From dak at sarai.net Thu Aug 4 13:18:50 2005 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 13:18:50 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] SARAI NEWSLETTER AUGUST 2005 Message-ID: <42F1C862.5080609@sarai.net> ********************************************************************************************************************** ***************************************** SARAI NEWSLETTER AUGUST 2005 *********************************************** ********************************************************************************************************************** Welcome to the Sarai newsletter. We are currently reformulating the newsletter in terms of its content, so besides regular features such as information about the monthly film curation and forthcoming events and seminars, we also hope to give you a sense of the many activities Sarai is involved in - reports on meetings we have attended, resource materials created in various research nodes in Sarai, responses from participants to events and so on. Do write in telling us what you would like to read in the newsletter, events and workshops which you would like more information on, and also ideas for collaboration you would like to explore with us. The newsletter is a one-way list, so for feedback and other inquiries write to dak at sarai.net. For friends living or studying in, or near, Delhi University, a new and improved method of commuting to Sarai has been inaugurated with the Delhi metro. Hop in at 'Vishwavidyalaya' and hop off at 'Civil Lines'. Hope to see many of you this Friday! Read on... Aarti Sethi [Outreach] +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[CONTENTS]] EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS 1. Seminars @ Sarai: Postcolonialism and the Problem of Translation, S. Shankar 2. Workshops @ Sarai: Student Stipends + Independent Fellowship Workshop 3. Masterclass @ Sarai: Digital Video Masterclass, Kabir Mohanty FILM 4. Film @ Sarai: Gangsters RESOURCES 5. Resources @ Sarai: Contested Commons/Trespassing Publics DVD 6. Broadsheet @ Sarai: Forthcoming Sarai.txt 2.3 CONVERSATIONS 7. Sarai in Kerala: Report on Free Software/Free Society meet in Trivandrum, Kerala. 8. A Measure of Anacoustic Reason: Video Sound installation by Raqs Media Collective at Venice Biennale, 2005 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS]] ======================================== Seminar @ Sarai: Language Seminar Series ======================================== Postcolonialism and the Problem of Translation presentation by S. Shankar Tuesday, 16 August, 3:30 p.m., Sarai seminar room Both in its metaphoric recourse to the trope of translation, as well as its skepticism of translation practice, postcolonial theory has generally associated translation mainly with colonial violence. Drawing on his own practical experience as a translator, as well as the “translation” of the Tamil film /Roja/ into Hindi, S. Shankar will suggest the limitations of this approach and argue for a more supple and optimistic approach to translation within postcolonial contexts. (S. Shankar is Associate Professor in the Department of English, and Director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is the translator of the full-length Tamil play 'Water!', and the author of two novels). ================= Workshops @ Sarai ================= Independent Research Fellowship Workshop 24, 25, 26 and 27 August 2005 Each year, for the past four years, we have supported a number of independent and often interdisciplinary projects that are key to Sarai's design of a distributed research network, under the Independent Research Fellowships Programme. The programme breaks away from the traditional conception of research, and the researcher as an activity which is limited to, and a figure who inhabits, the university/academic structure. The fellowships supports researchers working on the interface between popular culture, urban space and technological creativity. This year too, August will see the return of the researchers to Sarai for a four day intensive workshop during which they will make their final research presentations. A full list of the current cycle of projects is available at: http://www.sarai.net/community/fellow.htm *** Student Stipends Workshop for Research on The City 30 – 31 August, 2005 Sarai supports young research scholars for short term studentships to facilitate research on urban life in South Asia. Covering a wide frame of geo-cultural regions from Kerala and Goa, to Darbhanga and Nowgong, stipendiaries come from a number of disciplines including literature, history, geography, urban planning and media studies, to name a few. In the course of the nine months of the stipendship, apart from financial support, stipendiaries were invited to participate in two workshops (in Delhi and Bangalore) to discuss their ideas and experiences of research in the field. During the course of the stipendship, researchers interacted closely with academicians of urban studies and shared their research with a community of scholars and practitioners on urbanstudygroup at sarai.net In the coming workshop, researchers will present their final research addressing a wide range of themes. These include: contested citizenship in Nowgong, the weekly market of Shani Bazaar in Delhi, the construction of labor identity in colonial Cochin, dalits and the digital world in the small town of Darbhanga, the politics of new urban masculinities, the location of cinema in colonial Kerala, visual interior spaces of restaurants in Bangalore, and localities, migrants and the construction of the other in Goa. A full list of the current cycle of projects is available at: http://www.sarai.net/community/student_stipend.htm =================== Masterclass @ Sarai =================== DIGITAL VIDEO IMAGE MASTERCLASS Tutor: Kabir Mohanty Call For Applications: This workshop will focus on the basic parameters of video-imaging - exposure, focus, horizontal axes movements, namely panning left and right, its vertical axes movements, namely tilting up and down. If one has a lot of prior experience in video, this workshop does not ask you to leave anything behind. On the contrary, to bring to the basics, all the compositional preparedness that one already has. However the workshop does not presume a prior familiarity with the medium. The workshop assumes that the practitioner is will handle the camera herself. (Kabir Mohanty works in film and in video, in the former as a film director of an ensemble form shooting in 35mm. In video, he works more as a solo artist, bringing to video the hands-on, performative aspect of music or drawing. His films and videos have been shown at many festivals and art venues in India, and abroad). The duration of the workshop is five weeks commencing from Wednesday, 31 August 2005. The participants will meet every Wednesday and Saturday, thereafter from 3 pm to 7 pm. The last class is on Saturday 1 October, 2005. Participants will get two weeks to prepare the final works which shall be submitted on Saturday, 15 October 2005 Those interested may send a short resume with a one-page note on why they want to attend the workshop, and a sample of creative work from any of the following mediums - photography, painting or sculpture (stills of work), a piece of music performed or composed, video, film or a piece of prose/poetry to: Iram Ghufran, Sarai Media Lab, Sarai- CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 54 iram at sarai.net Samples of work submitted shall not be returned. Last Date for applications: 5 August, 2005 Selected participants will be informed on email by 16 August, 2005 Masterclass Fee: Rs. 2000/- to be paid after confirmation of selection. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[FILM]] ===================================== Film @ Sarai: August – September 2005 ===================================== GANGSTERS This month's short curation looks at two gangster films, set in widely different eras - prohibition era Chicago and contemporary Los Angeles. Both these films show us the 'lawless' underworld as being governed by strict codes of conduct and the ritualised performance of violence. (As a character in Miller's Crossing says, “If you can't trust a fixed fight, what can you trust?”) But beyond this, the gangster film, as imbued with the off kilter humour and dark sensibilities of the Coen Brothers and Takeshi Kitano, shows us the world of illegality governed by ethical imperatives and a moral vision, however bleak. The screenings begin at 4.30 pm and are followed by a discussion over coffee in the cafe. ||Miller's Crossing|| Directed by Joel Coen, 1990, 115 minutes 5 August 2005 "It's gettin' so a businessman can't expect no return from a fixed fight. Now, if you can't trust a fix, what can you trust?” The intricate world of big-city organised crime is constructed upon rigid customs and codes of proper behavior. In this exhilaratingly stylized, witty, dark gangster film set in the prohibition era, Bernie Bernbaum has blatantly chosen to violate the rules. Therefore, according to the gangster's code, Bernie deserves to die. Against his own better judgment - and the counsel of his right-hand man, Tom Reagan -- mob boss Leo refuses to grant permission to rub out Bernie. Not for business reasons, as it turns out, but for personal ones. Tom fears that Leo is going "soft". And that's when the mobsters' warped but precariously maintained moral/ethical structure - the operating construct that allows them to continue to "do business" - begins to collapse... ||Brother|| Directed by Takeshi Kitano, 2000, 114 minutes 12 August 2005 Brother continues celebrated director Takeshi Kitano's focus on Japanese gangster culture, but for the first time in a Kitano production, most of the action takes place outside Japan, in the smog-filled streets of Los Angeles. Brother centers on Yamamoto (played by Kitano), an aging Tokyo gangster left isolated after his boss is murdered in a war between yakuza families. After receiving a tip-off that he is a marked man, Yamamoto flees to Los Angeles, where he manages to track down his younger brother. Sent to the US to study, his brother is now involved in street-level dope dealing. Yamamoto quickly assesses the situation, and uses a minor dispute between his brother and a supplier to commence a murderous drive to the top of L.A.'s crime world. Along the way, he builds a new family of African- and Japanese-American 'brothers', imbuing the Americans with yakuza notions of honour and loyalty. Their 'business' expands rapidly, until they run foul of the mafia, triggering a war from which only one side can emerge alive. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[RESOURCES]] In our search to find new modes of public rendition and dissemination of research, we curate sets of print, web and digital resources. These include digital resources created by research nodes such as the CD produced by the PPHP research node, and the audio archive of the City One conference organised in February 2004. Now available is a DVD from the 'Contested Commons, Trespassing Publics' conference on intellectual property, inequality and conflict organised by Sarai-CSDS and the Alternative Law Forum in January 2005. The DVD contains an audio archive of the presentations and discussions, video files of interviews with speakers, pdf files of some of the papers papers presented, and an annotated bibliography on intellectual property and the public domain. The DVD is a useful resource for anyone interested in emerging debates around intellectual property and the public domain. Write to us if you would like a copy of the Contested Commons DVD. For the programme, paper abstracts and audio files of the conference, visit: http://www.sarai.net/events/ip_conf/ip_conf.htm ================== Broadsheet @ Sarai ================== Forthcoming: Sarai.txt 2.3: THE STATE YOU ARE IN (August 15 - November 15, 2005) Through what registers can we try to articulate the matrices of anxiety that are part of everyday living? How do movement, space, design change because of fear, uncertainty, anxiety? This edition of Sarai.txt emerged as a response to the increasing levels of violence against women, escalating in two incidents of rape in the last month, in the city of Delhi. Sarai.txt is a quaterly broadsheet of Sarai. Content includes: - The Day I Got Verified – Field notes, Taha Mahmood, researcher, Information Society, Sarai - Inside the Locality – Aparajita De, Sarai Independent Fellow 2004 - The Clap – Shveta Sarda - Unsettling Memories - Notes from Emma Tarlo's lecture (City Conference, Sarai) - Tasty Images, Inadequate Smells - Monya - Whose Hands Are Sullied – Lakshmi Kutty, Sarai Independent Fellow, current cycle - Late Night Show – Madhavi Tangella, Sarai Independent Fellow, current cycle - Review of 'Naukar Ki Kameez' – Hansa Thapliyal, reader-list Text versions of previous txt issues can be accessed at: txt 2.1: SHIFT https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2005-April/005449.html txt 2.2: TRANSMIT https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2005-June/005796.html Write in to broadsheet at sarai.net for feedback. Write to broadsheet at sarai.net for copies of txt 2.2 and txt 2.3. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[CONVERSATIONS]] =============== Sarai in Kerala =============== Report on 'Free Software/Free Society' Four-nation conference on freedom in computing, development and culture. 28 -29 May 2005, Trivandrum, Kerala Ravikant and Aarti from Sarai attended the Free Software/ Free Society meet in Trivandrum, Kerala. The meet extended over two days and participating teams came from Brazil, Italy, Venezuela and India. The conference was organised as a series of plenary sessions, and working group meetings. The sessions were quite diverse. Interestingly for a FLOSS meet, the focus was often not so much on the technology per say, but rather the social life of technology. This emerged directly from the organisers' conviction that a discussion about technology was also a discussion about the production of culture. Also interesting was the experiences shared by the group on the Venezuelan experience with the international patent regime. Venezuela does not allow patents to be granted on software, and on what could be termed 'life' – products derived from organisms such as DNA, plant substances and so forth. The Venezuelan government itself actively promotes the use of non-proprietary software in all its offices. This was an interesting lesson for us as it was an example of a successful partnership between a government committed to certain social goals which were also shared by civil-society groups. ============================== A Measure of Anacoustic Reason ============================== By Raqs Media Collective (produced at the Sarai Media Lab, Delhi and at Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga) Installation with 1 projection, 4 screens, 4 dialogues, 4 lecterns and a lightbox Shown at ICon: India Contemporary at Venice Biennale 2005 (14 June-31 July, 2005) A Measure of Anacoustic Reason is an installation that registers a process of thinking about forms of reasoning that insulate themselves from listening. The installation sees the act of 'turning a deaf ear', as the unwillingness or inability to listen to the voices that refuse to be accommodated into the master narratives of progress, of instrumental reason and the domestication of space through the geomancy of corporations and nation-states. The visitor is invited to undertake his/her own audit of anacoustic reasoning through a meditation on a series of dialogues and rebuses that encrypt a set of paradoxes about the grandiose follies of seeking to rule the world by not listening to it. Additional Credits Sound Editing: Iram Ghufran Print Design: Mrityunjay Chatterjee Production : Ashish Mahajan For images of the installation please see http://www.raqsmediacollective.net/anacoustic.html http://www.universes-in-universe.de/car/venezia/bien51/eng/ind/img-02.htm +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ END OF NEWSLETTER