From dak at sarai.net Mon Mar 5 01:35:27 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 01:35:27 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] MARCH 2007 Message-ID: <75DBDBD7-EAA3-4D0A-9104-7496625C6044@sarai.net> SARAI NEWSLETTER: MARCH 2007 Dear All, As we officially celebrate the coming of spring, this March we offer to you a fat newsletter - Aniket Jaaware comes to Sarai with readings from his new collection of stories, "Neon Fish", we host a much-awaited Open Mic featuring performances and readings by the participants of the recently concluded Spoken Word Series. Sarai also hosts a screening of Sanjay Kak's new documentary on Kashmir "Jashn-e- Azaadi", a hands-on workshop with graphic novelists and comic artists Sarnath Banerjee and Parasmita Singh. We round the month off by inviting friends to a public conversation on the alarming news that Delhi will lose over 2500 of her oldest trees in the course of the construction of the new High Speed Bus Corridor. The newsletter also features an extract from a conversation between the editors of "Pages' and the Cybermohalla Practitioners, and updates on two new Sarai publications: FLOSS Is Not Just Good For Your Teeth!, and Sarai.txt 3.3: The Horizon of Scanning. We hope many of you will be able to make your way to Sarai. :) Holi Mubarak! Warmly, Aarti Sethi [Outreach] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[CONTENTS]] EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS 1. Workshop @ Sarai: Co-mix/Comics, facilitated by Sarnath Banerjee and Parasmita Singh 2. Open Mic @ Sarai: An Evening of Poetry, Prose and Spoken Word 3. Reading@ Sarai: Neon Fish, by Aniket Jaaware 4. Public Discussion @ Sarai: The Assault on Delhi's Trees FILM 5. Films @ Sarai: Jashn-e-Azaadi, by Sanjay Kak + Kokaku Kidotai [Ghost in the Shell], by Mamoru Oshii PUBLICATIONS 6. Floss is Not Just Good For Your Teeth! 7. Sarai.txt 3.3: The Horizon of Scanning CONVERSATIONS 8. Pages [Safiye]: A conversation on the architectural disposition of spaces ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS]] ============================ Workshop @ Sarai: Co-mix/Comics ============================ Co-mix/Comics : Workshop on Comics and Graphic Novels with Sarnath Bannerjee and Parismita Singh 10:30 A.M. - 6:00 P.M., Saturday and Sunday, 17 and 18 March 2007 "Are you now, or have you ever been guilty of reading comics when you should have been doing more important things, such as homework? Have you ever dreamt of being a comic book artist or a graphic novelist yourself?" If so, this intensive and hands on introductory workshop is for you. You will learn story boarding and characterization, think about researching comic books, get a crash course in comic book culture, and get to meet and interact with graphic novelists Sarnath Bannerjee and Parismita Singh. The workshop will also feature a screening of Kokaku Kidotai on the 17th afternoon. Limited places available. To register for participation in this workshop, send a mail to amitabh at sarai.net No previous experience required but a passion for comics and comic book culture is mandatory! The workshop is free. (A special request: Since we try and not charge for our workshops and we reserve seats on a first-asked-first-booked basis, please register only if you intend on attending both days. This way people who really wish to attend are not denied space on account of being full up. :) ==================================================== Open Mic @ Sarai: An Evening of Spoken Word, Poetry and Prose ==================================================== Open Mic: An Evening of Spoken Word, Poetry and Prose 5:00 P.M., Thursday, 8 March 2007 Interface Zone, Sarai-CSDS The first Open Mic in 2007 features poetry, spoken word and prose readings and performances by participants of the Spoken Word Performance Workshop as part of the recently concluded Spoken Word Series, organised by the British Council, Delhi. As always, the evening is open to everyone who wishes to bring with them samples of poetry/prose/spoken word/song/lyric/limmerick that they might wish to share :) A brief recap of the rules, each participant gets the floor for about 5 to 7 minutes. If you don't want to read anything, do come to listen! Good performances require attentive audiences ;) For more information, write to aarti at sarai.net ======================== Reading @ Sarai: Neon Fish ======================== Readings from "Neon Fish" by Aniket Jaaware 5:00 P.M., Monday 12 March 2007 Interface Zone, Sarai-CSDS "This is the year 2050. This is the City. Strange things happen here, along with familiar things. There’s a man who lives on the N-BAR (the New Bridge Across the River). There’s a feisty, unspeaking nurse. There’s a pair of lovers, one of them a painter, the other a pharmacist. There’s a forever irate Inspector (Crime Branch), and a man who uses a cart to sell a variable fare, a boy who rides his bicycle the whole day, going round and round and round the City. There are new, automated Micro/Ford cars coming in, there are cleaning robots on the streets." These brilliant, disturbing stories speak to us of our own time as well as of a time to come, and they do so in a wholly modern, contemporary accent. Aniket Jaaware's text is a composite of word and image, narrative complemented by graphic art reminiscent of Martin Escher's visual puzzles, while the tales tease us into thinking about urban lives, singularities,obsessions, virtual realities, and the nature of persons. Jaaware's City is made up of eccentrics who are also, in the context of a postmodern urbanity, regulars: recognizably the denizens of the crowded but alienating space in which we all live our lives. There are dying lovers, the abused but self-possessed nurse, the vendor and the bicycle boy, the butterfly collector, the computer hacker, the police Inspector: each fully in command of their own kinds of reality, but ironically at odds with other kinds. The tone of the narration, accessible, easy, contemporary, places us within this brilliantly imagined cityscape, with its blend of the familiar and the disorienting. Jaaware's style combines sympathy, humour and irony, making the act of reading itself an act of affiliation within a new imaginative order. About Aniket Jaaware Aniket Jaaware teaches English at the University of Pune. He is mainly interested in the literary genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror, and cinema. His earlier publications include a few poems and essays and an academic book called Simplifications: An Introduction to Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. He also translates between English and Marathi. Neon Fish comes after a long gap. More than twenty years ago, he had published a novel in Marathi. His subsequent projects include a fantasy trilogy, which he hopes to start working on soon. ============================================ Public Discussion @ Sarai: The Assault on Delhi's Trees ============================================ The Assault on Delhi's Trees: A Discussion with environmentalists, urbanists, tree lovers Speakers will include Ravi Agarwal (Toxics Link), Awadhendra Sharan (Sarai-CSDS), Mahesh Rangarajan (Environmental Historian, to be confirmed) 4:00 P.M., Monday, 26 March 2007 The Construction of a High Speed Bus Corridor and the extension of the Delhi Metro threaten an invaluable part of Delhi's ecology. Over 2500 prime trees - some over 50 years old or older, will be lost if concerted efforts are not made to review the plans to transform Delhi's landscape. This meeting is the first of a series of events that we hope to initiatie to take stock of what is happenning and think about how the denizens of Delhi can act to shape the destiny of their own city. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[FILM]] Kokaku Kidotai [Ghost in the Shell] Directed by Mamoru Oshii. Produced by Kenzi Kawaii, Based on the Graphic Novel by Masamune Shirow (Dubbed in English from the Original Japanese), 45 minutes, 1995 5:00 P.M., Saturday, 17 March 2007 Seminar Room, Sarai-CSDS 'Ghost in the Shell' is a 1995 anime film adaptation of the manga comic classic 'Ghost in the Shell' by Masamune Shirow. The film is directed by Mamoru Oshii. The film, based on the classic cyberpunk graphic novel, features a female cyborg supercop hacking into the information network of an international crime syndicate with disturbing personal and philosophical consequences. 'Ghost in the Shell' is the place where cyberpunk met with Japanese manga culture and flowered in unusually dense, lush and dark directions. The film has proved to be a cult classic and is said to have influenced the making of the Matrix trilogy. It was lauded as one of the first anime films to seamlessly blend computer and cell animation and was one of the first anime features to cross over to non-anime fans globally. This screening is part of the 'Co-mix/Comics' workshop on Comic Books and Graphic Novels but is open to everyone. ****************************************************** Jashn-e-Azaadi' [How we Celebrate Freedom] Kashmiri/Urdu/English (English subtitles), 2007 Written and Directed by Sanjay Kak Photography Ranjan Palit Edited by Tarun Bhartiya 5:00 P.M., Friday, 23 March 2007 Seminar Room, Sarai-CSDS It's 15th August, India's Independence day, and the Indian flag ritually goes up at Lal Chowk in the heart of Srinagar, Kashmir. The normally bustling square is eerily empty– a handful of soldiers on parade, some more guarding them, and except for the attendant media crews, no Kashmiris. For more than a decade, such sullen acts of protest have marked 15th August in Kashmir, and this is the point from where Jashn-e-Azadi begins to explore the many meanings of Freedom–of Azadi–in Kashmir. In India, the real contours of the conflict in Kashmir are invariably buried under the facile depiction of an Innocent Population, trapped between the Terrorist's Gun and the Army's Boot. But after 18 years of a bloody armed struggle, after 60,000 civilians dead (and almost 7,000 enforced disappearances), what really is contained in the sentiment for Azadi–for freedom? Amidst the everyday violence and ever-present fear in Kashmir, there are no easy answers to such questions. Where truth has been an early victim, all language–speech, poetry, even cinema–becomes inadequate to describe what we know and feel here. So we reshape our curiousity, and point ourselves at what we can see, what we are allowed to see. The film then combines several forms and modes of expression to evoke the past as well as unravel the present: We are witness to an ageing father in the Martyr's Graveyard; we are with a group of men as they survey the dead in the mountain villages of Bandipora; we sit quietly in the Out Patients Ward of the Govt Psychiatric Hospital in Srinagar. But we look elsewhere too, in the satirical farce of Bhand folk performers as they play in a village square; in the tense undercurrents of an Army Sadhbhavna (Goodwill) camp in north Kashmir; and in the images conjured up by the work of contemporary Kashmiri poets. Shot and edited between August 2004-2006 Jashn-e-Azadi engages us with the idea of Azadi in Kashmir. In 2007, as India celebrates it's 60th anniversary of Independence, this is also a conversation about Freedom in India. Sanjay Kak, the filmmaker will be present. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmaker. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[PUBLICATIONS]] FLOSS Is Not Just Good For Your Teeth! [Free Software Explained in Simple English!] "Why do they call it 'FLOSS' when it doesn't clean your teeth?" Are you a non-nerd, a human being who happens to use computers without living inside them? Does that make you curious to find out what the buzz regarding open source and free software is all about? What's in it for you? Does it work? Is it fun and easy to use? How is it made and who makes it? And how 'free' or 'open' is it, really? Have you looked long and hard for answers to questions like these in plain English? If that's the case, 'FLOSS is not just good for teeth' could be just what you are looking for. Impress your techie buddies with the fact that you care for your kernel, and open yourself to a whole new world of concepts that offer challenging and exciting ideas about creativity, collaboration and coding. 'Floss' geeks, make yourselves understood to other human beings - download and distribute 'FLOSS is not just good for teeth' to friends, family and colleagues, so they can finally know and appreciate what keeps you awake while they sleep. 'FLOSS is not just good for teeth' is a collaboratively produced introduction to the concepts that underlie free and open source software, written specially for the non-technical reader, at the Sarai Programme (www.sarai.net) of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. To order a print copy of FLOSS Is not Just Good For Your Teeth!, write to publications at sarai.net To download a pdf version please visit: http://www.sarai.net/ publications/broadsheets/floss-is-not-just-good-for-teeth *************************** Sarai.txt 3.3: The Horizon of Scanning Sarai.txt 3.3: The Horizon of Scanning juxtaposes found materials, thoughts and reflections on the body, to radio waves, to television screens, the coming of street lighting, to acts of reading - scanning operates as a metaphor for control, diagnosis and a recombinant frame (when you search, you scan, and so open up possibilities of newer interconnections). The word travels between different disciplines and practices (from medicine to literature to surveillance to everyday acts). Horizon of Scanning plays with ideas of 'exposure' and the residual, the lingering, the fragile and the transient to open up a array of associational possibilities. The broadsheet will be available soon online, and we will keep you posted about that. To order a print copy of the broadsheet write to broadsheet at sarai.net ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ [[CONVERSATIONS]] Pages (Safiye) is a collaborative project of Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi, who are artists and writers based in Amsterdam. It is a platform for Iranian artists and writers, in different fields, to publish their projects and to exchange thoughts internationally. During their residency at Sarai in Delhi in November and December 2006, Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi had some exchanges with the practitioners of the Cybermohalla Labs. One of the coversations was about the architectural disposition of spaces. See http:// www.pagesmagazine.net/2006/daily_pages.php#index for the text of the exchange. The conversations during the residency are the beginning of a long-term collaborative project and dialogue, which Nasrin and Babak will post regularly on the Daily Pages. Extract from the conversation: "Babak Afrassiabi: But there is also an interesting aspect that you were talking about, which was about expansion not in space but in time. That you can presume your neighbour is going to expand or even withdraw in the future. (Some developments can even tell you of withdrawal in the future.) So its time and space both which play a role. Shamsher Ali: Long durations of living in a space with continuous negotiations with the surrounding reality in forms of withdrawal and expansion produces a capacity for you to articulate that space in a much more stable and powerful way. There is an example about a man who is building a house in M Block in Ghevra and he has many bricks which he has gathered to built his house. He narrates the story of each brick, saying this is a brick from 1978, these are from 82, 86, 87, 89, 90 ... And in that narration he produces the story about the many times he had to live through demolishing and building houses. But he has a certain stability and power in his narration. It carries knowledge of what it means to continuously negotiate your life. This comes from long duration of living in a particular space." ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++ END OF NEWSLETTER -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: