From dak at sarai.net Wed Sep 1 15:22:28 2004 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 15:22:28 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] SEPTEMBER 2004 Message-ID: <200409011522.28360.dak@sarai.net> CONTENTS - SEPTEMBER 2004 (1) Workshop Reports .KDE Translation Review Workshop Student Stipends Workshop for Research on the City Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowships Workshop (2) The Knowledge and Democracy Colloquium, 7th Sept. (3) Film @ Sarai: 9/11 Chronicles 10th Sept. World Ka Centre, Dir. Faisal Rehman and Bilal Minto 17th Sept. Fahrenheit 9/11, (2004), Dir. Michael Moore 24th Sept. Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997), Dir. Patricio Guzmán ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (1) WORKSHOP REPORTS: KDE Translation Review Workshop August 1-3, 2004 Sarai-CSDS, Delhi The workshop started with a demo of Indic computing. Since most of the core contributors were familiar with the Localisation work the participants split up into two teams and immediately launched into the review. Two computers were kept side by side one with english and the other with hindi translation. Each team worked on one application at a time. If particular strings appeared incorrect in the given context there would be a discussion, at times across board, to find a replacement translation. Participants found translation of Kmail, Konqueror and Editorial softwares easy, but translating the Control Centre posed some challenges. The teams managed to review and revise most of the key KDE applications which constitute 20% of all KDE. The good news is that these will have a bearing on 80% of translations. The revisions have been entered and released. A longer time frame is required for a full review. The team now feels that they are now in a position to take up revision of Mozilla and a full-scale revision of Open Office, a version of which has been done by NCST (now merged with C-DAC). A couple of new participants with Urdu skills also looked sufficiently enthused and wish to start work on Urdu localisation of KDE as soon as possible. Sarai Floss Fellows G. Karunakar, Co-ordinator, Indlinux and Ravi Shrivastava, Hindi translator, Gnome & .Kde came in for the workshop from Mumbai and Ratlam respectively. Other participants included journalist Pankaj Dubey; Sanjeev Kumar, writer and teacher in Delhi University; Vibhas Chandra Verma, writer and teacher; Yogender Dutt, translator; Rizwanul Haq , writer and Sarai Independent Fellow; Imtiyaz Ahmed, writer and teacher at Delhi University; Md Abdul Khaliq, Teacher and Sarai Independent Fellow; Satyakam, tech consultant; Mrinal Vallari, freelance journalist; Prabhat Jha, Ankur and Baldeo Purusharth, Assistant Collector, Manipur. Participants from Sarai included Aniruddha Shankar, Avinash Kumar, Ravikant and T. Meyarivan. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Student Stipends Workshop for Research on the City August 19-20, 2004 Sarai-CSDS, Delhi Every year the Sarai programme supports young research students for short-term studentships to facilitate research on urban life in South Asia. The process includes a public call for applications in September-October, a teaching workshop for the selected students, and a public presentation in August of every year. Uniquely the Sarai programme also includes practitioners (architecture and media students) as well classic research disciplines in universities. This year, the programme culminated in a workshop on the 19th and 20th of August. Young researchers from all over India presented fourteen papers on a broad range of subjects. The panels were arranged according to the following themes: Witnessing the Urban: Memory, Event and Violence; Urban Histories; Neighbourhood, Market and Ecology; Work and Space; and Visual Cultures. Each panel included a discussant, assigned from in-house as well as from among the stipendiaries, who facilitated the question/answer session that followed each presentation. Several presentations were supported by audiovisuals showing a new ease with media among researchers. The presentations were both in English and Hindi. Creative, experimental and anecdotal presentations alternated with the more conventional. There was a lively interactive session on the themes, methods and sources of urban research and the possibilities of networking and resource building, which was initiated by Prabhu Mahapatra, Solomon Benjamin, Ravi Sundaram and Awadhendra Sharan. The stipendiaries offered detailed feedback with regard to their experience of the workshop itself and the preparatory activities and dialogue initiated by Sarai for several months preceding the actual event. It was suggested that if the papers were circulated in advance, they would speak more to each other as well as to the audience; that the student could post electronically in the public domain on the existing Sarai urban web list. Some students asserted that the research experience in the fellowship had been "fun"; that it had helped them to understand their own academic practices better; that they might extend their stipendiary research into wider practice or develop it further in scholarly ways. All found the cross-disciplinary format of the studentship both dynamic and challenging. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowships Workshop August 26-28, 2004 The Independent Research fellowships are key to Sarai's design of a distributed research network. Each year the fellowships support researchers working on the interface between popular culture, urban space and technological creativity. We see this as a foundation for a network of socially available, publicly accessible knowledge about key issues in contemporary cultural, intellectual and technological practice. The Sarai Independent Research Fellowships completed its third year with this workshop in which thirty-eight projects were presented over the three days. The presentations were arranged in twelve panels according to the following themes: Transformations in Space and Time; Locating 'Indian' Cinema; Forming, Re-forming Locations; Designing Interventions; Ethnographic Spaces (1); Ethnographic Spaces (2); Plotting Urban Struggles; In Search of the Image; The Hidden History of Sound; Tracing Texts; Regulating the Laws of Regulation; and The Past, Present and Future of Work. The programme ended with a performance that came out of the project titled 'Socialist Wives', enacted in the Sarai Interface Zone on the evening of the last day. The papers covered a fascinating range of material, and many were in creative audiovisual formats. In his opening statement, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Fellow, Sarai, remarked that Sarai had always wanted to break new ground with regard to research; in particular, Sarai was keen to facilitate the opening of the field to the researcher as practitioner; support the mode where the practice itself and its methodologies became a form of research, where research was not restricted to the conventional definition of 'findings';and support the public rendering of such knowledge. A detailed report of the presentations and the work done by this year's Independent Fellows will be available soon on the Sarai website. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (2) THE KNOWLEDGE AND DEMOCRACY COLLOQUIUM Tuesday, September 7, 2004, 4:30 pm Library, CSDS The Knowledge and Democracy Colloquium (collaborative programme between Sarai-CSDS, the Library and Lokayan) on 3rd August, CSDS Delhi, was the first of what is envisioned as a monthly colloquium around the themes of knowledge and democracy, both defined in the broadest possible sense. The discussion began with short presentations which attempted to flag, and gesture towards, some issues that subsequent discussions on knowledge production might engage. The first set of concerns related to knowledge and its relationship to reality in terms of protocols, and procedures of organisation. The second cluster related to concerns regarding control and controllers, the management and manipulation of knowledge by power structures. Thirdly concerns related to the processes of dissemination of knowledge and here issues of access were raised. Another cluster looked at subversions, elisions and silences in the production of discourses on knowledge. An interesting point of departure when speaking of silences would be to reflect upon the political economy within which knowledge production is situated, where the control of academic journals by media monopolies determines the kind of research that is undertaken. Here new sites of knowledge production become important where the earlier broad categories are breaking down. So today, for instance, history was reproduced as evidence in a court of law, and 'traditional knowledge' appeared in debates about intellectual property rights. We hope subsequent meets will tease out and explore the tensions upon which a knowledge production universe is situated. The next meeting is scheduled for September 7, 2004, at 4:30 PM in the CSDS Library. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (3) FILM @ SARAI: 9/11 Chronicles This September at Sarai we are screening three films that are linked to events that occurred on September 11 - two films that spin off from 9/11/2001 and a third film that revisits a banned film and suppressed memories of a bloody coup in Chile on 9/11/1973. The series kicks off on the 10th of September with a Pakistani film. Please note, there is NO film scheduled for Friday, 3rd September. All screenings will be followed by a discussion. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Friday, September 10, 2004, 4:30 pm World Ka Centre, (2002), 58 minutes Directed by Faisal Rehman and Bilal Minto The film chronicles the events of a day in the life of Hassan, a middle-class youth in Pakistan, and other people associated with him in different ways. The day is September 11, 2001, and Hassan is all set to leave for New York in the evening where his cousin, Iqbal, is a cab driver. Many hopes are pinned on his departure to the land of opportunities but Hassan and his friends are happiest because they feel he is going to a country where happiness and the means to afford it are in abundance. The day starts before the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City which take place in the evening by Pakistan Standard Time. At a loss about how to spend his last day in Pakistan, as any other day, Hassan goes about marking time randomly. He lurks outside the house of a girlfriend, visits an upper class acquaintance to smoke dope, and is convinced by his neighborhood buddies to spend the latter part of the day with them to celebrate their last day together. The boys carry on their party through the evening oblivious of the fact that 9/11 has taken place while others come to know of it and react in different ways. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Friday, September 17, 2004, 4:30 pm Fahrenheit 9/11, (2004), 122 minutes Directed by Michael Moore Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore examines the Bush administration's financial ties to Saudi Arabia and the bin Laden family in 'Fahrenheit 9/11', a well-researched, fast-paced, highly controversial and important documentary that won the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Using actual footage and declassified documents, Moore takes a detailed look into political events both before and after the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, beginning with the polarizing Supreme Court decision that ultimately gave the state of Florida and the 2000 election to George W. Bush. Moore reveals how the U.S. government helped the bin Laden family return to Saudi Arabia immediately after September 11, when all other flights were still grounded; and examines military recruiting techniques in such poor areas as his own hometown of Flint, Michigan. He even attempts to get congressmen to enlist their own sons and daughters into the military. The writer-director also visits with the troops, including a hospital where soldiers are having second thoughts about America's involvement in Iraq, and spends time with a family whose eldest son is fighting in Iraq. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, September 24, 2004, 4:30 pm Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997), 52 minutes Directed by Patricio Guzmán Introduced by Film Scholar Ranjani Mazumdar Hearing only the official version, a generation of young Chileans has grown up with little knowledge of the historical facts surrounding the events of September 11, 1973. On that day Salvador Allende's democratically elected government was overthrown in a bloody coup by General Augusto Pinochet's army. Patricio Guzmán's landmark film 'The Battle of Chile' (1976) documented the "Popular Unity" period of Allende's government, the tumultuous events leading up to the coup, and Allende's death. But the memory of those times and events, captured so powerfully in 'The Battle of Chile', was largely barred from the collective consciousness of the Chilean people. Now, Guzmán has returned to show 'The Battle of Chile' in his homeland for the first time, and to explore the terrain of the confiscated (but maybe reawakening) memories of the Chilean people. 'Chile, Obstinate Memory' visits with Chileans who experienced the coup first-hand (some of whom are seen in 'The Battle of Chile' from 25 years ago). Survivors reminisce as they watch that film, recognizing lost comrades and recalling their courage, gaiety and love of life. Programme subject to last minute changes. -- Ranita Chatterjee 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 dak at sarai.net Wed Sep 1 15:46:53 2004 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 15:46:53 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] SEPTEMBER 2004 Message-ID: <200409011546.53823.dak@sarai.net> CONTENTS - SEPTEMBER 2004 (1) Workshop Reports .KDE Translation Review Workshop Student Stipends Workshop for Research on the City Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowships Workshop (2) The Knowledge and Democracy Colloquium, 7th Sept. (3) Film @ Sarai: 9/11 Chronicles 10th Sept. World Ka Centre, Dir. Faisal Rehman and Bilal Minto 17th Sept. Fahrenheit 9/11, (2004), Dir. Michael Moore 24th Sept. Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997), Dir. Patricio Guzmán ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (1) WORKSHOP REPORTS: KDE Translation Review Workshop August 1-3, 2004 Sarai-CSDS, Delhi The workshop started with a demo of Indic computing. Since most of the core contributors were familiar with the Localisation work the participants split up into two teams and immediately launched into the review. Two computers were kept side by side one with english and the other with hindi translation. Each team worked on one application at a time. If particular strings appeared incorrect in the given context there would be a discussion, at times across board, to find a replacement translation. Participants found translation of Kmail, Konqueror and Editorial softwares easy, but translating the Control Centre posed some challenges. The teams managed to review and revise most of the key KDE applications which constitute 20% of all KDE. The good news is that these will have a bearing on 80% of translations. The revisions have been entered and released. A longer time frame is required for a full review. The team now feels that they are now in a position to take up revision of Mozilla and a full-scale revision of Open Office, a version of which has been done by NCST (now merged with C-DAC). A couple of new participants with Urdu skills also looked sufficiently enthused and wish to start work on Urdu localisation of KDE as soon as possible. Sarai Floss Fellows G. Karunakar, Co-ordinator, Indlinux and Ravi Shrivastava, Hindi translator, Gnome & .Kde came in for the workshop from Mumbai and Ratlam respectively. Other participants included journalist Pankaj Dubey; Sanjeev Kumar, writer and teacher in Delhi University; Vibhas Chandra Verma, writer and teacher; Yogender Dutt, translator; Rizwanul Haq , writer and Sarai Independent Fellow; Imtiyaz Ahmed, writer and teacher at Delhi University; Md Abdul Khaliq, Teacher and Sarai Independent Fellow; Satyakam, tech consultant; Mrinal Vallari, freelance journalist; Prabhat Jha, Ankur and Baldeo Purusharth, Assistant Collector, Manipur. Participants from Sarai included Aniruddha Shankar, Avinash Kumar, Ravikant and T. Meyarivan. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Student Stipends Workshop for Research on the City August 19-20, 2004 Sarai-CSDS, Delhi Every year the Sarai programme supports young research students for short-term studentships to facilitate research on urban life in South Asia. The process includes a public call for applications in September-October, a teaching workshop for the selected students, and a public presentation in August of every year. Uniquely the Sarai programme also includes practitioners (architecture and media students) as well classic research disciplines in universities. This year, the programme culminated in a workshop on the 19th and 20th of August. Young researchers from all over India presented fourteen papers on a broad range of subjects. The panels were arranged according to the following themes: Witnessing the Urban: Memory, Event and Violence; Urban Histories; Neighbourhood, Market and Ecology; Work and Space; and Visual Cultures. Each panel included a discussant, assigned from in-house as well as from among the stipendiaries, who facilitated the question/answer session that followed each presentation. Several presentations were supported by audiovisuals showing a new ease with media among researchers. The presentations were both in English and Hindi. Creative, experimental and anecdotal presentations alternated with the more conventional. There was a lively interactive session on the themes, methods and sources of urban research and the possibilities of networking and resource building, which was initiated by Prabhu Mahapatra, Solomon Benjamin, Ravi Sundaram and Awadhendra Sharan. The stipendiaries offered detailed feedback with regard to their experience of the workshop itself and the preparatory activities and dialogue initiated by Sarai for several months preceding the actual event. It was suggested that if the papers were circulated in advance, they would speak more to each other as well as to the audience; that the student could post electronically in the public domain on the existing Sarai urban web list. Some students asserted that the research experience in the fellowship had been "fun"; that it had helped them to understand their own academic practices better; that they might extend their stipendiary research into wider practice or develop it further in scholarly ways. All found the cross-disciplinary format of the studentship both dynamic and challenging. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowships Workshop August 26-28, 2004 The Independent Research fellowships are key to Sarai's design of a distributed research network. Each year the fellowships support researchers working on the interface between popular culture, urban space and technological creativity. We see this as a foundation for a network of socially available, publicly accessible knowledge about key issues in contemporary cultural, intellectual and technological practice. The Sarai Independent Research Fellowships completed its third year with this workshop in which thirty-eight projects were presented over the three days. The presentations were arranged in twelve panels according to the following themes: Transformations in Space and Time; Locating 'Indian' Cinema; Forming, Re-forming Locations; Designing Interventions; Ethnographic Spaces (1); Ethnographic Spaces (2); Plotting Urban Struggles; In Search of the Image; The Hidden History of Sound; Tracing Texts; Regulating the Laws of Regulation; and The Past, Present and Future of Work. The programme ended with a performance that came out of the project titled 'Socialist Wives', enacted in the Sarai Interface Zone on the evening of the last day. The papers covered a fascinating range of material, and many were in creative audiovisual formats. In his opening statement, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Fellow, Sarai, remarked that Sarai had always wanted to break new ground with regard to research; in particular, Sarai was keen to facilitate the opening of the field to the researcher as practitioner; support the mode where the practice itself and its methodologies became a form of research, where research was not restricted to the conventional definition of 'findings';and support the public rendering of such knowledge. A detailed report of the presentations and the work done by this year's Independent Fellows will be available soon on the Sarai website. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (2) THE KNOWLEDGE AND DEMOCRACY COLLOQUIUM Tuesday, September 7, 2004, 4:30 pm Library, CSDS The Knowledge and Democracy Colloquium (collaborative programme between Sarai-CSDS, the Library and Lokayan) on 3rd August, CSDS Delhi, was the first of what is envisioned as a monthly colloquium around the themes of knowledge and democracy, both defined in the broadest possible sense. The discussion began with short presentations which attempted to flag, and gesture towards, some issues that subsequent discussions on knowledge production might engage. The first set of concerns related to knowledge and its relationship to reality in terms of protocols, and procedures of organisation. The second cluster related to concerns regarding control and controllers, the management and manipulation of knowledge by power structures. Thirdly concerns related to the processes of dissemination of knowledge and here issues of access were raised. Another cluster looked at subversions, elisions and silences in the production of discourses on knowledge. An interesting point of departure when speaking of silences would be to reflect upon the political economy within which knowledge production is situated, where the control of academic journals by media monopolies determines the kind of research that is undertaken. Here new sites of knowledge production become important where the earlier broad categories are breaking down. So today, for instance, history was reproduced as evidence in a court of law, and 'traditional knowledge' appeared in debates about intellectual property rights. We hope subsequent meets will tease out and explore the tensions upon which a knowledge production universe is situated. The next meeting is scheduled for September 7, 2004, at 4:30 PM in the CSDS Library. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (3) FILM @ SARAI: 9/11 Chronicles This September at Sarai we are screening three films that are linked to events that occurred on September 11 - two films that spin off from 9/11/2001 and a third film that revisits a banned film and suppressed memories of a bloody coup in Chile on 9/11/1973. The series kicks off on the 10th of September with a Pakistani film. Please note, there is NO film scheduled for Friday, 3rd September. All screenings will be followed by a discussion. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Friday, September 10, 2004, 4:30 pm World Ka Centre, (2002), 58 minutes Directed by Faisal Rehman and Bilal Minto The film chronicles the events of a day in the life of Hassan, a middle-class youth in Pakistan, and other people associated with him in different ways. The day is September 11, 2001, and Hassan is all set to leave for New York in the evening where his cousin, Iqbal, is a cab driver. Many hopes are pinned on his departure to the land of opportunities but Hassan and his friends are happiest because they feel he is going to a country where happiness and the means to afford it are in abundance. The day starts before the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City which take place in the evening by Pakistan Standard Time. At a loss about how to spend his last day in Pakistan, as any other day, Hassan goes about marking time randomly. He lurks outside the house of a girlfriend, visits an upper class acquaintance to smoke dope, and is convinced by his neighborhood buddies to spend the latter part of the day with them to celebrate their last day together. The boys carry on their party through the evening oblivious of the fact that 9/11 has taken place while others come to know of it and react in different ways. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Friday, September 17, 2004, 4:30 pm Fahrenheit 9/11, (2004), 122 minutes Directed by Michael Moore Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore examines the Bush administration's financial ties to Saudi Arabia and the bin Laden family in 'Fahrenheit 9/11', a well-researched, fast-paced, highly controversial and important documentary that won the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Using actual footage and declassified documents, Moore takes a detailed look into political events both before and after the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, beginning with the polarizing Supreme Court decision that ultimately gave the state of Florida and the 2000 election to George W. Bush. Moore reveals how the U.S. government helped the bin Laden family return to Saudi Arabia immediately after September 11, when all other flights were still grounded; and examines military recruiting techniques in such poor areas as his own hometown of Flint, Michigan. He even attempts to get congressmen to enlist their own sons and daughters into the military. The writer-director also visits with the troops, including a hospital where soldiers are having second thoughts about America's involvement in Iraq, and spends time with a family whose eldest son is fighting in Iraq. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, September 24, 2004, 4:30 pm Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997), 52 minutes Directed by Patricio Guzmán Introduced by Film Scholar Ranjani Mazumdar Hearing only the official version, a generation of young Chileans has grown up with little knowledge of the historical facts surrounding the events of September 11, 1973. On that day Salvador Allende's democratically elected government was overthrown in a bloody coup by General Augusto Pinochet's army. Patricio Guzmán's landmark film 'The Battle of Chile' (1976) documented the "Popular Unity" period of Allende's government, the tumultuous events leading up to the coup, and Allende's death. But the memory of those times and events, captured so powerfully in 'The Battle of Chile', was largely barred from the collective consciousness of the Chilean people. Now, Guzmán has returned to show 'The Battle of Chile' in his homeland for the first time, and to explore the terrain of the confiscated (but maybe reawakening) memories of the Chilean people. 'Chile, Obstinate Memory' visits with Chileans who experienced the coup first-hand (some of whom are seen in 'The Battle of Chile' from 25 years ago). Survivors reminisce as they watch that film, recognizing lost comrades and recalling their courage, gaiety and love of life. Programme subject to last minute changes. -- Ranita Chatterjee 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 dak at sarai.net Fri Sep 17 12:23:10 2004 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 12:23:10 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Call for Proposals: Sarai-CSDS Independent Research Fellowships Message-ID: <200409171223.10639.dak@sarai.net> CALL FOR PROPOSALS - SARAI-CSDS INDEPENDENT FELLOWSHIPS, 2004-05 Applications Invited for Independent Research Fellowships The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi 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. Sarai is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. (For more information, visit ) *Who Can Apply? * Sarai invites independent researchers, media practitioners, software designers and programmers, urbanists, architects, artists and writers, as well as students (postgraduate level and above) and university/college faculty to apply for support with regard to research-driven projects. We support projects from all over India, and have an established track record of supporting deserving project proposals that originate outside the metropolitan centres of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. We would like to see the focus of our fellowship programme expand to support more research in smaller towns and non-urban areas. The duration of the fellowship is six months, beginning from 1 January 2005. The final presentation of the research project will be made in Delhi in August 2005. *Why Research ? What Do We Mean by Research? * Sarai is committed to generating public knowledge and creativity through research. By research we mean both archival and field research, practice-based research and forays into theoretical work, as well as any process or activity of an experimental or creative nature--in the audiovisual media, for instance, as well as in journalism, the humanities and social sciences, computing and architecture. We are especially interested in supporting projects that formulate precise and cogent intellectual questions, reflect on modes of understanding that implicate knowledge production within a critical social framework, foreground processes of gathering information and of creating links between bodies of information. We also encourage research that is based on a strong engagement with archival materials and imaginative ways of tackling the question of the public rendition of research activity. **The Experience of Previous Years** This is the fourth year in which Sarai is calling for proposals for such fellowships. We would like to describe how the process has worked in previous years, as an indication of what applicants should expect. We have so far supported a hundred research projects over the past three years, including work in the areas of popular culture, literature, urban ethnography, architecture, geography, creative writing, graphic arts, new media, cinema studies, FLOSS software, histories of media forms and practices, sexuality, studies of technology and culture, and oral history. Successful applicants have included freelance researchers, academics, media practitioners, writers, journalists and activists. (For a detailed overview of successful proposals from the previous years, see _http://www.sarai.net/community/fellow.htm_) The project proposals, postings and reports were submitted in English, Hindi or a combination of the two languages. We have seen that projects which set important but practical and modest goals were usually successful, whereas those that may have been conceptually sound but lacked sufficient motivation to actually approach a research objective in the field usually did not sustain themselves beyond the interim stage. Sarai interacts closely with the researchers over the period of the fellowship, and the independent fellows make a public presentation of their work at Sarai at the end of their fellowship period. During the term of their fellowship each fellow is required to make a posting to the Sarai Reader List every month, reporting on the development of their work. These postings, which are archived, are an important means by which the research process reaches a wider discursive community. They also help us to trace the progress of work during the grant period, and understand how the research interfaces with a larger public. Fellows also receive structured but informal feedback from Sarai in stages during the course of their work. Submissions by fellows include written reports and essays, photographs, tape recordings, pamphlets, maps, drawings and html presentations. On occasion, fellows have also incorporated performance into their final presentations. **What Happens to the Research Projects?** The annual research projects add to our now substantial archival collections on urban space and media culture. These are proving to be very significant value additions to the availability of knowledge resources in the public domain. Researchers are free to publish or render any part or all of their projects in any forms, independently of Sarai (but with due acknowledgment of the support that they have received from Sarai). Sarai Independent Research Fellows have gone on to publish articles in journals, work towards the making of films, exhibitions, websites, multimedia works and performances, and the creation of graphic novels, soundworks and books. We actively encourage all such efforts. **What We Are Looking For** Like previous years, this year too we are looking for proposals that are imaginatively articulated, experimental and methodologically innovative, but pragmatic and backed up by a well argued work plan which sets out a timetable for the project, as well as suggests how the support from Sarai will help in generating/providing 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, migration, surveillance, intellectual property, social/digital interfaces, urban violence, street life, technologies of urban control, health and the city, the political economy of media forms, digital art and culture, or anything that the applicants feel will resonate with the philosophy and interests that motivate Sarai's work. We are particularly interested in supporting work that delves into what we are beginning to call 'Histories of the New'. This can include excavating the histories of different forms of media practice (early photography, cinema, print, radio, the music industry), as well as the histories of urban spaces and phenomena, neighbourhoods in cities, the evolution of utilities, transport and communications networks (electricity, telegraphy, telephony, the early Internet in India, railways, roads, urban public transport), labour, histories (including oral histories and biographical research) of dissident political movements, milieus and cultures and people associated with them. Again, Sarai supports innovative and inventive modes of rendering work into the public domain. Proposals which pay attention to this principle will be particularly valued. Also, proposals that include the collection of materials for our archive will be appreciated: in the past, fellows have submitted photographs, recordings, printed matter, maps, multimedia and posters related to the subject of their study to this archive. Preferred Approaches: We especially welcome the articulation, within the text of the proposal, of innovative and interdisciplinary methodologies that gesture towards how research, practice, and delivery or rendition methods will dovetail into each other in the project. **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 the fellows to be present at Sarai. Fellowship holders will be free to pursue their primary occupations, if any. **What Do You Need To Send?** There are no application forms. Simply post your: - Proposal (not more than 1000 words) - A clear work plan (not more than one page) - An updated CV (not more than two pages) - Work samples (maximum two) - Envelopes should be marked - "Attention: Short Term Independent Research Fellowship" (Email proposals will not be considered). Proposals may be sent in English or Hindi. Mail these to: Independent Fellowship Programme, Sarai, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India. Inquiries: vivek at sarai.net Last date for submission: October 30, 2004 The list of successful proposals for 2004-2005 will be notified on the Sarai website by 15 December 2004 Note: Proposals from teams, partnerships, collectives and faculty are welcome, as 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, partnership, registered body or institutional entity. Applicants who apply to other institutions for support for the same project 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. -- 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 dak at sarai.net Wed Sep 29 13:01:02 2004 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 13:01:02 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] FILM @ SARAI Message-ID: <200409291301.02042.dak@sarai.net> FILM @ SARAI FOCUS ON THE DOCUMENTARY All screenings are held in the Seminar Room, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054. Friday, October 1, 2004, 4:30 pm Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers (2003), 52 minutes Directed by Eric Gandini Introduced by Pradip Saha, Managing Editor, Down To Earth 'Surplus' is a video essay on contemporary political economy of the globe. Gandini successfully employs television and music video aesthetics to narrate the culture of consumption. One may describe it as a 50 minute long music video on contemporary political economy too! Stunning editing and breathtaking cinematography turns the notion that 20% of the world is gobbling up 80% of its resources from pure statistics into an overwhelming emotional experience. Against a familiar backdrop of cynical world leaders, corporate captains and Microsoft fanatics, the film focuses on the controversial anti-globalisation guru, John Zerzan, whose call for property damage has inspired many to take to the streets. From the explosive riot days in Genoa 2001 to $7000 sex dolls in the US, 'Surplus' explores the cold violence and destruction triggered by the cycle of consumption and production. An intense visual odyssey filmed for over three years in eight different countries. The film has won several awards in 2003 including the Best Short Documentary at IDFA, International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam, and Best Film at FICA, the International Festival of Environmental Film, held in Goias, Brazil. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, October 15, 2004, 4:30 pm Fahrenheit 9/11, (2004), 122 minutes Directed by Michael Moore Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore examines the Bush administration's financial ties to Saudi Arabia and the bin Laden family in 'Fahrenheit 9/11', a well-researched, fast-paced, highly controversial and important documentary that won the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Using actual footage and declassified documents, Moore takes a detailed look into political events both before and after the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, beginning with the polarizing Supreme Court decision that ultimately gave the state of Florida and the 2000 election to George W. Bush. Moore reveals how the U.S. government helped the bin Laden family return to Saudi Arabia immediately after September 11, when all other flights were still grounded; and examines military recruiting techniques in such poor areas as his own hometown of Flint, Michigan. He even attempts to get congressmen to enlist their own sons and daughters into the military. The writer-director also visits with the troops, including a hospital where soldiers are having second thoughts about America's involvement in Iraq, and spends time with a family whose eldest son is fighting in Iraq. Repeat screening due to popular demand. -- Ranita Chatterjee 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