From dak at sarai.net Thu Feb 1 04:17:05 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2007 04:17:05 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] FEBRUARY 2007 Message-ID: <2C268FF3-2AE1-481F-9556-A0772174A583@sarai.net> [[CONTENTS]] [[EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS]] 1. Seminar @ Sarai: Public Spaces and Intellectual Debates in Contemporary China, Wan Hui 2. Seminar @ Sarai: The Where of Now - Positionality in the Moment of Globalisation, Irit Rogoff 3. Lecture-Demonstration @ Sarai: Cartoons and Icons: Notes from an Archive of Blasphemy and Heresy, Shuddhabrata Sengupta [[FILM]] 4. Film @ Sarai: Rabindranath Tagore, directed by Satyajit Ray, introduced by Ramin Jehanbegloo [[PUBLICATIONS]] 5. Call for Applications: Sarai Reader 07: The Frontier ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS]] =============== Seminar @ Sarai =============== Public Spaces and Intellectual Debates in Contemporary China A Talk by Wan Hui 3 P.M., Friday, 9 February 2007 Seminar Room, CSDS WANG HUI is one of contemporary China’s foremost intellectuals and scholars, and has emerged as a critical voice in the tradition of the great twentieth-century revolutionary social critic Lu Xun, on whom he has written extensively. Professor of History at Qinghua [Tsinghua] University in Beijing and the author and editor of many books, Wang Hui is also editor of Dushu (Reading), China’s premier journal of ideas and critical thought. This journal has a readership of something between 100, 000 to 120, 000 and is also read by members of the Chinese Communist Party. The English-language translation of his book of essays China’s New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition (Harvard, 2003 and 2006) brought his work to a wider audience, and established his reputation outside of China as a significant analyst and critic of contemporary capitalism in China. In 2004, Wang Hui’s four-volume Zhongguo xiandai sixiangde xingqi (The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought) was published in Beijing. It is a major reinterpretation of the history of Chinese thought from pre- imperial times through the present, and has had an enormous influence on contemporary discussions of national identity, politics, and the nature of state, region, and empire. Although China’s New Order contains important reflections on the Tianammen movement of 1989 and its aftermath, it would be inaccurate to describe Wang Hui as a dissident. The current Chinese leadership, through a range of social initiatives aimed at China’s growing inequality, has registered the force and truth of Wang Hui’s – and the New Left’s – critiques, although the regime’s capacity to address these problems remains uncertain. Indeed, it is to the character of contemporary politics, and of political possibility in the present, that Wang Hui has devoted recent attention. ****************************************** 'The Where of Now' - Positionality in the Moment of Globalisation. A Talk by Irit Rogoff 3:30 P.M, Wednesday, 14 February 2007 Seminar Room, Sarai- CSDS This talk explores the idea of alternative forms of situatedness in contemporary culture, especially contemporary art, at a time when it has also become increasingly difficult to define location. [Irit Rogoff is Professor of Visual Culture at Goldsmiths College,London University. She works at the intersections of the critical,the political and contemporary artistic practices. Her most recent book is "Terra Infirma - Geography's Visual Culture"(Routledge 2001). She directed "Translating the Image - Cross Cultural Contemporary Arts" (AHRC Research Project 2001-2006)from which 2 volumes will be published by Koenig Verlag in 2007.recent curatorial projects include "De-Regulation with thework of Kutlug Ataman" (Antwerp, Herzylia,Berlin) and "Academy - Learning from the Museum" (Vanabbe Museum, Eindhoven)]. ****************************************** Cartoons and Icons: Notes from an Archive of Blasphemy and Heresy A Lecture-Demonstration by Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Sarai-CSDS 4:30 P.M., Wednesday, 28 February 2007 Seminar Room, Sarai-CSDS Cartoons and Icons : Notes from an Archive of Blasphemy and Heresy is an exploration of different histories of sanctioned and illicit image making in Islamicate societies, with a view to arriving at a more nuanced understanding of issues pertaining to image making, freedom of expressiona and the xenophobic and discourse around images, in the wake of the publication of the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in European and other newspapers. This presentation, which takes place exactly a year after the 'Danish Cartoon' question became an international crisis seeks to complicate prevalent narratives of blasphemy, heresy and ritualised iconoclasm in Islamicate societies, as well as the ritualised demonization of Muslims in Europe by pointing towards recalcitrant histories that defy the imperative of narrative simplification. [Shuddhabrata Sengupta works at the Media Lab at Sarai-CSDS. He is a media practitioner, artist and writer with the Raqs Media Collective.] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[FILM]] ===================================== Film @ Sarai: February – March 2007 ===================================== Rabindranath Tagore Satyajit Ray 1961, India. Documentary, 54 min, B/W Producer: Films Division, Govt. of India 4:30 P.M., Friday 2 February 2007 Seminar Room, Sarai-CSDS The film will be introduced by Prof. Ramin Jehanbegloo, Rajni Kothari Professor of Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi The documentary details the life and work of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). The documentary was made to celebrate Tagore’s birth centenary in May 1961. Ray was conscious that he was making an official portrait of India’s celebrated poet and hence the film does not include any controversial aspects of Tagore’s life. However, it is far from being a propaganda film. The film comprises dramatized episodes from the poet’s life and archived images and documents. [Ramin Jahanbegloo was born in Tehran and studied at the Sorbonne University, Paris. He is currently the Rajni Kothari Professor of Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi. Prior to this he was a post-doc at Harvard University and then headed the department for contemporary studies at the Cultural Research Bureau, Iran. Among his twenty books in English, French and Persian are Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (Phoenix, 2000), and (as editor) Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity (Lexington Books, 2004). His intellectual work has featured, among other elements, a close engagement with the life and work of Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[PUBLICATIONS]] Call for Submissions: Sarai Reader 07: The Frontier Frequently at frontiers we are asked, 'Anything to declare?' The wisest thing to do when faced with the scrutiny of a border official is to say that you have 'Nothing to declare', and quickly move on. Crossing borders usually entails an effort not to say too much, or at least to get by with saying very little. A degree of reticence is the mark of the wise and experienced traveller. Sarai Reader 07: The Frontier, seeks to turn this ethic of reticence on arrival at a boundary, at any boundary, on its head. This time, the Reader will consider limits, edges, borders and margins of all kind to be sites for declarations, occasions for conversation, settings for the staging of arguments, debates, recounting and reflection. We invite you to consider the frontier as an open door, a chute into something new, or the rediscovery of that which has been obscured, a hidden tunnel that crosses under a mountain, a porous membrane of liminal possibilities, a zone of contact and contagion. We want to think of the frontier as the skin of our time and our world, and we invite you to get under the skin of contemporary experience in order to generate a series of subcutaneous reflective possibilities. For us, the frontier is a threshold waiting to be crossed, a space rife with the possibility of seductive transgression. For the full text of the call, and submission guidelines, please see: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2007 January/008578.html ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[END OF NEWSLETTER]] From dak at sarai.net Thu Feb 1 04:25:30 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2007 04:25:30 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] FEBRUARY 2007 Message-ID: <47162E6C-AC01-4F49-90AB-910E6C48C1A1@sarai.net> [[CONTENTS]] [[EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS]] 1. Seminar @ Sarai: Public Spaces and Intellectual Debates in Contemporary China, Wan Hui 2. Seminar @ Sarai: The Where of Now - Positionality in the Moment of Globalisation, Irit Rogoff 3. Lecture-Demonstration @ Sarai: Cartoons and Icons: Notes from an Archive of Blasphemy and Heresy, Shuddhabrata Sengupta [[FILM]] 4. Film @ Sarai: Rabindranath Tagore, directed by Satyajit Ray, introduced by Ramin Jehanbegloo [[PUBLICATIONS]] 5. Call for Applications: Sarai Reader 07: The Frontier ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS]] =============== Seminar @ Sarai =============== Public Spaces and Intellectual Debates in Contemporary China A Talk by Wan Hui 3 P.M., Friday, 9 February 2007 Seminar Room, CSDS WANG HUI is one of contemporary China’s foremost intellectuals and scholars, and has emerged as a critical voice in the tradition of the great twentieth-century revolutionary social critic Lu Xun, on whom he has written extensively. Professor of History at Qinghua [Tsinghua] University in Beijing and the author and editor of many books, Wang Hui is also editor of Dushu (Reading), China’s premier journal of ideas and critical thought. This journal has a readership of something between 100, 000 to 120, 000 and is also read by members of the Chinese Communist Party. The English-language translation of his book of essays China’s New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition (Harvard, 2003 and 2006) brought his work to a wider audience, and established his reputation outside of China as a significant analyst and critic of contemporary capitalism in China. In 2004, Wang Hui’s four-volume Zhongguo xiandai sixiangde xingqi (The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought) was published in Beijing. It is a major reinterpretation of the history of Chinese thought from pre- imperial times through the present, and has had an enormous influence on contemporary discussions of national identity, politics, and the nature of state, region, and empire. Although China’s New Order contains important reflections on the Tianammen movement of 1989 and its aftermath, it would be inaccurate to describe Wang Hui as a dissident. The current Chinese leadership, through a range of social initiatives aimed at China’s growing inequality, has registered the force and truth of Wang Hui’s – and the New Left’s – critiques, although the regime’s capacity to address these problems remains uncertain. Indeed, it is to the character of contemporary politics, and of political possibility in the present, that Wang Hui has devoted recent attention. ****************************************** 'The Where of Now' - Positionality in the Moment of Globalisation. A Talk by Irit Rogoff 3:30 P.M, Wednesday, 14 February 2007 Seminar Room, Sarai- CSDS This talk explores the idea of alternative forms of situatedness in contemporary culture, especially contemporary art, at a time when it has also become increasingly difficult to define location. [Irit Rogoff is Professor of Visual Culture at Goldsmiths College,London University. She works at the intersections of the critical,the political and contemporary artistic practices. Her most recent book is "Terra Infirma - Geography's Visual Culture"(Routledge 2001). She directed "Translating the Image - Cross Cultural Contemporary Arts" (AHRC Research Project 2001-2006)from which 2 volumes will be published by Koenig Verlag in 2007.recent curatorial projects include "De-Regulation with thework of Kutlug Ataman" (Antwerp, Herzylia,Berlin) and "Academy - Learning from the Museum" (Vanabbe Museum, Eindhoven)]. ****************************************** Cartoons and Icons: Notes from an Archive of Blasphemy and Heresy A Lecture-Demonstration by Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Sarai-CSDS 4:30 P.M., Wednesday, 28 February 2007 Seminar Room, Sarai-CSDS Cartoons and Icons : Notes from an Archive of Blasphemy and Heresy is an exploration of different histories of sanctioned and illicit image making in Islamicate societies, with a view to arriving at a more nuanced understanding of issues pertaining to image making, freedom of expressiona and the xenophobic and discourse around images, in the wake of the publication of the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in European and other newspapers. This presentation, which takes place exactly a year after the 'Danish Cartoon' question became an international crisis seeks to complicate prevalent narratives of blasphemy, heresy and ritualised iconoclasm in Islamicate societies, as well as the ritualised demonization of Muslims in Europe by pointing towards recalcitrant histories that defy the imperative of narrative simplification. [Shuddhabrata Sengupta works at the Media Lab at Sarai-CSDS. He is a media practitioner, artist and writer with the Raqs Media Collective.] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[FILM]] ===================================== Film @ Sarai: February – March 2007 ===================================== Rabindranath Tagore Satyajit Ray 1961, India. Documentary, 54 min, B/W Producer: Films Division, Govt. of India 4:30 P.M., Friday 2 February 2007 Seminar Room, Sarai-CSDS The film will be introduced by Prof. Ramin Jehanbegloo, Rajni Kothari Professor of Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi The documentary details the life and work of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). The documentary was made to celebrate Tagore’s birth centenary in May 1961. Ray was conscious that he was making an official portrait of India’s celebrated poet and hence the film does not include