapter or section headings, but point to areas of interest) could include: The Political Economy of Contemporary Media Forms Media Wars and Media in times of War: Weapons of Mass Distraction? Taking Sides and Speaking Truth: The Reportage of Ethnic Conflict and Civil Unrest Surveillance, Intelligence, Reportage: The Journalist and the Informer Brand Disloyalty: Critiques and Analyses of Immaterial Capital in the Information Age Aliens and Others: Media and Migration Reporting the Crises of Everyday Life Re imagining Tactical Media Evaluating Independent Media Strategies in the time of Globalization Mobile Maverick Media: the Technology and Politics of Dispersed and Mobile Media Forms Viral Media Communicable Diseases: Epidemics as Information The Body as Data Crises of Representation: Ethics, Epistemics, Aesthetics The Space for Free Speech Sarai Reader 04: Crisis/Media, seeks to engage with this situation by inviting a series of reflections by media practitioners (journalists, independent media activists, filmmakers, photographers, artists, commentators and editors) and thinkers, writers, scholars, activists and critics. We are looking for incisive analysis, as well as passionate writing, for scholarly and theoretical rigour as well as for critical and imaginative depth. We invite essays, reportage, diaries and memoirs, entries from weblogs, edited compilations of online discussions, photo essays, image-text collages and interpretations of found visual material. We are interested in testimonies from all theatres of global conflict - be they New York, London, Baghdad or Kabul, in reports from continuing crisis situations - in Kinshasa, Ahmedabad, Ramallah, and in essays and reflections that address the world from Delhi, Belgrade, Karachi, Beijing, Buenos Aires and Tehran. We are interested in anything from anywhere at all that makes for intelligent, provocative and critical encounters with the world we all live in. Contributors can also consider the structural, technological, rhetorical and aesthetic dimensions of understanding, interpreting and expressing aspects of what they see as situations of crisis. They can reflect on ecological crises, crisis within social institutions and the many unreported and unexamined crises of everyday life that be-devil the contemporary moment. Hate speech and unreflective testimonies of victim-hood, however, are not welcome. The Sarai Reader 4, like the previous Sarai Readers, will be international in scope and content, while retaining a special emphasis on reflection about and from areas that normally lie outside the domain of mainstream discourses. We are particularly interested in cutting edge writing and contributions from South Asia, South and Central America, South East Asia, China, Tibet and Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Australia. This is not an expression of a 'regional' or 'third world' bias; rather it is an affirmation of the fact that some of the most exciting emergent voices are located in these regions. We of course welcome innovative and critical contributions from Europe, North America and Japan. We are especially keen to shape the Reader in response to events such as the Next Five Minutes 4 Conference, and hope that some of the ideas that get generated in such events can find their way into the debates that the Reader hopes to embody. If you feel these issues and questions are of interest to you. If your practice, thought, curiosities, research or creative activity has impelled you to think about some of these issues, we invite you to contribute to Sarai Reader 04: Crisis/Media. III. Guidelines for Submissions Word Limit: 1500 - 4000 words 1.Submissions may be scholarly, journalistic, or literary - or a mix of these, in the form of essays, papers, interviews, online discussions ordinary entries. All submission, unless specifically solicited, must be in English only. 2.Submissions must be sent by email in as text, or as rtf, or as word document or star office/open office attachments. Articles may be accompanied by black and white photographs or drawings submitted in the tiff format. 3.We urge all writers, to follow the Chicago Manual of Style, (CMS) in terms of footnotes, annotations and references. For more details about the CMS and an updated list of Frequently Asked Questions, see http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq/cmosfaq.html For a 'Quick Reference Guide to the Chicago Manual of Style' - especially relevant for citation style, see - http://www.library.wwu.edu/ref/Refhome/chicago.html 4.All contributions should be accompanied by a three/four line text introducing the author. 5.All submissions will be read by the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader 04 before the final selection is made. The editorial collective reserves the right not to publish any material sent to it for publication in the Sarai Reader on stylistic or editorial grounds. All contributors will be informed of the final decisions of the editorial collective vis a vis their contribution. 6.Copyright for all accepted contributions will remain with the authors, but Sarai reserves indefinitely the right to place any of the material accepted for publication on the public domain in print or electronic forms, and on the Internet. 7.Accepted submissions will not be paid for, but authors are guaranteed a wide international readership. The Reader will be published in print, distributed in India and internationally, and will also be uploaded in a pdf form on to the Sarai website. All contributors whose work has been accepted for publication will receive two copies of the Reader. IV. Where and When to send your Contributions Last date for submission - December 1st 2003. (But please write as soon as possible to the editorial collective with a brief outline/abstract, not more than one page, of what you want to write about - this helps in designing the content of the reader). We expect to have the reader published by mid-February 2004. Please send in your outlines and abstracts, and images/graphic material to - 1. For articles, to Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Co Ordinator, Sarai Reader 04 Editorial Collective (shuddha at sarai.net) 2. For proposals to moderate online discussions on the Reader List, to Monica Narula, List Administrator, the Reader List (monica at sarai.net) 3. For images and/or graphic material, to Monica Narula, Co Ordinator, Media Lab (monica at sarai.net) The Sarai Programme Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 Tel: (+91) 11 23960040 (+91) 11 23942199, ext 307 Fax: (+91) 11 23943450 www.sarai.net From ranita at sarai.net Wed Sep 10 20:56:14 2003 From: ranita at sarai.net (ranita) Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 20:56:14 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Call for Proposals for Short Term Independent Research Fellowship Message-ID: <200309102056.14118.ranita@sarai.net> Proposals Invited for Short Term Independent Research Fellowship The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi What is Sarai? Sarai is a public initiative of media practitioners and scholars looking at media cultures and urban life. Sarai's interests are in the field of old and new media, information and communication technologies, free software, cinema, and urban space - its politics, built form, ecology, culture and history, with a strong commitment to making knowledge available in the public domain. It is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. For more information visit www.sarai.net Who Can Apply? Sarai invites independent researchers, media practitioners, software designers and programmers, urbanists, architects, artists and writers, as well as students (post graduate level and above) and university and college faculty to apply for support to research driven projects. Why Research? What do we mean by Research? Sarai is committed to generating public knowledge and creativity through research. Hence the support for research driven projects and processes. The fellowships are in the nature of small grants in order to emphasize the initiation and founding of projects that would otherwise go unsupported Here, by research we mean both archival and field research, and forays into theoretical work as well as any process or activity of an experimental or creative nature - for instance in the audiovisual media, as well as in journalism or the humanities and social sciences, or in computing and architecture. The Experience of Previous Years: This is the third year in which Sarai has called for proposals for such fellowships. We would like to spell out the way in which the process worked in the previous years, as an indication of what applicants should expect. The first year saw the selection of twenty proposals, in the second year thirty six proposals were selected. These included work towards projects based on investigative reportage of urban issues; essays on everyday life; a history of urban Dalit performance traditions; soundscapes of the city; a graphic novel about Delhi; a documentation of the free software movement in India; research on displacement and rehabilitation in cities; interpretative catalogues of wall writings and public signages; histories of cinema halls and studios in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata; a study of the world of popular fiction and many others. Successful applicants included freelance researchers, academics, media practitioners, writers, journalists and activists. For a detailed list of the proposals click on http://www.sarai.net/community/fellow.htm The projects were submitted in English, Hindi or a combination of the two languages. We have seen that projects that set important but practical and modest goals were usually successful, whereas those that may have been conceptually sound but lacked sufficient motivation to actually pursue a research objective on the field, usually did not take off beyond the interim stage. Sarai interacted closely with the researcher over the period of the fellowship and the independent fellows made monthly postings on a public list as well as a final presentation at Sarai. This enabled us to trace the development of work during the grant period and the fellows to obtain structured but informal feedback from us at Sarai in stages during the course of their work. Submissions at the end of the fellowship period included written reports and essays, photographs, tape recordings, audio CDs, pamphlets, maps, drawings and html presentations. What we are Looking For: As in the past, this year too we are looking for proposals that are imaginatively articulated, experimental and methodogically innovative, but which are pragmatic and backed up by a well argued work plan which sets out a time table for the project, as well as suggests how the support will help with specific resources (human and material) that the project needs. Suggested Themes: Sarai's interests lie in the city and in media. Broadly speaking any proposal that looks at the urban condition, or at media, is eligible. More specifically, themes may be as diverse as habitation, sexuality, labour, social/digital interfaces, urban violence, street life, technologies of urban control, health and the city, the political economy of media forms, histories of particular media practices, intellectual property law, migration, transportation, or anything that the applicants feel will resonate with the philosophy and interests that motivate Sarai's work. Sarai supports innovative and inventive modes of rendering work into the Public Domain. Proposals, which pay attention to this, will be particularly valued. Preferred Approaches: Innovative and interdisciplinary methodologies, that combine research, practice, and delivery or rendition methods will be especially welcome. Conditions: Applicants should be resident in India, and should have an account in any bank operating in India. The research fellowship would be available for up to six months and for a maximum amount of Rs. 60,000. The fellowships do not require an every day presence at Sarai. These are support fellowships and fellowship holders will be free to pursue their primary occupations, if any. What you need to send? There are no application forms. Simply post (snail mail) your - Proposal (not more than1000 words) - A brief workplan (not more than one page) - An updated CV (not more than two pages) - Work samples (maximum two. Work samples need not necessarily be in the same area as the proposed project) - Envelopes should be marked - "Attention : Short Term Independent Research Fellowship 2003" [Email proposals will not be entertained]. Proposals may be sent in English or Hindi. Mail these to: Ranita Chatterjee, Coordinator, Programmes, Sarai, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India. Enquires: dak at sarai.net Last date for submission: October 20, 2003. Note: Proposals from teams, partnerships, collectives, faculty are welcome, so long as the grant amount is administered by a single individual, and the funds are deposited in a single bank account in the name of an individual. Applicants who apply to other institutions for support for the same proposal will not be disqualified, provided they inform Sarai that support is being sought (or has been obtained) from another institution. The applicants should inform Sarai about the identity of the other institution.