From dak at sarai.net Sat Sep 4 14:57:52 2010 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 14:57:52 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Libraries and the City Message-ID: <4C821118.5080301@sarai.net> *The Delhi Urban Platform invites you to a discussion on Libraries and the City 6 pm, 10th September, 2010 Library, Sarai-CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi-54* Imagine Paradise, like Jorge Luis Borges did, as some kind of library. And this sprawling Paradise of great big wooden shelves sky high that you have to manouevre like a silverfish trapped in bookspines. The Library Space is a realm of imagined realities, the space of lore and learning and shared knowledge, where you can roam free and be what you read. Ideas rippling with magical electricity, surprising you in explosive ways. A physical landscape and simultaneously an imagined one, of the mind but rendered with texture and organisation and meaning. Do such spaces exist in great big cities like Delhi, where the quiet hum of a reading community can come together and access knowledge and gather to think? The library is now the bureaucratized machinery of catalogues and storage space. The lack of public libraries and libraries as public spaces proclaims an absence of a culture of an opening up of the library to the reader,the absence of a librarian who is not merely the taxonomist of dead cellulose, and the absence of books that are not only bought or owned, but savoured in circulation. This Friday, the 10th of September, we invite librarians, publishers, readers and book lovers to to reflect on the role of libraries as a site of public gathering and learning in the city.* * Join us for an conservation with: Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Media practitioner, filmmaker, writer, and reader) Sikander Changezi (Founder of a community library in Old Delhi) Chiki Sarkar (Editor-in-chief of Random House India) Avinash Jha (Librarian, CSDS) Cordelia Jenkins (Journalist at Mint) Anjana Chatthopadhyay (Director, Delhi Public Library) Sheeba Cchachi ( Installation artist, photographer, activist, and writer) [Shuddhabrata Sengupta as chair] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- *[[END OF NEWSLETTER]]* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dak at sarai.net Sun Sep 12 18:37:41 2010 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 18:37:41 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] The Melodramatic Public Book Dsicussion Message-ID: <4C8CD09D.3030601@sarai.net> *The Melodramatic Public Book Discussion* We invite you for a discussion of Ravi Vasudevan's The Melodramatic Public http://permanent-black.blogspot.com/2010/03/ravi-vasudevan-ends-long-hibernation.html *The panel of discussants:* Prathama Banerjee, CSDS Jeebesh Bagchi, Sarai and Raqs Media Collective Christine Gledhill, Prof of Media Studies, University of Sunderland *Date: Friday, 17 September 2010 Venue: CSDS Seminar Room, New Building Time: 4.30 pm * The Melodramatic Public draws on melodrama as a key conceptual apparatus to understand how entertainment cinema in India drew audiences into complex passages of historical change. As the seeming consensus of the 1950s about nation-building unravelled in the 1970s, and globalisation introduced new economic and territorial compulsions, Indian cinema offered compelling testimony to debates about economic advancement, social justice, inter-community conflict, and urban lifestyles. Melodrama provided a narrative architecture and an expressive form which connected the public and the private, as well as the personal and the political, in ways which engaged audiences emotionally. In continuous dialogue with cinematic 'others'­within American cinema, in Indian popular cinema, and in a realist art cinema­mainstream melodrama also underwent significant mutations. This book explores the dynamics of form and narrative strategy across a wide repertoire of film practices. These include the pioneer D.G. Phalke, popular 'auteurs' Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt, industry moguls Aditya and Yash Chopra, mainstream innovators Mani Rathnam, Kamalahasan, and Ram Gopal Verma, and art and documentary cinema icons Satyajit Ray and Anand Patwardhan. The book concludes with the contemporary global moment associated with 'Bollywood'. It considers changes in state policy and industrial organization, and the impact of digital technologies, new economies of consumption, and wider export markets on Indian film culture. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *[[END OF NEWSLETTER]] * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dak at sarai.net Wed Sep 22 19:46:48 2010 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:46:48 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] City as Studio: EXB 10.05, Saturday 25 September 2010- Cancelled Message-ID: <4C9A0FD0.1010800@sarai.net> City as Studio: EXB 10.05, Saturday 25 September 2010- *Cancelled* Due to circumstances absolutely beyond our control, we have had to cancel the City as Studio EXB 10.05 , beginning Saturday, September 25 2010 till October 16 , 2010 at Sarai. Regrets to all, particularly the artists involved. The incessant rains have led to water logging in the building, the space will be closed to the public for a month at least for repairs. ------------------------------------------------ *[[END OF NEWSLETTER]]* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: