From dak at sarai.net Wed Dec 2 07:18:35 2009 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:48:35 -1200 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] The CITY as STUDIO- Call for Proposals Message-ID: <4B15C773.9020904@sarai.net> *Newsletter- December- 2009* * Call for Proposals* *"The CITY as STUDIO"* *The Sarai-CSDS Media Lab Associate Fellowship for Contemporary Art and Media Practices * The Sarai Programme at the Center for Study of Developing Societies, Delhi is an interdisciplinary platform for the investigation and interpretation of contemporary urban experience. Sarai produces events and processes, publishes offline and online content and generates contexts for research and creative practice concerning contemporary urban conditions. The Sarai Media Lab invites expressions of interest and intent from artists and practitioners in diverse media - textual, visual, aural, spatial and temporal - who could be - visual artists (photographers, sculptors, installation artists, graphic artists), writers and independent scholars, filmmakers, architects, experimental musicians and composers, sound recordists, performers and people whose practices straddle or transcend different areas of practice - for participation in the 'City as Studio' Project. The City as Studio initiative will create contexts for high intensity inter-disciplinary processes at different locations in Delhi and at the Sarai space at CSDS. Sometimes these process(es) may be rendered as an exhibition, at other times as a gathering, as a library, as a temporary archive or as an occasion for performances, conversations and debates. At still other times it may take the form of a workshop, a temporary atelier, a media studio, a publication or an online platform. The City as Studio is neither a one off event, nor a workshop or a residency, nor a festival or a simple cluster of public programmes - though it has elements of all of the above. It is primarily a method of generating a new public profile for creative work in the city, a scanning of the horizon of possibilities that can be opened up in urban spaces through the presence of art, experimental cultural activity and public exchanges. The studio process plans to bring together artists, filmmakers, photographers, discursive interlocutors, architects, writers, urbanists, scientists, architects, social actors and cultural workers, neighbourhood initiatives and diverse audiences to create art works, participatory performances, media works, and transmissions of different kinds of signals. Possible areas of that will be reflected upon could include but need not be limited to - - the city as spectacle, as a site of consumption, as an arena of power - the growing intensity of surveillance, - the question of distance and anchorage: housing and transportation - access to resources, location and privilege - the local pursuits of pleasure - life, death, and rites of passage in the city - the everydayness and banality of terror - imagined histories and urban legends, the fantastical and uncanny city - the archived and remembered city - urban ecologies, the city as a zone of bio-diversity, urban forests, rivers - ways of life, sub-cultures, bodies of informal knowledge, local practices - migrants, margins and minorities We invite applicants to imagine that the city itself is their studio, and that urban realities are their materials in order to create artistic work that acts as a body of public knowledge in and about the city. Applicants are invited to write a short (no more than two pages) note sketching an idea or ideas that they would like to develop, participate in, or create. We will consider this note to be an expression of intent (not as a fully worked out proposal, but as a sketch of what the applicant would ideally like to do if presented with the possibility of responding to the city) and will evaluate it on how best, how imaginatively and resourcefully an applicant responds to urban situations, questions and processes of their own choice. We are looking for forms of intervention into city life that cannot easily be defined, appropriated or neutralized. Projects that straddle artistic expression with a research imperative, that intervene in, enlighten, and critique the city, will be especially welcome. Based on our evaluation of these expressions of intent, we will invite 10 artists and practitioners for the fellowships, and they will work in dialogue with the Sarai Media Lab. The range of the proposed artistic projects and media interventions could span free standing art works to proposals for mini-exhibitions, installations, performances and happenings, publications, sound works, video, mapping and GPS driven projects, internet and mobile phone based works, graphic novels, public art works, graffiti and signage and speculative architectural proposals. The fellows will receive a bursary of Rs 65,000 spread over a period of nine months. *The Process* i) The fellowship duration will be from 1st February 2010 till 31st October, 2010. ii) From February to June (2010), the fellows are expected to develop their projects and share it on an online space that will be especially dedicated for the City as Studio process. We plan to publicize this online space in various circuits. iii) An intensive studio will take place in Delhi during the months of July and August (2010). All City as Studio fellows will have to attend in order to develop their works and ideas while being engaged in a dialogue with the location, with other fellows and the Sarai Media Lab. They will also interact with resource persons who will be invited to expose the fellows to a range of practices during this period. Costs for travel to Delhi and accomodation wil be borne (separate from the bursary) by Sarai-CSDS for candidates from outside Delhi. iv) During September and October, the fellows will be expected to develop their ideas towards completion and begin to share, circulate and exhibit works through various media. v) Sarai-CSDS will exhibit and publish some of the works coming out of the City Studios. vi) All fellows are expected to submit a final report to Sarai-CSDS by 15th November 2010. *Who Can Apply:* Anyone above the age of 21 with a bank account and a PAN number in India can apply for this fellowship. While the City as Studio initiative will be located in Delhi, there is no bar against people from outside Delhi applying to take part in this process. But, it is an imperative for the applicant to commit to participation for the 'on-location' process in Delhi during July and August. *What Should Applicants Send:* 1. A two-page sketch of an idea that the applicant would like to pursue within the framework of the City as Studio initiative 2. CV listing recent works, projects and experiences 3. 