From dak at sarai.net Thu Sep 1 20:12:22 2005 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:12:22 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] SEPTEMBER 2005 Message-ID: <4317134E.1000702@sarai.net> ********************************************************************************************************************** ***************************************** SARAI NEWSLETTER AUGUST 2005 *********************************************** ********************************************************************************************************************** Dear All, August has been a busy and exciting month at Sarai with the Independent Fellowship and Student Stipendship workshops. Short reports on both are included in the newsletter. September sees the launch of three new publications from Sarai, an event in JNU around the broadsheet, and the This Year This City public conversation on the year that was in Delhi. From this month on we are beginning a series of collaborative events in the city. These include conversations around the broadsheet and the readers. They also include film screenings at Khoj Studios. We hope to see many of you here in Sarai and at the 'city events' in JNU and Khoj. Aarti Sethi [Outreach] +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[CONTENTS]] EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS 1. Seminars @ Sarai: Tracking a Tramjatra, Mick Douglas 2. Conversations over a Broadsheet 3. This Year, This City FILM 4. Film @ Sarai: Remembering The Bomb RESOURCES 5. Resources @ Sarai: Bolnagari CD 6. Publications @ Sarai: Sarai Reader 05 + Deewan-e-Sarai + Medianagar 02 CONVERSATIONS 7. Reports on Independent Fellowship and Student Stipendship workshops. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS]] =========================================================== Seminar @ Sarai: Urban Cultures and Politics Seminar Series =========================================================== Tracking a Tramjatra presentation by Mick Douglas Thursday, 15 September 3:30 pm, Sarai seminar room Tramjatra is an ongoing project which since 1996 has brought together artists and the tramways communities of Melbourne (Australia) & Kolkata (Calcutta, India) to explore their cities through the medium of tramways. In the context of rising environmentalism and debates about the impacts of globalisation, tramjatra has demonstrated how new linkages can be made through a public arts practice of inter-cultural collaboration. Through a time where Kolkata’s struggling tramways have faced a persistent threat of closure and the operation of Melbourne’s tramways has been privatised and automated, the tramjatra project has sought to provoke a broader, global engagement in the culturally enriching and environmentally sustaining contribution that tramways can make to these cities. Mick Douglas will present the Tramjatra project and speak of his new book 'Tramjatra: Imagining Melbourne and Kolkata by Tramways'. (Mick Douglas is an artist working in the public realm and senior lecturer in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is the editor of 'Tramjatra: Imagining Melbourne & Kolkata by Tramways' (Yoda Press Delhi and RMIT Univ Press). His current research work explores 'transports' crossing between two key concerns: creative vehicles of cultural change and sustainable modes of transportation.) http://www.tramtactic.net ==================== This Year, This City ==================== This Year, This City 17 September 2005 3:30 pm Interface Zone, Sarai Shifts, transmissions, anxieties, exhilarations, public secrets, street-corner intimacies – what did the city say to you this year? For the past five years, Sarai has played host to a public conversation on the year that was, in this our city. This year too we extend to you an invitation to come and participate in a conversation on how different people have witnessed and experienced Delhi in 2004 – 2005. =============================== Conversations over A Broadsheet =============================== Jawaharlal Nehru University 8 September 2005 Outside Ganga Dhaba 6:30 pm Through what registers can we try to articulate the matrices of anxiety that are part of everyday living in cities? How do movement, space, design change because of fear, uncertainty, anxiety? Join us for a discussion around Sarai.txt 2.3 'The State You Are In'. Over the next few months we are meeting for informal discussions around the themes and ideas expressed in the Sarai.txt issues. To invite the broadsheet collective to share your experiences and reflections, and for more information on upcoming events, write to broadsheet at sarai.net +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[FILM]] From this September, we are happy to announce that film screenings curated by the Sarai programme will also be screened at the Khoj artists collective. This marks a collaborative initiative between Sarai and Khoj. This new series of screenings will run on Thursdays at Khoj at 6:00 pm and on Fridays at Sarai-CSDS at the usual time, 4:30 pm. These screenings have been an integral part of Sarai's programming and public profile for five years. The screenings have been a space for people from diverse backgrounds - academics and students, practitioners, artists and researchers – to converse with each other about the way in which films speak to the times that they were made in, and to the times we live in. We hope that with this initiative a new public will find the Sarai screenings, and that Sarai will find a new public, bringing new energies and approaches into talking and thinking about films. Hoping to see many of you, and many good films. films at khoj – Thursdays, 6.00 pm films at sarai – Fridays, 4.30 pm ====================================== Film @ Sarai: September – October 2005 ====================================== REMEMBERING THE BOMB This month sees the first of Sarai's forthcoming series of film curations on remembering technologies – both iconic and everyday – which characterise the 'modernity' we inhabit. A month after the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima, we choose to reflect on the nuclear bomb, and how its representation has changed in films over the years. The films in this curation include the noir Kiss Me Deadly(1955), the landmark Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), Dr. Strangelove(1964) on the politics of the Cold War, The Hulk (2003) and Original Child Bomb on the Hiroshima bombing. | | Kiss Me Deadly | | Directed by Robert Aldritch 1955, 106 minutes, fiction Khoj - 1st September Sarai - 2nd September Kiss Me Deadly (1955) is the definitive, apocalyptic, nihilistic, science-fiction film noir - rich with symbolic allusions, labyrinthine and complex plot threads, and Cold War fear and nuclear paranoia about the atomic bomb. Based upon pulp fiction writer Mickey Spillane's 1952 sensationalist detective best-seller of the same name, the film features a sleazy private investigator named Mick Hammer whose trademark is brutish violence and speed. The tough, ruthless cop's selfish, solitary pursuit of the white-hot apocalyptic object in a mysterious 'Pandora's box' ("the great whatzit") leads to nuclear catastrophe and annihilation - although there is no explicit mention of the words bomb, atomic, or thermo-nuclear in the film. Shot over a one month period in late 1954, this low budget film is a masterpiece of cinematography, exhibited in the disorienting camera angles and unique and unconventional compositions of Ernest Laszlo. | | Hiroshima Mon Amour | | Directed by Alain Resnais 1959, 90 minutes, fiction Khoj - 8th September Sarai - 9th September (This film will be introduced by T.P. Sabitha, Department of English, Hansraj College) Made in 1959 , Hiroshima mon amour is one of the most significant films of the French New Wave. A French actress Elle is staying in Hiroshima for a few days shooting an anti-nuclear film. There she meets a Japanese architect named Lui with whom she has a one night stand. Despite the fact that both of them are married they find themselves falling love with one another. Elle begins to recall the tragedy of her lost first love with a German soldier during the occupation of France in World War II... Resnais and screenwriter Marguerite Duras explore the nature of forgetting and remembering with regard to human emotions. The film posits the very simple question, "How can we forget tragedy?" The beauty and the power of the film come primarily from the editing. In the first 15 minutes Resnais uses a poetic, elliptical editing structure that shuffles black and white images of amorous close-ups, newsreel footage, and reconstructed war footage together to draw us into the theme of memory. || Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb | | Directed by Stanley Kubrick 1964, 93 minutes, fiction Khoj - 15th Septmber Sarai - 16th September Dr. Strangelove is Stanley Kubrick's brilliant, satirical, provocative black comedy regarding doomsday and Cold War politics that features an accidental, inadvertent, pre-emptive nuclear attack. The film opens with a deranged General Ripper declaring a "Code Red", sealing off his airforce base, and ordering a nuclear attack on Russia. The screenplay, co-authored by the director (with Terry Southern), was based on Peter George's novel Red Alert. The film is also notable for its remarkable performances, especially Peter Sellers (as Captain Mandrake, as the President of the United States, and as former Nazi scientist, Doctor Strangelove), George C. Scott as General 'Buck' Turgidson and Slim Pickens as Major Kong. | |The Hulk| | Directed by Ang Lee 2003, 138 minutes, fiction Khoj - 22nd September Sarai - 23rd September The Hulk is a comic book character born in the sixties, a mild mannered nuclear scientist with traumatic repressed memories who is turned into a raging green giant from exposer to the blast of a powerful gamma bomb. But the movie Hulk is not a consequence of nuclear testing, but of genetic experimentation. Scientist Bruce Banner follows unknowingly in his father's footsteps as a researcher in genetic technology. A lab accident exposes Bruce to what should be a fatal dose of gamma radiation. But a mutating gene not only allows him to withstand the gammas, the combination serves to kick-start the "monster" within. Now when severely angered, the scrambled DNA turns Bruce into the Hulk... Ang Lee's unparalleled visual style conveys the experience of reading a comic book in cinematic terms. The panels on the page become the focus: the connection between the images and the way they pull us through the story. | |Original Child Bomb| | Directed by Cary Schonegevel 2004, 57 minutes, documentary (This film has been provided courtesy Breakthrough, www.breakthrough.tv ) Khoj - 29th September Sarai - 30th September Inspired by Thomas Merton's poem, Original Child Bomb shows the human cost of nuclear weapons. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are depicted through declassified footage, photographs, drawings and testimonies of mothers, brothers and soldiers. Ordinary people gaze upon the nuclear past and its terrifying present. They expose the political rhetoric surrounding "security" and "weapons of mass destruction". +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[RESOURCES]] Sarai is an active member of the voluntary platform for indic computing known as indlinux. The community is involved in comprehensive localisation programmes in most Indian languages. Localisation involves translating interfaces of the most popular softwares likely to be used by a diverse set of users into languages other than English. If you have tried writing in Indian languages with the default English keyboard you must have had to learn a new keymap. This can be a frustrating and discouraging exercise. At Sarai we do a lot of work in Hindi. From this experience grew our effort to create easy user-friendly input systems. The Bolnagari keyboard is a phonetic keymap for Linux systems. It is a hack, but it works. Do note it can be used in an Unicode environment only. Unicode is a relatively new encoding system that allow for enough space for Indic languages and enables interoperability - that is you can write in any Unicode font and see it in another, provided that font is also Unicode embedded. To download Bolnagari for free visit: http://www.indlinux.org/downloads/files/bolnagri.tar.gz A readme file is included in the package which gives clear and lucid instructions on how to install and use the software. To download Unicode fonts, visit: http://devanaagarii.net Do write to the authors for more information, to report bugs and with any questions you might have. Ravikant ravikant at sarai.net Pramod pramodr at gmail.com Karunakar karunakar at indlinux.org Also visit www.indlinux.org for more information on localisation activities in India. ==================== Publications @ Sarai ==================== This September sees the launch of three new publications from Sarai. The bboks are available for free download in pdf format on the Sarai website. ||Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts|| The fifth in the Sarai reader Series, Bare Acts looks at 'Acts' - as instruments of legislation, as things within the law, and at 'acts' - at different ways of doing things in society and culture. The Reader foregrounds explorations of borders, surveillance, claims to authority and entitlements, the legal regulation of sexuality and trespasses of various kinds, with a view to complicate our understandings of the bare act of the law and a meta-legal domain of codes, norms and practices within which the law is located. http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader_05.html ||Deewan-e-Sarai 02: Shaharnama|| The second Sarai Hindi Reader focuses on cities past and present, especially Delhi, by enabling dialogue between social science and literary imaginations in Hindi and Urdu. The collection brings together writings by young and emerging writers, revisits older histories and inscribes the contemporary in a fresh register. http://hindi.sarai.net/deewan/deewan01.html ||Medianagar 02|| Medianagar is the annual Hindi publication of the Publics and Practices in the History of the Present [PPHP] project in Sarai. Medianagar 02 explores the dynamic, flexible networks involved in the production, distribution and circulation of diverse media forms. It attempts a creative analysis and rendering of the modes, trends and representations of old and new media in the contemporary city. http://www.sarai.net/mediacity/filmcity/medianagar02.htm +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[CONVERSATIONS]] =============================== Independent Fellowship Workshop =============================== Report on 'Independent Fellowship Workshop' 24, 25, 26, 27 -August 2005, Sarai-CSDS August saw the return of the Independent Fellows to Sarai for their final presentations. This year there were almost 50 presentations over a hectic four days of intense and lively discussion. Projects presented were extremely varied, both in terms of areas of research, as also modes of rendition. Topics ranged from a social history of mess houses in 19th Century Bengal, a discussion of children's relationship to space in Vijayawada railway station, urban water conflicts in Chennai, to a subjective rendering of the experience of space and time in Delhi, Researchers ranged from academics situated within the university system, to professionals situated in work contexts whose research constituted reflections on the spaces they inhabit (such as Kuldeep Kaur's ethnography of the Labour room, and Faraaz Mehmood's lively descriptions of work processes in a multi-national bank), to filmmakers, dancers, musicians, song-writers, architects, programmers. Researchers experimented with a variety of forms – these ranged from semi-fictionalised accounts, first-person narratives, short films which were screened, an audio-essay, a video-cum oral narrative, as well as more formal academic papers. A highlight of the workshop was three performance-presentations. The first by Urmila Bhidikar on the production of feminine and masculine voice in the figure of Bal Gandharva. Sumangala Damodaran presented an analysis of the music of the IPTA through recordings, and Mehmood Farooqui performed two sections from the dastan of Amir Hamza. The Independent Fellowship programme is designed such that the end of the fellowship process does not signal and end to the conversation between fellows and their material, or between eachother. Many projects were therefore 'works-in-progress' and researchers saw the presentations as forums from which to gather fresh questions and provocations, find new directionalities in their work. Detailed reports will be made available online soon. Visit http://midday.chalomumbai.com/columns/mahmood_farooqui/2005/august/117156.ht for Mehmood Farooqui's (Independent Fellow 2005) reflections on the fellowship process. *** Student Stipendship programme 30, 31 August 2005 The Student Stipends programme is structured in a manner which facilitates the work of young researchers within the university structure. Besides presentations therefore, the workshop also included sessions with invited facilitators such as Solomon Benjamin, Asha Ghosh, Prabhu Mohapatra, Zainab Bawa and Rupali Gupte on the modes and methodologies of research, and open sessions on the process of research. The workshop was structured over two days. In all about twenty researchers presented their work. Presentations included papers on Contested citizenship in Nowgong, Saturday markets in Delhi, labour in colonial Cochin harbour, dalits in the digital world in Darbhanga, new urban masculinities and cinema in colonial Kerala amongst others. Detailed reports will be available online soon. To know more about the programme write to Sadan Jha at sadan at sarai.net +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ END OF NEWSLETTER The Newsletter of the Sarai Programme, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054, www.sarai.net Info: dak at sarai.net.To subscribe: send a blank email to newsletter-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. Directions to Sarai: We are ten minutes from Delhi University. Nearest bus stop: IP college or Exchange Stores See Calendar and Newsletter online: http://www.sarai.net/calendar/newsletter.htm From dak at sarai.net Thu Sep 1 20:26:13 2005 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:26:13 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] clarification - September 2005 Message-ID: <4317168D.7020003@sarai.net> Dear Members, The September Sarai Newsletter inadvertently carried 'August 2005' as the month line in the masthead. I apologise for any confusion this has caused. Warm regards Aarti Sethi (Outreach) From dak at sarai.net Thu Sep 29 22:18:53 2005 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 22:18:53 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] OCTOBER 2005 Message-ID: <433C1AF5.20307@sarai.net> ************************************************************************************************************ ***************************************** SARAI NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 2005 ************************************ ************************************************************************************************************ Dear All, This September saw the launch of three new publications - Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts, Deewan-e-Sarai 02: Shehernama and Medianagar 02: Ubharta Manjar. As always, they are available for free download on the web. We also include short reflections on This Year This City, Sarai's ongoing conversations in the university, and a listing of events for the month of October. We hope to see you at the film screenings, at Sarai and/or at Khoj. Warmly, Aarti Sethi [Outreach] +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[CONTENTS]] EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS 1. Presentation @ Sarai: Adrian Caon 2. Seminars @ CSDS: Shakespeare's Henry V and the Many Faces of War, Douglas Lumis + Okinawa - Japan's Internal Colony, chinin ushii 3. Masterclass @ Sarai: Creative Writing Masterclass, Sharmistha Mohanty 4. Sarai Reader 05 Discussion (in collaboration with Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore): CED Bnagalore FILM 5. Film @ Sarai: The Worm of the Word in the Belly of the Picture, The Germ of the Picture in the Blood of the Word, curated by Ruchir Joshi RESOURCES 6. Publications @ Sarai: Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts + Medianagar 02: Ubharta Manjar + Deewan-e-Sarai 02: Shehernama CONVERSATIONS 7. 5 Years of Sarai: This Year This City - A public conversation on the year that was in Delhi 8. An Invitation +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS]] ==================== Presentation @ Sarai ==================== Adrian Caon 3 pm, Wednesday 26 October 2005 Seminar room, Sara-CSDS Adrian Caon is an artist based in Adelaide, Australia. His work encompasses photography, drawing, installation and performance. He is currently an artist in residency at the Sanskriti Kendra, Delhi and is working on a project on street signage in Delhi. Adrian has done a similar project in his own city of Adelaide and will be showing images from, and speaking of his work. We invite all interested to be part of a conversation on ways of thinking about and representing the city. ============== Seminar @ CSDS ============== Shakespeare's Henry V and the Many Faces of War Talk by Douglas Lumis 3 pm, Monday 3 October 2005 Seminar Hall, CSDS Henry V, Shakespeare’s only war play, is not only a powerful drama, it also contains a wealth of information concerning the nature of war, the politics of war, the psychology of war, the laws and customs of war, and the limits of those laws and customs. We will be watching the film clips of the classic Lawrence Olivier version of the play, followed by the very shocking scene that was omitted (censored?) out of that version, but included in the later Kenneth Branagh version. Prof. Lummis will give a short introduction to the sections; followed by discussion. [Douglas Lumis, a distinguished political theorist, is the first Chair Professor of Rajni Kothari Chair in Democracy. His engagement with the theory and practice of democracy runs across several distinct civilizational-cultural and political boundaries. Among his books are: English Conversation as Ideology, A New Look at the Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Japan's Radical Constitution and Radical Democracy] ***** Okinawa – Japan's Internal Colony Talk by chinin ushii 3 pm, Thursday, 6 October 2005 Seminar Hall, CSDS "I am supposed to be from ‘Japan’. But it is not so easy for me to use the word ‘Japan’ to describe myself. I will tell you why. I will explain the history and the present situation of Okinawa where I was born, raised, and live." [Ms. chinin ushii, is an essayist based in Okinawa (Japan). Also a journalist, she writes on Neo-Colonialism, Okinawa-Japan relations, the United States military base issue in Okinawa and the other cultural subjects] =================== Masterclass @ Sarai =================== CREATIVE WRITING MASTERCLASS Tutor: Sharmistha Mohanty This workshop is open to those who wish to have a serious engagement with imaginative prose writing, fiction or non-fiction. There are two fundamental aspects that the workshop will focus on. Because we are born into language, writing cannot be taught as a craft, like the other arts. We already know the codes, the grammar, how to make sentences, paragraphs, pages. In writing we work at the opposite end from a musician or a dancer who must first learn the basics, we need to refuse the ease with which words come. A first task then is to make a /relationship/ with language, different from the everyday one. For myself, as a prose fiction writer, I see speech as close to thought, writing as close to consciousness. That is why it is often possible in writing to express something unknown even to oneself. More than finding a way to /make/ this relationship with language, we can look at how it can be/ allowed/. This may mean expanding the space of language, not shrinking it by taking on given structures, or having too defined a purpose, or using things one already knows. A second task is to ask the question, what is form? In writing, form arises not from an external, not from mere wishes or ideals. Form arises from a real need. This is what must be identified, by everyone, individually, for themselves. Arising from a need and arriving at its shape through a struggle, each found form will have its own rigour and can never be whimsical or random. By letting oneself be with these explorations, once can move towards a writing which is able to evoke what is not already known. The basic principle I will work with in conducting the workshop is that writing, because it cannot be “taught,” can only be guided, by a practitioner, and the best form of guidance is to work on the actual writing and take it forward through criticism and dialogue. Each participant will present their writing on a regular basis during the workshop. The writing will be discussed at the workshop by myself and all the other participants. I will also hold one on one sessions with every participant at least once during the course. We will also be doing some reading in parallel. The reading will span vastly different kinds of prose, perhaps the autobiographical pieces of James Baldwin, the novels of W.G. Sebald, the prose of Claudio Magris, the short fictions of Bruno Schulz, the essays of Joseph Brodsky, and Indian myths and folktales which have their own special ways of approaching narrative. [Sharmistha Mohanty received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the Iowa Writer's Workshop. She is the author of the screenplay for the film Nazar (1989) by Mani Kaul, and two novels-- Book One (1995) and the just published New Life (India Ink/Roli Books, 2005). Her fiction has also appeared in the journals, Ploughshares (Boston), Siecle 21 (Paris) and Gender and History (London), and Inertia Magazine (New York, online).] The duration of the workshop is nine sessions from 26 November 2005 to 24 December 2005. The participants will meet every Wednesday and Saturday, from 4 pm to 7 pm. The class will have a limited number of participants. Applicants should send in a writing sample of imaginative prose, of not more than five pages (it can be an excerpt from a longer work), and a page on why they would like to attend the workshop. Masterclass fee: Rs. 1500/-, payable on confirmation of selection. Last date for applications: 25 October, 2005 Selected participants will be informed on email by November 10, 2005. Applications and queries can be sent to dak at sarai.net, with the subject line "Creative Writing Workshop". Paper applications should be posted to: "Application for Creative Writing Workshop" Sarai / CSDS 29 Rajpur Road Delhi - 110054 ===================================== Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts Discussion ===================================== Center for Education and Documentation 3 October 2005, Monday, 6 pm. Following the launch of Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts in Delhi, ALF and Sarai would like to invite you for a launch and discussion of Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts in Bangalore. The discussants for the evening are: Eshah Shah, Fellow, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development Sitharamam Kakarala, Senior Fellow, Center for Study of Culture and Society Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Faculty, National Law School Center for Education and Documentation (Domlur) Take the left turn on the Shanti Sagar intersection on Airport road, and follow the road till you reach a prominent red brick building. For further details see www.doccentre.org +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[FILM]] We are happy to announce that film screenings curated by the Sarai programme will also be screened at the Khoj artists collective. This marks a collaborative initiative between Sarai and Khoj. This new series of screenings will run on Thursdays at Khoj at 6:00 pm and on Fridays at Sarai-CSDS at the usual time, 4:30 pm. These screenings have been an integral part of Sarai's programming and public profile for five years. The screenings have been a space for people from diverse backgrounds - academics and students, practitioners, artists and researchers – to converse with each other about the way in which films speak to the times that they were made in, and to the times we live in. We hope that with this initiative a new public will find the Sarai screenings, and that Sarai will find a new public, bringing new energies and approaches into talking and thinking about films. Hoping to see many of you, and many good films. films @ khoj – Thursdays, 6.00 pm Khoj Studios S-17 . Khirki Extension. (Near Sai Baba Temple) New Delhi-17 Call:91-11-55655874\73 www.khojworkshop.org khojinteract at gmail.com films @ Sarai – Fridays, 4.30 pm ===================================== Film @ Sarai: October – November 2005 ===================================== In what is hopefully the first of a series of critical engagements with filmmakers/media practitioners, Ruchir Joshi has curated a month long series this October , in which he reflects on the linkages and disunities between Image and Words. The Worm of the Word in the Belly of the Picture The Germ of Picture in the Blood of the Word As we know, the