any controversial aspects of Tagore’s life. However, it is far from being a propaganda film. The film comprises dramatized episodes from the poet’s life and archived images and documents. [Ramin Jahanbegloo was born in Tehran and studied at the Sorbonne University, Paris. He is currently the Rajni Kothari Professor of Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi. Prior to this he was a post-doc at Harvard University and then headed the department for contemporary studies at the Cultural Research Bureau, Iran. Among his twenty books in English, French and Persian are Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (Phoenix, 2000), and (as editor) Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity (Lexington Books, 2004). His intellectual work has featured, among other elements, a close engagement with the life and work of Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[PUBLICATIONS]] Call for Submissions: Sarai Reader 07: The Frontier Frequently at frontiers we are asked, 'Anything to declare?' The wisest thing to do when faced with the scrutiny of a border official is to say that you have 'Nothing to declare', and quickly move on. Crossing borders usually entails an effort not to say too much, or at least to get by with saying very little. A degree of reticence is the mark of the wise and experienced traveller. Sarai Reader 07: The Frontier, seeks to turn this ethic of reticence on arrival at a boundary, at any boundary, on its head. This time, the Reader will consider limits, edges, borders and margins of all kind to be sites for declarations, occasions for conversation, settings for the staging of arguments, debates, recounting and reflection. We invite you to consider the frontier as an open door, a chute into something new, or the rediscovery of that which has been obscured, a hidden tunnel that crosses under a mountain, a porous membrane of liminal possibilities, a zone of contact and contagion. We want to think of the frontier as the skin of our time and our world, and we invite you to get under the skin of contemporary experience in order to generate a series of subcutaneous reflective possibilities. For us, the frontier is a threshold waiting to be crossed, a space rife with the possibility of seductive transgression. For the full text of the call, and submission guidelines, please see: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2007 January/008578.html ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[END OF NEWSLETTER]] From dak at sarai.net Tue Feb 6 13:52:30 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 13:52:30 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] The Scalable City: Presentation at Sarai Message-ID: <43171FFD-A27F-4EC7-931F-725F3086C577@sarai.net> The Scalable City An artist's Presentation by Sheldon Brown 4:30 P.M., Wednesday, 7 February 2007 Seminar-Room, Sarai-CSDS 29, Rajpur Road, Civil Lines. Sheldon Brown, Director of the Center of Research in Computing and the Arts and Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California San Diego, will discuss and demonstrate his current project - The Scalable City. The Scalable City is an interactive extrapolation of the cultural condition arising from the interaction of users, data and algorithms. As our world becomes increasingly characterized by this equation, we find ourselves inhabiting the artifacts of these relationships. The Scalable City generates its urban environment via the choreography of these artifacts. Brown's work in general examines the relationships between mediated and physical experiences. This work often exists across a range of public realms. From dak at sarai.net Fri Feb 9 00:14:09 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (dak at sarai.net) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2007 19:44:09 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Reminder: "Public Spaces and Intellectual Debates in Contemporary China" Message-ID: <3393.125.23.13.134.1170960249.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> "Public Spaces and Intellectual Debates in Contemporary China" Date: Friday, 9 February 2007 Time: 3 pm Venue: Conference Room, CSDS New Building A Brief Introduction WANG HUI is one of contemporary China’s foremost intellectuals and scholars, and has emerged as a critical voice in the tradition of the great twentieth-century revolutionary social critic Lu Xun, on whom he has written extensively. Professor of History at Qinghua [Tsinghua] University in Beijing and the author and editor of many books, Wang Hui is also editor of Dushu (Reading), China’s premier journal of ideas and critical thought. This journal has a readership of something between 100, 000 to 120, 000 and is also read by members of the Chinese Communist Party. The English-language translation of his book of essays China’s New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition (Harvard, 2003 and 2006) brought his work to a wider audience, and established his reputation outside of China as a significant analyst and critic of contemporary capitalism in China. In 2004, Wang Hui’s four-volume Zhongguo xiandai sixiangde xingqi (The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought) was published in Beijing. It is a major reinterpretation of the history of Chinese thought from pre-imperial times through the present, and has had an enormous influence on contemporary discussions of national identity, politics, and the nature of state, region, and empire. Although China’s New Order contains important reflections on the Tianammen movement of 1989 and its aftermath, it would be inaccurate to describe Wang Hui as a dissident. The current Chinese leadership, through a range of social initiatives aimed at China’s growing inequality, has registered the force and truth of Wang Hui’s – and the New Left’s – critiques, although the regime’s capacity to address these problems remains uncertain. Indeed, it is to the character of contemporary politics, and of political possibility in the present, that Wang Hui has devoted recent attention. Extract from Pankaj Mishra's profile of Wang Hui in the New York Times magazine: China’s New Leftist Co-editor of China’s leading intellectual journal, Dushu (Reading), and the author of a four-volume history of Chinese thought, Wang, still in his mid-40’s, has emerged as a central figure among a group of writers and academics known collectively as the New Left. New Left intellectuals advocate a “Chinese alternative” to the neoliberal market economy, one that will guarantee the welfare of the country’s 800 million peasants left behind by recent reforms. And unlike much of China’s dissident class, which grew out of the protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and consists largely of human rights and pro-democracy activists, Wang and the New Left view the Communist leadership as a likely force for change. Recent events — the purge of party leaders on anticorruption charges late last month and continuing efforts to curb market excesses — suggest that this view is neither utopian nor paradoxical. Though New Leftists have never directed government policy, their concerns are increasingly amplified by the central leadership. In the last few years, Wang has reflected eloquently and often on what outsiders see as the central paradox of contemporary China: an authoritarian state fostering a free-market economy while espousing socialism. On this first afternoon, he barely paused for small talk before embarking on an analysis of the country’s problems. He described how the Communist Party, though officially dedicated to egalitarianism, had opened its membership to rich businessmen. Many of its local officials, he said, used their arbitrary power to become successful entrepreneurs at the expense of the rural populations they were meant to serve and joined up with real estate speculators to seize collectively owned land from peasants. (According to Chinese officials, 60 percent of land acquisitions are illegal.) The result has been an alliance of elite political and commercial interests, Wang said, that recalls similar alliances in the United States and many East Asian countries. From dak at sarai.net Tue Feb 13 20:03:06 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (dak at sarai.net) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:33:06 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] 'The Where of Now' - Positionality in the Moment of Globalisation: A Talk by Irit Rogoff Message-ID: <51347.203.101.2.120.1171377186.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> 'The Where of Now' - Positionality in the Moment of Globalisation. A Talk by Irit Rogoff 3:30 P.M, Wednesday, 14 February 2007 Seminar Room, Sarai- CSDS This talk explores the idea of alternative forms of situatedness in contemporary culture, especially contemporary art, at a time when it has also become increasingly difficult to define location. [Irit Rogoff is Professor of Visual Culture at Goldsmiths College,London University. She works at the intersections of the critical, the political and contemporary artistic practices. Her most recent book is "Terra Infirma - Geography's Visual Culture"(Routledge 2001). She directed "Translating the Image - Cross Cultural Contemporary Arts" (AHRC Research Project 2001-2006)from which 2 volumes will be published by Koenig Verlag in 2007.recent curatorial projects include "De-Regulation with thework of Kutlug Ataman" (Antwerp, Herzylia,Berlin) and "Academy - Learning from the Museum" (Vanabbe Museum,Eindhoven.)]