From dak at sarai.net Sun May 7 19:39:41 2006 From: dak at sarai.net (dak at sarai.net) Date: Sun, 7 May 2006 16:09:41 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] MAY 2006 Message-ID: <1048.61.246.29.162.1147010981.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> ********************************************************************************************************* **************************SARAI NEWSLETTER MAY 2006************************* ********************************************************************************************************* [[CONTENTS]] *SEMINARS & PRESENTATIONS* 1. Blind Faith: Painting Christianity in Post-Conflict Ambon: Patricia Spyer 2. Artist's Presentation: Daniel Jewesbury *CONVERSATIONS* 3. Nangla's Delhi +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[SEMINAR'S $ PRESENTATIONS]] =============== Seminar @ Sarai =============== Blind Faith: Painting Christianity in Post-Conflict Ambon (Indonesia) A talk by Patricia Spyer Seminar Room Monday, 12 P.M., 8 May 2006 During the war in Ambon and since, popular Christian painters have been plastering the city’s main thoroughfares and Christian neighborhood gateways with billboard portraits of Jesus and Christian murals. These artifacts perform in several capacities: as visual emblems of Christian territory, as an alternative urban counterpublic to the political and televisual prominence of Muslims nation-wide, as a way of presencing and therein a being-seen-by God, and as a mode of intervention in everyday Christian behavior. The paintings’ migration from church interiors to urban public space and their non-institutional base raises questions concerning the transformations post-war of religious sensibility and the specific role of both mass and alternative media therein. During and following the war, different dimensions of the visual have been both explicitly and implicitly thematized in a variety of ways first, in the sense among ordinary Ambonese of not being able to trust appearances, of not seeing or foreseeing what might come, of a radical refiguration of not only subjectivity but, more precisely, sensory subjectivity during the war. Second, the pervasive sense that they themselves were unseen, that their suffering went unnoticed by the Indonesian government, their fellow countrymen, the larger world. Among minority Christians who in the late Suharto period saw their prior privileged social, political, and economic position diminished, the sense of being unseen is even stronger. Implicit in some practices albeit a theological impossibility is the perception among Ambonese Christians that their own desperate plight may have been invisible to God himself. The gigantic Christian portraits and murals rising on the ruins of war across Ambon bear witness and give material form to Christian anxieties about invisibility while also aiming to alleviate the very condition of being unseen. Homing in on blindness as much as varied refractions of the visual, the paper also expands our understanding of what the visual might be. [Patricia Spyer is Professor of Anthropology at Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands. She is the author of is the author of "The Memory of Trade: Modernity's Entanglements on an Eastern Indonesia Island", (Duke, 2000) and editor of "Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces", (Routledge, 1998.)] ============================= Artist's Presentation @ Sarai ============================= A Presentation on Recent Work by Daniel Jewesbury. Monday, 12 P.M., 15 May 2006 Daniel Jewesbury will be making an informal presentation of some of his current media art and research projects, and talking about the possibilities of connecting historical experiences in India and Ireland. [Daniel, a Research Associate in the Center for Media Research, University of Ulster, completed a Ph.D in new media at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, in 2001, having studied Fine Art in Dublin. He is an active practitioner in media arts. Recent projects include Exchange (Carlow 2003), developed in conjunction with refugees and other non-nationals, and Beauty Queens (Charlottetown, Canada 2004.)] +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [CONVERSATIONS] ============== Nangla's Delhi ============== Over the last 35 years we have witnessed a massive internal dislocation of habitations and life worlds within this city, Delhi. This is something that started with high intensity in Delhi from the early 70s. Now the process of this internal dislocation has become intense and harder. Nangla Maachi is a 30 year old habitation. It was created by its inhabitants over this period along the river bank and next to Pragati Maidan (Progress Ground). The last month has witnessed the destruction, and slow emptying of Nangla Maachi. Sarai/Ankur had set up a cybermohalla lab in Nangla Maachi two years ago. Many a practitioner has been through the lab. Over these two years, diaries have been written by the lab practitioners. These diary entries stubbornly remind us that Nangla was made into a lively, heterogeneous habitation by countless peoples efforts and needs to be remembered for this creative act of making and finding ways of living together. The diary is now a record of a contested terrain of the violence of dislocation. A blog in both English and Hindi has been set up, to share with a wider public the various diary entries of the practitioners. Since the eviction process began, practioners have been blogging almost on a daily basis. Practitioners have been also been posting updates from the blog on the reader, urban-study and commons-law lists. The postings and conversations around them, can be accessed from the public archives. Do visit the blog, read it, circulate it, share it and link it further. Your comments and stories will be very valuable. English language blog: http://nangla.freeflux.net/ Hindi language blog: http://nangla-maachi.freeflux.net/ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [END OF NEWSLETTER]