relationship between image and words precedes even the central binary of picture and sound in cinema. What I would like to do with these October screenings is to put forward some of my own films along with a few video works by a close friend and colleague Tony Cokes, works which try and mess up and re-jig the usually straight and deadly yoking/cleaving of spoken/written text and image. Tony Cokes is now widely recognised in his native USA and elsewhere as one of the most radical artists to have emerged over the last twenty-odd years in the area of what is loosely termed `video art'. Across his career, Tony has moved through a series of sparse, rigorous and yet often deeply humorous engagements with picture, sound, politics and contemporary music. As a black artist working in a society and environment that ever keeps finding new ways to marginalise African-Americans both in society and in the arena of art production, Tony has consciously and consistently managed to avoid and get way beyond the `identity' trap; as a person of huge erudition and fantastic articulation, both in terms of words and pix, he has managed to navigate around the pitfalls of the overly cerebral; in an international art `world' too easily seduced by the twee, the pretty and the surface-clever, Tony has managed to keep vibrant his interventions in debates/issues of race, class, gender and representation. In my own film work there has always been an ongoing struggle between image, sound, word and text. It's a struggle that quarrels equally from my old, basic, allegiances to the Western modernism and post-modernism I stumbled across in my teens and twenties and my need, since then, to find some meaningful purchase in the shifting cultural sands of this Indian society I've lived and worked in. What is interesting for me is that Tony and I first met at the art school in America which gave each of us the space to find his initial voice. While we've been close since then, often bouncing things off of each other, occasionally even working for each other, our works have diverged wildly in form and content. Looking at Tony's work and mine together, many questions, parallels and contradictions come up, of which the first one is, oddly enough, the ongoing, dichotomous, fighting marriage between picture and word which was pretty entertaining and troubling even when we were in college a quarter century ago. Which to me seems a good place to start from. - Ruchir Joshi || Eleven Miles|| 52 minutes Directed by Ruchir Joshi 6 October 2005 - Khoj 7 October 2005 - Sarai **** || Black September || Directed by Tony Cokes || Shrink 2 || || Shrink 2B || Directed by Tony Cokes || Love, Labour, Language || Directed by Tony Cokes 13 October 2005 - Khoj 14 October 2005 - Sarai **** || Dream Before Wicket || Directed by Ruchir Joshi || Pop Manifestos || Directed by Tony Cokes 20 October 2005 –Khoj 21 October 2005 – Sarai **** || Black Celebration || Directed by Tony Coke || Another Mercedes For Ashish || Directed by Ruchir Joshi 27 October 2005 – Khoj 28 October 2005 – Sarai **** All screenings at Khoj at 5.30 pm, Thursdays All screenings at Sarai at 4.30 pm, Fridays The programme is subject to last minute changes. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[RESOURCES]] ==================== Publications @ Sarai ==================== http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader_05.html Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts The Sarai Reader is a unique product, even in terms of form: neither book nor journal, it is a purely experimental enterprise that combines contributions that range from the academic to the literary, from the purely textual to the visual, from detailed ethnographic reports to fairly dense theoretical writings. In fact, it will not be an exaggeration to say that the Sarai Reader embodies in every sense, the collapse of all boundaries of form, style and genre. Sarai has made available to us a whole new language for apprehending the enormous changes taking place over the last decade, which have radically transformed our existence. Aditya Nigam,Seminar September 2005 (for full text of review visit: http://www.india-seminar.com/2005/553/553%20books.htm) http://hindi.sarai.net/deewan/deewan01.html Deewan-e-Sarai 02: Shaharnama The second Sarai Hindi Reader focuses on cities past and present, especially Delhi, by enabling dialogue between social science and literary imaginations in Hindi and Urdu. Traditionally, the city seems not to have emerged as the site of reflection in the Hindi litrary imagination. Deewan-e-Sarai attempts to fill this aporia. The collection brings together writings by young and emerging writers, revisits older histories and inscribes the contemporary in a fresh register. The book also contains an annotated bibliography of Hindi prose writing on the city. http://www.sarai.net/mediacity/filmcity/medianagar02.htm Medianagar 02 Medianagar is the annual Hindi publication of the Publics and Practices in the History of the Present [PPHP] project in Sarai. Medianagar 02 explores the dynamic, flexible networks involved in the production, distribution and circulation of diverse media forms. It attempts a creative analysis and rendering of the modes, trends and representations of old and new media in the contemporary city. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[CONVERSATIONS]] ================= 5 Years of Sarai ================= This Year This City 3 pm, 17 September 2005 For the last five years Sarai has played host to a public conversation on the year that was, in this our city. This year too people from different locations converged in the Interface zone to share experiences. The conversation was facilitated by Shuddhabrata Sengupta from the Sarai Media Lab in conversation with Jeet Thayil (poet), Chander Nigam (lawyer in Tees Hazari court), Anand Taneja (researcher at Sarai), air traffic controllers Debotosh Moitra and SC Badola, and Prabhat Jha (Prabhat is associated with Ankur and also coordinates the Cybermohalla Project, with practioners from Sarai). The conversation was threaded around the figure of the 'stranger' - the figure who comes to the city, or in living in the city is nonetheless at the periphery of imagination. Prabhat read an extract from a text co-authored with Ravikant in the Deewan on the verses painted behind autorikshaws. The verses contain in themselves stories of transformationHis lead to an animated discussion around how the city is inscribed by the everyday perambulations of desires and dreams. Anand has recently been experimenting with the form of the ghazal and using newspaper headlines to compose short 'verse-stories' in English and Hindustani. His rendering of some of his ghazals was a nice companion text to Prabhat's - of how could find lyrical (?) registers to speak of this city be found. Chander spoke of the messy, and sometimes hilarious, experiences of being an advocate in one of India's busiest courts and the many figures she encounters. Jeet Thayil, amongst other things, spoke of his encounter with the architecture of Delhi. Of the strange experience of being 'framed' by structures immense and grand, which seemed not to diminish, but extend the human figure. Debotosh and Sc Badola gave a fascinating account of their work. The world when seen from that height must look very different - where coordinates must be mapped in three dimensions, keeping in mind the critical fourth i.e time. The evening saw the official launch of the three new publications. Ravi Sundaram began the conversation by speaking of Sarai's in the past five years, this was folowed by Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta speaking of the making of the Sarai Reader Series. Ravikant and Sanjay Sharma introduced the Deewan-e-Sarai, followed by Rakesh Sharma who introduced Medianagar. Ashis Nandy, Brajeshwar Mishra and Anil Chamadia were invited to respond to the books, and the evening ended with them sharing their insights. Ravikant noted that while traditionally the 'village' and not the city seemed to have captured Hindi litrary imaginations, the attempt in Deewan was to fill this aporia and claim the city as a site for thinking and writing. Ashis Nandy questioned the sharp divide between 'village' and 'city' and noted that the most interesting cities were those that carried within them the experiential life-world of the village. These were perhaps 'lost' cities, cities that we perhaps inhabited only in the mind. =============== An Invitation =============== This last month we have been having informal conversations in various colleges in the university. While the conversations take the broadsheets, Sarai.txt, as their initial provocation, they soon flow into general discussions on 'the state we are in'! We have had conversations in Lady Sriram College, JNU, Kirori Mal College. It is important for us to take our work and provocations to other sites, and we hope these discussions are interesting for those attending. Here is an invitation from Sarai.txt 2.1: "You are cordially invited to invite us, the Broadsheet Collective, To talk to you so that you can talk to us and so that even if we are strangers now, we will find a question or two to share for the road" Call, write, e-mail and we can fix a time and place. Write to us at broadsheet at sarai.net +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ END OF NEWSLETTER The Newsletter of the Sarai Programme, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054, www.sarai.net Info: dak at sarai.net To subscribe: send a blank email to newsletter-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. Directions to Sarai: We are ten minutes from Delhi University. Nearest bus stop: IP college or Exchange Stores. You can also take the Metro - get off at Civil Lines station. See Calendar and Newsletter online: http://www.sarai.net/calendar/newsletter.htm