2 Samples of recent work - as tifs, jpg, .mov files and as sound files and/or publications 4. Contact details *Last Date for Sending Applications: 26th December, 2009 * *Where to Send Applications: *Send the application as an email, with attachments to OR a hard copy to City Studio, Sarai/CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054. *When can you expect to hear from us:* The list of selected candidates will be posted on the Sarai webstie on 15th January, 2010. *[[END OF NEWSLETTER]]* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dak at sarai.net Sat Dec 5 05:39:46 2009 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:09:46 -1200 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] =?windows-1252?q?Film_Screenings_on_Slavoj_=8E?= =?windows-1252?q?i=9Eek?= Message-ID: <4B19A4CA.6040307@sarai.net> *Newsletter- December- 2009 Sarai and Navayana invite you to a double-bill screening of “The Pervert's Guide to Cinema” and “Žižek!”, both starring Slavoj Žižek, on 24 December 2009. Venue: Sarai-CSDS Seminar Room, 29 Rajpur Road, Civil Lines, Delhi Time: 3 p.m. to 5.30 p.m (“Pervert’s Guide”). 6 p.m. to 7.15 p.m. (“Žižek!”).* “Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire – it tells you how to desire.” — Slavoj Žižek As a curtain-raiser to Navayana’s inaugural annual lecture series by Slavoj Žižek, Sarai and Navayana present two films on/with Žižek. “The Pervert's Guide to Cinema” (2006, 150 minutes) is a hilarious, high-energy monologue by Žižek, who subjects more than 40 mostly classic films, by directors ranging from Chaplin to Hitchcock to David Lynch, to a no-holes-barred psychoanalytic scrutiny. This globe-trotting three-part documentary, directed by Sophie Fiennes, cuts its cloth from the very world of the movies it discusses; by shooting at original locations and on replica sets, it creates the uncanny illusion that Žižek is speaking from within the films themselves. The Guardian review says, “'Unruly thinker and critic Slavoj Žižek gives us a highly entertaining and often brilliant tour of modern cinema... Tremendously exhilarating stuff.” To know more about the film, visit the official website: http://www.thepervertsguide.com/index.php. This film shall prepare you for the Navayana-Sarai annual lecture at Sarai on 4 January 2010 (5 p.m.), where Žižek speaks on “Ideology in the Post-ideological World: The Case of Hollywood”. This will be followed by “Žižek!” (2005, 71 mins), a feature documentary that explores the eccentric personality and esoteric work of the “wild man of theory”. The feature, directed by Astra Taylor, trails the thinker as he crisscrosses the globe, racing from New York City lecture halls, through the streets of Buenos Aires, and even stopping at home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. All the while Žižek obsessively reveals the invisible workings of ideology through his unique blend of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxism, and critique of pop culture. A review in Variety says: “Subject is a bearded, sweating, antisocial, eminently quotable bear of a man who throws out ideas in a heavily accented lisp. Žižek 's work fuses Marxism and the thinking of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), who put a post-structuralist spin on Freud. Further twists are his encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture and extreme pronouncements: ‘My big worry,’ he frets, ‘is not to be ignored, but accepted.’” To know more about this film, visit the official website: http://www.zizekthemovie.com/ For Žižek enthusiasts, the full schedule of his India tour is as follows: *24 Dec 2009. 3 p.m to 7.15 p.m. Screenings* "The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema", in 3 parts. 150 mins, to be followed by “Žižek!”, 71 mins. Sarai-CSDS. 29 Rajpur Road, Civil Lines, Delhi *2 Jan 2010. 7 p.m. Screening* "Žižek!" A feature documentary directed by Astra Taylor, 71 mins. Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi *4 Jan 2010. 5 p.m. Lecture* “Ideology in the Post-ideological World: The Case of Hollywood” Sarai-CSDS. 29 Rajpur Road, Civil Lines, Delhi *5 Jan 2010. 7 p.m. Lecture* “Tragedy and Farce” Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi *7 Jan 2010. 11 a.m. Lecture* “Capitalism and Particular Life-Worlds: In Defense of Universalism” ICSSR Auditorium, English & Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad *9 Jan 2010. 5 p.m. Lecture and Panel Discussion* “Whither Left?” Town Hall, Kochi. For updates on the Žižek India tour visit www.navayana.org *[[END OF NEWSLETTER]]* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dak at sarai.net Mon Dec 28 12:56:56 2009 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 12:56:56 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Navayana- Sarai annual Lecture, 4th January 2010 Message-ID: <4B385DC0.1060506@sarai.net> *Newsletter- January 2010 Navayana and Sarai invite you to Navayana's First Annual Lecture on Monday, 4 January 2010, at 5: 00 p.m. at Seminar Room, CSDS 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054 * The annual lecture is the culmination of the lecture series that Navayana has been organising with Sarai since November 2008. Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Z(iz(ek, shall speak on "Ideology in the Post-ideological World: The Case of Hollywood". Shuddhabrata Sengupta of Sarai shall introduce Z(iz(ek and chair the session. "So when even products of the allegedly 'liberal" Hollywood display the most blatant ideological regression, are any further proofs needed that ideology is alive and kicking in our post-ideological world? Consequently, it shouldn't surprise us to discover ideology at its purest in what may appear as Hollywood at its most innocent: the big blockbuster cartoons. 'The truth has the structure of a fiction' -- is there a better exemplification of this thesis than cartoons in which the truth about the existing social order is rendered in such a direct way which would never be allowed in the narrative cinema with 'real' actors?" --Z(iz(ek in a recent essay, "Hollywood Today: Report from an Ideological Frontline" Slavoj Z(iz(ek is a professor at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana and at the European Graduate School. He uses popular culture to explain the theory of Jacques Lacan and the theory of Jacques Lacan to explain politics and popular culture. He was born in 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he lives to this day. The more than 40 books he has written deal with topics ranging from philosophy and Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, to theology, film, opera and radical politics. He was a candidate for, and nearly won, the presidency of Slovenia in the first democratic elections after the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1990. Two of his titles, The Sublime Object of Ideology and his latest First as Tragedy, Then as Farce have been published by Navayana. *For further details on Z(iz(ek's lecture tour of India, see* www.navayana.org *[[END OF NEWSLETTER]]* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: