From chauhan.vijender at gmail.com Mon Jan 2 11:00:50 2006 From: chauhan.vijender at gmail.com (Vijender chauhan) Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 11:00:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Save Bandhyali School In-Reply-To: <986723ac0601011134v7ca3f7ccp9fde803d0f7389f6@mail.gmail.com> References: <986723ac0601011134v7ca3f7ccp9fde803d0f7389f6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <8bdde4540601012130u62b9195en8be5f585461f3dfd@mail.gmail.com> From: anupam pachauri Date: Jan 2, 2006 1:04 AM Subject: Save Bandhyali School To: apachauri at gmail.com Dear Friends, Sorry if it is being cross posted Am enclosing an appeal from Rohit Dhankar to save Digantar's (Jaipur) Bandhyali school which is run for the marginalised children. Please go to this link to sign petition: Please read and sign the petition at: http://new.PetitionOnline.com/Digantar/petition.html Am also giving several other links which bring out more about the issue. Join Protest Demonstration at Rajasthan House on Jan 3rd A meeting of educationists, students , teachers and social activists was held at ANHAD on 20 December, 2005 to oppose the move of thew JDA to demolish BANDHIYALI SCHOOL. It was decided that a protest demonstration would be held at the Rajasthan House on 3 January , 2005 at 12 pm . It was also noted that the Jaipur High Court has fixed 9 january, 2006 as the next date of hearing of the petition filed by Digantar against the JDA move. Stay has been extended till 9 January. Please extend all support Anupam Pachauri ______________________________ From: Rohit Dhankar [mailto: rdhankar at Ricmail.com] Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 9:06 AM Dear Friend, I am writing this letter in a crisis to enlist your support for Digantar. Perhaps you are aware that we re running four schools in outskirts of Jaipur. These schools were originally started under an MHRD project funded through its scheme for Support to Innovative and Experimental Programmes. Bandhali School, the name comes from the largest hamlet close to the school, is the largest and oldest of existing Digantar schools. It was started in 1992, moved to the present place in 1993 July and at present has a strength of 225 children, more than two hundred of them girls. The school is equivalent to an upper primary school. On 2nd December 2005, Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) gave a notice to Digantar to remove the school and vacate the land within three days. Fortunately the High Court has ordered to maintain status quo till JDA files its response. To our mind JDA's insistance on removal of the school would be: 1. a violent disruption of children's right to education, 2. blatant discrimination against Digantar, and 3. destruction of a very good quality school for the marginalized to favour privatisation of education. A short document explaining our position is attached. I request you to please read it. If you think we are wrong in out thinking, and our insistence on continuing the school is improper in any sense (ethical and/or legal) please let me know, we will definitely reconsider our position. But if you agree with me that we are on the right course, both ethically and legally, please help us save this school. We are organising a public meeting on 12th December 2005 at Bandhyali school itself. If you could participate in that it would be really very helpful. But even if you cannot participate, please write to the Governor, Chief Minister and Education Minister of Rajasthan as early as possible. If possible please encourage others to write to the above mentioned. Their fax numbers are given in the attached appeal titled Save Bandhyali School. With best regards Rohit ______________________________ ____________________________ Kabira Speaking: Saving Bandhyali School ( Digantar, Jaipur) Meanwhile a few kilometers away a NGO called Digantar* is desperately seeking support to ... Education in Digantar schools is completely free for children. ... ashaprinceton : Message: Digantar School...URGENT!! Here is the update from Digantar. Given below are tel numbers/fax of people ... notice to the Bandhyali School (run by Digantar Shiksha Evam Khelkud Samiti, ... [EDUCATION-INDIA] Petition: "Save Bandhyali School ( Digantar, Jaipur)" PetitionOnline.com/ Digantar/petition.html I request you to spread the word. ... Through its schools, Digantar offers path-breaking education to children ... Authorities order demolition of Jaipur school NDTV.com - New Delhi,India ... that absolute priority must be given to primary education," said Anil Bordia, former Education Secretary, Government of India and Chairman, Digantar School. ... Save Bandhyali School This blog is intended to track progress of the effort to save Digantar's ... I am writing this letter in a crisis to enlist your support for Digantar. ... ______________________________________________________________________________ Anupam Pachauri -- AP From vnr1995 at gmail.com Mon Jan 2 12:18:14 2006 From: vnr1995 at gmail.com (V NR) Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 22:48:14 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Problematizing Definitions In-Reply-To: <43AD2787.7030605@cnt-semac.com> References: <43AAA777.9020904@cnt-semac.com> <43AD2787.7030605@cnt-semac.com> Message-ID: Reply to Prem's post. A concept is not a variable; it is constrained by the context, and this context is a set of sentences (And the dispute is not much about concepts in general, which a psychological theory of concepts can deal with.) One can pick up any paragraph in any text, and problematize it: there are software programs which do this job, for instance, check the product of Inspiraton (dot) com. Some of our problems have to do with semantics: the way labels are used; once labels are taken away, more light is shed. Once if what is being talked about (reference) is relatively fixed (some disputes in contemporary biology are centered about reference itself: what is the reference of theory of evolition? Is it population, species, or individual), the problems about represenations (unlike the notion of how local MP, MLAs represent their constituents) of the world can be located. An answer to such a cluster of problems could be a theory: after all, even a solution of an arithmetical problem, for example, find x such that x + 1 = 2, is part of some theory -- Dedekind-Peano system of arithmetic. Lets look at Zainab's post. Compress first part of her post. A child was crying. His legs were tethered. She took a picture, and a female, prolly the child's mother, was saying "No photos here". So far no problems--whether you are a pomo, poco, a feminist, a humanist. In other words, all disputants are agreeing to this coarse description. Even if we don't agree to this description, we can find another description of this, which is acceptable to all of us. At different level, the disputants can diverge about deeper explanations. Some of such deeper unities are thus: an intentional explanation that the mother pushed Zainab way, because the mother thinks, and Zainab guesses, that the kids are put in foster care; the other explanation that is for defense of the mother's actions: the mother's rights, the kid's rights, the rights of the Sovereign that city of Mumbai is, and so on; the conflict of these rights; and so on. Similar can be said of thrash cans, cleanliness of Mumbai city, and our NRI's experience of insensitivity of Indians toward garbage. These two problems are not unique to the first phenomenon described in Zainab's post. Some programmatic hypotheses, even when we are oblivious to such hypotheses, are used to understand some phenomena. And these hypotheses, which have become part and parcel of our intuitions, are part of some deeper theories. Sure, no theory is complete. Hence merely criticizing any theory does not help much: one of such criticism is that essentialism is a sin, or that logic does not reflect the structure of theoretical knowledge; empirical/conceptual anomalies, and so on. There are deeper problems here: replacing a explanatorily powerful theory by emasculated theories. Wish you all a happy new year Best, Reddy, V., Palo Alto, CA. From aesthete at mail.jnu.ac.in Mon Jan 2 13:40:52 2006 From: aesthete at mail.jnu.ac.in (Dean School of Arts and Aesthetics) Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 13:40:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] A Dialogue with Richard Schechner Message-ID: <1136189452.8f8e5380aesthete@mail.jnu.ac.in> A Dialogue with Richard Schechner (Supported by an audio-visual presentation) 9TH January 2006 11am - 1 pm School of Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium Jawaharlal Nehru University Richard Schechner theatre director and author, teaches performance theory at the School of the Arts New York University. He was the founder director of The Performance Group and his productions with the group include avant garde classics like Dionysus in 69, The Tooth of Crime and Mother Courage and Her Childern. He has also done extensive and intensive studies of performances and rehearsal procedures in India, Indonesia, Papua -New Guinea and Japan. Among his books are Public Domain, Environmental Theatre and Essays on Performance Theory ============================================== This Mail was Scanned for Virus and found Virus free ============================================== _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From iram at sarai.net Mon Jan 2 23:05:28 2006 From: iram at sarai.net (Iram Ghufran) Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 23:05:28 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] call for film proposals on 'Population, Sexual-Reproductive Rights and Health' Message-ID: <43B96460.6010909@sarai.net> call for proposals from PSBT : ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear all, The Public Service Broadcasting Trust invites proposals from independent film makers on the theme, *'Population, Sexual-Reproductive Rights and Health'.* We are awaiting proposals for films that will sensitively engage with experiences that are intrinsic to people’s lives and delve deeper into what they mean to them, as individuals, as women/men and as part of larger social groups. Films that will encourage a discourse and understanding on issues focusing on increasing awareness of young people's sexual and reproductive health, the associated rights and issues. The films could explore the multiple themes and their politics either in their macro complexities or document personal negotiations with sexuality, identity and violence, among other processes. For the commissioning brief and other details visit www.psbt.org *We will receive proposals till mid January 2006* Best, Ridhima PSBT PO Box 3264, Nizamudin East New Delhi 110 013 91-11-24355941 www.psbt.org PSBT is a not for profit trust that represents the confluence of energies to foster a shared public culture of broadcasting that is as exciting and cutting edge, as it is socially responsive and representative of democratic values. In seeking to do this, PSBT seeks to situate a new vocabulary and activism at the very heart of broadcasting in India. _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From jeebesh at sarai.net Mon Jan 2 15:39:08 2006 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:39:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Micheal Aram Worker's Public Dialouge Message-ID: <43B8FBC4.7090203@sarai.net> Dear friends, The Michael Aram Exports metal workers will be in public dialouge with their placards at the following locations and times this week: Monday, Jan 2: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Harkesh Nagar 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Tuesday, Jan 3: 8:30 - 9:30 am, ESI Hospital Okhla Phase I 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Wednesday, Jan 4: 11:30 am - 2 pm, Sujan Singh Park near Ambassador Hotel Thursday, Jan 5: 8:30 - 9:30 am, T-Block, Okhla Phase II 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Friday, Jan 6: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Tekhand Mode, Okhla Phase I, D-Block 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Saturday, Jan 7: 11:30 am - 2 pm, Sujan Singh Park near Ambassador Hotel Please stop by and meet us if you are in the area. Sincerely, Shankar Ramaswami (for directions please call 9818630612) _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From jeebesh at sarai.net Mon Jan 2 18:08:45 2006 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2006 18:08:45 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] The Biennale Society Message-ID: <43B91ED5.5050402@sarai.net> The Biennale Society A Lecture Series 3rd - 4th January 2006 3 January, 2006 at 4-30 pm The National Gallery of Modern Art and The Biennale Society present Nicholas Serota (Director Tate, UK) "Are Museums of Modern Art necessary in the 21st century" Venue: Triveni Kala Sangam Auditorium, Tansen Marg. Supported by The British Council. 4 January, 2006 at 3 pm The Biennale Society and the India International Centre present Roger Buergel (Director Documenta 12, Kassel) speaking on his Concept of the 2007 Documenta Venue: IIC auditorium, Supported by the Max Mueller Bhavan. 4 January, 2006 at 6-30 pm The Biennale Society and the India International Centre present Teresa Gleadowe (Head of Curating, Contemporary Art Department, Royal College of Art, London) "What is Curating Now" Venue: IIC annexe lecture theatre. ...for an inaugural Delhi Biennale, November 2007. The Biennale Society (Registered under the Societies Registration Act, XXI of 1860, Government of NCT of Delhi) President: Professor Jyotindra Jain Secretary: Vivan Sundaram Treasurer: Roobina Karode Members: Professor K.T. Ravindran, Geeta Kapur, Gayatri Sinha, Sheba Chhachhi, Ranbir Kaleka, Pooja Sood _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From sastry at cs.wisc.edu Tue Jan 3 13:37:45 2006 From: sastry at cs.wisc.edu (Subramanya Sastry) Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 02:07:45 -0600 (CST) Subject: [Reader-list] newsrack: minor update Message-ID: Hello all, On and off, I have been looking at various newspapers (of interest) and trying to cover them under NewsRack even though they don't provide RSS feeds. Over the last couple months, 5 new sources have been covered: Deccan Herald, Assam Tribune, New Indian Express, Pioneer, and Govt. of India PIB Releases All these RSS feeds are now available via NewsRack installation -- so that these feeds can be used as appropriate independent of newsrack. Visit: http://floss.sarai.net/newsrack/vm/extras.rss-feeds.vm Over time, other papers will be added here as and when I find time to work on this aspect. Subbu. From geert at desk.nl Tue Jan 3 15:06:08 2006 From: geert at desk.nl (geert lovink) Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 10:36:08 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Homeland Security doesn't snoop on interlibrary loans Message-ID: <80769fe281f39f826432754238bc9b00@desk.nl> > Subject: Re: [Politech] Does Homeland Security cross-reference > interlibrary loans to INS, other databases? [priv] > Date: 24 Dec 2005 14:36:03 -0500 > From: John R Levine > To: Declan McCullagh > References: <43AD9002.2000800 at well.com> > > > Unless there is more to the following story than was reported, ... > > In case a hundred people haven't already sent this in, the story turns > out > to have been a complete hoax. The student just made it up. > > http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/12/24/ > students_tall_tale_revealed/ > > Seasons xmas and all that. > > R's, > John > > From hfg at konsumerziehung.de Tue Jan 3 15:58:26 2006 From: hfg at konsumerziehung.de (he tears consume) Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 11:28:26 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Homeland Security doesn't snoop on interlibrary loans In-Reply-To: <80769fe281f39f826432754238bc9b00@desk.nl> References: <80769fe281f39f826432754238bc9b00@desk.nl> Message-ID: <0186545f93caa43bce3c1b559dfdbc05@konsumerziehung.de> geert lovink ist eine neokonservative dreckschleuder! geert lovink is a neokonservative dirt centrifuge! geert lovink est une neokonservative centrifugeuse de merde! From penguinhead at linux-delhi.org Tue Jan 3 17:41:54 2006 From: penguinhead at linux-delhi.org (Pankaj kaushal) Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 17:41:54 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] newsrack: minor update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <43BA6A0A.5020700@linux-delhi.org> Subramanya Sastry wrote: > Hello all, > > On and off, I have been looking at various newspapers (of interest) and trying > to cover them under NewsRack even though they don't provide RSS feeds. > Visit: http://floss.sarai.net/newsrack/vm/extras.rss-feeds.vm You might want to take a look at rssyn, I have developer access to it. so lookout for a update (if i get any time off that is ) :) http://sourceforge.net/projects/rssyn/ -- Wir wollen dass ihr uns alles glaubt. From nezih.erdogan at e-kolay.net Tue Jan 3 02:25:21 2006 From: nezih.erdogan at e-kolay.net (Nezih Erdogan) Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 22:55:21 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] film and media conference 2006 Message-ID: <00f801c60fde$de765090$0900000a@NEZ> CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION FILM AND MEDIA CONFERENCE SHIFTING LANDSCAPES: FILM AND MEDIA IN EUROPEAN CONTEXT JUNE 16-18, 2006 ISTANBUL BİLGİ UNIVERSITY, TURKEY http://filmandmedia.bilgi.edu.tr/ Within the last decade and a half, European film and media have faced new challenges due to the macro processes of international migration, political, cultural and economic globalization, as well as the gradual rise of the European Union as a new political-economic and cultural power bloc. Although there is a vein of scholarship that situates these developments in the more neutral realm of 'mixing of cultures', 'hybridization', 'experiences of border-crossing', and 'new freedoms and deterritorialization', it should be noted that a good portion of recent films and other works point to a series of significant social, economic and cultural problems such as: racism, sexism, unemployment, urban bias, etc. In the midst of these structural transformations, and 70 years after Benjamin's seminal essay, "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," another element, digitization, is now a force majeur that is altering production, distribution and exhibition of artwork in an unprecedented way. Changes in both technology and the sociopolitical and economic spheres are manifested not only in the domain of artistic work itself in the form of content, aesthetics and form, but also in the physical sphere of social life. We now experience a constant flux of simultaneous fragmentation and integration through the aggregating and disaggregating forces of global, regional and local mobility both materially in terms of individual/social reality, and virtually through film, audiovisual media, CMC-and, more significantly, through the ongoing convergence of these media. While broadcasting is losing ground to narrowcasting, the movie theaters of the "arcades" have been replaced by the multiplexes of shopping malls, turning spectatorship and movie-going into a completely new sport and the cinematic encounter into a "viewing strip" where the screen extends beyond the domain of the theater and into the realm of a multitude of other spectacles from shop windows to LCD screens to cell phones. The aim of this conference is to address the complex and intertwined issues in European film and audiovisual media arising from the transformations in technology and social/urban landscapes, and in the macro forces of economics and politics. These changes have significant implications for the production, distribution and exhibition/consumption of European audiovisual works, thus creating new micro-realities "within" and "across", and beyond the bounds of nationality, geography, space, language, ethnicity, race, gender and sexuality, age, socioeconomic status, etc. We invite contributions from researchers and professionals from a broad cross-section of related schools and disciplines. Suggested areas of inquiry include (but are not limited to): a.. Production/Distribution/Exhibition b.. Film/Media and identity c.. Gender d.. Race/Ethnicity e.. Political economy f.. Urban topography/architecture and film/media g.. Consumption/consumer society h.. New media technologies i.. Digitization j.. Globalization/Regionalization k.. Film/Media reception l.. Questions of cultural imperialism m.. Territorialization/De-territorialization/Re-territorialization n.. Cultural Heritage/Preservation Please submit a 250-word abstract by March 15, 2006, by e-mail to Serazer Pekerman (conference at bilgi.edu.tr) Please include: Title of Paper, Full Name (s), Affiliation, Current Position, an e-mail address and at least 3 keywords that best describe the subject of your submission. http://filmandmedia.bilgi.edu.tr/ From abshi at vsnl.com Wed Jan 4 16:56:51 2006 From: abshi at vsnl.com (abshi at vsnl.com) Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2006 16:26:51 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] PUKAR Panel: South Asia Matters: Safety, Security and Freedom Message-ID: PUKAR cordially invites you to a Panel Discussion on South Asia Matters: Safety, Security and Freedom Date: Thursday, January 12, 2006 Time: 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM Speakers: Prof. Arjun Appadurai President, PUKAR; Vice President, Academic Affairs, New School, New York Faisal Devji Assistant Professor, New School University, New York Admiral Rakesh Chopra Integrated Defence Staff Headquarters, Ministry of Defence, New Delhi Venue: NGMA auditorium, opposite the Museum, M. G. Road, Fort, Mumbai – 400 032 PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) Address:: 1-4, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Sir P. M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Telephone:: +91 (22) 5574 8152 Fax:: +91 (22) 5664 0561 Email:: pukar at pukar.org.in Website:: www.pukar.org.in From tunberg2003 at yaho.com Wed Jan 4 04:12:14 2006 From: tunberg2003 at yaho.com (despina) Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 14:42:14 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] 4rth INTERNATIONAL ART FESTIVAL "CHANIA 2006" Message-ID: <269321-22006123224214562@YOUR-25AE075A49> 4rth INTERNATIONAL ART FESTIVAL "CHANIA 2006" UNDER THE AIGIS OF THE PREFECTURE OF CHANIA, PAINTING, MIXED MEDIA, SCULPTURE, PHOTOGRAPHY, DIGITAL ART, INSTALLATIONS GALLERIES CAN PARTICIPATE WITH A GROUPS OF ARTISTS Omma Center of Contemporary Art is organizing the 4rth International Art Festival from June 15 until June 30, 2006 at the NEORIA public exhibition center in the Old Town of Chania, Crete, Greece. The exhibition space, a converted 15th century vaulted Venetian shipyard, is over 4000 square meters in area. It will be the largest art exhibition ever held in Hania and one of the largest ever held in Greece, and will be covered accordingly by the local and national media. Click here to view the previous Art Festivals"Chania 2003" "Chania 2004" and"Chania 2005 which Omma organized at the NEORIA CENTER Artists from all over the world can participate. Each artist will participate with two works (no size limit) Participation fee for artists 350 Euros Participation fee for galleries 1300 Euros (group of 4 artists) Apply by sending at least 5 to 10 images in JPG or Gif format (no more than 250 kb each) to: omma at omma.gr Only artists who received an email for acceptance can submit the application form to confirm their interest. One of the works and a short biography of each artist will be included in a full color catalogue which we will publish for the exhibition Each artist will get two copies of the catalogue for free. Slides or photos of the selected works - for the catalogue - must have been received by March 30, 2006. Post address: Omma Center 43 E. Venizelou 731 32 Chania Crete - Greece or 1221 State Street Santa Barbara CA 93101 USA If we receive materials later than the above date, we can not guarantee inclusion in the catalogue DEADLINE FOR PARTICIPATION MARCH 15, 2006 Email: omma at omma.gr http://www.omma.gr Tel & Fax (+30) 2821042100 (Chania Crete - Greece) +805 963 4606 Santa Barbara - California Despina Tunberg - curator 1221 State street Santa Barbara, CA 93101 Tel & Fax (805) 963-4606 http://www.omma.gr Despina Tunberg From vivek at sarai.net Thu Jan 5 15:32:14 2006 From: vivek at sarai.net (vivek at sarai.net) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 11:02:14 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Reader-list] 2006 Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellows Message-ID: <1044.210.211.178.241.1136455334.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> Happy New Year! We're excited to announce this year's Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellows, and we look forward to hearing more about their upcoming explorations... Vivek The Sarai- CSDS Independent Fellows 2006 Arshad Amanullah, New Delhi Journalism in Madrasas and Madrasas in Journalism Daljit Ami, Chandigarh Celluloid and Compact Disks in Punjab Maitrey Bajpai, Mumbai Cawnpore Samit Basu, New Delhi The Trousers of Time: Possible Futures of Indian Speculative Fiction in English Rudradeep Bhattacharjee, Mumbai Freedom in Cyberspace in the Context of India: A video documentary Tushar Bhor, Mumbai Water Lenses: Prelude for a New Imagination for Urban Water in Mumbai Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Kolkata Bishnupur Gharana: Story of a Forgotten Melody: Restoring the sound of Bishnupur Gharana Averee Chaurey, New Delhi The Song of the Baul Ayesha Sen Choudhury, Kolkata Locating Sexuality Through the Eyes of Afghan and Burmese Refugee Women in Delhi Dilip D'Souza, Mumbai Village in the city: Bombay in microcosm Girindra Pravasi Ilaqe mein telephone booth sanskriti (The culture of telephone booths) Uddipana Goswami, Guwahati City as Setting: Reflections of the Changing Faces of Guwahati in Assamese Literature Peerzada Arshad Hamid, Anantnag Exploring the Space of Psychiatric Hospitals in Srinagar Rakshat Hooja, Jaipur Urban Stakeholder Activism and the Role of Resident Welfare Associations Farhana Ibrahim, Gurgaon Maritime Histories: Merchant Networks and the Production of Locality in Western India Lakshmi IndraSimhan and Jacob Weinstein, New Delhi Vending as Vernacular: Depicting Street Sales and Services through Sequential Art Brajesh Kumar Jha, Delhi Hindi Cinemayee geet aur uska Bhashayee safar (The Language Journeys of Hindi Cinema) Anjali Jyoti, New Delhi Home Street Home: A Street Child Survival Guide for Delhi Sunandan K.N., New Delhi Workshop Boys of Coimbatore: A Study of City and Tacit Knowledge Akshaye Khanna, New Delhi Apni Jagah, Zarah Hut Ke: A “Staged Ethnography” of Space and Sexuality Naresh Kumar, New Delhi Festival of Music in the City of Sports: Harballabh Sangeet Mela of Jalandhar Prabhat Kumar, Delhi Yuvak Sangh aur ‘Yuvak’: 1920 ke dashak mein Bihar ka bauddhik parivesh (Yuvak Sangh and the ‘Yuvak’ magazine in the intellectual public sphere in 1920s Bihar) Rajesh Kumar K, Trivandrum An Ethnography of Teyyam Performance from a Practitioner’s Point of View Udaykumar M, New Delhi Unravelling a 'Real' Media Incident in Trivandrum Mallica, New Delhi Identities and Aspirations of Tibetan Youth in New Delhi Mamta Mantri, Mumbai Movie Theatres on and Around Maulana Shaukat Ali Road, Mumbai Abhinandita Mathur Veenu Mathur, New Delhi My building and the Shahar Rajesh Mehar, Bangalore Exploring Notions of Creative Ownership Among Contemporary Musicians Kamal Kumar Mishra Hindi Hridaysthali mein Jasoosi Upanyason va Inkey Paathakon ka Ek Samajik Itihas (A social history of detective novels and their readers in the Hindi heartland) Sanjeev Ranjan Mishra, Delhi Gyan-vinimay ki nayi takneekein aur mel banate Dalit (The New Technologies of Knowledge-flow and the Dalits) Izhar Ahmed Nadeem, Delhi Muslim Mahilaon ki Urdu Patrikayo ki Duniya (Urdu Women's Magazines: Their impact on Muslim Women) Veena Naregal, Informal Economies and Cultural Patronage: Studying Bollywood John Patrick Ojwando, Bangalore An Exploration of the Experiences of Afro students in South Asia Anil Pandey, NOIDA Desi Filmon ka Karobar (An analysis of the desi films trade) Piyush Pandey, Delhi News Channelon ka Satyakathakaran (The Satyakathaization of News Channels, on the compulsive crime reporting on TV) Rahul Pandita, Delhi Byte Soldier: The Life and Times of a Metro TV Reporter: A Graphic Novel in Hindi Janice Erica Pariat, New Delhi Writing the Notion of Home and Urban Space Sudipta Paul, West Bengal Response of the Labour Force to the Changing Urban Formation in the Asansol Industrial Area, West Bengal Dripta Piplai, New Delhi The Hegemony of Calcutta Music Schools in Tagore Songs: Towards an Archival Preservation of 'Multiple Traditions in Rabindrasangeet' Vasundhara Prakash, New Delhi 15 Seconds of Fame: Extras in Bollywood Nandita Raman Dilli ke cinemagharon ka badalta swaroop: ek chhayachitraN (The changing face of Delhi’s cinema halls) Nithya V Raman, Chennai Disaster Politics: An Examination of Tsunami Relief in Chennai Kaushiki Rao, New Delhi Transplanting the Urban Aesthetic in a Resettlement Colony in Delhi Rama Rao Ladkiyon ke College ka sarvajanik telephone aur ab har hath mein mobile (Then and Now: The public telephone in girls’ colleges and the mobile phone) Rinchin, Bhopal Tracing the History of Girl's Education in a Small Town Through the Eyes of its First Woman Teacher Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed, Chennai Indian Print Media and its Reportage on Fatwas Nirupama Sekhar and Sanjay Ramchandran, Mumbai Urban Stories: A Collection of Graphic Essays on the City of Mumbai Debjani Sengupta, New Delhi Colony Fiction: Refugee Colonies and their Representation in Post-Partition Kolkata Aman Sethi, New Delhi Seeking Alternative Ways and Means of Representing the “Poor and the Oppressed” by Studying Informal Networks at Labour Mandis in Delhi Ram Murthi Sharma, UNA, Himachal An Analysis of Magazines in Braille Parismita Singh, New Delhi Babel in Humayunpur, the Gift of Difference: a Comic Book Exploring Migrant Experience Sidharth Srinivasan, New Delhi A photoroman feature film: a Love Story Intertwined with the Myth and Folklore of Delhi's Heritage Sites Sheba Tejani, Mumbai Queer Cityscapes: Exploring Mumbai Cityscapes through the Eyes of Two Queer Women. Mrityunjay Tripathi, Allahabad Allahabad ki Chhatra Rajniti (Student politics in Allahabad) Indu Verma, Mumbai Society and the Soap Factory Aamit Rai, Wardha Harsud aur media (Harsud and the Media) Syed Mohd. Yunus and Syed Mohd Faisal, Delhi Asahay Mahanagar: Help Line karyakartaon ke najariye Se Dilli Shahar ka Adhyayan (Helpless City: A Study of Delhi from the Perspective of Help Line Workers) From vivek at sarai.net Thu Jan 5 15:32:59 2006 From: vivek at sarai.net (vivek at sarai.net) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 11:02:59 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Reader-list] 2006 Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellows Message-ID: <1045.210.211.178.241.1136455379.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> Happy New Year! We're excited to announce this year's Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellows, and we look forward to hearing more about their upcoming explorations... Vivek The Sarai- CSDS Independent Fellows 2006 Arshad Amanullah, New Delhi Journalism in Madrasas and Madrasas in Journalism Daljit Ami, Chandigarh Celluloid and Compact Disks in Punjab Maitrey Bajpai, Mumbai Cawnpore Samit Basu, New Delhi The Trousers of Time: Possible Futures of Indian Speculative Fiction in English Rudradeep Bhattacharjee, Mumbai Freedom in Cyberspace in the Context of India: A video documentary Tushar Bhor, Mumbai Water Lenses: Prelude for a New Imagination for Urban Water in Mumbai Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Kolkata Bishnupur Gharana: Story of a Forgotten Melody: Restoring the sound of Bishnupur Gharana Averee Chaurey, New Delhi The Song of the Baul Ayesha Sen Choudhury, Kolkata Locating Sexuality Through the Eyes of Afghan and Burmese Refugee Women in Delhi Dilip D'Souza, Mumbai Village in the city: Bombay in microcosm Girindra Pravasi Ilaqe mein telephone booth sanskriti (The culture of telephone booths) Uddipana Goswami, Guwahati City as Setting: Reflections of the Changing Faces of Guwahati in Assamese Literature Peerzada Arshad Hamid, Anantnag Exploring the Space of Psychiatric Hospitals in Srinagar Rakshat Hooja, Jaipur Urban Stakeholder Activism and the Role of Resident Welfare Associations Farhana Ibrahim, Gurgaon Maritime Histories: Merchant Networks and the Production of Locality in Western India Lakshmi IndraSimhan and Jacob Weinstein, New Delhi Vending as Vernacular: Depicting Street Sales and Services through Sequential Art Brajesh Kumar Jha, Delhi Hindi Cinemayee geet aur uska Bhashayee safar (The Language Journeys of Hindi Cinema) Anjali Jyoti, New Delhi Home Street Home: A Street Child Survival Guide for Delhi Sunandan K.N., New Delhi Workshop Boys of Coimbatore: A Study of City and Tacit Knowledge Akshaye Khanna, New Delhi Apni Jagah, Zarah Hut Ke: A “Staged Ethnography” of Space and Sexuality Naresh Kumar, New Delhi Festival of Music in the City of Sports: Harballabh Sangeet Mela of Jalandhar Prabhat Kumar, Delhi Yuvak Sangh aur ‘Yuvak’: 1920 ke dashak mein Bihar ka bauddhik parivesh (Yuvak Sangh and the ‘Yuvak’ magazine in the intellectual public sphere in 1920s Bihar) Rajesh Kumar K, Trivandrum An Ethnography of Teyyam Performance from a Practitioner’s Point of View Udaykumar M, New Delhi Unravelling a 'Real' Media Incident in Trivandrum Mallica, New Delhi Identities and Aspirations of Tibetan Youth in New Delhi Mamta Mantri, Mumbai Movie Theatres on and Around Maulana Shaukat Ali Road, Mumbai Abhinandita Mathur Veenu Mathur, New Delhi My building and the Shahar Rajesh Mehar, Bangalore Exploring Notions of Creative Ownership Among Contemporary Musicians Kamal Kumar Mishra Hindi Hridaysthali mein Jasoosi Upanyason va Inkey Paathakon ka Ek Samajik Itihas (A social history of detective novels and their readers in the Hindi heartland) Sanjeev Ranjan Mishra, Delhi Gyan-vinimay ki nayi takneekein aur mel banate Dalit (The New Technologies of Knowledge-flow and the Dalits) Izhar Ahmed Nadeem, Delhi Muslim Mahilaon ki Urdu Patrikayo ki Duniya (Urdu Women's Magazines: Their impact on Muslim Women) Veena Naregal, Informal Economies and Cultural Patronage: Studying Bollywood John Patrick Ojwando, Bangalore An Exploration of the Experiences of Afro students in South Asia Anil Pandey, NOIDA Desi Filmon ka Karobar (An analysis of the desi films trade) Piyush Pandey, Delhi News Channelon ka Satyakathakaran (The Satyakathaization of News Channels, on the compulsive crime reporting on TV) Rahul Pandita, Delhi Byte Soldier: The Life and Times of a Metro TV Reporter: A Graphic Novel in Hindi Janice Erica Pariat, New Delhi Writing the Notion of Home and Urban Space Sudipta Paul, West Bengal Response of the Labour Force to the Changing Urban Formation in the Asansol Industrial Area, West Bengal Dripta Piplai, New Delhi The Hegemony of Calcutta Music Schools in Tagore Songs: Towards an Archival Preservation of 'Multiple Traditions in Rabindrasangeet' Vasundhara Prakash, New Delhi 15 Seconds of Fame: Extras in Bollywood Nandita Raman Dilli ke cinemagharon ka badalta swaroop: ek chhayachitraN (The changing face of Delhi’s cinema halls) Nithya V Raman, Chennai Disaster Politics: An Examination of Tsunami Relief in Chennai Kaushiki Rao, New Delhi Transplanting the Urban Aesthetic in a Resettlement Colony in Delhi Rama Rao Ladkiyon ke College ka sarvajanik telephone aur ab har hath mein mobile (Then and Now: The public telephone in girls’ colleges and the mobile phone) Rinchin, Bhopal Tracing the History of Girl's Education in a Small Town Through the Eyes of its First Woman Teacher Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed, Chennai Indian Print Media and its Reportage on Fatwas Nirupama Sekhar and Sanjay Ramchandran, Mumbai Urban Stories: A Collection of Graphic Essays on the City of Mumbai Debjani Sengupta, New Delhi Colony Fiction: Refugee Colonies and their Representation in Post-Partition Kolkata Aman Sethi, New Delhi Seeking Alternative Ways and Means of Representing the “Poor and the Oppressed” by Studying Informal Networks at Labour Mandis in Delhi Ram Murthi Sharma, UNA, Himachal An Analysis of Magazines in Braille Parismita Singh, New Delhi Babel in Humayunpur, the Gift of Difference: a Comic Book Exploring Migrant Experience Sidharth Srinivasan, New Delhi A photoroman feature film: a Love Story Intertwined with the Myth and Folklore of Delhi's Heritage Sites Sheba Tejani, Mumbai Queer Cityscapes: Exploring Mumbai Cityscapes through the Eyes of Two Queer Women. Mrityunjay Tripathi, Allahabad Allahabad ki Chhatra Rajniti (Student politics in Allahabad) Indu Verma, Mumbai Society and the Soap Factory Aamit Rai, Wardha Harsud aur media (Harsud and the Media) Syed Mohd. Yunus and Syed Mohd Faisal, Delhi Asahay Mahanagar: Help Line karyakartaon ke najariye Se Dilli Shahar ka Adhyayan (Helpless City: A Study of Delhi from the Perspective of Help Line Workers) From eve at pointephemere.org Thu Jan 5 15:54:23 2006 From: eve at pointephemere.org (Eve Lemesle) Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 11:24:23 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call for projects for a residency Message-ID: <5ABC5581-8281-4B84-A734-E8936F0579F5@pointephemere.org> AIR / ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE CALL FOR PROJECTS for a residency at Point Ephémère (Paris) in April- May-June 06 Point Ephémère, centre for artistic dynamics in Paris, and The Dune Beach Village near Pondicherry are starting an Artist In Residence program for Indian and French artists. POINT EPHEMERE ######## In Paris, Indian visual artists, video-makers, painters, sculptors are invited to propose their project, before February 10th, in order to have a 3 months residence at Point Ephémère, starting in April 2006. Point Ephémère's residencies are dedicated to artistic research and creation, or production of a specific project. Artists work in a Point Ephémère studio, along the canal St Martin, in the heart of Paris. They are accommodated at Cité Internationale des Arts, an international foundation that provides more than 300 flats for artists in Paris. The resident artist will benefit from Point Ephémère's logistic support and accompaniment in art works production, along with French artists. This program mainly concerns emerging artists, starting their career. They will be chosen for the artistic quality of their work, by a jury of professionals (around February 17th). RESIDENCY ######## The residence consists in: - a plane ticket (round trip) to Paris and back - a grant of 1290 euros, - Possibility for a show or exhibition in Point Ephémère and private galleries With this grant, artists will have to assume, with preferential fares : - An accommodation at Cité International des Arts (290 euros) - A private studio (35 m2) in Point Ephémère (300 euros), with access to technical studios, sound and multimedia platforms, - production materials, perdiem. APPLICATION ######## Interested artists will have to provide for application: - a curriculum vitae - images on their actual work - 1 page text on the art's content - documentation on their former work - press reviews and publications - a motivation letter, or if relevant, a brief project in relation with France, Paris. Please send your files UNTIL FEBRUARY 10 TH 2006, BY EMAIL with pdf files, to both eve at pointephemere.org and Josephine at artistsinresidence.org CONTACT ######## For any information, please contact Eve Lemesle : eve at pointephemere.org / (+33) 1 40 34 02 48 This program is founded by City Hall of Paris, and benefit from the sponsorship of Gulf Air, and the support of ENSBA (Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris). ........................................................................ ........ Point Ephémère AIR Artists In Residence 200 Quai de Valmy "The Dune Beach Village" 75010 Paris Pudhukuppam, Keelputhupet France (Via Pondichery University) 600 014 Tamil Nadu_______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From events at oii.ox.ac.uk Thu Jan 5 16:30:10 2006 From: events at oii.ox.ac.uk (OII Events) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 11:00:10 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Globalization and the Offshore Outsourcing of Software Services Message-ID: <10c3aab308314aeda1cdb46dbea9de62@oii.ox.ac.uk> Dear All, Please may we bring to your attention the following forthcoming event: 'Globalization and the Offshore Outsourcing of Software Services' Speaker: Professor William Aspray, Professor of Informatics, Indiana University, Bloomington. Date: 12 Jan 2006, 15:30 - 17:00 Location: Oxford Internet Institute, 1 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JS Attendance: This event is open to the public, if you would like to attend please email your name and affiliation to events at oii.ox.ac.uk Abstract: The talk will present findings from an international study organized by the computing professional society ACM. Topics will include changes in the geography of the software industry, enablers of offshoring, reasons why companies send work to other countries, the economics of offshoring, globalization of research, security and intellectual property risks, and educational and policy responses. Biography: William Aspray is the Rudy Professor of Informatics at Indiana University, Bloomington. His research involves the politics and history of computing and Internet technologies. He has formerly held senior management positions in Computing Research Association, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Charles Babbage Institute; and faculty positions at Harvard, Pennsylvania, Rutgers, Virginia Tech, and Williams. For further information on all OII events, please refer to our website at: www.oii.ox.ac.uk Kind Regards The Events Team Oxford Internet Institute 1 St Giles University of Oxford Oxford OX1 3JS Tel: +44 (0)1865 287209 Fax: +44 (0)1865 287211 www.oii.ox.ac.uk From hfg at konsumerziehung.de Thu Jan 5 20:06:10 2006 From: hfg at konsumerziehung.de (he tears consume) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 15:36:10 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] good communication rec.: kunst kommerz distinkte praxis In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <078b9a4eb49aedfed85b28ddd9e8bbb4@konsumerziehung.de> good communication rec. kunst kommerz distinkte praxis New Live Tracks out now on GCRecords! "curmbox sound art rock band live at tanzhaus west 2005" http://gute-kommunikation.org/03_curmbox_03.m4a "38317 feat. dr. matze schmidt live at tanzhaus west 2005" http://gute-kommunikation.org/02_38317_02.m4a http://gute-kommunikation.org/01_38317_01.m4a http://gute-kommunikation.org/ Emerging Arts Musics Words Cultures Sciences & Resistances ////// Archives http://aus7.org/hate/ // http://zurwehme.org Des lois. Zazie: u-bahn est un élévateur horizontalement. From cahen.x at levels9.com Thu Jan 5 23:12:15 2006 From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen) Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 18:42:15 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] pourinfos Newsletter / 01-01 to 01-05-2006 Message-ID: <43BD5A77.3050509@levels9.com> pourinfos.org l'actualite du monde de l'art / daily Art news ----------------------------------------------------------------------- infos from January 01, 2006 to January 05, 2006 (included) ------------------------------------------------------------------- (mostly in french) Best wishes 2006 ! ------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 Call : Labyrinth project, Saksala ArtRadius, Haukivuori, Finland. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2559 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 Call : 'CARTES Flux', CARTES Centre for Art and Technology, Espoon Kaupunki, Finland. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2558 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 Call : Call for Experimental Video: ADTV, Ohio, Usa. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2557 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 Call : Flag metaphoses, Düsseldorf, Allemagne. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2556 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 Call : Flying Broom International women's film festival, Ankara, Turkey. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2555 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 Formation : Call for visual artists, Ecole Supérieure d'Art et de Design d'Amiens Metropole, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=2553 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 Job : multi-media artistic teaching, école supérieure des beaux-arts de Tours, Tours, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=2552 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 Meetings : Shu Lea Cheang, Wednesday January 11, 2006, Ciren, Ensad, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2551 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 09 Meetings : The Factory of the project: Cuno Brullmann et Associés, Wednesday January 11, 2006, Maison de l'architecture en Île-de-France, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2550 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Meetings : collectif Mix, lecturs, performances on January 19, 2006, à l'Ensci les Ateliers, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2549 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 Meetings : Crossings with the literature: Henri Gaudin, Henri Gaudin, Maison de l'architecture en Île-de-France, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2548 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 Publication : PAPIERS LIBRES # 43, repentance, galerie ESCA Edition, Milhaud, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2547 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Publication : La maison rectangulaire, Hélèna Villovitch et Hendrik Hegray, Estuaire Editions, éof, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2546 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 Publication : Hojas de Haiku, Sonia Andrés Alzola et A partir de la palabra, Albert Girós, Inter-Textos, Spain. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2545 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 Various : libr&critik, is a site devoted to the contemporary literatures, Arras, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=2544 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 Exhibition: be on table, Centre Social et Culturel d'Étouvie, Amiens, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2543 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 Screening : Stan Brakhage, Thursday January 05, 2006 at 8 pm, Mk2 Beaubourg, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2542 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 18 Screening : diffusion of artist videos at à FEST-HIVER, La vitrine, Limoges, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2541 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Program : Exhibitions, Abbaye de Maubuisson, Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2540 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 Exhibition : RESIS-TANCES, homage to Rémy Zaugg,, Le Frac Nord - Pas de Calais, Dunkerque, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2539 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 Screening : 3 short films, Association Art En Exil, Cinéma La CLEF, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2538 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 Exhibition : Strangers in the night, Triangle France, Galerie Friche la Belle de mai, Marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2537 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Exhibition : Variations & Traces, Le Frac Nord - Pas de Calais, Espace le Carré, Lille, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2535 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 Exhibition : Five hundred billion girls And I, and I, and I, Miss China, Lunch Box, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2534 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 Exhibition: « multiple art », Espace de l’Art Concret, Donation Albers-Honegger, Château de Mouans, Mouans-Sartoux, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2533 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 26 Exhibition : Radio Kills the video stars, Le Collège, Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2532 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 Apostils : The Net: towards a semantics and social cartography. | Rémi Sussan | 12/14/2005 | http://pourinfos.org/encours/item.php?id=2427 From sunil at mahiti.org Fri Jan 6 16:33:00 2006 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 12:03:00 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] CALL FOR PROJECTS for a residency at Point Ephemere (Paris) in April-May-June 06 Message-ID: <1136545380.8469.24.camel@localhost.localdomain> AIR / ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE CALL FOR PROJECTS for a residency at Point Eph�m�re (Paris) in April-May-June 06 Point Eph�m�re, centre for artistic dynamics in Paris, and The Dune Beach Village near Pondicherry are starting an Artist In Residence program for Indian and French artists. POINT EPHEMERE ######## In Paris, Indian visual artists, video-makers, painters, sculptors are invited to propose their project, before February 10th, in order to have a 3 months residence at Point Eph�m�re, starting in April 2006. Point Eph�m�re's residencies are dedicated to artistic research and creation, or production of a specific project. Artists work in a Point Eph�m�re studio, along the canal St Martin, in the heart of Paris. They are accommodated at Cit� Internationale des Arts, an international foundation that provides more than 300 flats for artists in Paris. The resident artist will benefit from Point Eph�m�re's logistic support and accompaniment in art works production, along with French artists. This program mainly concerns emerging artists, starting their career. They will be chosen for the artistic quality of their work, by a jury of professionals (around February 17th). RESIDENCY ######## The residence consists in: - a plane ticket (round trip) to Paris and back - a grant of 1290 euros, - Possibility for a show or exhibition in Point Eph�m�re and private galleries With this grant, artists will have to assume, with preferential fares : - An accommodation at Cit� International des Arts (290 euros) - A private studio (35 m2) in Point Eph�m�re (300 euros), with access to technical studios, sound and multimedia platforms, - production materials, perdiem. APPLICATION ######## Interested artists will have to provide for application: - a curriculum vitae - images on their actual work - 1 page text on the art's content - documentation on their former work - press reviews and publications - a motivation letter, or if relevant, a brief project in relation with France, Paris. Please send your files UNTIL FEBRUARY 10 TH 2006, BY EMAIL with pdf files, to both eve at pointephemere.org and Josephine at artistsinresidence.org CONTACT ######## For any information, please contact Eve Lemesle : eve at pointephemere.org / (+33) 1 40 34 02 48 This program is founded by City Hall of Paris, and benefit from the sponsorship of Gulf Air, and the support of ENSBA (Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris). ................................................................................ Point Eph�m�re 200 Quai de Valmy 75010 Paris France AIR Artists In Residence "The Dune Beach Village" Pudhukuppam, Keelputhupet (Via Pondichery University) 600 014 Tamil Nadu -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org "Vijay Kiran" IInd Floor, 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mob: (91) 9342201521 UK: (44) 02000000259 From jumpshark at gmail.com Sat Jan 7 00:32:49 2006 From: jumpshark at gmail.com (Prashant Pandey) Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 00:32:49 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Film Music's Young Turks, Shameer Tandon By Prashant Pandey Message-ID: Kitne Ajeeb Rishte Hai Yaha pe…. Do Pal milte hain saath saath chalte hai Jab mod aaye to back ke nikalte hai Beqarar kar dala Chalka chahato ka pyala Bin qatal kiye hee marr dala Huzoor Huzoor-e-aala Both these songs were one of the best that film music industry offered last year. The man behind these songs is Shamir Tandon, He is currently head of the operations (India) of the Virgin-EMI Records, but don't mistake him for any other nerdy number crunching corporate. Thirty three year old Shamir is a silent killer who operates in the Hindi film music industry as a composer with films like Page 3, Rakth, Umar and some 200 ad-jingles. Virgin-EMI office is located in an old mill near Sewri, which is a part of the Dock area falling on the Harbour Line. I must say that it is quite an unusual place for a music label. It's not a big office. Just like a modest up market music store. … I see around 6 people working on their computers or talking on phone. The office is full of CDs and posters of Indian (Shaan & Shuba Mudgal) and international artists.(Shakira) I spoke to Shamir Tandon in his cabin, which stacks music encyclopedias, yearly reports of the international music sales, Directories, Foreign Exchange tables & Volumes on International laws on taxation. There are awards and trophies too in his small cabin. This is what we talked about- Page 3 is not a musical film. Yet we see songs of different genres in it……. Yes… see there is a song on the internal journey that the journalist goes through.Then there are light hearted songs and an item song. What is an item song? This is keeping in mind that you are composer as well as head of a music company. I think there are 2 kinds of funny and dance songs. One is woven in the films narrative without which the films story is incomplete other is forcefully fitted in the film to draw audiences. I think the latter is an item song. I think item song is a subset of a dance song that is forcefully put in the film to draw attention. It is a marketing tool. But there are certain dance songs like in earlier film Don (Kalyanji Anandji) (http://imdb.com/title/tt0077451/) there is this song Chora Ganga kinare wala. It's a funny song but its not an item song because there is lot of action happening-- there is police chasing someone. So its weaved in the film. What about Helen numbers? Would they classify as item song? No even those do not classify because some action would be happening there would eye contact between the villain and the hero. Or Helen would be helping the thief to steal the diamond necklace. The dance gets over. Lights go off. The diamond necklace vanishes. So those songs perpetuated a lot of action within the narrative. But now people put it just for the heck of it. You say it… but you have given one of the most memorable item songs of our times —oh Watta babe…. (Laughs) you are calling it an item song because Yana Gupta danced to it. But in the film Sanjay Dutt goes to look for this girl in a night club. So there is some story there. Now if he is going to a night club you can not have a bhajan there. In you film Page 3 You have done a song called Kitne Ajeeb Rishte hai yaha pe(On frailties of human relationships) This song has praised by one and all including the music critics. But then in the same album you do a "kua me kuud jaouungii"( I will dive into the well) How do you explain this? See let me ask you a question? If you were to analyze this film…. one of the greatest hit of Hindi Cinema- Sholay- (http://imdb.com/title/tt0073707/) how you would you do it? Pancham da who we all idolize gave the music and Anand Bakshi wrote the songs. OK? Now you see the album. You have a happy friendship song – "ye Dosti Hum nahi Torenge" Then you have a Holi Song where everybody is dancing, then you have a comedy/love song with the popular couple Hema and Dharamender " koi haseena jab rooth jati hai " then you have a sad version of "Ye Dosti" (Shamir sings a line each of all these songs one by one to highlight the respective mood of the song.) If you analyze this there are songs for different moods and genre. It's a compilation for different stock situations. Say this is hero. He goes to college. He will sing a love song there with his girlfriend. Then he comes home and there is Rakshabhandan so he will sing a song with his sister. The mother may also join in. If the girlfriend leaves the hero then he will be singing a sad song. If the villain kills his mother and sister then he will sing a song of revenge. So a film song album has traditionally been a package. Are you a really techno kind of a guy? I mean do you play around with softwares? No never. This is for the technicians to do. I just compose off my head…whether I am in the washroom or car or taking a walk. See there are technical people to take care of these things. There is a sound designer, arranger, recordist. Some of the young composers are very good with softwares…but it not a must. You can say that it is not a qualification. You might think that senior composers are failing to catch up with technology but it is not true. Recordists and arrangers and sound designers who all of us work with are quite clued in with the current advancements in technology. So they take care. So you do a tune and sing it in a Dictaphone? Yes that's what I have been doing. All 200 jingles and all songs happened that way. See music making is a very collaborative effort there is a lot communication that happens. The director of the film is the captain of the ship. Say page 3… it is Madhurs' brief that I am executing. The arrangers are executing my brief. The players are executing the arrangers brief. Yet there is lot of cross collaboration and talk-back. Do you strive for a particular sound? I mean is there a Shamir Tandon sound? No not really because for that you must done several films. I am just starting out so I do not know you can label it like you do for Anu and Rehman.I am sure as I do more films something will emerge that people will refer to as a Shamir Tandon song or sound. This develops over a period of time. I don't think anyone who is doing his first project will say," This is my style". But there are certain dos and don'ts that I keep in mind. Like? Like I am a melody guy. You mean… melody versus harmony? No … I mean it has to sound sweet… Then I am firm that I will not run away from technology. I am not saying that I will create new sounds or be heavy on rhythm. I am just going to be a natural composer making film songs. Then I love live acoustic sounds. Most of my songs are live acoustic. Even club tracks that I do I put in some live Dholak Tell me a bit about your background? Do you come from advertising? I am a management graduate. I have done cost accountancy (ICWA). I started my career with firms like Kotak Mahindra and Birla Global finance. Then I started freelancing with Moonlight (A Bombay based Production House) where I did more than 100 jingles in different languages. When entertainment industry started opening up in 1999 and professionals started to come in this industry…I jumped into entertainment industry bandwagon. I did event management for a while and then joined EMI Music as a Marketing manager. Through & through I started serving the company and today I head the operations….but this music ka kida was always there. There were lots of compositions that I had done since childhood. So I have started to flog them to producers and directors. Do you have mentors? I consider Kalyan ji –Anandji bhai as my teachers. Though no body can teach you composing…either you can do it or you do not. Yet there is lot that you can learn just from watching and talking. They lived near my house and as a young guy I would go to them….. sit and talk to them and see them record a song.. It was great fun…they did so much experiment. See their sound in Saraswati Chandra( Chandan Sa Badan) , Qurbani ( Aap jaisa koi, Laila Laila) even Tridev (Oye Oye) that Viju did. I learnt all from just watching them. Are you from Bombay? Yes. Ok tell me one thing……you were doing music all this while … then you left hardcore finance and joined a music company. What was your first lesson that your bosses taught you at Virgin Records. Well we are a multinational company so certain systems are no different from a McKenzie or Arthur Anderson or say Hindustan Liver. We are a product company… we manufacture and sell cassettes and CDs. So we adhere to international systems. Remember this is not music – this is the business of music so the same break even analysis, online manufacturing, distribution approval has to be done. I can see lot of books on international trade and tax laws on the racks in the next cabin. Absolutely how different is this from selling a premium chocolate or a brand of liquor. Music is a product that has to be profitably sold. You also started this trend in India with music companies tying up with various brands and coming up with stuff like Bacardi blast & Seagrams mega mix. What is it? Is it sponsorship? Surrogate advertising? They are not really sponsors but partners because people would know what Bacardi is and what its tastes like if they buy the Bacardi blast album. I have a never-ending catalogue of good songs. I can push 5 good songs on a CD and call it BLAST but I call it BACARDI BLAST because your expenses are getting paid for so it improves your profit margins. To run a business you have to subsidize your costs. What about competition between music companies? See if you ask Pepsi they would not say that Coke is their rival. They will say lassi nimbu paani mango shake or pani is their rival. Similarly music does not compete against music. It is competing these days with new forms of entertainment. In today's world the consumption is music is going high but music buying is going down. People have other things to do. Pocket money of my young buyer is getting diluted at other forms of entertainment… See this kid has 300 Rupees in his pocket. Now he goes to a music shop and buys my CD. Or he goes to a Bowling alley that is located on the same floor of the shopping mall and spends all that money on bowling…else drinks coffee with his girlfriend or buys a book. So as a music company we strategize for these equations… everybody in the market is vying for that 300 Rupees. Everybody wants a share in that pie. Is this 300 rupees of this young guy, a survey result? No just a commonsensical estimate. So bringing down the corporate helps you to subsidize your costs so you can concentrate on you core area which is making new music. Its partnership as they get advertised as well. It seems music companies only want to market music rather than make it. Aren't music companies supposed to make new music? Yes absolutely. You have to keep making new music but the old music have to be repackaged. You have to thematically play around with your catalog and present new compilations. That's how a Pink Floyd, Rafi, Kishore sells. You are running a company which is governed by strong business fundamentals of the music trade. What about your own creative sensibilities as a composer? Do you compose your song trying to make it a saleable product? No not really. A tune comes naturally. You do not think that now I am going to make a commercial tune. It just happens. But certainly you can do lot of things when you are giving your song a definite shape. That is when you arrange it? Yes when you are arranging it then you wear your other cap because you weigh its marketability. You are trying to balance a high responsibility job and a very demanding profession i.e. of a film music director …. Does it get to your nerves? See if you say there is tension there is tension. If you say there is stress there is stress. But if you CHOOSE to say," There is none"… then there is none. See I will tell you…every corporate guy working in Marine Point or CP in Delhi does something after his office gets over i.e. going out for a beer in a bar, take his chick out in a park or a club, lot of people shop a lot after office. Some head for tennis or gym. Similarly I go to my music room. For me music is my release. It is fun for me. I have a job and music is my passion- my creative outlet. It is not my source of income. The day it becomes my source of income it will give me stress. If you play a cricket match and score a zero then you do not care but if you are Sachin Tendulkar and if you score a duck then you are fucked. What are your office timings? Office is from 9.30 to 7.30 or 8 That's a lot……. Yes every corporate has the same timings. From then I head for my music room which is one hour drive from my office. We jam up there till 12 -1230 pm from there I head for home. So you reach home at 1 am. (Silence ….I realize I should not have said it) (Smiles) Yes but I do music on alternate days. And I devote weekends to my family. I am sure that your big bosses would feel happy that you have given Virgin Records, a face but do you face some sort of hostility from your colleagues because you have a very strong exterior persona that is linked to the glamour and riches of Bollywood. No not at all my company encourages me a lot. That's how I have been able to do so much…. See all the work that I do…. I do not take a single penny for it. Everything goes to Virgin records. I am just happy composing. The proceeds of my work and payments are made out to my company. That's one way of leveraging my career as a composer and my career as a record label executive. End Of Part One ================================================================================================================================== Links to this Article- http://imdb.com/name/nm1340084/ http://www.24x7updates.com/FullStory-News-Asha_Bhonsle_records_in_US-ID-23386.html http://www.saindia.com/article/articleview/308/1/38/ http://www.nowrunning.com/MusicReviews/musicReview.asp?it=1705 http://in.news.yahoo.com/050618/43/5z0bg.html http://www.bollywhat.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=e83e7c5562f96114bb4515c993d7d9d0&topic=6281.msg73948 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Prashant Pandey From anusharizvi at rediffmail.com Fri Jan 6 11:32:01 2006 From: anusharizvi at rediffmail.com (anusha rizvi) Date: 6 Jan 2006 06:02:01 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] 'Emlployment Guarantee-A Reportage' Message-ID: <20060106060201.12535.qmail@webmail10.rediffmail.com>   The following is a diary of the 'Rozgar Yatra 2004' by one of the participants. ____________________ HAR HAATH KO KAAM DO- A Reportage. Lucknow-28 June, Tuesday. 10-30: At the Gandhi Bhawan Sangrahalay in Central Lucknow, two attendants sit around a table in a depleted and dilapidated hall. The furniture of an old world library is intact, the literature is missing. Except for Hindi newspapers, all that its shelves contain are old copies of obscure Hindi magazines, many of them propaganda pamphlets of Nagri Pracharni Sabha, with one of them adorning Manmohan’s face, placed prominently, perhaps recently. The only two visitors present this morning are from an organization called Usha, run by a Magsaysay Award winner. They are here to receive the Rozgar AdhikarYatra of the People’s Action for Employment Guarantee on behalf of their organization, Usha which is the local host for this last leg, through the Awadh heartland, of the Rozgar Yatra. !.45 Waiting for the start of the Press Conference and the Jan Sabha, I wait it out in the auditorium, a surprisingly proper one for a dilapidated and out of funds Gandhi Bhawan. Even a ‘People’s’ Action for employment guarantee function needs an auditorium, lights, mikes, sound systems and volunteers as well as a crowd, the addressee public, for it to become successful. The arrangements in progress seem to be a combination of a cultural function and a political rally. Sudarshan and his team of volunteers have been busy these past few days in putting up banners and posters in the city for the event these few days. Right now they are decorating the hall and its environs with those same banners, checking sound levels and laying bolsters and mattresses on the stage. There are 200 or so villagers waiting in the hall with me, they have been brought here by Usha from the areas, particularly Atrauli block, where it works. We are being entertained by bad recordings of SRK songs and, a surprise item, the title song from a film called Hadsa from the early eighties. There are banners of the local organizations hosting the event: Mushar Vikas Pahal Samiti, Nichlol, Maharajganj, Ashray Adhikar Manch, Allahabad, Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Lucknow. Each must protect and advertise its turf, zealously. There are villagers in the meeting but the Jan Sabha, the Public Meeting, is marked by a complete absence of the putative public jan. As we wait for the ‘events’ to start I drift off to the canteen downstairs which would not be a misfit if transported wholesale to JNU or D School. A group sitting in front of me is taking notes while a young girl fluently critiques media’s approach to complex social issues. (Is the media changing or strengthening the conservative mindset, say by highlighting the Karva Chauth festival, is one of the queries under discussion). Some villagers lounge around on the tables outside. Across the road, the sprawling, stately and magnificent ruins of the Lucknow Residency indifferently watch the proceedings. 3.40 pm- Back to the Reading Room of the Gandhi Sangrahalaya, I have missed the Press Conference. Cameras on stands, all wound up, reporters with rolled up mikes and cellphones. Next to me a bearded man with flowing gray hair and a beard reads aloud in English, from a Hindi Newspaper, before jotting notes in a handbook. Each page of the notepad is scribbles at the top with a signature, ‘S Chaudhry Greatest God One in World.’ His shirt is torn at the right armpit but like the Press Conference, he is oblivious to that tear too and goes on with his English recitation and note-taking from a Hindi paper. 4.35 pm. The function has begun in the hall. Pawan Pande from JNU introduces us to the purposes of the Yatra after giving us the Lal Salam. His delivery and rhetoric are inseparable from political speak of other parties, other leaders. How can a revolutionary ideal be presented in an oratorical style that is so markedly establishment-like? Needed therefore, a new revolutionary rhetoric. 4.45 pm. Sandip Pande talks about the Right to Information campaign in his area, about how works at the village level are given away to contractors or commercial firms in complete violation of the norms. He mentions the case of faulty BPL rolls, where in the Mohammedpur block they included the names of a local journalist from Dainik Jagran and of a teacher at the local Inter College. Anybody with a phawra should be given work, regardless of BPL registration. It is as VP Singh had pointed out at the start of the rally, what is the need to restrict this Act to the poor? Which wealthy man is going to lift stones all day just to get a minimum wage-62 Rs in UP and even that is not paid in full anywhere. 5.15 pm I drift off for a Cigarette and spot Prakash Karat, who appears in a small white Maruti car with Suhasini Ali. There is no security, nor any other attendants. Since he has limited time he is immediately pressed into speaking. His short and technical speech is followed by Ambika Chaudhy of the SP, the State Revenue Minister who is far more cogent and knowledgeable than I would have ever expected an SP politician to be. He talks about how in Uttar Pradesh the average holding is 0.9 acre which means that a marginal farmer is hardly better than a landless labourer therefore an EGA, of whatever nature, would be wholly inadequate to deal with unemployment as a wider issue. He raises interesting questions about the implementation of government schemes, quoting Rajiv Gandhi to say that only 15 out of a 100 paisa that is sanctioned by the State actually gets spent at the ground level, the rest being pocketed by middlemen. His views remind me, of all the people, of Tavlin Singh who makes a similar point every two weeks in her columns. Meanwhile, Jaan sits still on the stage, assiduously taking notes. 5.55 Suhasini Ali follows Ambica Chaudhry. She speaks with a faltering and urbane accent but with great fluency and passion, bindaas one might say. She talks about the Parliamentary standing committee on the Employment Guarantee Bill, which is chaired by Kalyan Singh. Talks about how he was very responsive when they approached him but says the politicians change colours when in Parliament from what they were in standing committees. What in the eyes of the State is defined as work, she asks? Digging a ditch 3 feet by 3 feet by 1 foot is called one day’s work. But the problem is that our qalamghissu babus (the penpushing clerks-loud laughter and cheers), forget that this will generate 3000 kilos of earth. Who is going to dispose of that mud, obviously the womenfolk of these labourers. There is no accounting for this unpaid labour. The villagers cheer loudly, she is the only one to catch their imagination. As Suhasini and Prakash leave the hall, half of it runs after them. How many times would a party worker see the chairman so close and upfront, unattended, free to be poached for this or that favour. Akhilesh Pratap Singh, the UP Secretary of CPI-ML speaks in their wake, unaffected by the depleted audience. He takes potshots at Prakash, at the Congress Party (for ‘92, for Telengana, for Hyderabad Police Action) and asserts that he has supported the Yatra despite his many objections. 6.20 pm. Jaan’s turn to speak. His fluency in Hindi is impressive. He talks about how an EGA was the first item on the UPA agenda, how the government has reneged from that commitment by discarding the bill prepared by the National Advisory Council, from which he has lately resigned, and creating one of its own which wholly dilutes the original purpose. In an ironic turn of phrase he describes, for it does not guarantee employment for women, he describes it as a ‘naamardon ka bill.’ The Food for Work Programmes that are to be implemented till the Act comes into force lacks vitality, he says, because the guidelines are not properly followed. Muster Rolls, recording the number of labour-days, workers and wages paid to them, are not available at all except for Rajasthan where the Right to Information campaign led by Aruna Roy and MKSS has shown some positive results. He speaks simply and well and thus escapes the ‘bhashan-shoshan’ that several Yatris later confessed to be suffering from. JUNE 29th, 9 am SANDILA We miss the bus next morning and therefore get to ride with Rajiv Pande and Jaan Daraaz and Rajiv’s wife Arundhati, a veteran of the Narmada movement, for the forty-five minute ride to Sandila, a Qasba near Lucknow which has historically been famous for its Laddus. Nazir AKbarabadi even wrote a poem on it, if I remember correctly. Remarking at his heavy load of files I elicit from Rajeev the confession that he is nothing but a glorified social clerk. 10.30 am We join the entourage at a small hall at Sandila, built by the Advocates’ Committee of Sandila, adjoining the local Kachahri. They are our local hosts and distribute Chai and Samosas to all, members of the Yatra are garlanded and we sing to them, more us, revolutionary songs. Who speaks to whom, and for what? Just outside the hall a poor family, all of it, is perched on a small charpai under the shade of a mango tree. These poor do not come into the meeting and are not addressed either. We troop out to do a public meeting at the street side. Very appropriately, the building which forms a backdrop is a Theka of Desi Sharab, a distinctly red brick colonial structure with the words Bonded Warehouse 1909 emblazoned on the top. As we shout slogans demanding work for every hand a blackened labourer washes himself on the handpump nearby. A ready market crowd, petitioners to the Kachahri and other odd visitors to the Qasba form a sizeable crowd for the street play and song prepared by the MKSS people. One man tells another, aao miyan sun to lo, kam se kam gaanv jake batahiyo ki kachahri mein kya sun ke aae ho baat to khair jaaiz hai.” An enterprising boy comes round, selling guthkas. I drift off in search of a bottled water, surprisingly it is available here. It is as Shambhu says to the poor people in the play, he plays a minister, who are demanding water. Water causes a lot of diseases he says, therefore we have cut off water supply and are going to build factories for bottled water for everyone. It is frightening that even Sandila now has bottled water. A local notable, Mohammed Rais, the Chairman of the Nagar Palika hurriedly draws up his new Maruti car and goes up to address the crowd, saying he is all for employment. A villager from Mohammadabad is invited onstage by Rajiv who talks about his struggle in getting hold of papers from his local officials. He looks rural, speaks in the local colloquial and talks passionately and aggressively about the collusion between Gram Pradhans, local officials and politicians. His feisty peroration greatly embarrasses Rais Ahmed, still hovering on the stage. He can’t take it for too long and on the pretext of receiving a call goes off stage leaving Mohan to his fulminations. Hearing Mohan speak, a middle aged woman comes forward to ask me, since I am taking notes I must be official, what it is all about. She turns out to be in hearty agreement with Mohan and says she herself has not been paid by her Pradhan for work she did under the Anganwadi scheme. As part of the Mid-day meal scheme instituted by the Government, she was asked to cook at 500 Rs a month. ‘Saal bhar khana banwain primary ke liye aur paisa na dihin,’ the Pradhan still owes her 2000 Rs. I ask her whether the students got to eat the meals she cooked-mostly khichdi-and it is still a pleasant surprise to learn that somewhere in the Mid-day meal scheme was being implemented, in whatever form. The children were being fed one meal by schools. We have nothing to offer her except to urge her that it is her right. Obviously she knows that. Yatris are selling badges which are inscribed with a slogan. ‘Har haath ko kaam do, kaam ka poora daam do.’ The Yatra is not being sponsored or funded by anyone. As it travels through North India, through ten states over fifty days, sales of badges, pamphlets and simple donations-of 1 or 2 Rs even-provide the cost of diesel. The food and accommodation is arranged by any of the 125 NGOs, the local hosts, who have come forward to support this Yatra. It is a unique endeavour and somewhat Gandhian in spirit, at least in trying to stay self-funded like this. Even in the poor, marginalized and voiceless Sandila five people end up buying badges. Information comes in that a clerk in the adjoining collectory had asked someone present for a bribe of 25 Rs to release a form. Instantly, the atmosphere turns electric. Shouting ‘Aawaaz do hum ek hain-duniya ke mazdoor ek ho,’ we march into the nearby Tehsil, with a gleeful and excited crowd following us, to impart immediate justice to the clerk who had demanded money to issue a caste certificate. For some of us this jamboree of instant justice becomes an insurrection against the State. Zulm agar mitaana hai to zulmi se takraana hoga shouts Ramcharan Rawat alias Vinoba ji, a bearded colourful Yatri from Gaya, Bihar, who turns out to be a great self-propagandist as we travel on. Here though he comes up with a wonderful, risqué slogan- chor padadhikari ka hathkanda gaand mein danda, chaubees ghanta The maalbabu, Mushir babu, is caught and dragged into the compound by two people. The local people make assenting and triumphant noises, even our party is visibly excited. A lone cop assures his superiors on the cellphone, ‘nahin sir kuchh nahin hua,’ as ever the Indian State seems paranoid about crowds. 12 pm- As the bus leaves, Shambhu briefs us about what happened to the corrupt babu. The SDM has promised to shift him, that only means that a new babu will get his money and the transferred one will partake of the former’s share. Rajiv briefs us about the struggle his organization waged to get information records from three Panchayats, a movement that has now spread to 30 Gram Panchayats. 1.45 pm Hardoi, Headquarters. We pass through the main Hardoi road in the form of a juloos through rows upon rows of roadside stalls of the self-employed that define this country’s street life. Cycle-repair wallahs, meter-repairmen, banana sellers, chat and panwallahs and several stalls selling application forms for petty government jobs. We distribute to them pamphlets about Employment guarantee including one to a chap standing outside an employment forms stall, advertising a CRPF post 2685 and a ‘Dakiya hetu Inter Pass’ form. Pledging, desh ki janta bhooki hai, yeh azadi jhooti hai we arrive at yet another Gandhi Hall where we are welcomed by the District Traders’ Association. The first speaker welcomes us by singing, with enviable self-absroption, Gandhi’s favourite bhajan. The Yatries, all on stage, are then garlanded by various local notables. Jaan Daraaz is ‘especially’ welcomed, in Hindi and English. ‘I welcome you most,’ and compared to Mother Teresa. As always the play is a great success and breaks the ice between the audience and the stage. People seem eager, enthusiastic and they include many villagers, local babus, businessmen association members and several who have trooped in for lack of anything better to do, the permanent condition of mofussil India. 3.10 pm The DM has arrived. Rajiv talks to the people about the Rozgar yatra, about the Right to Information campaign and the ongoing food for work program, reminding them again that they have the dubious privilege of living in one of the poorest 150 districts in the country and that the government has sanctioned 42 crore Rs for the food for work programe for their district. Two young men, with shaven heads both, get up to leave after an intent attendance of over an hour. When I smile a goodbye to one of them, he apologetically explains that he has to leave now because his cycle downstairs is ‘unattended.’ Jaan is ushered off the stage to do an interview with a cameraman, a digital video camera, a mike is produced. Like everywhere else his command of Hindi arouses great astonishment in Hardoi too. Rajiv shares with the audience the experience of the Jagruk Nagrik Samiti of Bikaner, which Shambhu had related to us in the bus in the morning, about how they picket government offices once a month, prepare a list of corrupt babus and a detailed account log of which babu has taken how much bribe and for what and then force them to return it. Rajiv tells us about his experience of chakbandi, ceiling, in one village where the Lekhpal/patwari was forced to return a bribe of 1200 Rs on the spot by the DM, when confronted with the truth. But this had only happened after malpractices in the way the chakbandi was being conducted had led one man to commit suicide and after 12 others had issued a similar threat. There are lusty cheers when Rajiv suggests that just as MLAs and Ministers are paid for being the peoples’ representatives, the public voting them into office should also be paid. He has calculated that averaging the salaries and the reps each voter should be paid 1500 Rs for each vote. Lovely notes for votes idea. Shazia, an MSW student from Bombay speaks forcefully about the true meaning of independence, every stomach should be filled, and with dignity. She chides the crowd for not containing a single woman, ‘kya is kshetra mein kisi aurat ko rozgar nahin chahiye.’ She also blows up the organizers for their discrimination in the way they received the woman. ‘One of our women would like to garland any two women members of the Yatra.’ DM Abishek Singh talks about procedural complexities in the way of the State trying to directly reach the workers in the villages. A villager labourer, when given the task to build a road, cannot take mud from adjoining fields, for instance, for lack of local clout. How then would he complete the works, even if the State deploys him to it? The dabang (the word has reached local usage from TV stations, it now denotes a social class rather than a personal characteristic) mafia therefore appropriates the funds and control the works and output. Half the minimum salary of 58 Rs is paid to the worker in cash and half in grain, what is the worker to do with the grain, convert it into flour and market it? He apologises that he has to leave early and goes off to personally attend to a call centre of complaints. He and another DM in the nearby region, both friends of Rajiv’s from his IIT days, have instituted public kiosks where for a payment of 5 or ten Rs anybody can demand a copy of any government document or lodge a complaint, it is called the Lokvani and today is the DM’s day to attend to calls. In a predominantly rural, illiterate area, where ten Rs go a long way, how would this e-governance cut any chords, I wonder. After his departure Pravin, a history undergrad at Ramjas University and a member of the Yatra talks about gross irregularities and malpractices in the ongoing Food for Work program that he went to inspect at Sarguja district in Chhattisgarh. A group of dhoti-clad farmers approach me-thanks to my notetaking no doubt- to say that they are from the Bhartiya Kisan Union, of Mahendra Singh Tikait fame, and have ‘liked’ this program and now want to know what they can do. We take them outside and it quickly becomes a crowd. People cluck in sympathy and agreement at what we are trying to do. Ramsevak Yadav, from Husainpur Diwani says he can easily mobilize a hundred two hundred people, lying idle since the BKU movement became embroiled in state politics but what are they going to do after that. I tell them they should wait to meet Jaan, after the meeting and go off to tell him about that. But after the meeting he is assailed by the local press, the BKU men remain unenlightened about what they should do. As the song and speeches go on A distributes pamphlets to the crowds, heavily in demand. An obviously rural person approaches her to ask if the Arundhati with us is the same Rai who has written her book. He is referring, of course, to Arundhati Roy. Four hundred Rs are collected as donations and some 25 badges are sold. (The highest collection for badges in any one meeting was Rs 3000 collected from a place near Narmada, Gujarat, attesting to the success of the Narmada movement in politicizing the masses there.) 6 pm. For my first night stay with arrive at a Sarvodaya Ashram, established in the wake of Vinoba Bhave’s Sarvodaya/Bhoodan movement, in SIkandarpur near Tariyavan in Hardoi. We are welcomed by all the children and the staff, commandeered here during the holidays for their momentary connection with a ‘national’ movement. After sharbat and snacks we sit in a circle, the students on the dari in the centre, and introduce ourselves one by one, all of us. The Ashram is devoted to Dalit girls, is a residential girls’ school and the girls who have been displayed to us are ones who have never been to a school but are now being given special training, a bridge course, to enable them to join in straight in Class Third. Later, in the evening, as we sit around the fine, airy compound of the school. I get to know some of the Yatris that evening. Mohan, a fellow activist from the village, asks Shambhu ‘why they cannot do a similar thing in Rajasthan.’ Mohan is a sixty year old, gangly tall man with bent knees, who is active with the MKSS of which Shambhu is one of the founders. While having dinner in a large hall, where the staff serve us various courses from pails and afterwards we all wash our plates and glasses, Shambhu tells me how the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangthan came to be founded. He grew up in a village in Rajasamand district in Rajasthan before landing at the Nehru Yuva Kendra at Lucknow, a social work institute where he was to receive his training and work as a social volunteer in his village. He became fascinated there with a puppeteer named Nathani and spent all his time trying to learn puppetry and puppet-making from the latter. When he returned to his village he started using puppets to do his Chetna Jagriti, Consciousness Awakening. It was a government sponsored propaganda program that exhorts people to remain clean, to produce more, to have a small family etc. But his superiors were greatly impressed with this puppettering that seemed to catch the imagination of the crowds. He shifted a little later to Tilonia, to work with Bunker Roy, one of India’s pioneering and celebrated social workers. While he was doing great work with the puppets he felt stifled in Tilonia’s ‘Communication department’ where they went and performed their shows and returned in the evenings, like other Artists elsewhere. But he had not set out to be an Artist. Around the same time Bunker’s wife, a highly respected Civil Servant, resigned her job to do full time social work and Shambhu came into contact with her. They went off to Jhabua to observe an outfit there and the way they were doing social work. As it happened, at the same time, another young man, having completed his higher education in the US and from a well off family was restlessly wandering around the whole of India, observing various people’s movements. He harangued Shambhu about the Chetna Jagriti work he was doing and the effeteness of his messages. The trio then returned once again to Jhabua and came back to form the Mazdoor Sangthan, because organization and numbers controlled the key to exerting any pressures on the state. But mazdoor, the classic Marxist proletariat, was a missing item in rural and largely unindustrialized Rajasthan, so Kisan, marginal or subsistence farmers had to be included and thus the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangthan, one of India’s most vibrant and well-known volunteer outfits was born. The baptism of fire for the young group was a year long struggle to regain the commons from the local Jagirdars. It would not be registered, a mandatory requirement if foreign funding is sought, would not seek any funding from anywhere, would run entirely on donations and would only pay minimum wage to its employees, including the founders who are still drawing minimum wage, ten years on. Everywhere it is his puppets and the street play they put on that forms an instant connection with the audience. In a nice attempt at self-mockery Shambhu and his group(troupe?) have also composed a song satirizing the working of NGOs. It goes, NGO o NGO O ji o, NGO Tum jiyo aur hum jiyo I return from a cigarette break to sit with Naseem, who is only one of three people to have remained with the Yatra for all of its fifty days. First he was only to go till Bhopal, then he was serviced to go upto Indore, then commanded for three more days till Ranchi and now he is still here. He is from Chittorgarh and works with a local organization called Krati and his friend from his hometown, Meraj works with another NGO called Prayas. Naseem worked with several Muslim organizations in Delhi and Bombay before returning to his city. He spent six years at Batla House in Okhla, N Delhi, exactly around the same time as I was coming of age in the same area and where my academic success and religious atheism was explained by a member of the same organization Naseem was working with, as due to a Zionist lobby working for me. As we talk, we are interrupted by shouts and screams from the hall nearby where we are to sleep. Naseem is disgusted at the fact that the Yatris do not seem to have any sense of consideration or courtesy towards their hosts, that this Ashram should not be desecrated by our boorish behaviour. It is a general criticism he has of the Yatra which he has oftentimes conveyed to Jaan too. He is also dissatisfied with the management of the Yatra, despite the enthusiastic response they have received in several places we remain very unclear about our larger aims and guidelines, he maintains. We have no answers to farmers’ demands for strategy and further action or for integrating their priorities with the larger aims of the Yatra. Then there were too many speakers and too few listeners. Meraj and Naseem divide the fellow-travellers into several distinct groupings. There are the Dilliwallahs, including the two first year girls from LSR, the JNUwallahs whom he divides into two groups. The dominant one is the Dhaba Kranti crowd, a group who like all dominant Marxist groups everywhere feel convinced that their chattering and sloganeering is the revolution itself. I agree. I have myself encountered many such smug revolutionaries, confident in knowing that they form the local hegemony that all opposition or criticism can be dismissed, disregarded or at some places, browbeaten. Cocooned by protected and subsidized walls of India’s premiere University for Social Sciences, the comrades are ever ready to spring a revolution at the slightest pretext, thus the Dhaba Kranti sobriquet. One day before we joined there was a heated argument within the group over the behaviour of the Dhaba-kranti crowd. There were differences about how far should partisan and party slogans associated with the Communist party, be used at what was an all-party or non-party initiative. “Inquilab Zindabad” has ever been a call for the poor and the dispossessed, if someone is claiming to do pro-poor work then I don’t know how they can object to this slogan,’ asks Baitul, nicknamed Baitul Dalit, a traveler from Benaras. He is not the member of any party, he severed his ties with CPI-ML after he disagreed with their tactics. Maale, the term he uses for ML, he says is ready to use violence to eliminate spies-poor landless labourers mostly- in their internecine battle with another radical group, People’s War Group but refrain from eliminating Shahabuddin, a local potentate and warlord who is said to have killed Chandrashekhar, a legendary past President of JNU who was brutally murdered in Siwan some years ago. His politicization, a word he himself uses, happened in and around Benaras, dominated by landholding Brahmins whom he fought to install women Dalit Presidents in several Colleges in the region. Then Pawan he says, then a student at Allahabad and now a leading revolutionary from JNU who is a star speaker at our Yatra, came to Benaras and lectured Baitul’s group in Marxism. His father was a Jan-Sanghi, he says, that is why he has perhaps drifted into this extreme reversal. He now works independently, trying to organize Rickshaw pullers into a union. “I consider Jaan to be a soft capitalist, like the World Social Forum,’ says Baitul. They have no larger ‘political aim or methodology,’ just a readiness to act as middlemen and get the State to deliver more or better. He then asks me about what I do and is dismayed to learn that I am not really ‘political.’ We discuss Marx and Gandhi as it begins to rain, and he advises me to read Marx, as opposed to merely ‘touching’ him. Gandhi was a great leader, says Baitul, there were people who were willing to worship him but he restricted his social transformation merely to emotional appeals for people to change themselves. I can’t entirely disagree, it is a cogent critique of Gandhi. 30th June-The bus is ready to leave after a hearty breakfast of ghughni and halwa for Lakhimpur Kheri. I share Prasad with a small framed bearded Bengali called Sumantro. He wants to get into TV journalism and has therefore been bombarding a leading TV news entrepreneur with letters about how he can do more with caste. The CPI-ML, currently India’s most radical Communist party he thinks is dominated wholly by Bhumihars. The AISA, its student wing is, in his opinion a wholly Bhumihar-Brahmin-Kayastha party. There is some truth to his statements for at JNU, revolutionary politics often boils down to regional-caste vote-banks like at other places in the country. The Muslims from Arabic-Persian-Urdu departments form one bloc, the Biharis another and they are further sub-divided into caste groupings, and alliances within them can help you win or lose elections. Before we leave the children are paraded once again. I am weary of this ritual but then something happens that, for the first time on the trip moves me profoundly. The students, with a little prompting, lustily join us in singing- Yeh faisle ka waqt hai utho Yeh jaagne ka waqt hai utho These girls, from some of the most backward and disadvantaged backgrounds in the country, their teachers, hardened by the need to promote oneself even in social work and all present there share for one day, for some moments, a struggle that is wider, bigger and more widespread than anything there lives might know. Perhaps their lives would be forever touched and affected by this moment of spontaneous camaraderie between us outsiders and these marginals. The thrill of sharing something wider as they join in songs of criticism and protest that are national and international, old and new will perhaps mark these children at their school and may be one or two of them, for their life. But before we can leave the lady in charge of the school says to the Music teacher, on cue as it were, aap bhi kuchh suna deejiye na. The music master, with a peaked cap, a silk kurta, a chandan tika and a malleable face is a character straight out of an Austin novel, he would have wrought enormous havoc on Liz and Darcy in a small drawing room. He plays on his flute, with great gusto, the tune of Ae Watan, the famous Nationalist song. And afterward, an indication that he had obviously come very prepared, dug out another small flute from inside his Kurta and plays it with his nostrils. His dreams of artistic glory, frustrated in this small town, get a wider audience for a day-may be one of us will return, sing his praises and then he may get a commission and a breakthrough to real fame and success which his talent(more the spirit) certainly entitles him to. 30th June, 2.30 pm. We pass by schools and memorials dedicated to one Amar Shahid Naseerudin and to Zahoor Ali as we enter Lakhimpur Kheri city. I have never heard of those people, were they of the Great 1942 rebellion against the British, or soldiers slain in wars with Pakistan? Either way, they were a suppressed aspect of Lakhimpur’s claim to fame, as were the Sikh migrants who had appropriated large swathes of the terai region spanning several districts where they had now aggregated huge, mechanized farms complete with harvester machines. These gigantic commercial farms had allowed a congregation of labour and CPI-ML, which had been very active in this region had built up a sizeable following. We were received at the main Chauraha of Lakhimpur by twenty odd activists from ML, some of them bearded and skull-capped, and 3 digital cameras. As we presented Lal Salams to out comrades from Lakhimpur, all joined in in a juloos and as ever, we ‘marched’ down to the Tehsil/Kacahri, the ubiquitous symbol of power and authority for several centuries now. Jaan asks me if I would like to speak, I do not particularly want to given that there usually are too many speakers from our side and too little participation from our listeners. The usual speeches and songs over, the CPI-ML contingent regroups on the stage and launches their slogans and speeches. CPI-ML is facing rough music from the administration in these parts. The Goonda Act and the Gangster Act, both passed by Mayawati and much condemned by the SP then, are invoked to arrest and detain activists of the party. Brij Bihari Singh, the party’s Secretary for the district is supposedly underground but appears to make the speech. As does its young and rising star, aptly called, Kranti Kunwar Singh. 2.30 pm. We are taken for lunch, afterwards, to Comrade Kranti Kunwar’s house. A well to do house for a Comrade, may be it his upper caste ancestry that secures it. Reminds me of what Sumantro said about the insidious interpenetration of caste and politics of protest. Kranti, a state Committee member of the CPI-ML, tells me that over a lakh and a half hectares of agicultural land in this region is controlled by the Sikh landlords and the All-India Khetihar Mazdoor Sabha was formed to organize the workers on these farmlands, many of whom were Dalits. They gherao block tehsils, stop harvester machines and the focal point of their activities is the smooth and proper functioning of the Food for Work Program. One worker called Milap Singh had died of starvation. There are some 25000 members in that body and they have been courting arrests to protest against the complete absence of Public Distribution System in the region and also to protest against a scam, of nearly one hundred crore Rs, in the food procurement area. When faced with draconian repression they launched an agitation to remove the SP which proved successful after 11 grueling months. 6 pm. We reach Sitapur Kachahri, which adjoins a Raja Todar Mal Park, perhaps the only one in this country dedicated to the memory of the best finance minister this country has ever had. Before that, on the outskirts, there was a short welcome by the Sitapur bar Association. We get off, enjoy the refreshments and before leaving raise a few slogans. Why they should be interested in a Yozgar Yatra is not something I can rationalize, because Bar Associations are usually in the hotbed of mainstream politicking. We are very much on the fringe. As we leave a few of our hosts want to know what this is all about. This reminds me of the patron-client network, made famous by the Cambridge School in its analysis of Nationalist politics in the colonial era. From top to bottom one forms associations on the basis of mutual interest, between clients and patrons, sub-clients and lower brokers in a chain of favours and perks that flows up and down. In the Tehsil some 150-200 people are waiting for us, many of them women. They are from adjoining villages, from Khanpur and Sanghna and have been here for two or three days at a stretch, brought here on the assurance that they are going to get their poor cards. We in the Yatra are not much interested in why they are here and who has brought them here. When after the meeting, A tries to point their plight and the misapprehension that has brought them here, Jaan says speak to Rajiv, Arundhati says they are not ours, they are ML’s people, and so the people get duped again, for the right cause may be. If not the poor card at least they get to hear speeches about the poor. Perhaps we are not alone in not caring for the audience who turn up, or more correctly, are ‘arranged’ for our meetings, as they are for all political meetings in the country everywhere. Nobody just goes, or visits a public meeting just like that. Perhaps Gandhi and Nehru also did not care for how their meetings or audiences were arranged. After a short stint at the Tehsil we all troop into a hall, a Nehru hall this time (inaugurated by state CM in 1963). There are welcome banners from the Chemist and Druggist Association, UP, the Sitapur Traders and Manufacturers Assoc and one Child Herald Social Welfare Association. What are the former two doing by welcoming us? The hall is too small so people are urged to go into the gallery upstairs, a woman with a blind child leads him up. The hall is quickly filled up by poor, emaciated, tired, elderly women and men holding aloft flags of a revolution that inheres in never arriving. As part of the Act Shambhu invites a young boy to talk to his puppet jokhim chacha. Manish is traumatized and when Shambhu leans the puppet to be kissed, begins to flail at him, to the great amusement of the crowd. Jaan once again reminds the gathering that even if the Employment Guarantee Act is passed we would have to be doubly vigilant in overseeing its implementation. People buy the information pamphlets, as if that would somehow empower them, something they can show to the powers that be as a token of participation and for exchange for some government dole. Shambhu’s street play, satirizing the troika of police, politician and bureaucrat who siphon off all the money in the name of schemes, as ever, greatly amuses the DM and his cohorts who have put in an appearance here, courtesy Rajiv again. But because of his presence, and because the public here has been brought by a dedicated peoples’ group, the meeting quickly turns into a kind of Lok Adalat. People are keen to express their opinion about whether, in the food for work program, they want payment in grain or cash. The CDO speaks, explaining the proportion of cash and kind payments. He says the grain they get to disburse-khali pet bhare godam, anyay hai, apradh hai is one of our favourite slogans-comes via so many agencies and through such hurdles (they have to pay a trade tax, a mandi tax) that it is difficult to prevent peculation. There are 1329 Gram Panchayats and 19 Blocks in Sitapur. It turns out that the card the local people are seeking is a worker’s card that the local DM has decided to introduce for all workers under the Food for Work Program. But only those already holding Red Ration cards are entitled for these workers cards and obviously only those with some reach or money will be able to get even that Ration card. The CDO directs the crowd to direct their dharnas and marches at the block level, against the SDM so that their protest remains specific and targeted. While the speeches proceed apace, most Yatris troop across for Chai, Cig and other breaks. By simply bringing their Yatra here they have perhaps done their job. The DM proposes a radical solution for governance, have elected District Magistrates, while a girl as part of her evening routine, carries out two buckets of water from the municipal tap in the compound. Seven eight women surround A demanding their cards and wanting to know how they will get back, nobody else from the Yatra is bothered. The meeting gets over and now the tired villagers can return home. The collections from here amount to 1414 Rs. We are taken for dinner to the Brahmputra Hotel. We reach there to find the compound overladen with Samajwadi Party cars, MLAs and a former MP we had encountered at Lucknow. Our dinner is being organised by the Samajwadi Party, due to Rajiv’s connections and therefore perhaps there are rumours that he may soon be joining SP, in exchange for a ticket to the Rajya Sabha. There is general dissatisfaction tempered by the memory of the visit to Sonebhadra district where the Yatra found itself walking into the local BJP headquarters for a meal. The discontent blows over into a bickering when Rajiv comes to bid goodbye to the group. The JNU team takes him to task for the way he conducted the earlier meeting at Sitapur Tehsil where he allowed a greater say to the DM and officials than to members of our party or to the villagers. He is accused of appeasing the administration, they are rightly perturbed about the villagers not geeting a chance to speak (but don’t seem concerned at the manner and for the reason they were brought there in the first place.) Rajiv says that the meeting was being held in his area and he has the prerogative to decide how to conduct it and further that the meeting brought together the outlawed ML leaders and the DM in one place and that is an achievement. That he is also working for the benefit of the poor and that he has to stay and work in that area and the DM, because of his prior acquaintance, often does things for them at a personal level. That is a curious defense, is the DM’s job not to govern, and if Rajiv’s work boils down to personal acquaintance then what is the great achievement of his work. The Yatra is to end at Delhi the next day and there is an open meeting there but there is already a dispute about whether the BJP should be invited and what treatment should be meted out to them. Pawan says he would like to boycott the session should they attend because they, the JNU kranti, do not want to give any legitimacy to that pariah outfit. This for a party which, as A points out, has just ruled the State for six years, what further legitimacy could it need? At the Ashram terrace in SItapur where we are put up for the night, an impromptu Mehfil is organized on the sprawling terrace after the mandatory power cut. Pawan, Shazia, Waseem, Shekhar, Dhanram and a few more recite and sing Urdu poetry from a wide variety of poets. I am amazed to find Shazia, the firebrand campaigner from Bombay, render some Classical Marsiyas from the canon. It turns out that her entire family are orthodox Shias and she has had to learn these difficult dirges and tunes as a compulsory obligation for the Muharram mehfils that her house hosts. I am impressed with Pawan’s knowledge of not just the well known poets but also of Parvin Shakir and Afzal Ahmed Syed, the latter an avant garde contemporary poet who is not very well known even among Urdu circles. This is another of the Left’s achievement, Urdu poetry and language are highly cherished in this milieu. We sleep afterwards on the terrace itself. I am doing so after more than a decade. I had remembered the breeze and the openness but not the mosquitos who proceed to demolish me throughout the night for that lapse. July 1st, 10.30 am. Shahjahanpur. Lunch at Bartawa, at the Binoba Sewa Ashram. SP’s pointman Raghav, who has been with us since Lucknow, is present here too to arrange lunch for us. They work in collaboration with this Ashram which looks quite well-endowed, going by the number of buildings it has. They supposedly run around 1100 Self-help groups in the region including a mobile bank and numerous Health Workers. They have a good rapport with the district administration, says Raghav, and get World Bank funding, fumes a JNUite, forgetting perhaps that even the West Bengal government gets that funding. It needs to be pointed out that Rajiv and his organization are not obliged to host us or to look after us, the Yatra is after all the Yatris baby. But someone counters that by saying that the Yatra has been organized by 125 NGOs, one of which is Usha so he is very much a party to its organization. The Ashram wants to organize in its own Gandhi hall cannot yet take off for lack of an assembly so we head off to the local chowk to do an impromptu street corner meeting. We march there and shout slogans in support of Comrade Ashfaqullah Khan who was from Shahjahanpur and one of the stalwarts of the Kakori Robbery that became an immediate precursor to Bhagat Singh’s actions. His legend lives on in the Comrady circles where he is an icon and people react emotionally to him. For the wider public assembled here, or elsewhere, he is nothing more than a long forgotten symbol of an Independence Struggle, the lore of which has become as ancient and mythified as the golden world of Ancient India. 6.15 pm. On the last leg of our journey we reach Ansari Inter College Muradabad, after traveling through a winding narrow road of a Muslim mohallah. It is more typically Muslim than the Muslim places I am used to, with half the population running beards and wearing caps. We are welcomed here by the Pital Mazdoor Karkhana Sangh (because Muradabad has a thriving brass-works industry), Northern Railwaymens Union Youth Wing and the Gyan Vigyan Samiti. On the board outside, while Meraj fills the bus cooler with water-always him, always diligent-and Naseem goes out to look for kebabs, I find an amazing notice, an advert for training for- 1. To be a journalist or writer 2. To be Models, girls or boys 3. To play a role in TV or cinema 4. To investigate corruption and crimes 5. Developing an ideal personality through cinema, debates and comp. A seminar on the above topics contact-Yusuf Stationers. What a seminar, only NGOs seem to be missing. We are joined at Muradabad by a Professor from JNU, another inspiration behind the Yatra. We stop to have chai two hours away from Delhi and the Dhaba Kranti crowd complains to him about Rajeev and his behaviour at the Sitapur rally. Promptly the Professor calls up a contact to inform her about what he is hearing about (the corruption) of ‘old friends.’ By now the story is that Rajeev did not let out boys speak and instead cosied up to the administration. The driver Narendra and his two minions, Jaggi and Jassu have been with the bus since day one, while they have not been politicized they have yet developed a soft spot for the young men traveling with them and there is close intimacy between them and the other Yatris. And in truth, regardless of irritable ritualism, they are all lovely people. I get talking to Dhanram, a thin, bony and tall man of fifty odd years with sunken cheeks who always wears a cap and smokes Navy Cut cigarettes, a brand we share so we draw on each other often. So when did your politicization happen, I ask him. His flabbergasting reply is, ‘abhi kahan hua hai. Abhi kisi se deeksha kahan liya hai.’ He has been in the business of revolution for over thirty years. He is from a well-to do family in Jamshedpur, his father was an Engineer with TISCO and he graduated from a good school there before he became a Naxalite in 1974, just like that. Along with a group of friends he hijacked a bus and took it around the state with two police pilot cars shadowing them. There was also some violence, he calls it Action. But while they were angry at things as they were and wanted to do something, they were always very unclear and confused about their motives. While he has remained with the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini, a formidable and famous Naxalite group, he turned Socialist after coming into contact with Jai Prakash Narain. He is the lone ‘socialist’ in the group and knows the ‘who is who’ of the Naxalite/revolutionary world, people like Vinod Mishra and Charu Babu, first hand. 2nd JULY-Constitution Club, New Delhi. Open Forum. We arrive late, the big speakers, V P Singh, Narayanan, Karat, have come and gone. After lunch Swami Agnivesh addresses the gathering, he is a charismatic and fluent speaker and articulates something that I have been asking myself for a long time. Instead of threatening to leave the government over BHEL why does the Left not issue an ultimatum to the Govt over the EGA. Why not? I try to raise a slogan from the audience but nobody takes up the cue. The yatris are all feeling hungover from the trip. We are feeling empty, disconnected and washed over by a sense of anti-climax. May be Jaan should take out another Yatra. ROZGAR YATRA- A DIARY. A Rozgar Adhikar Yatra was taken out through ten States of Northern India between the 15th may and 1st July. It traveled through some of the poorest districts and villages in this region publicizing the inadequacies of the existing Employment Guarantee Bill and the need to have a comprehensive Act as the greatest anti-Poverty measure this country could have. It was an independent initiative but supported by over 125 organisations all across the country. Jean Dreze, of the Delhi School of Economics ( a collaborator of Amartya Sen and a former member of the National Advisory Council), Aruna Roy the Magsaysay winner and founder of MKSS of Rajasthan and a few others conceived the Yatra as a way of mounting pressure on the government to shore up the Employment Bill it had conceived. The Yatris comprised a rotatory and motley group. Students from JNU and DU, NGO reps from Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand and Lucknow, Party activists from CPM and ML, academics, reporters and local residents. Most of us were under 35. It was not funded by anyone and the diesel cost came from the donations we received after performing our plays and songs and from the sale of publicity material like pamphlets, badges and booklets. We were put up and looked after, the meals were always frugal and accommodation basic minimum, by local organizations and activists along the way. While it could have improved itself in many ways, most notably by curbing hackneyed slogans and party political positions, the Yatra was a wonderful idea. We had nothing to offer the masses except speeches. The masses however, gave us a lot. Humility for one and admiration at the way they cope and fight and resist injustice and oppression everyday of their lives. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060106/56bf2ae3/attachment.html From budhaditya_chattopadhyay at rediffmail.com Thu Jan 5 22:09:26 2006 From: budhaditya_chattopadhyay at rediffmail.com (budhaditya chattopadhyay) Date: 5 Jan 2006 16:39:26 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcement Message-ID: <20060105163926.901.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com> THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF MUSEOLOGY 2006 "Audiovisuals as cultural heritage and their use in museums" Mytilene, University of the Aegean, June 5-8, 2006 Municipal Theatre of Mytilene - Auditorium of the Commercial Chamber The Department of Cultural Technology & Communication of the University of the Aegean, the Hellenic Committee of ICOM and the International Committee for the Audiovisuals in Museums AVICOM organize the Third International Conference of Museology and the AVICOM Annual Conference in Mytilene, from June 5th to June 8th, 2006 on: "Audiovisuals as cultural heritage and their use in museums". The Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT) - General Directorate of Hellenic Television participates in the Conference. AIMS AND THEMES OF THE CONFERENCE The sound and image technologies, as well as their applications play an essential role within the realms of contemporary cultural institutions, as evidence that require to be collected, curated and protected, as means of managing and interpreting cultural material, as communication and promotional tools for the cultural heritage, as educational tool, etc. The aims of the conference are: · To focus on these technologies and create a discourse through a wide array of theoretical and practical approaches. · To engage in the theory, methods and uses of these mediums in museums, cultural heritage sites, historical sites and other institutions at an international level. · To create a collaboration framework among individuals, entities and institutions producing sound and image works within the field of cultural heritage. · To examine the future perspectives and to discuss new directions, collaborations, new technologies of audiovisual production. The conference will be divided into the following units: 1. Audiovisual medium as exhibits, including digital arts. 2. Film museums, Film archives, Audiovisual archives. 3. Methods and systems of registration, documentation and classification of audiovisual material, including digital arts. 4. The new sound and image technologies as collections management tools, including issues around digital preservation. 5. The audiovisual as promotion and communication vehicle. 5.1. The sound (audio guides, soundtopia, sound as an exhibit) and image technologies as interpretative tools in contemporary museums. 5.2. Multimedia and Internet applications in museum communication. 5.3. Portable devices as promotion, interpretation and communication vehicles. 5.4. The new sound and image technologies and society (special public groups, collaboration with communities, artists, etc). 5.5. The museum as a producer of audiovisual material. 6. New business partnership models for museums to develop a/v production. EVENTS 1. The Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT) - General Directorate of Hellenic Television will participate at the conference with a workshop on public radio and television archives in the information society. 2. The conference will be accompanied by a film festival, documentaries, television programs, etc. related to museums and cultural organizations. 3. During the conference, museum audiovisual production companies will present their activities. PAPERS - LANGUAGES OF THE CONFERENCE If you wish to participate in the conference with a paper or/and a projection of audiovisual material for museums, please submit an abstract (500 words approx.) including full contact information (name, institutional affiliation if any, mailing address, phone, fax and email) in Greek, English or French at the email address conf2006 at ct.aegean.gr. The duration of each paper will be 20 minutes. DATES TO REMEMBER Submission of an abstract of a paper or/and of an audiovisual work by January 30th, 2006. Acceptance of the abstract by February 28th, 2006. Submission of papers (full text) or/and audiovisual works by April 30th, 2006. Final submission by May 10th, 2006. REGISTRATION COST The conference registration cost is: Before May 20th, 2006 Participants 200 € Speakers 150 € Students * 50 € (* please send a photocopy of your student card) After May 20th, 2006 and until the day of the conference Participants 230 € Speakers 180 € Students * 50 € (* please send a photocopy of your student card) The registration cost covers: · Participation in all conference sessions · Printed material of the conference · Conference proceedings in printed or/and electronic form (will be sent to the participants) · Refreshments during the conference intervals · Free entrance in the museums and the archaeological sites of Mytilene during the conference · Attendance of the audiovisual works' festival during the conference · Participation to the welcome reception and the farewell party ACCOMMODATIONS Information about hotel accommodations and the optional excursion that will take place after the conference can be found on the website www.aegean.gr/culturaltec/museum/2006. REGISTRATION PROCESS 1. Please fill out the participation application form and forward it to the email address conf2006 at ct.aegean.gr or to (+30) 22510 - 36609 (fax) or to the postal address: Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean, Harilaou Trikoupi & Faonos, Mytilene 81100, Greece. 2. Payment of registration cost by bank money order. Information about the bank account details can be found on the conference website. COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION For any information regarding the conference and the registration process, please visit the conference website www.aegean.gr/culturaltec/museum/2006 or, alternatively, contact the conference organizing committee, Dr. Alexandra Bounia (conf2006 at ct.aegean.gr), or the Hellenic Committee of ICOM, Miss Elena Papadaki, 15, Ag. Asomaton, Athens 105 58, Tel/Fax: (+30) 210-3239414 (icom at otenet.gr), Mrs. Amalia Tsitouri (+30) 210 3304030). ******************************************************* Sophia Bakogianni, MA, Phd Candidate, Department of Cultural Technology & Communication, University of the Aegean, Greece. Tel. no. +30 22510 36637 Fax. no.+30 22510 36609 URL: www.aegean.gr/culturaltec/sbakogianni E-mail: sbak at ct.aegean.gr   -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060105/9e5ee2cd/attachment.html From nc-agricowi at netcologne.de Fri Jan 6 16:18:10 2006 From: nc-agricowi at netcologne.de (NetEx) Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 11:48:10 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call: A show for Bethlehem Message-ID: <43BE4AEA.7030109@netcologne.de> **A Call for Artists and a New Years message --->* **A Show for Bethlehem* Deadline: 13 February 2006 ---> After presenting his global networking project [R][R][F]2005--->XP - http://rrf2005.newmediafest.org in 2005 in Bethlehem/Palestine as an interactive media exhibition, Agricola de Cologne, media artist and director of [NewMediaArtprojectNetwork]:||cologne - www.nmartproject.net is invited to curate in 2006 another exhibition in Bethlehem at CAVE Gallery/Bethlehem International Center to be inaugurated in July 2006, this time focussed on the classical theme of "selfportrait", but executed in New Media. Through its relevance in three world religions, Bethlehem was during more than 2000 years a symbol for peace also beyond, but since some time Bethlehem and the entire Holy Land on the Westbank is vanishing behind a huge wall as the result of a conflict in Middle East which is threatening world peace since many years. Just by being presented in Bethlehem - "Selfportrait" - a show for Bethlehem - has also a political dimension in different concern, It does not bring only the message of solidarity, but also the idea of a free and independant culture without borders, in this way the show becomes an action for supporting the effords for peace in Middle East. Each artist involved becomes a messanger of peace! The "call for proposals" is addressed to all artists working with digital/electronic media, for submitting one single "selfportrait" for exhibition purposes as digital print, digital video, multi-media works based on Cd-Rom and Internet, and soundart - focussed on how they - these "new artists" - see themselves and the environment they are living in. Due to the limits of exhibition space, only a selection of submissions can be included. In order to spread the message of solidarity and peace, It is planned to present this show also at other places around the globe. You find the "call", the submission details and the entry form on http://netex.nmartproject.net/index.php?blog=8&cat=54 Deadline 13 February 2006 ***************************************************** NetEX - networked experience http://netex.nmartproject net is a free information service provided by [NewMediaArtprojectNetwork]:||cologne www.nmartproject.net . info(at)nmartproject.net _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From pukar at pukar.org.in Fri Jan 6 18:48:20 2006 From: pukar at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 18:48:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [announcements] Panel Discussion on January 12th Message-ID: <002e01c612c3$ad17f930$09d0c0cb@freeda> cordially invites you to a panel discussion on South Asia Matters: Safety, Security and Global Freedom Speakers: Prof. Arjun Appadurai President, PUKAR; Vice President, Academic Affairs, New School, New York Fear of Small Numbers Faisal Devji Assistant Professor, New School University, New York Landscapes of the Jihad Admiral Rakesh Chopra Integrated Defence Staff Headquarters, Ministry of Defence, New Delhi Energy Security in Asia: 2020 and Beyond Date: Thursday, January 12, 2006 Time: 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM Venue: NGMA auditorium, 2nd floor, opposite the Museum, M. G. Road, Fort, Mumbai - 400 032 PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) Address:: 1-4, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Sir P. M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Telephone:: +91 (22) 5574 8152 Fax:: +91 (22) 5664 0561 Email:: pukar at pukar.org.in Website:: www.pukar.org.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060106/e1fe9309/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/octet-stream Size: 533 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060106/e1fe9309/attachment.obj -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in Fri Jan 6 01:51:33 2006 From: zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in (khalid jamal) Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 20:21:33 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] 2006 Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellows In-Reply-To: <1045.210.211.178.241.1136455379.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20060105202133.37767.qmail@web8603.mail.in.yahoo.com> My heartiest Congratulations and a very warm year to all!! Its not at all important to introduce myself and tell you that I am your past-tense, lover of Sarai ,a lazy guy and a moody writer. I wish you a great-time and rich-experience during your fellowships.My experience taught me that the most lucrative form of writing, without an iota of doubt is, writing Ranson notes.. But with Sarai, its even more. Here its FUN too. Have a ball-ful Research... vivek at sarai.net wrote: Happy New Year! We're excited to announce this year's Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellows, and we look forward to hearing more about their upcoming explorations... Vivek The Sarai- CSDS Independent Fellows 2006 Arshad Amanullah, New Delhi Journalism in Madrasas and Madrasas in Journalism Daljit Ami, Chandigarh Celluloid and Compact Disks in Punjab Maitrey Bajpai, Mumbai Cawnpore Samit Basu, New Delhi The Trousers of Time: Possible Futures of Indian Speculative Fiction in English Rudradeep Bhattacharjee, Mumbai Freedom in Cyberspace in the Context of India: A video documentary Tushar Bhor, Mumbai Water Lenses: Prelude for a New Imagination for Urban Water in Mumbai Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Kolkata Bishnupur Gharana: Story of a Forgotten Melody: Restoring the sound of Bishnupur Gharana Averee Chaurey, New Delhi The Song of the Baul Ayesha Sen Choudhury, Kolkata Locating Sexuality Through the Eyes of Afghan and Burmese Refugee Women in Delhi Dilip D'Souza, Mumbai Village in the city: Bombay in microcosm Girindra Pravasi Ilaqe mein telephone booth sanskriti (The culture of telephone booths) Uddipana Goswami, Guwahati City as Setting: Reflections of the Changing Faces of Guwahati in Assamese Literature Peerzada Arshad Hamid, Anantnag Exploring the Space of Psychiatric Hospitals in Srinagar Rakshat Hooja, Jaipur Urban Stakeholder Activism and the Role of Resident Welfare Associations Farhana Ibrahim, Gurgaon Maritime Histories: Merchant Networks and the Production of Locality in Western India Lakshmi IndraSimhan and Jacob Weinstein, New Delhi Vending as Vernacular: Depicting Street Sales and Services through Sequential Art Brajesh Kumar Jha, Delhi Hindi Cinemayee geet aur uska Bhashayee safar (The Language Journeys of Hindi Cinema) Anjali Jyoti, New Delhi Home Street Home: A Street Child Survival Guide for Delhi Sunandan K.N., New Delhi Workshop Boys of Coimbatore: A Study of City and Tacit Knowledge Akshaye Khanna, New Delhi Apni Jagah, Zarah Hut Ke: A “Staged Ethnography” of Space and Sexuality Naresh Kumar, New Delhi Festival of Music in the City of Sports: Harballabh Sangeet Mela of Jalandhar Prabhat Kumar, Delhi Yuvak Sangh aur ‘Yuvak’: 1920 ke dashak mein Bihar ka bauddhik parivesh (Yuvak Sangh and the ‘Yuvak’ magazine in the intellectual public sphere in 1920s Bihar) Rajesh Kumar K, Trivandrum An Ethnography of Teyyam Performance from a Practitioner’s Point of View Udaykumar M, New Delhi Unravelling a 'Real' Media Incident in Trivandrum Mallica, New Delhi Identities and Aspirations of Tibetan Youth in New Delhi Mamta Mantri, Mumbai Movie Theatres on and Around Maulana Shaukat Ali Road, Mumbai Abhinandita Mathur Veenu Mathur, New Delhi My building and the Shahar Rajesh Mehar, Bangalore Exploring Notions of Creative Ownership Among Contemporary Musicians Kamal Kumar Mishra Hindi Hridaysthali mein Jasoosi Upanyason va Inkey Paathakon ka Ek Samajik Itihas (A social history of detective novels and their readers in the Hindi heartland) Sanjeev Ranjan Mishra, Delhi Gyan-vinimay ki nayi takneekein aur mel banate Dalit (The New Technologies of Knowledge-flow and the Dalits) Izhar Ahmed Nadeem, Delhi Muslim Mahilaon ki Urdu Patrikayo ki Duniya (Urdu Women's Magazines: Their impact on Muslim Women) Veena Naregal, Informal Economies and Cultural Patronage: Studying Bollywood John Patrick Ojwando, Bangalore An Exploration of the Experiences of Afro students in South Asia Anil Pandey, NOIDA Desi Filmon ka Karobar (An analysis of the desi films trade) Piyush Pandey, Delhi News Channelon ka Satyakathakaran (The Satyakathaization of News Channels, on the compulsive crime reporting on TV) Rahul Pandita, Delhi Byte Soldier: The Life and Times of a Metro TV Reporter: A Graphic Novel in Hindi Janice Erica Pariat, New Delhi Writing the Notion of Home and Urban Space Sudipta Paul, West Bengal Response of the Labour Force to the Changing Urban Formation in the Asansol Industrial Area, West Bengal Dripta Piplai, New Delhi The Hegemony of Calcutta Music Schools in Tagore Songs: Towards an Archival Preservation of 'Multiple Traditions in Rabindrasangeet' Vasundhara Prakash, New Delhi 15 Seconds of Fame: Extras in Bollywood Nandita Raman Dilli ke cinemagharon ka badalta swaroop: ek chhayachitraN (The changing face of Delhi’s cinema halls) Nithya V Raman, Chennai Disaster Politics: An Examination of Tsunami Relief in Chennai Kaushiki Rao, New Delhi Transplanting the Urban Aesthetic in a Resettlement Colony in Delhi Rama Rao Ladkiyon ke College ka sarvajanik telephone aur ab har hath mein mobile (Then and Now: The public telephone in girls’ colleges and the mobile phone) Rinchin, Bhopal Tracing the History of Girl's Education in a Small Town Through the Eyes of its First Woman Teacher Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed, Chennai Indian Print Media and its Reportage on Fatwas Nirupama Sekhar and Sanjay Ramchandran, Mumbai Urban Stories: A Collection of Graphic Essays on the City of Mumbai Debjani Sengupta, New Delhi Colony Fiction: Refugee Colonies and their Representation in Post-Partition Kolkata Aman Sethi, New Delhi Seeking Alternative Ways and Means of Representing the “Poor and the Oppressed” by Studying Informal Networks at Labour Mandis in Delhi Ram Murthi Sharma, UNA, Himachal An Analysis of Magazines in Braille Parismita Singh, New Delhi Babel in Humayunpur, the Gift of Difference: a Comic Book Exploring Migrant Experience Sidharth Srinivasan, New Delhi A photoroman feature film: a Love Story Intertwined with the Myth and Folklore of Delhi's Heritage Sites Sheba Tejani, Mumbai Queer Cityscapes: Exploring Mumbai Cityscapes through the Eyes of Two Queer Women. Mrityunjay Tripathi, Allahabad Allahabad ki Chhatra Rajniti (Student politics in Allahabad) Indu Verma, Mumbai Society and the Soap Factory Aamit Rai, Wardha Harsud aur media (Harsud and the Media) Syed Mohd. Yunus and Syed Mohd Faisal, Delhi Asahay Mahanagar: Help Line karyakartaon ke najariye Se Dilli Shahar ka Adhyayan (Helpless City: A Study of Delhi from the Perspective of Help Line Workers) _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: ONE LIFE. ONE SHOT. Happiness, Health & Peace, Syed Khalid Jamal Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060105/bcceb065/attachment.html From mi_ga at o-o.lt Sun Jan 8 01:23:09 2006 From: mi_ga at o-o.lt () Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 19:53:09 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] ascii: support mi_ga by clicking google ads Message-ID: <20060107195309.9C8D61001D@p15122045.pureserver.info> +----------------------------------------------------+ | ascii images brought to you by http://www.ascii.lt | | Please view them in monospaced fonts like courier. | +----------------------------------------------------+ LOOK AT THE WATER CLOSET TO THE RIGHT OF ME / / / |~~~~~~| o |~~~| |~~~~~~| /\_ _| | | | \__`[_ | /~~\| /~~\| DSI ][ \,/|___| \__/ \__/ From zainab at xtdnet.nl Sun Jan 8 14:25:07 2006 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 12:55:07 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Strangers meet in a city Message-ID: <3010.219.65.10.83.1136710507.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> January 6, 2006 11 o’clock at night. I am still at Carter Road. Bus number 1 had just passed by. I imagine there will be another one in 20 minutes to ferry me to Byculla. 11:30 PM. No bus in sight. Mobile phone battery is also dead. (No means of communication. But I am not terribly afraid.) Bus number 220 - I am moving towards Bandra station, hoping that there will be more choice of buses there and I will still be able to reach Byculla by 12:30 AM. The crowd at the Saga bus stop is bleak. The regular bunches of burkha clad Muslim are not there (their presence is a form of consolation for me i.e. ‘people ‘like’ me, waiting for a common bus). A couple is there, standing with a baby each on their shoulders. I look at them and know ‘instinctively’ that this is a Muslim couple, sophisticated and educated. Which buses are you waiting for? I ask I and 4 number, the woman replies. (She has a kind of near suspicious look.) I am also waiting for those buses, I said 1 number bus just passed by, the man said. Oh shit! I remarked. I continued waiting for a bus. Buses would come and buses would go, but none for me (and the Muslim couple – reassured I am!). A fat purdah clad woman came and stood at the bus stop. Her presence was also consolation because I ‘instinctively’ knew that she was also waiting for bus number ¼. (How I mark Muslims and ‘my people’! I wonder about scale and the city – practices of marking, grouping, locality and community – the operation of the eye in the city!) 12:00 AM. I am still waiting (and so are the ‘Muslim couple’- I still haven’t verified their identity, but I know). The thought of taking a taxi seems unsafe and expensive. I notice that the couple are also looking at their watches and about to make a move to a taxi. Somehow I also know that they may be going my way – perhaps Byculla or nearby. I approach the woman: Can we share a taxi? Yeah, I was about to ask you where you are to go? Byculla. Which side? On the bridge. Okay, then we can drop you and take the taxi ahead. I am relieved in a way. We board the taxi. I start making conversation: Your babies have fallen off to sleep. Yes, the kids get very heavy when they are on your shoulders, the man said. How old are they? One is 1.5 and the other is nearly 3.5. That’s a very precarious age. You must be having to spend a lot of energy on them. Precarious is a mild word, the wife said. We are both doctors. I am ______ and this is my wife __________ (they were Muslims). I work as a doctor in _________ and she works as dentist in ________. Oh great, so you are a dentist! I needed to clean my teeth so I will come to you. Sure. We advise you to think carefully before you get married and before you have kids. Really, it’s a lot of energy and time and commitment. The discussion on children and raising them went on for sometime. So how come you are so late? (now the man is making most of the conversation) Work. (I explain my work on cities to him.) Oh! So you would know more about cities (now I am marked as an ‘expert). Not really! I am still trying to understand. I spent my time in London and Paris during my medical education period. So, how was London? I have always wanted to be there. It’s okay. Nothing great! Brits are snooty and cold. Winter is terrible. They follow a five-day working week. Saturday-Sunday holiday. So if you don’t have friends/company/family around, it can be very depressing. I liked Paris better. I would advise you to go there. It is much, much better. Paris is beautiful. (I wondered a bit about the riots in Paris – and I wondered whether the riots are part of his imagination of Paris.) As the taxi passed along, he asked. What’s your name? Zainab. So you must be Dawoodi Bohra? No. (And I explained by community affiliation to him, which anyway is meaningless because I don’t practice.) Oh, I am sorry I asked. (It’s natural I guess.) We saw concretization of roads taking place. They are always digging roads. Yeah. So, what’s this thing about Bombay becoming a world class city? Do you think Bombay will change and be different in the next ten years? I can’t make any random conclusions for now. I am somehow beginning to believe that eventually, there will be a massive paradigm shift in terms of economy and business and that might create a new turn for Bombay. Presently, I feel concerned about the way Bangalore is going and the pressure on infrastructure. I think we are still better off in Bombay. Sure! But then, the northern suburbs are hugely pressured and collapses might occur there which will be crazy. Yeah, I guess we are better off in the city region. Sure enough! They are talking of clearing slums along P. D’mello Road and Tulsi Pipe Road. It’s not going to be easy. The communities are very strong there. We can expect rioting if this were to happen. (And my mind went back to rioting in Paris and Danielle’s comments on social housing and how rioting took place in the social housing areas.) I can imagine. You know things better because you study these! (ah damn!) Byculla came. The taxi halted. I opened my wallet to pay for half the fare. No, no Zainab, the wife said, we were anyway going to ask you to come along with us. Please don’t pay! I thanked them profusely. And I wondered about trust, scale of people, the city, relationships and trust, trust, trust! How do strangers meet in this city!?!?!?!!? Questions for today:  Public transport and the experience/imagination of cosmopolitanism  Public transport and cultural identity and difference  Public transport and practices of marking  Public transport and the division of the city (thereby making it easier to mark in terms of location, neighbourhood and geography)  Imagination of the city (and therefore mind mapping of the city and cognitive maps)  Planning, centralization, authority and subversions – everyday life! Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From iram at sarai.net Mon Jan 9 19:50:38 2006 From: iram at sarai.net (Iram Ghufran) Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 19:50:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: ifellow posting by rahul pandita In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <43C27136.9080107@sarai.net> posting by Rahul Pandita > I am pasting below my first post: My parents named me Rahul. After > adding the surname, it becomes Rahul Pandita. I am a moody writer, > poet, blogger, self-styled public intellectual, former bilingual > Television journalist, trainee illustrator, Kashmiri, Indian, Brahmin > - in that order. I have worked for television channels like Aaj tak, > Zee News, Sahara Samay and reported from areas like Falluja, Batalik, > Maisuma, Galar, Ukhrul, Tamoh and Kochar ki Daang. I am a former NEMEP > fellow and the winner of e-author award for my Bildungsroman 'Chinar > In My Veins'. I am currently working on a novel, which I have named > 'Yimberzal', which will be based on events ranging from the 1947 > tribesmen attack in Kashmir to (hopefully) the recent earthquake. As a > Sarai fellow, I will be working on a project titled - Byte Soldier: > The life and times of a metro TV reporter. I intend to prepare a mini > graphic novel, based on the project along with a whacky, creative > essay/story. The genesis of my idea can be traced to around four > thousand words, which I thought would be a part of one novel, which I > claimed to be working on, but later dumped the idea; at least for the > time being. Here is an excerpt: Just a fortnight ago, Som had left a > successful job of a television journalist. The never ending world of > deadlines had made him sick. And everyday it was the same story. > Another ceasefire in the northeast, another suicide attack in Kashmir, > another operation to flush out militants and yet another set of > accusations against a politician. It was a murky world out there – > thankless and spurious. Som just decided to call it a day, one fine > afternoon. He was in the office canteen, sipping coffee and looking > outside through the window frame. He had felt his shoulders with one > hand, pinching the flesh. Knots of lactic acid had accumulated under > the layers, which were a indication of how stressed out he was. In > fifteen minutes, he had to leave for an assignment. Some bloody > Pentagon official was scheduled to meet the top brass of the Indian > Army. The mobile phone jumped to life, vibrating like a fish without > water. He looked at the number flashing on the screen. It was his > Bureau Chief. Som thought of his paan masala-stained teeth and his wet > lips. He would be sitting on his throne, aiming his spit in the > dustbin kept under his table, with the hands-free of his mobile fitted > deep into his ear canal. Suresh Jee, everybody added that suffix after > his name and he made the reporters under him feel as if they were > chotus working in dhabas, destined to run for errands. At the sight of > Meena, a junior reporter, he would drool and if he had his way, he > would make her the editor-in-chief. For her, he was a slave, born to > serve her – suggest story ideas, arrange camera units and a vehicle > for her on priority, write her scripts and arrange an editor for her. > For others, he was the commander of the third reich. In the morning, > he would even make calls from his mobile to reporters, while sitting > on the pot. At times like these, his voice echoed through the phone, > as if he was calling from a well. When he called Som, he imagined him > with his dirty pyjamas lying at his feet, three newspapers in his lap > and he talking to Som about an assignment, and at the same time > pleased about how last night’s sat isabgol had done wonders to his > bowel movement. Suresh Jee was still making the phone dance. Som had > made his mind not to press the green button and take the call. He was > no longer willing to talk to someone who referred to pastry as cake. > He switched off his mobile. He just snapped every tie with his office, > leaving it behind, like a snake sheds his skin. At the gate, he felt > light. His shoulders twitched as if wings were sprouting from them. > There was no sinking feeling in the heart either. Siddartha must have > felt the same, when he left his kingdom to become Buddha, he thought. > But how did it boil down to Graphic Novel? Well, I have another story > to share. Since it would make the post longer, for those want to read > it, they may click on the following link to read my piece 'My Mother's > 22 Rooms' : > http://sanitysucks.blogspot.com/2005/12/my-mothers-22-rooms.html Well, > that is it for now, friends, guides and philosophers. I remain Rahul > Pandita > > Rahul Pandita www.sanitysucks.blogspot.com > Mobile: 9818088664 > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Yahoo! Cars > > NEW - sell your car and browse thousands of new and used cars online > search now > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From khadeejaarif1 at rediffmail.com Mon Jan 9 18:18:49 2006 From: khadeejaarif1 at rediffmail.com (khadeeja arif) Date: 9 Jan 2006 12:48:49 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: ifellow posting by rahul pandita Message-ID: <20060109124849.28922.qmail@webmail33.rediffmail.com> Dear Rahul, I am really looking forward to read your post as you proceed with your work.. It all seems coming right from the heart:-) Best of luck Khadeeja On Mon, 09 Jan 2006 Iram Ghufran wrote : >posting by Rahul Pandita > >>I am pasting below my first post: My parents named me Rahul. After adding the surname, it becomes Rahul Pandita. I am a moody writer, poet, blogger, self-styled public intellectual, former bilingual Television journalist, trainee illustrator, Kashmiri, Indian, Brahmin - in that order. I have worked for television channels like Aaj tak, Zee News, Sahara Samay and reported from areas like Falluja, Batalik, Maisuma, Galar, Ukhrul, Tamoh and Kochar ki Daang. I am a former NEMEP fellow and the winner of e-author award for my Bildungsroman 'Chinar In My Veins'. I am currently working on a novel, which I have named 'Yimberzal', which will be based on events ranging from the 1947 tribesmen attack in Kashmir to (hopefully) the recent earthquake. As a Sarai fellow, I will be working on a project titled - Byte Soldier: The life and times of a metro TV reporter. I intend to prepare a mini graphic novel, based on the project along with a whacky, creative essay/story. The genesis of my idea can be traced to around four thousand words, which I thought would be a part of one novel, which I claimed to be working on, but later dumped the idea; at least for the time being. Here is an excerpt: Just a fortnight ago, Som had left a successful job of a television journalist. The never ending world of deadlines had made him sick. And everyday it was the same story. Another ceasefire in the northeast, another suicide attack in Kashmir, another operation to flush out militants and yet another set of accusations against a politician. It was a murky world out there – thankless and spurious. Som just decided to call it a day, one fine afternoon. He was in the office canteen, sipping coffee and looking outside through the window frame. He had felt his shoulders with one hand, pinching the flesh. Knots of lactic acid had accumulated under the layers, which were a indication of how stressed out he was. In fifteen minutes, he had to leave for an assignment. Some bloody Pentagon official was scheduled to meet the top brass of the Indian Army. The mobile phone jumped to life, vibrating like a fish without water. He looked at the number flashing on the screen. It was his Bureau Chief. Som thought of his paan masala-stained teeth and his wet lips. He would be sitting on his throne, aiming his spit in the dustbin kept under his table, with the hands-free of his mobile fitted deep into his ear canal. Suresh Jee, everybody added that suffix after his name and he made the reporters under him feel as if they were chotus working in dhabas, destined to run for errands. At the sight of Meena, a junior reporter, he would drool and if he had his way, he would make her the editor-in-chief. For her, he was a slave, born to serve her – suggest story ideas, arrange camera units and a vehicle for her on priority, write her scripts and arrange an editor for her. For others, he was the commander of the third reich. In the morning, he would even make calls from his mobile to reporters, while sitting on the pot. At times like these, his voice echoed through the phone, as if he was calling from a well. When he called Som, he imagined him with his dirty pyjamas lying at his feet, three newspapers in his lap and he talking to Som about an assignment, and at the same time pleased about how last night’s sat isabgol had done wonders to his bowel movement. Suresh Jee was still making the phone dance. Som had made his mind not to press the green button and take the call. He was no longer willing to talk to someone who referred to pastry as cake. He switched off his mobile. He just snapped every tie with his office, leaving it behind, like a snake sheds his skin. At the gate, he felt light. His shoulders twitched as if wings were sprouting from them. There was no sinking feeling in the heart either. Siddartha must have felt the same, when he left his kingdom to become Buddha, he thought. But how did it boil down to Graphic Novel? Well, I have another story to share. Since it would make the post longer, for those want to read it, they may click on the following link to read my piece 'My Mother's 22 Rooms' : http://sanitysucks.blogspot.com/2005/12/my-mothers-22-rooms.html Well, that is it for now, friends, guides and philosophers. I remain Rahul Pandita >> >>Rahul Pandita www.sanitysucks.blogspot.com Mobile: 9818088664 >> >>------------------------------------------------------------------------ >>Yahoo! Cars NEW - sell your car and browse thousands of new and used cars online search now >>------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > >_________________________________________ >reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >Critiques & Collaborations >To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. >List archive: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060109/0746cf37/attachment.html From siriyavan at outlookindia.com Mon Jan 9 14:53:41 2006 From: siriyavan at outlookindia.com (anand) Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 14:53:41 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Re: announcements Digest, Vol 29, Issue 5 References: <20060107110012.394DA28DB57@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <002e01c614fe$61915140$7504a8c0@eth.net> Soiled Tracks India Stinking: Manual Scavengers in Andhra Pradesh and Their Work By Gita Ramaswamy, Navayana Publishing, pp. 128, Rs 100 Brings out the ideological hang-ups that encourage manual scavenging and needs to be read by every civilised citizen of India. KANCHA ILAIAH Outlook, 16 January 2005 Instead of creating a technology to remove human excreta from houses, the pandits took the easy way out by condemning a particular caste to do the job. Even when the technology was available, our Brahminical bureaucracy was unwilling to abolish manual scavenging. How the combination of caste and urbanisation has contributed to the persistence of the most inhuman of jobs is revealed in this small but significant book. Gita Ramaswamy's book evolved out of her work in the campaign to demolish the infamous dry latrine system that still prevails in Andhra Pradesh, home to over two lakh dry latrines. Despite being banned in '93, manual scavenging persists even in the 21st century. The book brings out the ideological hang-ups that encourage manual scavenging. It points out the limits of Communist ideology, so long as it remains caste-blind. It shows how this abominable system was allowed by every successive ruling party because of the Gandhian understanding that the Bhangis were born to do this work-just like a mother cleans her child's nappies. It cites Ambedkar's argument that if this work was/is so sacred, why don't the upper castes take it up? This book needs to be read by every civilised citizen of India. ============= The other side of life By Scharada Bail New Indian Express on Sunday, 8 January 2006 Dalits in Dravidian Land Frontline Reports on Anti-dalit Violence in Tamil Nadu (1995-2004) By S Viswanathan Navayana Publishing, Rs 300 Continued hostility towards dalits by powerful backward castes is widely reported from the Northern states, with each fresh carnage of burnt homes, looting, and rape reinforcing the image of a violent countryside. In Tamil Nadu however, Dravidian politics has successfully marginalised Dalit concerns in such a way that readers of the news and intellectuals outside the state may well imagine that Dalits and BCs co-exist peacefully. This, along with Tamil Nadu's comparatively clean record of communal clashes, gives the state its reputation for calm and peace. S Viswanathan has been reporting for Frontline for over ten years on Dalit issues and this book is a compilation of the eventful decade of 1995 to 2004, when violence against Dalits has been on the rise, and their political organisation and articulation has also been more evident. Through reports that examine the geographic spread of anti-Dalit attacks, from the southern districts to northern and western Tamil Nadu, Viswanathan looks closely at the issues that define the Dalit experience in modern independent India. Police brutality and the use of excessive force against legitimate popular demonstrations by Dalit groups, including the infamous incident on the banks of the Thamiraparani river in Tirunelveli in 1999, when 17 workers were beaten and killed, has been narrated in report after report. Attacks to prevent Dalits from exercising their votes, and appalling incidents like the Thinniyam instance when dalits were made to eat excreta have been written about in detail, with close interaction with the principal characters. But what brings cheer is the documentation of courage and resistance among Dalits, whether it is the emergence of Puthiya Tamizhagam, or the efforts of an individual like Yasoda Ekambaram against illicit liquor trafficking in Tiruvallur. 'Dalits in Dravidian Land' portrays such spirited actions with rare understanding, bringing a depth to Dalit studies that goes well beyond mere reportage. India Stinking Manual Scavengers in Andhra Pradesh and Their Work By Gita Ramaswamy Navayana Publishing, Rs 100 Institutionalised indifference to fellow human beings as represented by the caste system is unique to India. This assumes a particularly stark form when one considers the practice of manual scavenging - the daily picking up of human excreta by hand from public 'dry latrines', as described in this book, or from alongside town roads, as shown in 'Pee', R P Amudhan's film that won first place in the inaugural 'One Billion Eyes' documentary and short film festival held in Chennai recently. India Stinking focuses on the practice of manual scavenging in Andhra Pradesh, but brings to the fore many issues that bear discussion at every level and region in our society. For instance, in profiling the activities of the Safai Karamchari Andolan or SKA led by Bezwada Wilson, the book demonstrates conclusively that nothing short of abolishing the 'dry latrine' system can bring about a change in public sanitation and a restoration of human dignity. In addition, from Bezwada Wilson's spirited rebuttal of the Gandhian approach of calling scavenging a 'noble' profession, and from the Appendix of Gandhi and Ambedkar's differing views on scavengers and scavenging, it is evident that untouchability as it translates into actual modern town and urban practice has to be vigorously examined and overcome. Gita Ramaswamy's book is a well-argued case for the engagement of the larger community with the issues that plague the lives of safai karamcharis. How can we allow what goes on to go on? How can we reinforce ritual discrimination with State support? What are we doing with the laws and legislation that was meant to end such practices? Through its documentation of the efforts of the SKA, the book asks such tough questions and more. For enquries write to anand.navayana at gmail.com _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From jeebesh at sarai.net Mon Jan 9 18:08:03 2006 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (jeebesh at sarai.net) Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 13:38:03 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] =?utf-8?b?TWljaGFlbMKgQXJhbcKgRXhwb3J0c8KgbWV0?= =?utf-8?q?al=C2=A0workers_-_This_week?= Message-ID: Dear friends, The Michael Aram Exports metal workers will be in public conversation with their placards at the following locations and times this week: Monday, Jan 9: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Basera Hotel main road, Okhla Phase I 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Tuesday, Jan 10: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Okhla police thana main road, Okhla Phase I 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Wednesday, Jan 11: 11:30 am - 2 pm, Sujan Singh Park near Ambassador Hotel Thursday, Jan 12: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Tata Steel main road, Okhla Phase I 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Friday, Jan 13: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Sarita Vihar-Okhla railway crossing 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Saturday, Jan 14: 11:30 am - 2 pm, Sujan Singh Park near Ambassador Hotel Please stop by and meet us if you are in the area. Sincerely, Shankar Ramaswami PhD Candidate University of Chicago (Please call 9818630612 for directions) _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From hight at 34n118w.net Tue Jan 10 02:03:29 2006 From: hight at 34n118w.net (hight at 34n118w.net) Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 12:33:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] binary katwalk....call for work Message-ID: <1816.70.34.212.67.1136838809.squirrel@webmail.34n118w.net> BINARY KATWALK announces the call for work for second edition. Binary katwalk is an on-line exhibition space focusing on work that is highly experimental and would benefit from a non-traditional exhibition space. The site is co-curated by Sindee Nakatani and Jeremy Hight. The first edition was a great success and we are now looking for work for the second . We are looking for new media work: for cross disciplinary works, for experimental works, for works that are pushing into new horizons in form and functionality. Contact : info at binarykatwalk.net From zainab at xtdnet.nl Tue Jan 10 10:04:55 2006 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 08:34:55 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] some more questions Message-ID: <3694.219.65.9.101.1136867695.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> So I have some more questions now: What does intervention mean? What is/are the line/s of difference/s (nuance/s) between intervention and interference? How does someone (institution/authority/person) acquire the right to intervene? Cheers, Zainab Questions Bawa Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From anitaguru at vsnl.com Mon Jan 9 19:17:18 2006 From: anitaguru at vsnl.com (Anita Gurumurthy) Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 19:17:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] seminar assistant In-Reply-To: <43ABCEF3.2060600@sarai.net> Message-ID: <0IST006R4VN1QW@smtp3.vsnl.net> "Seeking a part-time assistant from now until June 2006 to help organize an upcoming international workshop on Law and Social Movements in Bangalore. Responsibilities include scoping out potential venues for workshop in and around Bangalore, liaising with manager of the concerned institution, making travel arrangements for domestic participants, and taking charge of all organizational aspects of the workshop leading up to and during the workshop. Person needs to be resident in Bangalore. Prior experience in organizing such events for an NGO or educational institution would be a big plus. Attractive compensation. Please email pkotiswaran at gmail.com with CV. Thank you! " -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060109/353edac7/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From turbulence at turbulence.org Mon Jan 9 20:50:01 2006 From: turbulence at turbulence.org (Turbulence) Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 10:20:01 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call for Entries: Turbulence New England Initiative II Message-ID: <001101c61530$34c691c0$6601a8c0@t5x1c0> Call for Entries: Turbulence New England Initiative II Turbulence.org is pleased to announce its "New England Initiative II," a juried, networked art competition. Three projects by New England artists will be commissioned and exhibited on Turbulence (http://turbulence.org) and in real space (venue to be announced). The jury consists of Julian Bleecker, Michelle Thursz, and Helen Thorington. This project is made possible with funds from the LEF Foundation. PROJECT CONCEPT: Net art projects are "art projects for which the Net is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing/expressing/participating" (Steve Dietz). They live in the public world of the Internet. Recently, however, wireless telecommunications technologies have enabled computation to migrate out of the desktop PC into the physical world, creating the possibility of "hybrid" networked art, works that intermingle and fuse previously discrete identities, disciplines, and/or fields of activity such as the Internet and urban space. (See the networked_performance blog—http://turbulence.org/blog—specifically the categories "Locative Media" and "Mobile Art and Culture.") Borders are disintegrating and new identities are emerging. We encourage applications by net artists and artists working on networked hybrid projects. PROJECT TIMELINE: Proposal Deadline: February 28, 2006 Selected Projects Announcement: March 15, 2006 Project Launch/Exhibition: October 1, 2006 SELECTION CRITERIA: (1) artistic merit of the proposed project; (2) originality; (3) degree of performativity and audience participation; (4) level of programming skill and degree of technological innovation; and (5) extent of collaborative and interdisciplinary activity. PROPOSAL GUIDELINES: (a) Your name, email address, and web site URL (if you have one). (b) A description of the project's core concept and how it will make creative use of digital networks (500 words maximum). (c) Details of how the project will be realized, including what software/programming will be used. Specs for the Turbulence server are available at http://www.turbulence.org/comp_05/server.htm. You may request additional software but we cannot guarantee it. (d) Names of collaborators, their areas of expertise, and their specific roles in the project. (e) A project budget, including other funding sources for this project, if any. (f) Your résumé/CV and one for each of your collaborators. (g) Up to five examples of prior work accessible on the web. Email submissions (the web site URL) to turbulence at turbulence.org with NE 2 in the subject field. JUROR BIOGRAPHIES: Julian Bleecker [http://www.techkwondo.com/] Julian Bleecker has been involved in technology design for over 15 years, creating mobile, wireless, and networked-based applications across a diversity of project idioms including entertainment, art-technology, brand marketing, university research and development, interactive advertising and museum exhibition. His expertise is technology implementation, innovation and concept development. Bleecker is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division and Critical Theory departments, and is participating in a research group at the Annenberg Center's Institute for Media Literacy exploring the future of mobile technology applications. He has a Ph.D. from the History of Consciousness Board at the University of California Santa Cruz, a Masters of Engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. Helen Thorington [http://new-radio.org/helen] is co-director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore), the founder and producer of the national weekly radio series, New American Radio (1987-1998), and the founder and producer of the Turbulence and Somewhere websites. She is a writer, sound composer, and radio producer, whose radio documentary, dramatic work, and sound/music compositions have been aired nationally and internationally for the past twenty-three years. Thorington has created compositions for film and installation that have been premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, the Whitney Biennial, and in the Whitney Museum’s Annual Performance series. She has produced three narrative works for the net, and the distributed performance Adrift which was presented at the 1997 Ars Electronica Festival and at the New Museum in New York City, 2001, among other places. Thorington has also composed for dance and performed with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at Jacob’s Pillow, MA in 2002, and at The Kitchen, New York City in 2003. She won two radio awards in 2003 for her 9_11_Scapes composition; and was recently commissioned by Deep Wireless, a Toronto radio festival, to create Calling to Mind. Thorington has lectured, presented on panels, and served as a juror on many occasions. Her recent articles on networked musical performances include "Breaking Out: The Trip Back" (Contemporary Music Review, Vol 24, No 6. December 2005, 445-458); and "Music, Sound and the Networked_Performance Blog" for the Extensible Toy Piano Symposium at Clark University, Massachusetts, November 5, 2005. Michele Thursz (http://www.michelethursz.com) is an independent curator and consultant for art-makers and distributors. Her current project is Post Media Network; Post Media is a term and action demonstrating the continuous evolution of uses of media and their effect on artists practice, and culture-at-large. In 1999 she co-founded and directed the Moving Image Gallery, NYC. Moving Image Gallery was one of the first galleries to show electronic and computer-based mediums, exhibiting such artist as Golan Levin, Cory Arcangel and Yael Kanerek. Thursz’ recent curatorial projects include “Copy it, Steal it, Share it”, Borusan Gallery, Istanbul, and “Nown”, Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh; “public.exe: Public Excution”, Exit Art, NYC, and “Democracy is Fun”, White Box, NYC. She has written essays about contemporary art for catalogues and has lectured on contemporary art and curatorial practice. Thursz’s actions and exhibits have been reviewed and featured in the New York Times, Forbes Best of the Web, ArtByte, Wired News, Art Forum, and many international periodicals and web publications. Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org New York: 917.548.7780 • Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: http://turbulence.org New American Radio: http://somewhere.org Networked_Performance Blog: http://turbulence.org/blog Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From turbulence at turbulence.org Mon Jan 9 22:58:03 2006 From: turbulence at turbulence.org (Turbulence) Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 12:28:03 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call for Entries: Turbulence New England Initiative II (Corrected) Message-ID: <000001c61542$18145b90$6601a8c0@t5x1c0> Apologies for leaving out the minor detail of the commission amount!: three commissions at $3,500 each. Call for Entries: Turbulence New England Initiative II Turbulence.org is pleased to announce its “New England Initiative II,” a juried, networked art competition. Three projects by New England artists will be commissioned and exhibited on Turbulence (http://turbulence.org) and in real space (venue to be announced). Each award will be $3,500. The jury consists of Julian Bleecker, Michelle Thursz, and Helen Thorington. This project is made possible with funds from the LEF Foundation. PROJECT CONCEPT: Net art projects are “art projects for which the Net is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing/ expressing/ participating” (Steve Dietz). They live in the public world of the Internet. Recently, however, wireless telecommunications technologies have enabled computation to migrate out of the desktop PC into the physical world, creating the possibility of “hybrid” networked art, works that intermingle and fuse previously discrete identities, disciplines, and/or fields of activity such as the Internet and urban space. (See the networked_performance blog—http://turbulence.org/blog—specifically the categories “Locative Media” and “Mobile Art and Culture.”) Borders are disintegrating and new identities are emerging. We encourage applications by net artists and artists working on networked hybrid projects. PROJECT TIMELINE: Proposal Deadline: February 28, 2006 Selected Projects Announcement: March 15, 2006 Project Launch/Exhibition: October 1, 2006 SELECTION CRITERIA: (1) artistic merit of the proposed project; (2) originality; (3) degree of performativity and audience participation; (4) level of programming skill and degree of technological innovation; and (5) extent of collaborative and interdisciplinary activity. PROPOSAL GUIDELINES: (a) Your name, email address, and web site URL (if you have one). (b) A description of the project's core concept and how it will make creative use of digital networks (500 words maximum). (c) Details of how the project will be realized, including what software/programming will be used. Specs for the Turbulence server are available at http://www.turbulence.org/comp_05/server.htm. You may request additional software but we cannot guarantee it. (d) Names of collaborators, their areas of expertise, and their specific roles in the project. (e) A project budget, including other funding sources for this project, if any. (f) Your résumé/CV and one for each of your collaborators. (g) Up to five examples of prior work accessible on the web. Email submissions (the web site URL) to turbulence at turbulence.org with NE 2 in the subject field. JUROR BIOGRAPHIES: Julian Bleecker [http://www.techkwondo.com/] Julian Bleecker has been involved in technology design for over 15 years, creating mobile, wireless, and networked-based applications across a diversity of project idioms including entertainment, art-technology, brand marketing, university research and development, interactive advertising and museum exhibition. His expertise is technology implementation, innovation and concept development. Bleecker is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division and Critical Theory departments, and is participating in a research group at the Annenberg Center's Institute for Media Literacy exploring the future of mobile technology applications. He has a Ph.D. from the History of Consciousness Board at the University of California Santa Cruz, a Masters of Engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. Helen Thorington [http://new-radio.org/helen] is co-director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore), the founder and producer of the national weekly radio series, New American Radio (1987-1998), and the founder and producer of the Turbulence and Somewhere websites. She is a writer, sound composer, and radio producer, whose radio documentary, dramatic work, and sound/music compositions have been aired nationally and internationally for the past twenty-three years. Thorington has created compositions for film and installation that have been premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, the Whitney Biennial, and in the Whitney Museum’s Annual Performance series. She has produced three narrative works for the net, and the distributed performance Adrift which was presented at the 1997 Ars Electronica Festival and at the New Museum in New York City, 2001, among other places. Thorington has also composed for dance and performed with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at Jacob’s Pillow, MA in 2002, and at The Kitchen, New York City in 2003. She won two radio awards in 2003 for her 9_11_Scapes composition; and was recently commissioned by Deep Wireless, a Toronto radio festival, to create Calling to Mind. Thorington has lectured, presented on panels, and served as a juror on many occasions. Her recent articles on networked musical performances include “Breaking Out: The Trip Back” (Contemporary Music Review, Vol 24, No 6. December 2005, 445-458); and “Music, Sound and the Networked_Performance Blog” for the Extensible Toy Piano Symposium at Clark University, Massachusetts, November 5, 2005. Michele Thursz (http://www.michelethursz.com) is an independent curator and consultant for art-makers and distributors. Her current project is Post Media Network; Post Media is a term and action demonstrating the continuous evolution of uses of media and their effect on artists practice, and culture-at-large. In 1999 she co-founded and directed the Moving Image Gallery, NYC. Moving Image Gallery was one of the first galleries to show electronic and computer-based mediums, exhibiting such artist as Golan Levin, Cory Arcangel and Yael Kanerek. Thursz’ recent curatorial projects include “Copy it, Steal it, Share it”, Borusan Gallery, Istanbul, and “Nown”, Wood Street Gallery, Pittsburgh; “public.exe: Public Excution”, Exit Art, NYC, and “Democracy is Fun”, White Box, NYC. She has written essays about contemporary art for catalogues and has lectured on contemporary art and curatorial practice. Thursz’s actions and exhibits have been reviewed and featured in the New York Times, Forbes Best of the Web, ArtByte, Wired News, Art Forum, and many international periodicals and web publications. Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org New York: 917.548.7780 • Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: http://turbulence.org New American Radio: http://somewhere.org Networked_Performance Blog: http://turbulence.org/blog Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From zainab at xtdnet.nl Wed Jan 11 13:24:02 2006 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 11:54:02 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Mustafa Message-ID: <3365.219.65.11.250.1136966042.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> 10th January 2006 His name is Mustafa. The name of the Chai Shop (Tea Café) is Khushali. Khushali is located in Imambada, an Irani Shia Muslim neighbourhood in the heart of Dongri (the larger Muslim neighbourhood in Mumbai – dreaded, feared, known and unknown). Dad introduced me to Khushali in October, during Ramzaan. (Dad and I both retain our connections and memories with Dongri – he and I both grew up here – in two different generations!) Since then, Khushali has become a regular jaunt, until recently, when I realized that Khushali serves as an interesting case in point of a ‘local public space’. I am examining what is the locality and publicness of this chai shop as against the locality and publicness of Marine Drive / Nariman Point. His name is Mustafa (another name of the Prophet). Let me outright announce that Mustafa is a lazy, eccentric, mad Irani (just like all those endearing Iranis of Imambada who I grew up with!) “People come from all over to drink Mustafa’s chai – Kalyan, Dombivali, Faridabad, Agra, Kalyan, Dombivali,” Mustafa announces to his cuustommers/custombers. But indirectly, Mustafa is announcing his fame to me. Undoubtedly, Mustafa is the chai man of the neighbourhood. The faithful praying at Mughal Masjid in Imambada thrive on Mustafa’s chai – arre, Mustafa aaj nahi aaya . Uski chai ki badi aadat lag gayi hai (Oh no, Mustafa is not here? His tea is an addiction.) His name is Mustafa, a man of his own. I have no timings for lunch – kabhi do, kabhi adhai, kabhi teen, to kabhi sallang chai banata rehta hoon (some times 2 PM, sometimes 2:30, sometimes 3 PM, and sometimes, straight up till the evening, I make tea), he groans, yawns and stretches tiredly. I have no way to determine Mustafa’s mood for lunch. On some days, the shop is closed just when I thought it would be open. So here is Mustafa who defines the pace of his chai shop according to his whims and fancies, unlike the coffee shops of the world outside Imambada which set their pace to the ideal of the global city. His name is Mustafa I walked into Imambada this afternoon. It is 1 PM. I am obviously an outsider, a stranger. I am dressed in a black body hugging t-shirt and black trousers. I certainly look like a journalist. I make my way to Khushali. Mustafa is getting a man to clean up the shop, readying for the month of Muharram when Mustafa will be serving tea to the faithful – to all of Imambada. I am dazzled by the glass and chinaware crockery which he has laid out on one of the two wooden benches of his shop. I quickly bring out my camera to shoot the variety of tea glasses and cups. Mustafa smiles and says Yeh bhangaar ka photo nikaal rahe ho (you are photographing this trash?) Abhi aap isko bhangaar bol rahe ho, kal ko yehi cheezen antique kehlayengi (today you are labeling this ware as trash; tomorrow this trash will be labeled as antique), I tell Mustafa and think of Jonathan Raban and his Morrocan Birdcage (as outlined in Soft City). (Strange are the ways of lifestyle, culture and the city and time and trends ) Mustafa is ordering the man in the shop to clean properly. This man is as lazy as Mustafa. Mustafa is but the task master. This way, place the biscuits this way so that cuustommers can see the labels. Then he turns towards and me says with a tired, pathological look, Cuustommers like these biscuits a lot. (I wonder whether he is complaining about the biscuits taking over the popularity of his handmade cakes and bakery.) Come on, come on, you lazy fool. Clean it up properly, Mustafa lashes. But the man is least perturbed. He is enjoying Mustafa’s nagging. Mustafa makes tea for me. A man on a Kinetic Honda parks the vehicle in front of Khushali. He is gregarious and lively. He greets the neighbouring kite shop owner and calls Mustafa out. Here, mind my thaila (shopping bag) as I go to the mosque and offer prayers. (Mustafa is also the watchman of people’s belongings in this neighbourhood.) Mustafa comes out and takes the green bag inside. Chai pee le (Have some tea) No, no, are you mad? I will go and pray first. What about your court case? I have to go there in the afternoon. Then the man notices me and suddenly comes close to me and looks into my face and asks Mustafa, Who is she – yeh kaun hai? She is a reporter. Then he asks me, What is your name? Zainab. Really? Zainab? Zainab!!! Wah. You are Zainab. I look at the man. I know he is alluding to my religious affiliation as also to the history of my name (Zainab being the granddaughter of the Prophet who fought the battle of justice and Islam after the battle of Kerbala was over). He goes off to pray. Mustafa asks me and tells me, Are you Mohammedan? I did not know. The old man sitting at the corner of the other wooden bench (he has been there since I entered the shop) asks Mustafa, Who is this? My elder brother. He has a restaurant at Dadar. How many brothers are you? Six. One of them is in Iran. And you don’t have sisters? No. I ask Mustafa if he goes to Iran. Do you go to Iran? Yes, once a year. Was there sometime ago. So when did you come to Bombay? I was born here (he says very proudly). I was born in Siddiqui hospital, right here. I want to probe more about Mustafa’s history. But then, the old man just throws the lit butt of his cigarette and Mustafa shouts, Arre, what are you doing? You throw that lit butt around there, right in front of the scooter? The scooter will light up – there will be an explosion. The man is careless. He pays no heed to Mustafa’s words. Mustafa looks at me, points his index finger to his head and says, People here have no science in their heads – kuch samajhte nahi hai – they don’t understand anything. The men in Iran are clean and sophisticated. They have etiquette. They don’t throw cigarette butts like this. You will not find cigarette butts like this on the streets there. I look down and count that there are exactly three cigarette butts thrown outside the shop. The cleaning of wares is still going on. Mustafa continues talking, Do you come here in Muharram? Yes, I do. Then it will be nice. I will prepare kahwa. Here, this is the packet of coffee kahwa. But there is not much demand for kahwa among the cuustommers. I have to see what the cuustommers want. He brings out the equipment for preparing kahwa and shows me the pores through which the tea/coffee will be brewed and strained. See, this is what it is like. Wow! Lot of Shias live here. Only Shias come here, to the chai shop – he has a strange grimace on his face when he says this. I am not sure if he is expressing a prejudice. The shop will get crowded after namaaz. People will throng in like crazy here, to drink tea, he says. I notice that some young men are already coming in the shop. I begin to get uncomfortable myself and decide that it is time to move. I bring out money to pay Mustafa. Are you leaving already? Yes. I am not sure if he wants to talk more. He shouts for change and the lack of it in the cash counter. I collect the money and wish him Eid Mubarak. Tomorrow the shop will be closed, he says. Do you slaughter goats? No, not me. The hajis (pilgrims returned from Hajj) do it. Lots of them. Mustafa seems to be referring to the affluence and indulgences of the hajis. I am not sure about Mustafa’s own faith and practices. He seems quite reassured by himself, making tea, making conversation with cuustommers, groaning and whining, nagging and shouting, basking in his fame, wanting some more. His name is Mustafa. Khushali is the chai shop. Mustafa is the chai maker (and also one of the space creators). I walked out in the street to feel the flavour of festivities. Kites are being made and put out. Afternoon activity is slow and lazy. Burkha clad women are making small fruit purchases. Some stare at me. Most don’t care. Sweets are being packed in pink coloured boxes. And as I walk, I notice two beat cops on a bike, racing into a gulli. That sight evokes a quick sensation in me – contempt and aggression. I calm down. Tomorrow this area will be policed heavily – after all, this is now known as a troubled area and will be for the rest of its life! Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From aarti at sarai.net Wed Jan 11 18:53:03 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (aarti at sarai.net) Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:23:03 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Reader-list] *The troubled futures of Secular Nationalism: A Round Table.* Message-ID: <1105.61.246.29.178.1136985783.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> *The troubled futures of Secular Nationalism: A Round Table.* A discussion around Aditya Nigam’s new book: "The Insurrection of Little Selves: The Crisis of Secular-Nationalism in India" Oxford (2006). 3 PM, Thursday, 12 January 2006 CSDS Seminar Room Can the secular survive the crisis of the national? Can it indeed deal with the challenges of the postsecular world? How does the production of the majority and minority affect post-colonial culture and politics in India? Join us for a roundtable on Aditya Nigam's new book,"The Insurrection of Little Selves: The Crisis of Secular-Nationalism in India" Oxford (2006). Speakers include Ashis Nandy, Rajeev Bhargava, Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Aditya Nigam. Ravi Sundaram will chair the session. From iram at sarai.net Thu Jan 12 19:30:12 2006 From: iram at sarai.net (Iram Ghufran) Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 19:30:12 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] message by a.khanna In-Reply-To: <20060111082423.8r9sfup148occog4@www.sms.ed.ac.uk> References: <20060111082423.8r9sfup148occog4@www.sms.ed.ac.uk> Message-ID: <43C660EC.9080602@sarai.net> message by akshay khanna, ifellow 2006-07 urgent request for help > hi all, > > this is akshay, one of the new independent fellow types. this time > around i'll introduce > myself as a queer activist - this is not my 'first posting' about my > project, this is an > invitation to a protest. > > a few days ago a group of men were arrested in Lucknow for being > members of a gay > internet group. the FIR claims that they were caught having sex in a > public park. the > independent fact finding team suggtests this is a fabrication, that > this is a case of > entrapment. either way, this is the first time that Section 377 of the > indian penal code > (which says that anyone who has 'carnal intercourse against the order > of nature' may be > imprisoned for life - 'against the order of nature' in 1860, when this > law was framed, > would have included using a condom, but which today means anal or oral > sex whether > between people of the same sex or of the 'oppostite' sexes)- has been > applied to mean > that being homosexual is a crime. thus far the interpretation has been > that it > criminalises particular sexual acts. > > these actions of the police have significant implications for the queer > movements in > india. > > pasted below is an invitation for a protest taking place at noon on > thursday. please try > to make it and forward it to other people...i think there are issues > here that link up > with concerns on many on this list. > > hope to see people there. > > best, > > akshay > .................... > Protest against police atrocities under Section 377 in Lucknow > > Date: Thursday, 12th January, 2006 > Time: 12 noon > Venue: Outside UP Bhawan, 5, Sardar Patel Marg, New Delhi-21 > > WHY: > > 3rd January: four men were arrested in Lucknow for being a part of what > the Lucknow police called a “gay racket” and charged under Section 377. > The arrests were made on the grounds that these persons are allegedly > members of an internet based service that enables gay men to meet other > like-minded persons. > > In other words, these people have been arrested simply because they are > homosexual – something that is not a crime! > > They have since been held in police custody and charged under Sec 377 – > an archaic British colonial law that criminalises adult, consensual > same-sex sexual behaviour and is currently the subject of a legal > challenge in the Delhi High Court. Yet even Sect 377 does not > criminalise being homosexual, but only certain sexual acts which were > NOT committed by any of the charged parties when they were arrested. > More importantly, the law violates the fundamental and human rights of > Indian citizens to freely take consensual decisions about their sexual > preferences and live lives free of violence and discrimination. > > In the FIR Police have mentioned 13 more people's names and mobile > phone numbers, > exposing them to discrimination and harm in their personal and > professional lives and > fundamentally violating their privacy. > > Other sources indicate that the FIR does not contain all the facts > behind the arrests. > Family members of one of the arrested parties have reportedly said that > he was illegally > detained by the police days before the other three and was taken away > for interrogation. > > The police have stepped outside of the law and have violated the > fundamental right to > life and liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution. > > This has created fear and panic in the Queer community in Lucknow - > many people have gone > underground and this has severely damaged the outreach work of NGOs > providing > HIV/AIDS/sexual health services to homosexual/bisexual men in Lucknow. > > The actions of the Lucknow police are in direct contravention of the > government’s own National AIDS Control and Prevention Policies, the > objective of which is to create an enabling environment by protecting > the human rights of marginalized sexualities. > > > > WE DEMAND > > § Immediate release of the arrested people and to drop all charges. > § Immediate suspension of Police Officials involved in these arrests. > § Punishing the guilty Police Officials after conducting an > immediate enquiry for their illegal and unconstitutional actions > including keeping people in illegal detention, filing false charges and > for violating 'Right to Privacy'. > § UP Government to take urgent steps to protect human rights and > to stop moral policing > § Complete implementation of the NACO policy recommendations to > ensure effective HIV/AIDS outreach with men who have sex with men in an > environment free of discrimination > § Repeal Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code as it serves as a > tool for the police to harass the sexuality minorities > > > Voices Against 377 is a coalition of Delhi based groups working on > women’s rights, human rights, child rights and the rights of same sex > desiring people including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered > people. This group seeks to draw public attention to section 377 of the > Indian Penal Code, 1860 – the law that penalises “carnal intercourse > against the order of nature” and effectively criminalises same-sex > sexual activity between consenting adults, in private. It is a colonial > law that has given legitimacy to gross and sustained human rights > violations against lesbian, gay, hijra, transgender and bisexual > people, thus negating the constitutional claim of equal citizenship and > protection for all. > From daljitami at rediffmail.com Tue Jan 10 15:05:21 2006 From: daljitami at rediffmail.com (daljit ami) Date: 10 Jan 2006 09:35:21 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Twin trends of success: Celluloid and Compact Disk Message-ID: <20060110093521.2283.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com> Hello Everybody, I am a freelance journalist and documentary films. After completing my masters in History and I did diploma in journalism. I am writing in Punjabi newspapers and magazines for last ten years. I have written about the socio-cultural and political issues of Punjab. I have also written on national and international issues with reference of Punjab. Rural Punjab remained focus of my writings. Six years ago I started making documentary films. I have made films about agriculture labour in Punjab that got commendation award from IDPA festival. I have done biographical films and an anti war film, Zulm Aur Aman. In Zulm Aur Aman I juxtaposed Second World War with second Gulf War on the poetry of two great Punjabi poets (of urdu) Habib Zalib and Sahir Ludhianvi. I have made six filmsIn my study that I am suppose to do on SARAI fellowship I will study the contemporary films being made in Punjabi. Here is the abstract below about my study. In recent past Punjabi film production has gone through tremendous changes of comprehensive magnitude. Two different trends have been noticed. Big budget (as compared to earlier Punjabi) films have been made on celluloid and have been able to not only recover the production cost but also earn heavy returns. With the popularization of Digital technology low budget small films have been made in large number. These small films made on video format have been successful in the market. These two trends have success as the common factor otherwise they are quite different from each other. The difference is not reduced to production format or length of the film. They are different in content and treatment. They are meant for different audiences. Video is trying to be group or area specific whereas celluloid is broader in canvas and reach. The budget of celluloid is ranging between 20 to 30 million where as small films are being produced within one lakh. Celluloid is trying to rope in big stars from Hollywood and NRIs into its cast. Video is dependent on local artists graduating from Punjabi theatre or fresher. The subject matter of celluloid has changed with last few years from caste or land holding based fights and triangles to emigration and lifestyle. With the change of subjects the locales of films have also shifted from open fields, tractors, horses and motorcycles to urban villas and North American landscapes. These film explore the nostalgia and problematic of settling abroad. Human relations stretched towards extreme ends under the pressures of emigration and love for motherland has been projected in these films with an eye on overseas market. Rustic males and rural females working in harem have been replaced by refined educated male-females speaking Punjabi-English mix. The success of Bollywood films having Punjabi background opened the door for Punjabi films. Punjabi pop was already established as big hit, internationally. Punjabi films started exploring the subjects of patriotism (Sheed Udaam Singh), lovetales (Sheed-e-Mohabat Buta Singh), comedy (Mahoul Theek Hai) and emigration (Je Ayaa Nu and Asa nu Maan Vatan da). Here the producer targeted at the global market explored by Punjabi Pop and Jash Chopra-Karan Johar brand of bollybood films. A new creed of producers and actors emerged. Few years old Punjabi films and subjects started looking primitive within no time. The decreased price of Compact Disk and its players converted lots of people into consumers of a commodity previous almost non-existent i.e. films made on video format. This medium is consumer friendly in terms of time, as it does not depend on Television or Cinema’s time schedule. Here you can see a film at your convenience. It has converted those people into audiences who don’t afford to visit cinema halls. The low cost production enables many people to make films. People involved in Punjabi theatre jumped with their subjects from stage to Compact Disk. Script of plays with minor altercations or as-it-is has been worked out into films. The market has seen a glut of such films. The subjects of these films range from social to political and economic. The films have rustic language and cheap comedy as its prominent features. The comparative study of both these trends will help us understand the taste of audiences, constrains of medium, concerns of producers and different aspects of media economy. The comparative study of contents and treatment in both the media will be useful to understand the role of medium in shaping the subject. The limitations and possibilities of media and individuals need to be studied to understand the role of media in shaping the media tastes. The comparative analysis of both the audiences will help us form an opinion about the choices of audiences. The importance of economy in shaping the media will be interesting to explore. The video films are uncensored or they don’t go to the market through censor board. How and what extent social censorship on these films work can be understood through interactions with people involved in the making of these films. Both these trends are trying to work out a combination of entertainment and message. This combination has been tried in different ways. The massage depends on the target audience. What massages are being coined in these trends will be an interesting variable to judge the composition of target audience. Compact Disk is delving into social problems and economic crises whereas Celluloid is exploring the emotional dilemmas. Both these trends are economically successful although the scales of success are different. How media review these trends is another interesting variable to access the attitude of media towards these trends. waiting for your responces daljit ami -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060110/b25a915f/attachment.html From s0454533 at sms.ed.ac.uk Tue Jan 10 23:58:51 2006 From: s0454533 at sms.ed.ac.uk (A Khanna) Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 18:28:51 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] urgent - protest against arrests under Section 377 IPC Message-ID: <20060110182851.6v8eb1ar4sc4os8s@www.sms.ed.ac.uk> hi all, this is akshay, one of the new independent fellow types. this time around i'll introduce myself as a queer activist - this is not my 'first posting' about my project, this is an invitation to a protest. a few days ago a group of men were arrested in Lucknow for being members of a gay internet group. the FIR claims that they were caught having sex in a public park. the independent fact finding team suggtests this is a fabrication, that this is a case of entrapment. either way, this is the first time that Section 377 of the indian penal code (which says that anyone who has 'carnal intercourse against the order of nature' may be imprisoned for life - 'against the order of nature' in 1860, when this law was framed, would have included using a condom, but which today means anal or oral sex whether between people of the same sex or of the 'oppostite' sexes)- has been applied to mean that being homosexual is a crime. thus far the interpretation has been that it criminalises particular sexual acts. these actions of the police have significant implications for the queer movements in india. pasted below is an invitation for a protest taking place at noon on thursday. please try to make it and forward it to other people...i think there are issues here that link up with concerns on many on this list. hope to see people there. best, akshay .................... Protest against police atrocities under Section 377 in Lucknow Date: Thursday, 12th January, 2006 Time: 12 noon Venue: Outside UP Bhawan, 5, Sardar Patel Marg, New Delhi-21 WHY: 3rd January: four men were arrested in Lucknow for being a part of what the Lucknow police called a “gay racket” and charged under Section 377. The arrests were made on the grounds that these persons are allegedly members of an internet based service that enables gay men to meet other like-minded persons. In other words, these people have been arrested simply because they are homosexual – something that is not a crime! They have since been held in police custody and charged under Sec 377 – an archaic British colonial law that criminalises adult, consensual same-sex sexual behaviour and is currently the subject of a legal challenge in the Delhi High Court. Yet even Sect 377 does not criminalise being homosexual, but only certain sexual acts which were NOT committed by any of the charged parties when they were arrested. More importantly, the law violates the fundamental and human rights of Indian citizens to freely take consensual decisions about their sexual preferences and live lives free of violence and discrimination. In the FIR Police have mentioned 13 more people's names and mobile phone numbers, exposing them to discrimination and harm in their personal and professional lives and fundamentally violating their privacy. Other sources indicate that the FIR does not contain all the facts behind the arrests. Family members of one of the arrested parties have reportedly said that he was illegally detained by the police days before the other three and was taken away for interrogation. The police have stepped outside of the law and have violated the fundamental right to life and liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution. This has created fear and panic in the Queer community in Lucknow - many people have gone underground and this has severely damaged the outreach work of NGOs providing HIV/AIDS/sexual health services to homosexual/bisexual men in Lucknow. The actions of the Lucknow police are in direct contravention of the government’s own National AIDS Control and Prevention Policies, the objective of which is to create an enabling environment by protecting the human rights of marginalized sexualities. WE DEMAND § Immediate release of the arrested people and to drop all charges. § Immediate suspension of Police Officials involved in these arrests. § Punishing the guilty Police Officials after conducting an immediate enquiry for their illegal and unconstitutional actions including keeping people in illegal detention, filing false charges and for violating 'Right to Privacy'. § UP Government to take urgent steps to protect human rights and to stop moral policing § Complete implementation of the NACO policy recommendations to ensure effective HIV/AIDS outreach with men who have sex with men in an environment free of discrimination § Repeal Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code as it serves as a tool for the police to harass the sexuality minorities Voices Against 377 is a coalition of Delhi based groups working on women’s rights, human rights, child rights and the rights of same sex desiring people including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people. This group seeks to draw public attention to section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 – the law that penalises “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” and effectively criminalises same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults, in private. It is a colonial law that has given legitimacy to gross and sustained human rights violations against lesbian, gay, hijra, transgender and bisexual people, thus negating the constitutional claim of equal citizenship and protection for all. From rameshs74 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 12 13:15:16 2006 From: rameshs74 at yahoo.com (ramesh sadasivam) Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 23:45:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] req. of info Message-ID: <20060112074516.39164.qmail@web50404.mail.yahoo.com> The subject pertains to Local Economy of Suburbia The title of REsearch is Dynamics of Suburbia : Changes in Land use and its impact in Local economy : A GIS planning strategy for Urban system management. The present problem is to have a Clear definiton of Suburbia, how to evaluate the Local economy. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From monica.mody at gmail.com Tue Jan 10 13:37:37 2006 From: monica.mody at gmail.com (Monica Mody) Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 13:37:37 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Fwd: TRI Continental Film Festival 2006 In-Reply-To: <4badad3b0601092334g9601729yc0a5859281b13bc6@mail.gmail.com> References: <4badad3b0601092334g9601729yc0a5859281b13bc6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4badad3b0601100007o14f9b95atea50124f53f4da81@mail.gmail.com> BREAKTHROUGH PRESENTS TRI CONTINENTAL FILM FESTIVAL 2006: HUMAN RIGHTS IN FRAMES Moving images speak to us as nothing else does. Films can enthrall and educate: the TRI Continental Film Festival demonstrates this. Successfully bringing to India the finest human rights cinema from the global south, for a second time, the festival has been organized by Breakthrough, a human rights organization that uses media, education and popular culture to promote values of dignity, equality and justice. Popular Sufi rock singer Rabbi Shergill opens the 3-day festival in Delhi on January 21, after which the festival travels to Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata in the two weeks following. The 16 documentaries selected this year have won accolades all over the world. A jury of five – Amar Kanwar, Arjun Chandramohan Bali, Ira Bhaskar, Rituparno Ghosh and Shohini Ghosh – will award one of these with the Jury Prize. Additionally, the non-competitive section showcases 4 outstanding features. Filmmakers will be present to discuss their films following certain screenings. Initiated in Latin America in 2002, South Africa in 2003 and India in 2004, the TRI Continental Film Festival (3CFF) has become an annual platform for narrative, documentary, feature and short length films in the 3 continents. In the last year, the first 3CFF in India has travelled to Bangalore, Chandigarh, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Pune, reaching students and practitioners of human rights and film, IITs as well as cultural institutions, focused groups as well as general audiences. These films spark discussions, debates and conversations everywhere around human rights and social justice issues. In this year's festival, find out what it means to be young, talented and a 'born criminal' ("Acting like a Thief"). Meet musicians and activists from the 'other' Americas ("Rebel Music Americas"). Watch the global media fight the war in Iraq ("Weapons of Mass Deception"). Join the global resistance to water privatization ("Thirst"). For details, visit www.breakthough.tv or contact: Monica Mody/ Alika Khosla 91 11 2617 6181/ 85 tri-cff at breakthrough.tv In collaboration with: Federation of Film Societies of India (FFSI) Habitat Film Club, New Delhi Alliance Francaise Delhi JACIC, Mumbai Suchitra Film Society, Bangalore Alliance Francaise Bangalore Indo-Cine Appreciation Forum, Chennai Cine Central, Kolkata Swayam, Kolkata ***SCREENING PROGRAMME DELHI*** In association with Uhuru Productions, FFSI, Habitat Film Club & Alliance Francaise Delhi Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi JANUARY 21 6.30 pm INAUGURATION by Rabbi Shergill 7.15 pm SNAPSHOTS OF COURAGE No More Tears Sister: An Anatomy of Hope and Betrayal Dir. Helene Klodawsky (Canada/2004/ 80 min) A story of love, revolution and betrayal, "No More Tears Sister" explores the price of truth in times of war. Set during the violent ethnic conflict that has enveloped Sri Lanka over decades, the documentary recreates the courageous and vibrant life of renowed human rights activist Dr. Rajani Thiranagama. Mother, anatomy professor, author and symbol of hope, Rajani was assassinated at the age of thirty-five. 15 years after Rajani's death, her charismatic older sister Nirmala, a former Tamil militant and political prisoner, journeys back to Sri Lanka. She has decided to break her long silence about Rajani's passionate life and her brutal slaying. Joining her are Rajani's husband, sisters and grown daughters, as well as fellow activists forced underground. Stunningly photographed, using rare archival footage, intimate correspondence and poetic recreations, the film recounts Rajani's dramatic story and delves into rarely explored themes - revolutionary women and their dangerous pursuit of justice. (Columbus International Film and Video Festival, Worthington, USA, 2005) Beauty Will Save the World Dir. Pietra Brettkelly (UK & New Zealand/ 2004/ 62 min) Before Saddam and Osama, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi was one of the most reviled leaders in the West. Then in 2002 he hosted the first Miss Net World beauty pageant, a first for Libya. "Beauty Will Save the World" follows the exploits of 19 year-old Teca Zendik, the American contender for the crown. She sets out with her political loyalties in check, even refusing to wear the competition uniform - a tshirt emblazoned with Gadaffi's likeness. How then does she assume the position of honorary consul to the US for Libya in a mere matter of months? Marvel at how diplomatic ties are re-established between two nations while enjoying the behind-the-scenes antics of a beauty pageant. JANUARY 22 6.30 pm EVERY WAR HAS ITS IMAGE 14 Episodes Dir. Murad Muzaev (Ukraine, Netherlands & Chechen Republic of Ichkerya/ 2004/ 9 min) This documentary short consists direct and fragmentary narratives of dead, wounded and fleeing civilians and soldiers from the first and second Russian-Chechen wars. Torn metal, the bare face of death, helplessness - nothing is side-stepped, bearing testimony to the scale and severity of this extraordinarily savage war. The material was given by the Ukranian TV reporter Taras Protsuk, killed in Iraq on 8 April 2003, and also Adam Tepsurkaev (killed in Chechnya) and Islam Saydaev. (Award for Short Film Promoting Human Rights (special citation), Melbourne Film International Festival, Melbourne, Australia, 2005; Amnesty International Prize, International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam, 2004) Weapons of Mass Deception Dir. Danny Schechter (USA/ 2004/ 98 min) There were two wars going on in Iraq. One was fought with armies of soldiers, bombs and a fearsome military force. The other was fought alongside it with cameras, satellites, armies of journalists and propanganda techniques. The TV networks in America considered their non-stop coverage their finest hour, but different countries saw different wars. Why? WMD explores this story with the findings of a gutsy, media insider-turned-outsider, former network journalist, Danny Schechter, who is also one of America's most prolific media critics. (Best Documentary, Denver International Film Festival, Denver, USA, 2004) 8.20 pm CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Acting Like a Thief Dir. Kerim Friedman & Shashwati Talukdar (India & USA/ 2005/ 15 min) WORLD PREMIERE "Acting Like a Thief" is a short film about the Budhan Theatre of Chharanagar. Starting with playwright Dakxin Bajrange discussing his arrest the film brings us inside the lives of a dedicated group of young actors and their families as they discuss what it means to be a "born criminal" and how theater changed their lives. The members of Budhan Theatre are Chhara tribals. They were notified as "born criminals" by the British, and imprisoned in a labor camp in Ahmedabad. After Indian independence they were de-notified, but the stigma of being a "born criminal" follows them to this day. (Filmmakers present) Sisters in Law Dir. Kim Longinotto & Florence Ayisi (UK/ 2005/ 106 min) Selected for Cannes this year, "Sisters in Law" is a totally fascinating - often hilarious - look at the work of one small courthouse in South West Cameroon. The two women at the heart of the doco wouldn't be out of place in an Alexander McCall Smith bestseller. As the State Counsel and Court President, they dispense wisdom, wisecracks and justice in fair measure. The victims of crime - an abused child, a woman daring to accuse a man of rape, and another trying to end a brutal marriage in a society where divorce is taboo - are handled with fierce compassion. You will feel like cheering when justice is served. (Prix Art Et Essai, Cannes, France, 2005) JANUARY 23 6.30 pm HOME AND BELONGING The Concrete Revolution Dir. Xialou Guo (China & UK/ 2004/ 61 min) A meditation on the price which is being paid for the building of the new China, the film starts with the unemployed peasants rushing into Beijing to work on the demolition and the construction of the city. New China uses these people's desperation to realize its huge ambitions. But the construction workers don't belong in Beijing, and Beijing has no place for them either. They long to return to their hometowns. The director is implicated too - does she also need to return home? As China sends rockets into space and prepares to host the 2008 Olympics, this film essay shows a crucial turning point in China's history and captures a rapidly disappearing past and erosion of every individual's roots. (Grand Prix, International Human Rights Film Festival, Paris, 2005) Traje: Women and Weaving in Guatemala Dir. Phoebe Hart (Guatemala/ 2004/ 10 min) The Maya people of Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, in particular the women, wear their traditional indigenous dress with pride. Handmade with a simple backstrap loom and embroidered with designs, symbols and stories that date back to antiquity, traje poses a colourful challenge to the pressures of changing values, global economies, and discrimination threatening the Mayan weaving practice. The film tells the story of three women who are resisting the homogenising effects of "western" culture. The House on Gulmohar Avenue Dir. Samina Mishra (India/ 2005/ 30 min) Sometimes the story of a life is the story of a search to be at home. "The House on Gulmohar Avenue" traces the personal journey of the filmmaker through the ideas of identity and belonging. The film is set in a part of New Delhi called Okhla, where four generations of the filmmaker's family have lived. An area that is predominantly inhabited by Muslims. An area that is sometimes also called Mini Pakistan. The filmmaker's personal history is a hybrid one but she grew up as a Muslim. Set against a quiet presence of the political context in India, the film seeks an honest and deeply personal understanding of what this means - when she is aware of being Muslim, when does it matter to her and when is it easier to forget it. In the journey to answer these difficult questions, the film seeks out encounters with other residents of Okhla to arrive at a complex understanding of what it can mean to be a Muslim in India today. (Filmmaker present) 8.15 pm IN A VEIN IRREVERENT West Bank Story Dir. Ari Sandel (USA/ 2005/ 21 min) A musical comedy set in the fast-paced, fast-food world of competing falalfel stands in the West Bank. David, an Israeli soldier, falls in love with the beautiful Palestinian cashier, Fatima, despite the animosity between their families' dueling restaurants. Can the couple's love withstand a 2000 year old conflict and their families' desire to control the future of the chickpea in the Middle East? 8.40 pm BIRTH OF A NEW SOUTH AFRICA Zulu Love Letter Dir. Ramadan Suleman (South Africa & France/ 2004/ 100 min) FEATURE A keen and insightful psychological drama, Zulu Love Letter presents the emotional journey of two mothers searching for their daughters. Tormented by the haunting images and unrelenting grief of the past, single mother and journalist Thandi has difficulty communicating with her estranged daughter, Mangi. Thirteen-year old Mangi is deaf and dumb due to the beating that the pregnant Thandi received at the same time that her friends, Mike and Dineo, were murdered by an Apartheid hit squad. Mike and Dineo's fate pursues her, especially when Dineo's mother appears requesting that Thandi testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (Grand Prix Du Mellieur Scenariste - Special Jury Award, organised by Sopadin, France, 2001) Alliance Francaise, New Delhi JANUARY 22 10.30 am EMERGING SONGS Angola saudades from the one who loves you Dir. Richard Pakleppa (Angola/ 2005/ 65 min) The civil war in Angola tore the country in two for twenty-seven years. Three years ago peace was negotiated. For the first time since the country's independence it is united, but it has also been totally destroyed. Nevertheless, Pakleppa opens his film with an optimistic promise: "Angola longs for a new future," sings a woman in Portuguese. A politician, an ambitious rapper, and a street urchin amidst the worst possible misery all tell how beautiful and rich Angola actually is. Kitte Mil Ve Mahi (Where the Twain Shall Meet) Dir. Ajay Bhardwaj (India/ 2005/ 72 min) Travel to the heart of Punjab. Enter a world of Sufi shrines worshipped and looked after by Dalits. Listen to B.S. Balli Qawwal Paslewale, the first generation Dalit Qawwals born out of this tradition. Join a fascinating dialogue with Lal Singh Dil - a radical poet, a Dalit, converted to Islam. Meet the last living legend of the Gadar movement, Baba Bhagat Singh Bilga, who contests the subversion of a common past, while affirming a new consciousness among Dalits, within and beyond Punjab. "Kitte Mil Ve Mahi" is people's narrative of the little-known cultural/spiritual universe of Punjab. (Filmmaker present) 1.00 pm EMERGING SONGS Rebel Music Americas Dir. Malcolm Guy & Marie Botie (Canada/ 2004/ 79 min) From Tierra del Fuego to the Rio Grande, the "other" Americas are in turmoil, and in the midst of the social and political movements rocking the region are four groups of passionate musicians. Theirs is the music of the America of the South - popular, dynamic, rebellious and more often than not "anti-American". It's the rhythms and voices of Afro-Colombian musicians from communities forcibly displaced by the military; of Lila Downs and the struggle of women and indigenous peoples in Mexico; of Santa Reveulta and unemployed workers blocking access to a refinery in Buenos Aires, and Chico Cesar joining a land occupation of the Landless Worker's Movement (MST) in Brazil. (Best Documentary, Roma Independent Film Festival, Rome, 2005) 2.30 pm BIRTH OF A NEW SOUTH AFRICA Homecoming Dir. Norman Maake (South Africa/ 2005/ 90 min) FEATURE "Homecoming" is a story of loves lost, futures promised and the price of freedom, but above all it is about friendship. Set in 1996, it is a heart-wrenching thriller about three boyhood friends, ANC exiles, who come back home to post-apartheid South Africa. Charlie, Peter and Thabo are forced to deal with the realities of the apartheid era and their friendship begins to take on a new meaning. This feature's cast includes South Africa's most acclaimed actors. 4.00 pm CIVIL STRUGGLES The Take Dir. Avi Lewis (Canada/ 2004/ 87 min) In the wake of Argentina's spectacular economic collapse in 2001, Latin America's most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - the take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head. Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein take viewers inside the lives of ordinary visionaries, as they reclaim their work, their dignity and their democracy. JANUARY 23 10.30 am CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Justiça Dir. Maria Ramos (Netherlands/ 2004/ 102 min) In Justiça, Maria Ramos puts a camera where many Brazilians have never been - a criminal courtroom in Rio de Janeiro, following the daily routine of several characters. There are those that work there every day (public attorneys, judges, and prosecutors) and those that are merely passing through (the accused). The camera is used as an instrument that sees the social theater, the structures of power - that is to say, what is, in general, invisible to us. With her options clear, and unobscured by her choice for sobriety and simplicity, Maria Ramos makes it evident that, like documentary making, justice is a long way from being impartial. How and for whom the judicial system works for in Brazil is the fundamental question dealt with in this film, without providing any definite answers or making preconceived judgements. 12.15 pm CIVIL STRUGGLES Thirst Dir. Deborah Kaufman & Alan Snitow (USA/ 2004/ 62 min) Is water part of a shared commons, a human right for all people? Or is it a commodity to be bought and sold in the global marketplace? Filmed in Bolivia, India and the USA, "Thirst" depicts communities struggling with these questions as water becomes the world's most valuable resource. This groundbreaking new film exposes how a global corporate drive to commodify the world's water inspires new movements against globalisation. (The Chris Statuette, Columbus International Film Festival, Columbus, Ohio, 2004; 1st Prize (Environment & Social Justice), Earth Vision Film Festival, Santa Cruz, California, 2004; CINE Golden Eagle Award, Fall 2004) 1.30 pm BODY/CONTROL Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan Dir. Petr Lom (Kyrgyzstan, Canada & Czech Republic/ 2004/ 52 min) Bride kidnapping is a common way of marrying in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet repubilc in Central Asia. This ancient custom has become more widespread since Kyrgyzstan's independence: because of increasing poverty, many choose to kidnap because they cannot afford the typically steep bride price asked by a Kyrgyz girl's family. Typically, the groom takes several friends, hires a car, stakes out his bride-to-be's movements, and snatches her off the street. The woman is taken to the groom's family home. A delegation is then sent to her family to inform them of the kidnapping. The abducted woman is kept until someone from her family arrives to determine whether she will marry her abductor. The level of consent and the familiarity of the bride with the groom vary. Sometimes the kidnappings are consensual - the bride is engaged to the groom and agrees to her "abduction", a playful ritual, prior to marriage. But in many other cases, the bride has never met the groom before her abduction, and does not want to marry. Recent studies estimate that about half of all rural marriages in Kyrgyzstan today are conducted through kidnapping, and that in half of these marriages the bride is forced to marry against her will. This documentary - the first to ever document the custom - follows the dramatic stories of four of non-consensual kidnappings. Sancharram (The Journey) Dir. Ligy Pullapally (India/ 2004/ 107 min) Set in the lush, rural Kerala, The Journey begins with the childhood friendship between beautiful, outgoing Delilah, a Christian girl, and the sober, idealistic, and inwardly focused Kiran, whose Nair family settles next door. They quickly become inseparable, and in time Kiran feels attracted to Delilah, but suppresses it. She finds a Bergerac-like outlet by writing love letters to Delilah for Rajan, a local boy pursuing her. When Delilah learns the truth about the letters, she responds – to Kiran. As neighbors begin to talk, Delilah's family flies into panic mode with arranged marriage plans; meanwhile Kiran fights back, leaving Delilah in the middle of a tug of war. The director achieves in this film a piquancy that deepens a sensitively drawn story. (The Chicago Award for Best Film, 40th Chicago International Film Festival, Chicago, 2004; India's Best Debut Director, The Lankesh Award, Bangalore India, 2005; Special Jury Prize, John Abraham Award, Kerala, 2004; Jury Prize, Kerala State Film Awards, 2005; Frameline Film Completion Award, San Francisco, 2004) 4.15 pm RESCREENING: Jury Prize Winner * THE SCHEDULE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From turbulence at turbulence.org Thu Jan 12 03:58:34 2006 From: turbulence at turbulence.org (Turbulence) Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 17:28:34 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Floating Points 3: Ubiquitous Computing, Spring 2006 Message-ID: <001501c616fe$6307aef0$6601a8c0@t5x1c0> Floating Points 3: Ubiquitous Computing February 8 and March 15, 2006 Emerson College and Live Online Emerson College and New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc./Turbulence.org announce a new speaker series, "Floating Points 3" [FP3] that will address the subject of "Ubiquitous Computing" or "Ubicomp", where computing and wireless capabilities are so integrated into the fabric of everyday life (clothing, cars, homes, and offices) that the technologies recede into the background and become indistinguishable from everyday activities. [FP3] will consist of two moderated panel discussions, one on February 8 and the other on March 15. The first will focus on artist-thinkers who work collaboratively with research teams--including scientists--to produce environments and systems that respond to the human presence; it will include Mark Goulthorpe, Susan Kozel and Chris Salter. For the second panel, we have invited artist-thinkers who question and confront the ongoing development of technical objects and work creatively to subvert them, for instance, the ever-enlarging practice of surveillance and data mining. Our guests will be Adam Greenfield, Beatriz da Costa and Brooke Singer (Preemptive Media), and Michelle Teran. Panel 1 -- February 8th at 7 p.m. in the Bill Bordy Theatre, 216 Tremont Street. Mark Goulthorpe, Susan Kozel and Chris Salter Mark Goulthorpe: In 1991, architect Mark Goulthorpe established the dECOi atelier to undertake a series of largely theoretical architectural competitions. Today, dECOi is an established architectural/design practice that takes a fresh, exploratory approach to design. Goulthorpe will discuss his interactive "Aegis Hyposurface" which dynamically mediates events happening inside and outside of buildings. Goulthorpe currently divides his time between the School of Architecture and the Media Lab at MIT. http://architecture.mit.edu/people/bg/cvgoulth.html; http://www.newitalianblood.com/showg.pl?id=519 Susan Kozel: Susan Kozel is a dancer, choreographer, writer and Associate Professor at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Kozel has a PhD in Philosophy and is co-founder of Mesh Performance Practices. Her research combines a broad range of interactive and responsive systems with performative practices (telematics, motion capture, sensing, wearables). All of her work is about exploring and expanding our physical and creative interface with technology. She will discuss her current project "other stories" which utilizes the Vicon motion capture system. http://whisper.iat.sfu.ca; http://www.meshperformance.org/ Chris Salter: Chris Salter is a media artist, director and composer based in Montreal, Canada and Berlin, Germany. He develops and produces large-scale, multi-media and interactive environments that merge space, vision and sound. These environments respond in complex and subtle ways to audience presence and activities. He is also a professor in the Design and Computation Department at Concordia University. He will discuss his large scale installation "Suspension/Threshold." http://www.clsalter.com; http://www.sponge.org Panel 2 -- March 15 at 7 p.m. The Cabaret, 80 Boylston Street. Adam Greenfield, Beatriz da Costa and Brooke Singer (Preemptive Media), and Michelle Teran Adam Greenfield: An information architect and user-experience consultant, Adam Greenfield's principal concern over the past half-decade has been "the restoration of human users and their needs to a place of rightful centrality in the design of technical systems." Most often, Greenfield says, complex technical objects are designed without understanding of how people receive, process and act on information, and this is a source of endless frustration on the part of the people who use them. Greenfield feels there has been very little knowledgeable resistance to the idea of ubicomp and the supposed conveniences it will bring. He is the author of Everyware: the dawning age of ubiquitous computing, to be published in March '06, which he hopes will explain just what Ubicomp is, how it might effect us, and how we can effect its eventual development. Greenfield is principal in the New York City-based design consultancy, Studies and Observations. He was previously lead information architect for the Tokyo office of Razorfish. http://www.v-2.org/ Beatriz da Costa and Brooke Singer (Preemptive Media): Preemptive Media reengineers your thinking about mobile digital technologies imbedded in everyday environments. In live performances and real time actions the PM art, technology and activist collective disturbs, dislodges, and redesigns new media technologies that are often ignored, like the bar codes on driver's licenses or radio frequency information devices used for EZ pass on highways. At the forefront of what is called locative media, Preemptive Media repositions highly specialized technologies within the democratic discourse of low-tech amateurism. PM will focus on their latest project "Zapped" which addresses the mass implementation of RFID and its contribution to the ever growing field of technology-enhanced surveillance practices. http://www.preemptivemedia.net/ Michelle Teran: Michelle Teran is a Canadian media artist (Toronto) who explores the performative potential of objects and space. Within her practice she examines the intertwining of social networks and everyday social spaces with their technological counterparts and creates performances, installations and online works that are concerned with issues of communication, surveillance, psychogeography, presence, intimacy, social ritual, collaboration and public participation. Teran is co-founder of "LiveForm:TeleKinetics" (with Jeff Mann); she will focus on their most recent project, "Telepresence Picnic." http://www.lftk.org About Floating Points: Floating Points is co-presented by Emerson College and New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA), a not-for-profit media organization with offices in Boston and New York. Turbulence.org, a project of NRPA, has commissioned over 100 works by both emerging and established artists who explore the creative potential of the Internet and wireless networks. Emerson College, located in downtown Boston, is the only comprehensive college or university in America dedicated exclusively to communication and the arts in a liberal arts context. Founded in 1880, Emerson College enrolls 3000 undergraduate and 1000 graduate students, and is committed to bringing innovation to communication and the arts. All lectures are free and open to the public. Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: http://turbulence.org New American Radio: http://somewhere.org Networked_Performance Blog: http://turbulence.org/blog Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From pukar at pukar.org.in Tue Jan 10 13:34:36 2006 From: pukar at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 13:34:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [announcements] Thursday, Januray 12th: Panel Discussion Message-ID: <001301c615bc$836dbd80$10d0c0cb@freeda> presents a panel discussion on South Asia Matters: Safety, Security and Global Freedom Speakers: Prof. Arjun Appadurai President, PUKAR; Vice President, Academic Affairs, The New School, New York Fear of Small Numbers Admiral Rakesh Chopra Integrated Defence Staff Headquarters, Ministry of Defence, New Delhi Energy Security in Asia: 2020 and Beyond Prof. Faisal Devji The New School, New York Landscapes of the Jihad Chairperson: Dr. Narendra Jadhav Principal Advisor & Chief Economist, Reserve Bank of India Thursday, January 12, 2006 : 6.00 PM to 8.30 PM Venue: NGMA auditorium, 2nd floor, opposite the museum, M. G. Road, Fort, Mumbai - 400 032 PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) Address:: 1-4, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Sir P. M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Telephone:: +91 (22) 5574 8152 Fax:: +91 (22) 5664 0561 Email:: pukar at pukar.org.in Website:: www.pukar.org.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060110/2d29264b/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/octet-stream Size: 533 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060110/2d29264b/attachment.obj -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From fi22 at cornell.edu Fri Jan 13 11:09:14 2006 From: fi22 at cornell.edu (Farhana Ibrahim) Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 11:09:14 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] i-fellow introduction Message-ID: Hello, I have recently completed a PhD in Socio-cultural Anthropology from Cornell University. My dissertation, titled "Mobility, Territory and Memory in Kachchh: The Making of a Region in Western India", examines the production of national political cultures through the conceptual prism of state formation and settlement along the borders of modern nation-states. I argue that the production of national borders is an enactment that is a political, but also a social and cultural process. I conducted ethnographic research in Kachchh district, Gujarat, along the border with Pakistan and critically interrogated Gujarat's contemporary nationalist identity, formulated in a Hindu nationalist idiom. In this discourse, Pakistan is a Muslim state, and a cultural and political 'other' for the region's self image. My ethnography among the Jatts, who are Muslim pastoralists on both sides of the border, as well as other political migrants (post Partition "refugees") across this border, allowed me to complicate nationalist histories of place and identity by foregrounding alternative projections of history, memory and territory. While an independent research Fellow at Sarai, I plan to continue with my research on mobility in Kachchh. This time my focus will be on exploring the nature of maritime migration between Kachchh and Mumbai. My research project, "Maritime Histories, Merchant Networks and the Production of Locality in Western India" will involve exploring the relationship between two old port towns in Kachchh – Jakhau and Mandvi – which have for different reasons, been progressively declining in prosperity since 1947 and Mumbai, which has been steadily populated with Kachchhi merchant immigrants. The Kachchhi merchants of Mumbai have in many instances moved in circles variously removed from the actual point of origin. Movement between Zanzibar, Muscat, Karachi, Kachchh and Mumbai was not uncommon and often took place across generations from the mid-19th century onwards. I will conduct ethnographic as well as archival research in Kachchh and Mumbai, and contribute a research paper as well as a collection of photographs that can be read as archival evidence both of urban development and decline. Farhana -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060113/a0ced5e6/attachment.html From mallica_jnu at yahoo.co.in Fri Jan 13 15:08:53 2006 From: mallica_jnu at yahoo.co.in (mallica mishra) Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 09:38:53 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] i-fellow Posting by Mallica Message-ID: <20060113093853.87427.qmail@web8512.mail.in.yahoo.com> H'lo! I'm Mallica and this is my first posting. I am pursuing a Ph.D in Sociology of Education from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. I graduated in Political Science (Hons) from Lady Shriram College a eons ago; following which I did my Masters in Sociology from JNU; M.PHIL in Sociology of Education again from JNU (JNU sort of grows into you, its difficult to get out , once you’re in!) My Ph.D thesis deals with the education of Tibetan refugees in India and explores its interlinkages with culture; ethnic identity and economic opportunity. I also work as Consultant (part-time) at the Institute of Social Studies Trust, an NGO that conducts research and action programmes to promote social justice and equity for the under-privileged, with a focus on women. I’ve worked as a Social Worker for the UNHCR in Delhi and as also as a Gender Trainer at the Centre for Social Research (CSR). Working on issues of peripheral, marginal and liminal identities (for instance: of refugees; internally displaced people; women and children) interest and motivate me.Talking of identities , I have multiple identities,as woman; as student..etc. parts of this identity is also Bihari Brahmin and Delhi'ite'. (My roots are in Bihar as also in Delhi where I've taken root in since the past ten or so years; strangely there's been no uprooting and re-transplantation involved, rather a spreading a roots at both these places, I would say!) As one of the Sarai-CSDS independent fellows,I seek to explore similar concerns. My proposed research at Sarai titled “Identities and Aspirations of Tibetan Youth in New Delhi” builds on my Ph.D research and I am eagerly looking forward to my work at Sarai and my Ph.D, both being a symbiotic, mutually enriching association. I hope that this experience helps me get a richer; deeper and intense understanding of the identities and aspirations of Tibetan youth; their likes and dislikes; to understand ways in which they are similar to other youth in Delhi and the ways which make them different and unique as Tibetan; as refugee; as youth and as individuals. Beyond the boundaries of academic research also, I seek to interact; to empathize with and to hear out voices of Tibetan youth for what makes them what they are; their essence; their own perspectives of what makes them alike the rest of the youth yet apart from them. I seek to explore the images that the word 'identity' conjures up in their mind. Is this identity a product of their socialization at home and the school or a continuously evolving process, in the city of Delhi, which has a culture and identity of its own (where many of them are pursuing higher education in Delhi University; JNU etc) or an amalgam of both product and process? Is this identity placed on a need to balance modernity with tradition? Is this identity determined, in part, by 'others' (older Tibetans; Indians; westerners etc) expectations? What are their experiences of being born ;brought up and educated in exile? What are their educational and economic aspirations? Has schooling in India and knowledge of three languages i.e."Thinglish" (Tibetan; English and Hindi)been of help to them in establishing connections with Indians; westerners and with fellow Tibetans? What does it feel like to be the "seeds of future Tibet" (as taught in school), to be prepared to 'go back'when "Tibet becomes independent" when, in most of the cases, they've never actually seen Tibet with their own eyes, when their roots have been forged in exile in India? What makes them FEEL Tibetan , when they have been born; brought up and educated in India; to FEEL Tibetan even if they are sometimes criticised for becoming 'westernized' in terms of their clothing; choice of music;films etc? What does the person and symbol of His Holiness the Dalai Lama mean to them? What does it feels like with popular Hollywood actors like Richard Gere taking up the cause of Tibet? Do they support the exile government's stance of support for 'significant and real autonomy' of Tibet or does 'rangzen' or freedom seems to be a much more desirable alternative to them? What does it feel like to sit on dharnas or peace processions shouting anti-China slogans and demanding freedom for Tibet at Jantar-Mantar and why do they do it? (if all of them do, i.e). Do they feel that even fellow Tibetans , people of the older generation, fail to understand them, if yes, why and how does this generation-gap occur? Youth, I believe, is about desires; dreams and dilemmas...I seek to explore how Tibetan youth feel about all these issues , being consciously socialized by the different sociazing agencies in India (family; school and community) to internalize an identity as Tibetan and as refugee; as ‘different’ from the rest and having the ‘responsibility’ to protect and preserve Tibetanness and to proud of the same? Do they realize the fact that their identity ; as is that of every individual human being , is as much a product of previous socialization as it is part of a continuous living, breathing, and continuously evolving process, open to multiple influences (westernized as also Indian) in a rapidly changing world subject to the forces of globalization?If yes, what are their responses to this question of identity; their take on this issue? Are these views just ‘different’ from that of the exile government and people from the older generation (who were born and brought up in Tibet and for whom Tibet was real; not a product of imagination woven around stories and myths recited by elders in the community and as part of school textbooks) or is it merely an extension of the same? What about differences amongst the youth themselves , in terms of not just age; gender; place of birth; education etc? Do these differences also colour and shape their identity ; provide different textures and hues to their feelings of , ‘who am I?’, I wonder???? For Tibetan girls, is the Miss Tibet contest a symbol of empowerment or something not in sync ‘with their culture’ and ‘anti-Buddhist’(in view of the displeasure of the exile government towards the holding of such events)?What do they feel about this and other issues pertaining to their real selves and their identities? Does the youth feel a sense of alienation, as straws blown about in the wind, without any control over the direction their lives are moving? Or do they have a definite sense of direction ; well-defined educational and economic aspirations and ways to realize the same alongwith clear definitions of their identities and selves? I would be exploring these issues through collection of secondary data (official reports; newspaper articles; books etc) for looking at the policies and programmes in education of the Tibetan Government in exile and the Indian government towards preservation of Tibetan culture, language and identity. My primary data would comprise of sustained, in-depth interactions and dialogues with Tibetan youth residing in the Tibetan Youth Hostel in Rohini and also in other parts of Delhi. I look forward to interactions and sharing of ideas with other sarai fellows and also hope that not only Tibetan youth and Tibetologists but also people in general find my work interesting (for, its true, isn’t it, that somewhere, there is an iota of refugee-ism that searches for peace, tranquility and happiness, within all of us??) ; as something they can relate to and establish connections with!! my blog> http://mallicam.blogspot.com/ mobile:9810839141 Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com From cahen.x at levels9.com Fri Jan 13 16:10:21 2006 From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen) Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 11:40:21 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] pourinfos Newsletter / 01-06 to 01-12-2006 Message-ID: <43C78395.8040003@levels9.com> pourinfos.org l'actualite du monde de l'art / daily Art news ----------------------------------------------------------------------- infos from January 06, 2006 to January 12, 2006 (included) ------------------------------------------------------------------- (mostly in french) ------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 Call : Stars of Scam, La Scam, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2610 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 Call : FUMETTO International Comix-Festival, Luzern, Switzerland. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2609 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 Call : Festival d'art contemporain Chemin d'Art, Saint-Flour, France. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2608 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 Call : "occupied Territory" a agri-cultural project,, La compagnie Metalovoice, Corbigny, France. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2607 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 Call : NYSCA offers Architecture, Planning and Design grants, New York, Usa. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2606 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 Call : Net art projects, Turbulence, New York, Usa. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2605 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 Call : search for actors, Le Vivat, Elsa Gaudefroy, Armentières, France. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2604 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 Call : The Invisible Reading Room, Melbourne, Australia. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2603 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 09 Meetings : "Rendez-vous teaching", February in the Pompidou center, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2602 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Meetings : dynamic extensions #6 of writings, collective Mix, Thursday January 19, 2006, L'Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, l'ENSCI, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2601 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 Meetings : the Platform of the teachers: Philippe Will bread, Monday January 16, 2006, , Maison de l'architecture en Île-de-France, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2600 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 Meetings : transmediale.06, Reality Addicts, Berlin, Germany. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2599 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Residency : residences of choreographic and visual research 2006, La malterie, Lille, France. http://pourinfos.org/residences/item.php?id=2598 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 Residency : The Artists’ Enclave, 2006 Artists’ Residency Program, East Haddam, Connecticut, USA. http://pourinfos.org/residences/item.php?id=2597 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 Publication : art 21 n°5 is available in kiosks and bookstores, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2596 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 Publication : Piss down my back and tell me it's raining, Linus Bill, éditions Nieves, Zürich, Switzerland. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2595 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 Various : International petition to support the action of Corinne Diserens, Museum of the Art schools of Nantes, Nantes, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=2594 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 18 Sceening : ' Description of a combat ', Chris Marker, Koninklijk Filmmuseum, January 13, 2006, établissement d'en face, Brussels, Belgium. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2593 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Screening : Of one language in the other, misafa lesafa, Nurith Aviv, January 18, 2006, Les 3 Luxembourg, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2592 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 Screening : short and medium films from the 12 to January 16, 2006, Pompidou center, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2591 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 Screening : "art & cinema", Wish women, Anne Deguelle, Friday January 20, 2006, Cinéma Utopia de Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2590 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 Exhibition: Opening of a new space, Space 29, Bordeaux, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2589 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Exhibition : "free and open source", Festival Make Art, Maison de l'Architecture, Poitiers, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2588 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 Exhibition : 1,000.043ème anniversary of art, Robert Filiou, Immanence, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2587 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 Exhibition : Paul DesBorough, Nancy Belzile, Centre d'art et de diffusion Clark, Montreal, Canada. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2586 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 26 Exhibition : 157 days of Documentation Céline Duval, Lendroit, Rennes, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2585 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 Exhibition : Bang ! Bang ! Traffic of weapons from Saint-Etienne to Sète, Michel Jeannès, galerie Roger Tator, Saint-Etiènne, Sète, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2584 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 Exhibition: after, Stéphane Le Mercier, Galerie RLBQ - Reposer la bonne question, Marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2583 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 Call : Independent Exposure 2006, Houston, Usa. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2582 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 Call : Dead line remainder - ARCO/BEEP NEW MEDIA ART, AWARDS, Spain. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2581 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 31 Meetings : trash your PC if you can, Christian Vialard - Frozen Lullabies, Wednesday January 18 with 20h 30, monoquini, Montpellier, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2580 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 32 Publication : Livraison #6, éditions rhinocéros, Strasbourg, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2579 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 33 Various : petition from the National Coordination of the Teachers of the Schools of Art, Orsay, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=2578 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 34 Various : Poetic musical monthly performances experemmentales, 9 billards, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=2577 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 35 Publication : ISSUE # 4 Theme: Break Through, Volume, Archis Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2576 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 36 Screening : video and artist film, Maison populaire Centre d’art Mira Phalaina, Montreuil, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2575 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 Screening: magmart video, Gruppo Sinestetico, International festival of video art, Naple, Italiy. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2574 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 38 Screening : the program of January 2006, Cinema Barbizon, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2573 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 39 Program : Cultural of January 2006, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2572 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 40 Performance : THE NATIONAL REVIEW OF LIVE ART, Glasgow, United Kingdom. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2571 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 Exhibition : video-installation, Espace d'art contemporain Camille Lambert, Juvisy-sur-Orge, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2570 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 42 Exhibition : One Shot, Gilles Balmet à la galerie Nuke, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2569 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 43 Exhibition : Metamophose of Jérôme Charbonnier, la Briqueterie, Amiens, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2568 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 44 Exhibition : Laurent Montaron, La Galerie, Noisy-le-Sec, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2567 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 45 Exhibition: Laurent Hopp, Cedrick Eymenier, La Vitrine, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2566 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 46 Exhibition : The Place of the Basic rights, Jochen Gerz, Karlsruhe, Germany. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2565 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 47 Exhibition : Kit O' Parts, CAN, Centre d’Art Neuchatel, Switzerland. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2564 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 48 Exhibition : Exhibition on place or to carry?, Galerie Artcore, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2563 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 49 Exhibition : Low Lights # 01, association Basses Lumières, Thursday January 26, 2006, Ars Longa, Confluences, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2562 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 50 Exhibition : “My way” collectif graphique Rock’N’BD, Le Forum, Vauréal, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2561 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 51 Exhibition : PleaseLetMeDesign, Graphisme et bonnes blagues, My.monkey, Nancy, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2560 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 52 Apostilles : The Net: towards a semantics and social cartography. | Rémi Sussan | 12/14/2005 | http://pourinfos.org/encours/item.php?id=2427 From abhayraj at nls.ac.in Fri Jan 13 19:57:14 2006 From: abhayraj at nls.ac.in (Abhayraj Naik) Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 19:57:14 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] Quirk News and Submission Call Message-ID: <59231.202.54.87.179.1137162434.squirrel@202.54.87.179> hi people, many apologies for cross-posting the little litmag from Bangalore - Quirk - is doing fairly well. We've launched an ambitious new website revamp project, and we're trying to shape up our distribution network. we've also been slowly building a steadily increasing readership in and outside Bangalore. If anyone can help us with organizing a sound distribution (India and South Aasia) plan, please do let us know. do write in for our subsequent editions: warm regards of the new year from the Quirk team Abhayraj Naik Bangalore ___________________________________________________________________________ *Quirk* *quirk at nls.ac.in www.quirk.in* *CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS* *January-February, 2006.* *FEATURED THEME* *"Luxury's Lap"* *Also Looking For*: Poetry, Short Stories, Articles, Opinions, Reviews, Visual Art, Cartoons, Cool Quizzes, Puzzles, Wacky Undefinable Submissions, and So On.... Think Big, Think Different. Anything That's Good and Fits our Quirky Quality Standards - We're Good to Publish. No Restrictions on Length, Content or Style. *Flexible deadline: **February 25, 2006**.* *CONTRIBUTE. CRITICIZE. ABUSE. PRAISE.* *Send in your contributions* *quirk at nls.ac.in* Physical contributions can be posted to: The Editorial Collective, Quirk National Law School of India University Nagarbhavi Bangalore - 560072 India ___________________________________________________________________________ -- Abhayraj Naik From rakshat at gmail.com Fri Jan 13 21:52:21 2006 From: rakshat at gmail.com (rakshat hooja) Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 21:52:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] I-fellow first post Message-ID: <69a2e4550601130822r11f9b2e1hc0412e952bbd30c8@mail.gmail.com> Hello everyone. Well its first-post time for the new I-fellows of Sarai and I am pretty excited about sharing my research ideas and progress with everyone on the list but first one is "required" to get over with the formalities of introducing oneself. I am Rakshat and I hope to someday live on my own farm, look after my livestock and write fiction. But at present I am working on my PhD (at the Center for Studies in Science Policy, Jawaharlal Nehru University) on commodification and de-facto privatization of water in urban areas and the role technology has played creating this scenario (can not remember the exact title at the moment but I am sure it will be mentioned in some of my future postings!) Earlier in life I was making a habit of changing universities (Delhi University for graduation, Jammia Millia Islamia for the Masters, JNU for M.Phil) as well as research topics (history of video games, watershed development and management, livestock, open source software [my apologies to those who use FLOSS or free software], and now urban water supply. Ok enough about ME, on to introducing the research. My proposed research is titled "Urban Stakeholder Activism and the Role of Resident Welfare Associations". In many of the metropolitan cities of IndiaResident Welfare Associations (RWAs) have become important social institutions that play an increasingly significant role in the lives of the residents of these areas. In New Delhi the RWAs have become very active and over time most of the RWAs have been registered under the Societies Act. The Government of Delhi has also launched a "Bhagadari" scheme where the authorities form partnerships with the local RWAs for carrying out many activities. The purpose of my planed study is try and understand, or figure out, what makes the RWAs tick. The plan is to document the activities and functioning of a few select (selected not randomly but deliberately) RWAs in order to understand why they are successful/not successful. The key questions examined will be those of the reasons for participation by the residents and possibility of the RWA being a viable platform for stakeholder activism in the existing urban political set-up. The idea for this research originated while talking to and observing the activities organized by the RWAs of the C8 and C9 Vasant Kunj localities in New Delhi as part of planning out my PhD data collection (well sometimes my research topics do have some connections ;-). It was quite obvious that RWAs had become important agencies of community and stake-holder activism and I decided to explore this phenomena further. The proposed research has started off as a sociological study of the interactions and interrelations existing within the selected RWAs in Vasant Kunj, Munirka and R K Puram as well as between the RWAs and the outside society including the Government, private agencies, other RWAs etc. As the research progresses questions like the response of and the success in dealing with the problems faced by the residents by the RWAs as well as the success of the RWAs as political pressure groups will be looked at. The organizational set up of the RWAs will also be examined. * * It is proposed to use a number of tools and methods to collect qualitative as well as quantitative primary data for the above mentioned research. Participant observation will be used to study the RWA of C9 Vasant Kunj. In order to study the other RWAs in South Delhi as well as Jaipur (I am living there for a few weeks right now so this made sense) a survey would be designed. The survey would be supplemented with focused interviews with key informants. The primary data would be complemented with a review of newspaper coverage of RWA activism in Delhi and over the last two years. For this the Internet archives of the newspapers as well as the paper copies available in Libraries would be used. At the end of the research in August 2006 one hopes to not only have a presentable research paper but also an audio documentary, which I hope will be a lot of fun to record and edit. Till the next time Rakshat -- -------------- Please use Firefox as your web browser. Its protects you from spyware and is also a very feature rich browser. www.firefox.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060113/2e3ac628/attachment.html From hpp at vsnl.com Fri Jan 13 12:19:44 2006 From: hpp at vsnl.com (V Ramaswamy) Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 12:19:44 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Request assistance on Hindi publications Message-ID: <067801c61811$e71c9ac0$73b541db@Ramaswamy> Dear Friends I would be grateful to know about "little magazines" or non-commercial literary publications in Hindi. I have been translating into English the short stories of the Bengali writer Subimal Misra. Among his most well-known stories is "Haran Majhi" (his first published story, 1969). I have translated this into Hindi and would like to send it to an appropriate Hindi little magazine - or e-zine. Thank you. V Ramaswamy Calcutta hpp at vsnl.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060113/8e6088a2/attachment.html From turbulence at turbulence.org Fri Jan 13 20:31:21 2006 From: turbulence at turbulence.org (Turbulence) Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 10:01:21 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Turbulence Spotlight: "No Animals Were Hurt" by Peter Brinson Message-ID: <000001c61852$430f9f40$6601a8c0@t5x1c0> January 13, 2006 Turbulence Spotlight: "No Animals Were Hurt" by Peter Brinson http://turbulence.org/spotlight/brinson/index.htm Needs Flash Player "No Animals Were Hurt" is a short film about Alan Turing. The more views the film receives, the closer it gets to telling his story. The picture plays too quickly while the sound plays at normal speed, but with each visitor the picture slows. After enough visitors, the sound and picture will play at equal speeds, allowing the story to finish. It is indeed short, but it gets longer with every 50 unique visitors. It'll reach its full length upon receiving nearly 5000 unique views. Whether it is at the movie theater or at home, we make decisions when we see a film. We decide to go, and we decide whether or not we recommend it to others. "No Animals Were Hurt" plays on these choices in order to highlight the relative imbalance of which facts are and are not well known about Turing. He is the father of modern computing, an accomplishment that's impact on culture has few rivals. But even many of his biggest fans do not know how and why he died. So if you want to see the end, tell a friend. BIOGRAPHY Peter Brinson is a filmmaker, game developer, and educator living in Los Angeles. His work considers the narrative possibilities found in animal protagonists, bot behavior, emergent systems, and game-play. His films, internet technologies, and computer games have shown at home and abroad. Brinson attended the University of North Carolina and the California Institute of the Arts, and currently teaches at the University of Southern California and the University of California at San Diego. For more information about Turbulence Spotlights, please visit http://turbulence.org/spotlight Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: http://turbulence.org New American Radio: http://somewhere.org Networked_Performance Blog: http://turbulence.org/blog Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From kaushiki.rao at gmail.com Sat Jan 14 14:34:02 2006 From: kaushiki.rao at gmail.com (Kaushiki Rao) Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 14:34:02 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] I-fellow first post In-Reply-To: <69a2e4550601130822r11f9b2e1hc0412e952bbd30c8@mail.gmail.com> References: <69a2e4550601130822r11f9b2e1hc0412e952bbd30c8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <53241df60601140104s65c5d33al542941f54bb984c7@mail.gmail.com> Hi all, Here's my input for the month: just a brief description of my project. I've been trained in anthropology and political science, and although much of my interest lies in governance, policy and social justice, a chance visit to Bawana, an urban resettlement colony in west Delhi sparked my interest in the aesthetic of such colonies. Through looking at resettlement colonies, I will explore how, aesthetically, a space can come to be defined as urban rather than sub-urban or rural. Bawana is located at the edge of NCR, in what can be called the middle-of-nowhere. Although good roads lead to the colony, it takes about 40 minutes to drive there from Rohini. All around is fallow land, seemingly put to no use, seemingly owned by no private individual or company. Yet, Bawana has narrow streets, and small houses constructed along narrow gullies. It is extremely commercial and has many dhabas and shops set up close to each other. Its flavour is reminiscent of the urban pockets of Bhagwan Nagar and Trilokpuri in eastern Delhi. Most buildings look like they've been built to go higher rather than wider, even though it seems like there is enough space for them to sprawl. And unlike the village, of which its pastoral setting reminds you, Bawana comes alive at night. Even Bawana village, closer to the city though it is, does not remind you as much of the city as does Bawana colony. Colonies where people are resettled from the center of an urban space to the margins of a city seem to import a variety of physical and social spaces from urban centers. I will explore how and which urban traits are retained. I want to learn what hybrids – between an urban center and an urban periphery – are formed. I will explore the constraints that determine these hybrids. Most people carry with them an idea of what an inhabitable place should be like; in urban resettlement colonies, this idea is very often similar to an idea of what a city is. It loosely imitates what a city looks, feels and smells like. It is on this imitation that I want to focus. There are several resettlement colonies I'd like to compare with Bawana. These are: an older colony named Dindoshi in Mumbai, the resettlement of several jhuggis in Jaipur, and tsunami-relief resettlement colony in Pondicherry. If anyone knows of other colonies that might be interesting, please let me know! Kaushiki From ravikant at sarai.net Sat Jan 14 17:39:06 2006 From: ravikant at sarai.net (Ravikant) Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 17:39:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] first posting from Udayan Kumar Message-ID: <200601141739.06834.ravikant@sarai.net> This is Udayakumar.M. My basic academic training training was in Political Science and I completed a masters degree in the discipline from Kerala University in 2001. Soon after my sudies I started working as a researcher at the Folklore Society of South Indian Languages.I worked at the society for nine months.Since then on I have been trying to maintain a sustained engagement with several fieds of knowledge which bradly come under the rubric of Human Sciences. The nature of my engagement has been in such a way as to deepen my understanding of both classical texts and contemporary theoretical literature in order for me to make a better sense of what is happening around us.                                                                                                                                  This kind of a temperament,like anyone,made me stumble upon an incident  which happened in the capital city of kerala on  6th february 2000 . Infact,the project I am undertaking is an attempt to launch an intrpretative intervention(of the incident).                                                            As I already mentioned in the proposl,I have repeatedly gone through those interviews having been conducted in the next couple of days after the incident. This helped me find out much more nuanced openings to go about.      I would like to mention at least one of them, as an initial finding, eventhough many considerations are in place: Some of the respondents said that they had assumed the trespasser to be a mad man. This attribute,for example,puts the making up of the event in a delicate balance from a different coceptual angle. I therefore will have to enquir into the further course of action followed up after the incident during the coming field trip.                                                                  In the next posting I will be able to come up with a detailed elucidation of the other intricacies involved in the making up of the event.                                                                 Udayakumar.M From gabyvargasc at prodigy.net.mx Sat Jan 14 20:30:24 2006 From: gabyvargasc at prodigy.net.mx (Gabriela Vargas-Cetina) Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 09:00:24 -0600 Subject: [Reader-list] first posting from Udayan Kumar In-Reply-To: <200601141739.06834.ravikant@sarai.net> Message-ID: My name is Gabriela Vargas-Cetina. I am an anthropologist who now works on urban music in the city of Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. I am a professor at the Autonomous University of Yucatan, where I teach subjects related to economic anthropology, music, research epistemology and methods, and post-structural theory. I subscribed to this list by accident, thinking I was subscribing to a different list (yeah, when you are a professor and you have only a few minutes in your day to do anything outside your regular work, these things happen). However, I have been enjoying many of the postings, and I thank you all for the references to electronic art, film festivals and music-related stuff. Also, I love hearing about young scholars' projects. So I've kept and will keep on lurking and reading you all whenever I can afford the time. Have a good day and all the best to everyone, Gabriela -- Gabriela Vargas-Cetina Professor of Anthropology Facultad de Ciencias Antropológicas Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán Campus de Ciencias Sociales Carretera a Tizimín Km. 1 Cholul, Mérida 97305 Tel. +52 999 930 0090 gvcetina at tunku.uady.mx http://mywebpage.netscape.com/gabyvargasc/ From bawree at yahoo.com Sun Jan 15 17:37:16 2006 From: bawree at yahoo.com (mamta mantri) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 04:07:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] 1st posting,, mamta Message-ID: <20060115120716.55614.qmail@web33110.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hello all, This is Mamta; I am based in Mumbai, and am Sarai fellow for the first time, but have been following the enlightening reader-list for quite some time now. Academically, I have done an M.Phil in English Literature and M.A. in History,, want to pursue PhD and add a Dr. to my name (ho, ho, I am only 29). On a serious note, I come from an average Marwari Maheshwari family and my roots are in Rajasthan, (very close to Makrana, the ‘marble’ place), I do go there to unwind. I have worked as a lecturer in various colleges in Mumbai, but don’t want to work according to the system, so chose not to do my NET and SET (Entrance exams mandatory for permanent job as lecturer), so am without a steady source of income. But have been lucky otherwise,, tried my hands at teaching (both in traditional and professional courses), Manuscripts cataloguing for Ministry of Culture (BJP government then), translated a book for Swaminarayan, Akshardham (remember the terrorist attack), translated interviews and some basic aspects of editing for a documentary film (in the process). This does not look ‘focused’ in the corporate sense, but I have enjoyed myself this way. I believe in living life to the fullest, experiencing all emotions to their due. That apart, the only wealth that I wish to focus on is gaining knowledge. Well, that’s about me for the moment... About the project, I will be working on the movie theatres at Grant Road, a (in) famous part of Mumbai. A group of eight cinema theatres (ALFRED, NEW ROYAL, NEW ROSHAN, SUPER, NEKZAAD, NISHAAT, GULSHAN, SHALIMAR) in the radius of about a kilometer, have been entertaining the local masses for more than 50 years. I have been walking through these theatres for the past two years, as a part of my teaching activity in a college nearby. Curious that I was, I finally walked into one of these theatres, with the help of a local student, and was amazed to see the view inside- a huge auditorium (both Dress Circle and Balcony), big canvas screen with quality picture, and amazing sound quality. These theatres show re runs of certain old Bollywood films (of the 80s and early 90s), with violence and desire/passion as the chief criteria for these films, presumably. Bhojpuri films are a major hit here. In fact, a couple of Bhojpuri films do have ‘star-appearances’ at these theatres. But what really interested me were the huge airy fans, (do we really need air-conditioners??), and of course, the seats. They were cushion less chairs, made of iron, which had begun to rust, and you are sure to tear off some part of your clothes if you are careless. But one credible thing about them,, you will never suffer from backache, your posture always remain right, as opposed to the red and blue cushioned chairs with head rests and all that, of the multiplexes, they are good only for dozing away, but the tough air-conditioner would not allow you to even do that. Anyways, I hope to move beyond seats and fans very soon... Nevertheless, it would be an interesting exercise to know how films are constantly rearticulated through the specific historical situations of public exhibition and reciprocally constructed through a complex social interchange with audiences vis-à-vis these spaces, out of which arise two issues: A) Understanding how films address their spectators, and most importantly: B) Understand how audiences get constituted through the social architecture and phenomenology of film going ( I am hinting at the social atmosphere within cinema theatres, made up of noise, talking, intimacies, disruptions and pranks, which significantly helps shape a shared sense of films).. Besides, I would also like to take ‘new people’ to a screening at these theatres and record their reactions and feedback about their experience. Also I do wish to understand the conditions that determine the re-release of certain films, and what are the material conditions involved in making such a decision? Finally, the research aims to gain a significant entry point for researching the question of experience, posing as it does the linkages between the cinema, the rhythms of everyday life and the experience of space, that context, which becomes a venue for cultural practice and meaning making. I shall keep posting my findings and summarize finally in a written paper in the workshop. Alongside, a couple of pictures which I shall post over a period of time and in the workshop. Until next posting,,, mamta __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From sam at media.com.au Sun Jan 15 17:54:13 2006 From: sam at media.com.au (sam de silva) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 18:24:13 +0600 Subject: [Reader-list] lanka tech/culture mag - writers out there? In-Reply-To: <20060115120716.55614.qmail@web33110.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20060115120716.55614.qmail@web33110.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <43CA3EED.5000307@media.com.au> hi, i am currently helping out a bunch of people here in colombo with re-shaping an IT Magazine in to more of a cultural/tech type magazine - eventually being distributed across South Asia. so, interested to hear from potential writers - who are good (and ideally have experience) at writing in an accessible way about topics relating technology / computing / net / tech-culture ... also interested in people who do music / video / dvd reviews ... the magazine pays writers too ... thanks, sam :-) From nithyavraman at yahoo.com Mon Jan 16 00:26:23 2006 From: nithyavraman at yahoo.com (Nithya V. Raman) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:56:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] First Post from N. Raman Message-ID: <20060115185623.55866.qmail@web33011.mail.mud.yahoo.com> My name is Nithya Raman, and I’m currently living and working in Chennai. My SARAI proposal is based on a close examination of one seaside community and its experience with tsunami relief distribution. In examining the community’s interactions with the relevant government agencies, I hope to create a narrative of how money, boats, houses, land titles, and with it, rights, recognition, and concessions are fought for and won from the government. However, tsunami relief is just one barometer of a larger relationship between the government and its citizens which I believe has to be examined in greater detail. When I was working in Delhi, I remember feeling a periodic sense of panic. Evictions of slums and jhuggi clusters were frequent and increasingly brazen, resettlement colonies were far from the center of the city and barely livable, and coverage of events concerning the urban poor in the English media was almost non-existent. The reality of Delhi was moving closer to a nightmarish vision of class apartheid, in which the poor were relegated to dingy outskirts of cities while the rich lived in gated and guarded communities in the city center. Such panic seems unwarranted in Chennai, where I have been living for the last six months. Posh, middle class and low income areas are intertwined throughout the city, and there is a long and vibrant history of protest and organization. The city has a completely different feel from Delhi. But here, too, things are changing. Land prices are increasing and the government seems always to be making plans to radically change the face of Chennai. I live near the new IT corridor now under construction. Corrugated sheets wall off the huge construction projects inside from the road running alongside it. Posters have been placed on these walls exhorting citizens to put up with deteriorating road conditions with pithy sayings: “You have to have rain to make rainbows” and “The road of your dreams is under construction.” The images on these posters show the road Chennai hopes to build along the IT corridor—clean and wide, with hardly any people at all. Contrast the image of the road on the posters with the roads in the tsunami affected community where I’m doing my SARAI research: the road is used as a playground by children, as a market for vegetable vendors, as a gathering place for women to talk and get water from a municipal tap, as a dump for throwing garbage, as a bus stop and auto stand, and as a place to lay out a cot and take some rest. For municipal planners, the new road is solely a means of getting people to their IT jobs as efficiently as possible. For many citizens, a road plays a much broader role in their daily lives, roles which are not acknowledged or encouraged by the government. What is at stake, then, in interactions between citizen and government is a vision of Chennai for the future, the shape of the modern city as the country increasingly urbanizes. Over the next six months, I hope to examine one particular set of interactions, those related to tsunami relief, in this larger context. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From samit.basu at gmail.com Mon Jan 16 09:02:17 2006 From: samit.basu at gmail.com (samit basu) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 09:02:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Trousers of Time Message-ID: <2fa79cb60601151932l65ac85a3yd73cd22b65961b7d@mail.gmail.com> Hi. My names Samit, I live in Delhi at present and try to make a living from writing weird fiction. I'm travelling around the country at present without one of those laptop thingies, so apologies for being two days late with the first post. The Trousers of Time: Possible Futures of Indian speculative fiction in English This project will map the future of Indian speculative fiction (science fiction and fantasy literature) in English. The origins of speculative fiction in India are twofold; first, the incredible wealth of mythical, historical and folklore traditions, and second, the incredibly popular genres of science fiction and fantasy in both literature and film in the West. It is surprising, to say the least, that even with these resources at our disposal a nation as culturally predisposed to the fantastic as we are should have produced a contemporary speculative fiction genre that is marginal at best, at least in literary terms. The works of Sukumar and Satyajit Ray have not found an audience worldwide because of the lack of proper marketing, and literary snobbery alone has prevented Rushdie's works from being classified as speculative fiction. Amitav Ghosh is probably the only writer in the world who has won a major SF award, the Arthur C. Clarke award, for a work he was not aware was science fiction. Market conditions and literary prejudices are held largely responsible for the lack of a strong tradition in the field of speculative fiction especially in English, but the future definitely looks bright. A slow trickle of fantasy and science fiction manuscripts has slowly begun to weigh down desks in Indian publishing houses. This project will discuss future roads down which Indian writers seeking to produce successful speculative fiction might do well to tread if we are to have a body of work in the field that matches western sci-fi and fantasy in quality and richness, while simultaneously possessing a strong and distinct Indian identity. In the process, I will also discuss current trends in fantasy literature worldwide, possible pitfalls SFF writers should avoid and the problems and opportunities relevant to writers working in a genre that is popular elsewhere in the world and extremely relevant but still somewhat out of place in India. I will study the possibilities for Indian speculative fiction in the following directions: Recasting Indian myths in the patterns established by revisionist SFF and the New Weird, the possibility, in the age of animation sweatshops and comics outsourcing, of Indian SFF graphic novels, the possibilities 18th and 19th century Indian history and literature present in terms of speculative fiction, the superhero in Indian terms, the opportunities presented by the universes created by Indian writers of speculative fiction in various languages for children, and the inclusion and contribution of the Indian disapora in the creation of an Indo-centric multicultural fantasy genre. The project will be presented in the form of six essays, each focusing on a particular aspect of speculative fiction and its relevance to India and Indian writers. Existing speculative fiction in the country, for children and adults, in various languages, will also be discussed. Additional material for the archive will be produced in the form of recorded interviews with writers, illustrators, publishers, booksellers and academics whose work relates to the field of study. From jeebesh at sarai.net Sun Jan 15 17:49:20 2006 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (jeebesh at sarai.net) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 13:19:20 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Micheal Aram Exports Metal workers - This week Message-ID: <5faba0dcbb5bef757f1ffddf50c419a1@sarai.net> Dear friends, The Michael Aram Exports metal workers will continue to be in public conversation with their placards at the following locations and times this week: Monday, Jan 16: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Union Bank of India, B-Block Okhla Phase I 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Tuesday, Jan 17: 11:30 am - 2 pm, Sujan Singh Park near Ambassador Hotel Wednesday, Jan 18: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Basera Hotel main road, Okhla Phase I 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Thursday, Jan 19: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Okhla Phase II Power House 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Friday, Jan 20: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Okhla Phase I Gole Chakkar 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Saturday, Jan 21: 11:30 am - 2 pm, Sujan Singh Park near Ambassador Hotel Please stop by and meet us if you are in the area. Sincerely, Shankar Ramaswami PhD Candidate University of Chicago (Please call 9818630612 for directions) _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From kranenbu at xs4all.nl Sun Jan 15 15:19:59 2006 From: kranenbu at xs4all.nl (Rob van Kranenburg) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:49:59 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [SV_RFID] Top 10 Tech trends in India for 2006 References: <68988c340601132344o1432be66o94109a6a83ca9aec@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Begin forwarded message: > From: Karun Bir Singh Sandha > Date: January 14, 2006 8:44:56 AM GMT+01:00 > To: rfid > Subject: [SV_RFID] Top 10 Tech trends in India for 2006 > Reply-To: SV_RFID at yahoogroups.com > > Link: http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2006/jan/11spec.htm > > > > > > > Top 10 tech trends for India > > Shobhana Subramanian, Priyanka Joshi and Leslie D'Monte | January > 11, 2006 > > Check out the happening infotech, communications and entertainment > trends of 2006. > > 1. Blu-Ray of hope > > Remember the 1.44 MB humble floppy? Now we only talk about CDs (can > store around 650 MB) and DVDs (anywhere from 4.7 GB to 17 GB). > However, with the announcement of Pioneer's Blu-ray or Blu-disc > format, the game is changing. > > Blu-ray is the next generation large capacity optical disc video > recording format -- enables recording, rewriting and play back of > up to 27 gigabytes (GB) of data on a single side and can transfer > date at 36 Mbps (the CD transfers data at around 150 Kbps while > DVDs do the same at around 11 Mbps). > > The High Density Digital Versatile Disc (HD-DVD) is also in the > news. However, HD-DVDs can store up to 15 GB on a single layer. > While HD-DVD is promoted by Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo and Microsoft and > backed by four major film studios, Blu-ray is backed by Japanese > consumer electronics giant Sony. > > At CES 2006, Sony already announced plans for its first high- > definition Blu-ray DVD players and recorders. High-definition > technology from Toshiba called HD DVD will also be available to > consumers in March 2006. > > HD-DVD is similar to DVD, hence analysts consider it cheaper for > manufacturers to switch production lines. On the other hand, Blu- > ray will need whole new equipment setups. Both formats are yet to > agree on a standard, which is a problem. > > Market monitor SMD sees Blu-Ray and HD DVD discs (Moser Baer is > already working on them) really kicking in only from 2007 onwards > in India. For now, CDs and DVDs are here to stay -- at least till > 2010. > > And as these two formats battle each other, the first holographic > storage systems, capable of storing up to 300 GB on a single disc > (over six times more content than Blu-ray and HD-DVD), will > reportedly go on sale towards the end of 2006. > > 2. Digital ticket > > After the convenience of booking cinema tickets online, comes the > ease of buying tickets on your cellphone. And also paying for it > through the phone. Bangalore-based Jigharak is believed to be > working on the software application. Not only this, you will be > able to book tickets using your personal digital assistant (PDA) or > any hand held. > > Vijay Basrur of Inox Leisure says it is kicking-off one such > initiative this February, either in Bangalore or Pune. Shringar > Cinemas also has plans to start hawking tickets through PDAs in the > next couple of months at its multiplex in Andheri, says Arshad > Kazi, technology head. > > Moreover, with the setting up of self-collection kiosks, buying > tickets will become as simple as withdrawing cash from an ATM. > Costing around Rs 1 lakh each, they will be installed in metros > soon. PVR Cinemas has already installed one in Bangalore. > > As for the theatre screens, D-Cinema (the high-end of digital > cinema is still about five years away thanks to high costs) 2006 > could see some upgrades of E-Cinema. > > Currently, around 150 theatres in India are digitised which means > that unlike a celluloid print, there are servers hooked on to > projectors that beam the pixels (read picture) onto a screen. But > only two screens of Satyam Cinema in Chennai have real D-Cinema. > > Kazi opines that it is a volume game -- at least 800-1,000 screens > are needed for cinema operators to be able to afford the D-Cinema > projectors and servers. The price of a D-Cinema projector is four > times that of an E-Cinema projector, which currently costs about Rs > 15-20 lakh (Rs 1.5-2 million). > > 3. Games people play > > The global mobile games' business is pegged at $ 2.2 billion, with > India accounting for around $100 million of the overall pie. > Nasscom states this market could well touch $500 million in exports > alone by 2010. > > And thanks to the next generation of cell phones with enhanced > graphical, sound and data capabilities, mobile gaming is poised as > the next big thing for the Indian gaming scenario. > > However, a console/PC genre, awaiting its day, in India is the > massively multimedia online role playing game (MMORPG). Indeed, > even the introduction of MMORPGs in the mobile market should bring > in a whole new audience. > > Due to the stratified nature of online gamers, there is little > crossover between those who play first-person shooter (FPS) games > and those who play MMORPGs, states a recent Juniper report. > > While versions of these games are currently available on mobiles -- > EverQuest, for example, which was introduced on the BREW platform > in 2003 -- they do not permit multiplayer play. Juniper expects > subscriptions to be the key source of revenues for such games. > > In the console/PC market, MMORPGs such as Dark Age of Camelot, > EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies typically retail at around $40 > with monthly subscription costs of nearly $15 per month. So, as the > MMORPG community increases, gaming revenue should increase. > > 4. Movies on Demand > > With Tata Sky planning to launch Direct to Home (DTH) services in > May-June this year, consumers will have much more choice. Not to > mention better picture and sound quality, thanks to set-top boxes. > > Vikram Kaushik, CEO, Tata Sky, says his company will leverage the > expertise of BSkyB and Foxtel and customise the programmes to suit > local needs. > > Gaming channels too are likely to become a reality. We should also > see the launch of digital video recorders this year which can > record 100 hours of programing, says Sunil Khanna, CEO, Dish TV. So > you can always record your favourite programmes -- six channels at > a time -- and watch them at your leisure. > > Last month, DishTV kicked-off with a Movie-on-Demand Service for > Hindi films and this will be followed up with a service for English > films in March. India might also see High Definition TV (HDTV) > before 2006 is over. Khanna notes that HD-compatible television > sets are already here but broadcasters need to get their act together. > > Are customers biting? Yes, the momentum's been building up in the > last six months or so say broadcasters. Khanna believes that by > March 7, Dish TV would have 2.5 milion subscribers. A set top box > which earlier cost Rs 6,000 now comes for Rs 4,000. And > subscriptions are affordable, starting from Rs 60 and going upto Rs > 300. > > And do you want to replay Sachin's square cut repeatedly? Thanks to > interactive TV, this too will be possible in 2006. > > 5. Plug into the IP Phone > > While Internet Protocol telephony is known in India -- many of us > having used it on the sly for the last four years -- what is little > known is that Indian enterprises have bought over 100,000 IP phones > in the last couple of years. > > IP phones transmit voice using data packets (similar to the way the > Internet routes data) instead of circuit-switched (the way your > vanilla telephone operates) connections over voice-only networks. > Since the calls are routed through the Net (these phones have an > ethernet phone in which your phone (copper) cable can be inserted), > all the user pays for is the IP phone software and the Internet > connection. > > While it took Cisco three years to sell its first million IP phone, > it took just four months to sell the sixth million (total global > sales till date). In a few year's time, one out of two phones in > India could be an IP phone, opines Ranajoy Punja, VP (Marketing), > Cisco. Frost & Sullivan estimates the Indian IP telephony market in > India to be around $ 54 million. > > IP phone prices have, on an average, dropped from $800-$900 four > years ago to around $100 today. The voice quality too has improved. > However, since the IP phone uses the Internet route, there are > concerns over security, though companies are taking care to ensure > that the network is adequately protected and all messages are > scrambled. IP phones (unlike the vanilla phones) can be customised. > And this trend is expected to catch on further in 2006. > > 6. Robots, robots everywhere > > Aibo has a cult following in the United States and Japan. Of > course, American AIBO buyers tend to be computer geeks who want to > hack the robotic dog's programming. Japanese consumers, on the > other hand, treat this Sony robot as a pet. > > Robots in the US have already taken over domestic tasks like lawn- > mowing, vacuum cleaning (the Roomba by iRobot) and window cleaning. > iRobot says it has sold hundreds of thousands of units of the > Roomba -- a self-guided, self-propelled vacuum cleaner that sells > for around $200 -- in just one year. > > A United Nations report on Robotics expects the sales of such > robots to reach 4.5 million units with an estimated value of $3 > billion. The market for entertainment and leisure robots, including > toy robots, is tipped to touch 2.5 million units. The sales value > is estimated at over $4.4 billion. > > With labour cheap in India, will domestic robots become popular? > Not likely in the coming years. However, robots have other uses in > our country. Many Indian auto, auto-ancillary majors and machine > tool players are using robots to meet global precision standards. > Robots have also been used in cardiac surgeries. > > And now a Pune-based urologist has taken the lead for using this > technique to treat prostate cancer and other urological disorders, > like opening up narrow fallopian tubes in women. A Kolhapur-based > general surgeon, Suresh Deshpande, along with a young IT engineer, > Vikrant Yadav, has also developed a laparoscopic robotic arm fitted > with a camera to perform orthopaedic surgeries. > > 7. Tag on to RFID > > Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is no longer only > about the US and Wal-Mart. Pune University's Jayakar library uses > RFID tags on its books as well as library cards; the Chitale Dairy > at Bhiwladi in Maharashtra's Sangli district has installed RFID to > monitor the feeding patterns of cattle and bisons; Pantaloon Retail > India and Shopper's Stop have RFID tags in their factories; more > than 45 colleges in Pune have introduced student identity RFID > cards that allow students access to hostels and monitor their > classroom attendance; and ITC uses RFID to track what goes into the > manufacturing of its cigarettes. > > These are but a few cases in point. Indian suppliers to retail > majors such as Wal-Mart, Metro, Target and Tesco have already been > issued directives to replace barcodes with RFID tags. > > While this may lower margins of these suppliers, it will > unwittingly create a demand for RFID tags in India. The estimated > market size of this industry in India is anywher between Rs 125-150 > crore (Rs 1.25-1.50 billion) and is said to be growing at 30 per > cent per annum. > > The current cost of tags is anywhere from Rs 5 to Rs 30, considered > to be prohibitive when tagging hundreds of products. The rates are > bound to decrease this year. Worldwide RFID spending is expected to > surpass $3 billion in 2010, predicts Gartner. A Research and > Markets report pegs the figure at $6 billion by 2010. > > RFID is not a bar code replacement, note analysts. While bar codes > are better at collecting data in structured places like warehouses > (likely to continue for the next five to seven years), RFID tags > are expected to be used for data collection in largely chaotic or > unstructured business processes like retail environments to hospitals. > > 8. The new intelligent vehicle > > Telematics, integrated use of telecommunications and informatics, > is catching up in the transportation sector. Global Positioning > System (GPS) is being used in KSRTC buses (pilot project) in > Bangalore. Many Indian logistics companies too are using GPS to > track vehicle movements and errant drivers. > > The recently-introduced Tata Novus range of commercial vehicles > feature the 'TRAK i t' Vehicle Locater -- a GPS system for vehicle > tracking; 'TRAK i t' Vehicle Data Recorder -- for critical vehicle > and driver performance recording; and electrical systems that > ensure 'vehicle start' in neutral gear, as an enhanced safety feature. > > Our cars too are becoming smarter. For instance, the REVA-NXG > introduced this April as a "concept car" in Monaco, was fitted with > a `wireless tablet' -- an embedded computer based on Mobilius > having a touch screen display which shows all essential information > about the car like speed and mileage. It also doubles up as a GPS > navigation system. Internet is accessible via GPRS. It also has a > MP3 player. > > Vehicle telematics systems are also increasingly being used to > provide remote diagnostics; a vehicle's in-built systems will > identify a mechanical or electronic problem, and the telematics > package will automatically make this information known to the > vehicle manufacturer and service organisation. Other forthcoming > applications include on-demand navigation, audio and audio-visual > entertainment content. > > 9. Where the Podcast's headed > > If you have an iPod, you would know what podcasting is. For the > uninitiated, imagine a desktop aggregator where you subscribe to a > set of feeds. Podcasting works similarly, except that instead of > reading, you listen to the content on an iPod. > > Juice was the first major podcasting software (downloads podcast > media file like oggs/MP3) and is still the most popular podcast > aggregator. > > With smartphones getting cheaper by the day and 3G networks > becoming commonplace (well at least in developed nations), 2006 > will see the growth in 'mobilecasting', predict tech pundits. > > All we need now is empower people with video phones, 3G mobile > telephony, and a Flickr-like tool to upload audio and video to RSS- > enabled websites. This is not mobile blogging or podcasting now -- > we're talking about a social revolution and that's mobcasting. > > Mobilecast (a software to convert podcasts to Adaptive Multi Rate > (AMR) converter for mobile phones) and mobilecasting have become > the 'One' when it comes to downloading and listening to podcasts on > mobile phones. All you need to do is install and configure > Mobilecast on the iPod. > > Thereon, it will be run after each podcast downloads, splitting the > podcast into segments of 10-minute AMR audio files for the mobile > phone. Podcasters have now begun brainstorming on how to create > podcasts specifically for mobile phones. > > 10. Wi-Fi on steroids > > Worldwide Interoperability of Microwave Access or WiMAX is the new > kid on the block. Taking over from Wi-Fi or the 802.11 b > technology, WiMAX (802.16 a) promises to bring bandwidth to the > masses at higher speeds this year. > > It broadcasts its signal over many more channels than WiFi, and > those channels are less cluttered. Its signals face less > interference, thus helping them travel as far as 30 miles. Besides, > WIMAX provides metropolitan area network connectivity at speeds of > up to 75 Mbps (compare that to Wi-Fi's 11 Mbps). > > WIMAX covers wider metropolitan or rural areas. It is meant to > solve the last-mile problem. In India, where the telecom > infrastructure is poor and last-mile connections are typically > through copper cable, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and fibre > optic, installation costs are high as it requires ripping up > streets to lay cables. The ability to provide these connections > wirelessly, without laying wire or cable in the ground, greatly > lowers the cost of providing these services. > > Intel and BSNL have already introduced Hot Spots (wherein you can > connect your Wi Fi-enabled (or Centrino) laptop to wireless network > and logon to the Net instantly). Satyam Infoway is on the way to > adopt WIMAX. Intel (which also plans to introduce a WiMAX computer > chip) is said to be working with Reliance on a pre-standard WIMAX > pilot project. It is also reportedly working with Bharti and Navini > Networks, and is in talks with BSNL for similar pilot projects. > > Meanwhile, the Indian government is expected to introduce 3G by > 2006. Intel and BSNL have already introduced Hot Spots (wherein you > can connect your Wi Fi-enabled (or Centrino) laptop to wireless > network and logon to the Net instantly). 3G will help in enhancing > India's competitiveness in the ITES / BPO segment. > > All this will entail an increase in India's optical fiber network > which currently stands at 670,000 km (all providers including BSNL). > > > > -- > Karun Bir Singh Sandha, > (Marketing-Systems), > Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies, > Range Hills Road, > Kirkee, Pune, India - 411020 > Ph.(91)9823560618 > > YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS > > Visit your group "SV_RFID" on the web. > > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > SV_RFID-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060115/50a91346/attachment.html From naresh.rhythm at gmail.com Sun Jan 15 20:19:27 2006 From: naresh.rhythm at gmail.com (Naresh Kumar) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 20:19:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] about self & Project Message-ID: <9e53509a0601150649m2b27107bt7f7b55f3b2bca23f@mail.gmail.com> Hi Every boby Myself Naresh Kumar. I teach social science in a government school at Delhi. Listening to Hindustani classical music is one of my weaknesses and I also possess some theoretical understanding of it. I am a student of history and presently working on the early phase of gramophone industry with special reference to classical music. *The history of listening in twentieth century north India *is going to be the topic of my future research. As Sarai fellow I am working on *Harballabh Sangeet Mela of Jalandhar*. Headquarter of the division/district/tahsil of the same name and a Class-I municipality of Punjab, Jalandhar is an important railway junction on the Amritsar Saharanpur Mughal Sarai Main Line of the Northern Railway and is situated on Grand Trunk Road from the international Wagha border with Pakistan to Delhi and onwards. If there exists an ancient city with a modern face, then Jalandhar fits the description. A town of great antiquity, Jalandhar today is a highly industrialized centre of commercial activity. It also claims the privilege of being the sports city of India as not only has it produced some of our finest sports people but also world-class sports equipment which is produced here. In addition to sports, the city is famous for its two annual events. The first is the gathering of veteran Ghadarites that takes place on October30 and 31st and the other is the Harballabh festival of classical music, which has been going on without any gap since 1875 The festival is held in the memory of Saint Harballabh [who was an accomplished Dhrupad singer himself] every year at *Devi Talab Mandir *in the last week of December. It lasts for three-four days and is attended by classical singers and musicians of repute from all over the country. [As the relations between India and Pakistan are improving the festival is witnessing the presence of the musicians from the other side of the border also.] For last 130 years people gather every year to enjoy the feast of hearing their favorite artists in the open air without taking into notice chilly winters that north India experiences in December. In addition to the three day-festival three other small musical gatherings are also organized to mark the three distinctive seasons-Vasant Utsava or the spring festival in February, Malhar Utsava or the Monsoon festival in July and Hemant Utsava or the winter festival in November. At present, Harballabh Mahasabha, an organization headed by the industrialists of the city organizes the festival. Anyone can be the life-member of the Mahasabha by paying Rs.5000. Though North Zone Cultural Council, Patiala helped the committee in organizing the Sammelan for four years since *1989, when it was revived after five years *yet the active participation of the state could not continue due to the differences with Mahasabha however the committee received a grant of Rs.2 lack from the Central Government in 1998 when this was declared one of the national festivals of India. Obviously, the Harballabh Sangeet Mela is a history in itself and every aspect of it is a subject of enquiry. How it began, different stages it passed through, the place it has among the music festivals of India, those who organize and sponsor the festival, those who come to perform every year and those who sit to enjoy them-all these and many other points compel a person to pause and think who is interested in sociology and history of music. How far does it accommodate the rich tradition of classical music that Punjab and Sikhism possess? What is special in Harballabh that attracts many of the maestros to take as a commitment? Because a number of big names has been reaching there for decades ignoring extreme weather and other problems. How Harballabh presents itself unique in comparison to music festivals of Delhi, Banaras, pune Kolkata etc? Definitely, with these festivals a new public sphere emerged and the questions related to creation of artisthood and listenership in terms of class, gender educational background etc arise too. In addition to performances in the evening, Harballabh is the place where young talents come to compete and winning this competition means a big achievement in classical music. The question is how many of the winners come from modern music-training institutions such as music departments of universities. It should also be seen if the music industry comes to approach the winners and upcoming singers who compete there. Do the winners get the chance of performing as junior artists? Above all, Harballabh is the festival of Jalandhar city. Because if you keep the artists aside, rest of the participation in every field comes from the city dwellers. Definitely, the city-life and the Mela affect each other. Though it will be a very crude division because I have not even had a glance over the primary and secondary sources yet four broad phases can be identified. [a] From 1875 to 1947, [b] from 1947 to early 1980s, [c] from early 80s to early 90s and [d] from early 90s to the present. Independence-partition and the Khalistan movement have been taken as dividing lines and to say that these had no effects on the festival will be a big fallacy. Many Congress leaders including *Gandhi *used to come to the Sammelan and even today, the festival gets concluded with *Vande-mataram*. Here, it should also be made clear that after the *assassination of Mrs. Gandhi *and terrorism in Punjab the Sammelan shrank into a *sheer ritual *and remained confined to local artists of the city and neighbouring areas *from 1984 to 1988*. Other than historical and economic aspects there are many things to be archived, such as memories and nostalgia. The project not only demands to look at primary sources like newspapers and Harballabh Mahasabha documents but it asks to deploy fieldwork and oral history as tools also because it is not necessary that the conventional sources present a complete picture that contains both bright and dark sides. A study of music festivals like Harballabh will be a modest beginning to understand the evolution of public performances of music in modern urban settings. I am looking for every possible help from all of you. Please, share if you have anything-any primary or secondary source related to any music-festival, any anecdotal material, any theoretical reference or at least your comments. Though I don't have much to share yet I love collecting old and live recordings in modern digital format. And I hope that I would be able to find some good sharers. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060115/99e49e18/attachment.html From aman.am at gmail.com Mon Jan 16 00:13:46 2006 From: aman.am at gmail.com (Aman Sethi) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 00:13:46 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Gareeb Admi ka kaun Dekhta hai? Post 1.0 by Aman Sethi In-Reply-To: <995a19920601140537t1e2e6ba2ne7593c0742404143@mail.gmail.com> References: <995a19920601140537t1e2e6ba2ne7593c0742404143@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <995a19920601151043g11ff6310pbe6b42ee0f357587@mail.gmail.com> Gareeb Admi ka kaun Dekhta hai? Have you ever read something in the papers, watched it on television, or simply seen it happen around you, and asked out loud, (in a manner reminiscent of Arjun questioning Krishna on the eve of battle), "Why is no-one doing something about this? Why isn't there a law to prevent this?" or, more crucially, "Why doesn't the government do something about this?" As a journalist for Frontline, I often found myself in situations where such questions seemed thoroughly appropriate; in fact they seemed absolutely essential. As I looked around, and read the work of others who had come before, I realized that I was in very good company. Practically even other newspaper, or magazine, had been there, done that, and in some cases, launched a campaign with a grainy photograph and a catchy kicker.(The Indian Express is particularly good at campaigns; their latest being the graphically titled "Building House, Breaking Law" on demolitions in Delhi). The other thing that struck me was that they all said the same things, often about rather different people, and came to conclusions that could be best described as "foregone". To quote my I-fellow proposal, " they could well be an extract … … describing the plight of the Indian farmer, factory worker, construction worker, woman laborer, child or dalit. The narrative usually begins with a laundry list of loss, deprivation, anguish and oppression, followed by the shrewd, rapier-like, query – "After fifty years of Independence, why is Kallu/ Mohandas/ Mohammed Ashraf / Bannodevi still hungry?", and is finally closed out with a plea to politicians, bureaucrats and civil society to put aside their petty differences, and work towards the emancipation and empowerment of India's "poor and oppressed." What made things worse was that my observations in one particular case were markedly different from what I had expected to find. Quoting again, "for my most recent story on construction workers in Delhi, I found it difficult to reconcile the reality I saw with the journalistic mode I had subconsciously chosen. There was no doubt that the workers I met were financially impoverished migrants, but they were a far cry from the helpless, anguished "beings" that I expected them to be. Instead, I met a group of skeptical, often humorous, workers; completely alien to the "official" world with its formal institutions of schools, banks, and hospitals, yet deeply enmeshed in vibrant, dynamic, trust-based networks of their own." While it is nobody's case that poverty and oppression do not exist, two basic questions need to be asked of the existing discourse – Who are such texts written for? And, what purpose are they supposed to serve? While I agree that the two questions listed above are rather "eve-of-battle"-ish themselves, I shall attempt to play with them through the course of my fellowship, titled "Alternative ways/ means of representation of the "poor and oppressed" by studying informal networks at labour mandis in Delhi." While that is the official title, I hope to come up with a less boring title at some point in the future, preferably in a foreign language. At the risk of making a rather obvious point, one of the most basic problems of the existing journalistic narrative is the fixity of language. Words/ Phrases like 'poor', "oppressed", "under privileged' and (my personal favourite) "the economically weaker sections of our societies' conjure up images that are often counter-productive. Years of media coverage have fixed the pictures in our heads, ensuring that all we know about India's "poor and oppressed" is that they are "poor and oppressed." Often, there isn't even an acknowledgment of the fact that some of the "economically weaker sections of our societies" might be less or more "poor and oppressed" than others. And so my fellowship shall not just look at different ways of writing about people, but also look at different ways of writing people. The difference between writing about people and writing people is a rather subtle one. When you write about people, you describe them as a zoologist would describe a fruit bat – their appearance, diet, ecological threat to their habitat (forest clearance or slum clearance as the case may be), future as a species etc. Thus, narratives like "She lay helplessly in her tiny , smoke filled hut, oblivious of the misery and poverty that surrounded her" would fall into this category. Such narratives sometimes slip into "stream of consciousness" mode where the sensitive journalist divines the inner-most hopes, desires and feelings of his subject. Writing people themselves is a far trickier exercise. It is usually a sub-conscious exercise where by repeatedly using the same metaphors to describe someone you create an icon, that can clicked to get a spontaneous, yet utterly predicable, response. Over the years, the media and the state have successfully written people so vividly, that as a journalist, one no longer feels the need to talk to anyone at all. You already know what they are going to say, and the real thing is invariably a poor step-cousin in comparison to the idealised creation, unable to describe their "condition" as you would like them to. One perfectly written person is the "old man from the village". No description is required. One can already imagine the wrinkles on his face, the salt and pepper subtle, and the shawl (usually greenish-brown) draped over his shoulders. If intelligently deployed, he is devastating as old farmer remembering the partition, the Naxal movement, the time Indira Gandhi came to their village, the drought of 1965 or the flood of 1976. The chances are that he will say something like, "Mahaul badal gaye hai, ab gareeb aadmi ka kaun dekhta hai?" I would like to call this process "abjectification". The process by which a person is reduced to an "abject" – devoid of individuality or expression beyond an articulation of the condition of "abjectness". I find that, apart from opening up interesting avenues for wordplay, the word/term "abject/abjective" conveys a sense of what I am trying to express without the accompanying pictures and sounds that are associated with so many of the other words that we encounter. To use it in a sentence, "An examination of existing media trends suggests that to be successful as a journalist today, abjectivity is a must." While the point that such discourses essentialise their subjects is an obvious one, what is interesting is the fact that the subjects often take on the role that the media assigns them. While photographing people for a story on slums in Delhi, I noticed that slum residents had a certain trademark expressions, that could only be described as "abjective." Thus, skeptical, animated faces would transform into masks of sorrow at the earliest sighting of a camera of any shape, size or description. Many would attain heightened states of "abjectment" at the first indication that I was, in fact, a journalist. However, to conclude that this is a sign of how the media has beaten an entire population into thinking, and seeing themselves, in a particular way would be to draw the wrong lesson. In fact, it would be just the kind of lesson that the "meediyaa" would draw. (The meediyaa, as I see it, represents the throng of television, and print, journalists who routinely descend on slums, and night-shelters in search of deprivation, and introduce themselves by saying, "namaste, hum meediyaa se aaye hai". They are then taken to meet the pradhan, who says "Kaun se meediyaa se hai? Humari photo ekbar meediyaa mein aaie thi.") The point that I am trying to make is that, well aware of the meediyaa's proclivities, the residents simply use it as a bargaining tool. While quiet, hidden processes continue in the background, the media is used as a platform to issue ultimatums, raise the ante, or signal intention by government departments and slum residents alike. To bring things back on track, through my fellowship (quoting once again) "I would like to focus on the concept of the labour mandi in Delhi, study its informal networks and institutions in detail and arrive at a possible template for representation of its inhabitants as other than abject, helpless and desperate. Through detailed research, it should be possible to obtain a deeper understanding of the functioning of the labor mandi. This should facilitate a multi-layered narrative that does not rob the subjects of their agency or humanity. While the present narrative urges the state to intervene, it also creates a distance between the subject of the story and the reader; placing the subject in a different universe, far removed from the reader. I would like to explore a narrative form that reduces this distance between the subject of my story and the reader." Over the next six months I shall try and generate text that shall break free from the existing discourse that I so irreverently described. I shall also try and understand why it exists. In the meantime, I shall also put up a blog with interesting articles that I come across. In conclusion I would like to highlight the fact that, irrespective of how misguided they may be (or seem), meediyaa discourses prepare the foundation for state intervention and policy. Thus, alternative discourses that highlight the tactility and efficacy of informal networks should prove useful in enhancing the bargaining power of Kallu, Mohandas, Mohammed Ashraf, and Banno Devi, should they require it. Aman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060116/492c7322/attachment.html From rahulpandita at yahoo.com Sat Jan 14 12:15:07 2006 From: rahulpandita at yahoo.com (rahul pandita) Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 06:45:07 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Request assistance on Hindi publications In-Reply-To: <067801c61811$e71c9ac0$73b541db@Ramaswamy> Message-ID: <20060114064507.60219.qmail@web31712.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Dear V Ramaswamy You may try kritya.org. It is a very vibrant e-magazine in Hindi and i think it will be glad to receive translation work. You could also try 'Gyanoday' the monthly magazine of Bhartiya Gyanpeeth. Regards Rahul V Ramaswamy wrote: Dear Friends I would be grateful to know about "little magazines" or non-commercial literary publications in Hindi. I have been translating into English the short stories of the Bengali writer Subimal Misra. Among his most well-known stories is "Haran Majhi" (his first published story, 1969). I have translated this into Hindi and would like to send it to an appropriate Hindi little magazine - or e-zine. Thank you. V Ramaswamy Calcutta hpp at vsnl.com _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: Rahul Pandita www.sanitysucks.blogspot.com Mobile: 9818088664 --------------------------------- To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060114/b5087691/attachment.html From uk_ps at yahoo.co.uk Sat Jan 14 15:40:47 2006 From: uk_ps at yahoo.co.uk (udayan kumar) Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 10:10:47 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Monthly Posting Message-ID: <20060114101047.35522.qmail@web26504.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> To Sarai reder list, This is Udayakumar.M. My basic academic training training was in Political Science and I completed a masters degree in the discipline from Kerala University in 2001. Soon after my sudies I started working as a researcher at the Folklore Society of South Indian Languages.I worked at the society for nine months.Since then on I have been trying to maintain a sustained engagement with several fieds of knowledge which bradly come under the rubric of Human Sciences. The nature of my engagement has been in such a way as to deepen my understanding of both classical texts and contemporary theoretical literature in order for me to make a better sense of what is happening around us. This kind of a temperament,like anyone,made me stumble upon an incident which happened in the capital city of kerala on 6th february 2000 . Infact,the project I am undertaking is an attempt to launch an intrpretative intervention(of the incident). As I already mentioned in the proposl,I have repeatedly gone through those interviews having been conducted in the next couple of days after the incident. This helped me find out much more nuanced openings to go about. I would like to mention at least one of them, as an initial finding, eventhough many considerations are in place: Some of the respondents said that they had assumed the trespasser to be a mad man. This attribute,for example,puts the making up of the event in a delicate balance from a different coceptual angle. I therefore will have to enquir into the further course of action followed up after the incident during the coming field trip. In the next posting I will be able to come up with a detailed elucidation of the other intricacies involved in the making up of the event. Udayakumar.M ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Photos – NEW, now offering a quality print service from just 8p a photo http://uk.photos.yahoo.com From reyhanchaudhuri at eth.net Thu Jan 5 20:41:06 2006 From: reyhanchaudhuri at eth.net (reyhan chaudhuri) Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 20:41:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Barbarity is the inevitable consequence of oreignrule-Sanjay Ghosh References: <20050127124633.13121.qmail@webmail46.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <008601c61923$efabc7c0$29e741db@ReyhanChaudhuri> 'People in glass houses must not throw stones'-so goes an old foreign/angrez proverb.Is it not valid though, in the context of this article?-Must we not first glance into our own courtyard and see all the many maggots and scorpions swarming under the peepal tree?Has our post-independent record been all that clean?Whether with tribals or those in custody(and still to be judged) or para-military forces and otherwise ....Time-to-time something or the other keeps leeks out to swim into our ears or crawl onto the dailies.Things,which would make even the stone-hearted hang in shame. And why glance out only at the crass courtyard OR the the chastening chaupal ?-What about the very rooms within our homes .Isn't there much violence perpetrated upon -from children to young women to everyone vulnerable... All within the arenas of heritage culture and time-tested traditions.Sanctioned in more ways than one, by us all. 'Barbarity is the inevitable consequence of foreign rule?'No,Sorry it is also the 'imperative' and insidious consequence of interdictory,traditional and heritage-hardened handiwork of 'home-rule' too. Both foreigners and 'we' must clean up our act,both at the homely hearth and the public maidan. I repeat 'Barbarity can also be the insidious consequence of 'home-rule'. Yours conclusively, R.Chaudhuri. ----- Original Message ----- From: sanjay ghosh To: reader-list at sarai.net Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 6:16 PM Subject: [Reader-list] (fwd) Barbarity is the inevitable consequence offoreignrule Barbarity is the inevitable consequence of foreign rule Seumas Milne Thursday January 27, 2005 The Guardian Perhaps Gordon Brown is preparing for that day after the next general election when Tony Blair is expected to offer him the choice of the Foreign Office or the backbenches. Or maybe he just thinks that if he can't beat the Blairites, he might as well join them. But the chancellor's declaration in Africa that Britain should stop apologising for its colonial history must give an unwelcome jolt to anyone hoping that a Brown government might step back from the liberal imperialist swagger and wars of intervention that have marked Blair's leadership. Far from being some heat-induced gaffe, his latest imperial turn follows an earlier remark that we should be proud of those who built the empire, which had been all about being "open, outward-looking and international". Even Blair, who was prevailed on to cut an "I am proud of the British empire" line from a speech during the 1997 election campaign, has never gone this far. Apparently it is meant to be part of an attempt by the chancellor to carve out a modern sense of British identity based around values of fair play, freedom and tolerance. Quite what modernity and such values have to do with the reality of empire might not be immediately obvious. But even more bizarre is the implication that Britain is forever apologising for the empire or the crimes committed under it. Nothing could be further from the truth. There have been no apologies. Official Britain put decolonisation behind it in a state of blissful amnesia, without the slightest effort to come to terms with what had taken place. Indeed, there has barely been a murmur of public reaction to Brown's extraordinary comments and what public criticism there is of the British imperial record has increasingly been drowned out by tub-thumping imperial apologias. The rehabilitation of empire began in the early 1990s at the time of the ill-fated US intervention in Somalia, used by maverick voices on both sides of the Atlantic to float the idea of new colonies or UN trusteeships in Africa. But in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, what had seemed a wacky rightwing wheeze was taken up in Britain with increasing enthusiasm by conservative popular historians like Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts, as the Sun and Mail cheered them on. The call for "a new kind of imperialism" by Blair adviser (and now senior EU official) Robert Cooper brought this reactionary retro chic into the political mainstream, and Brown's endorsement of empire has now given it a powerful boost. The outraged response to South African president Thabo Mbeki's recent denunciation of Churchill and the empire for a "terrible legacy" was a measure of the imperial torch-bearers' new confidence. The empire had brought "freedom and justice", Roberts blithely informed the BBC. It would be interesting to hear how Roberts - or Gordon Brown for that matter - squares such grotesque claims with the latest research on the large-scale, systematic atrocities carried out by British forces during the Mau Mau rebellion in colonial Kenya during the 1950s: the 320,000 Kikuyu held in concentration camps, the 1,090 hangings, the terrorisation of villages, electric shocks, beatings and mass rape documented in Caroline Elkins' new book, Britain's Gulag - and a death toll now thought to be over 100,000. This was a time when British soldiers were paid five shillings for each African they killed, when they nailed the limbs of Kikuyu guerrillas to crossroads posts and had themselves photographed with the heads of Malayan "terrorists" in a war that cost 10,000 lives. Or more recently still, as veterans described in the BBC Empire Warriors series, British soldiers thrashed and tortured their way through Aden's Crater City - the details of which one explained he couldn't go into because of the risk of war crimes prosecutions. And all in the name of civilisation: the sense of continuity with today's Iraq could not be clearer. But it's not as if these end-of-empire episodes were isolated blemishes on a glorious record of freedom and good governance. Britain's empire was built on vast ethnic cleansing, enslavement, enforced racial hierarchy, land theft and merciless exploitation. As the Cambridge historian Richard Drayton puts it: "We hear a lot about the rule of law, incorruptible government and economic progress - the reality was tyranny, oppression, poverty and the unnecessary deaths of countless millions of human beings." Some empire apologists like to claim that, however brutal the first phase may have been, the 19th- and 20th-century story was one of liberty and economic progress. But this is nonsense. In late 19th and early 20th century India - the jewel of the imperial crown - up to 30 million died in famines as British administrators insisted on the export of grain (as in Ireland), and courts ordered 80,000 floggings a year; 4 million died in the avoidable Bengal famine of 1943. There have been no such famines since independence. Modern-day Bangladesh was one of the richest parts of the world before the British arrived and deliberately destroyed its cotton industry. When India's Andaman islands were devastated by the tsunami, who recalled that 80,000 political prisoners were held in camps there in the early 20th century and routinely experimented on by British army doctors? Perhaps it's not surprising that Hitler was an enthusiast, describing the British empire as an "inestimable factor of value" even if, he added, it had been acquired with "force and often brutality". But there has been no serious attempt in Britain to face up to the record of colonialism and the long-term impact on the societies it ruled - let alone trials of elderly colonial administrators now living out their days in Surrey retirement homes. Instead, the third in line to the throne thinks it's a bit of a lark to go to a "colonials and natives" fancy dress party, while the national curriculum has more or less struck the empire and its crimes out of history. The standard GCSE modern world history textbook has chapter after chapter on the world wars, the cold war, British and American life, Stalin's terror and the monstrosities of Nazism - but scarcely a word on the British and other European empires which carved up most of the world between them, or the horrors they perpetrated. s.milne at guardian.co.uk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060105/e153f4d0/attachment.html From aarti at sarai.net Mon Jan 16 13:00:14 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 13:00:14 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Open Mic / Open Screen Message-ID: <43CB4B86.4040509@sarai.net> ====================== Open Mic / Open Screen ====================== Open Mic/Open Screen: An Evening of Experimental Film, Video, Audio-work,Poetry and Spoken Word. 5:30 pm, Tuesday, 31 January 2006 This month we invite friends interested in experimenting with the film, video and audio forms to jam in the Sarai cafe. We hope this can become a regular event in which people working across forms such as film, image-making, sound and text can come together and share their work in an open, relaxed and fun context. Everyone will get 5-7 minutes to screen/play video/audio works, and read/perform text based work. You can share video, audio, poetry, spoken word, a short prose piece, a performance, singly or in groups, in any language (though do be prepared to translate for those uninitiated :) The screening/performance order will be decided on a first-come-first-serve basis. Films, Video and Audio pieces should be between 1-7 minutes long. You can share a complete work, parts of a work, a work in progress, even stills, in B/W and or colour. Contact aarti at sarai.net for further details _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From pukar at pukar.org.in Mon Jan 16 11:36:29 2006 From: pukar at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 11:36:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [announcements] Winter Institute: inviting registration Message-ID: <004301c61a63$00f1aa00$0bd0c0cb@freeda> Dear Friends, The PUKAR Winter Institute 2006 will be held from February 10th to 12th, 2006, in Mumbai. If you would like to attend, do get back to us with information about yourself by January 31st 2006. Those who have registeres earlier need not apply again. Details: MEDIASCAPES: SHIFTING BOUNDARIES, CONTESTED TERRAIN 10 -12 February, 2006 @ Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai Campus This national seminar, co-sponsored by PUKAR and Tata Institute of Social Sciences, will bring together leading scholars and practitioners from all across India to explore a broad set of cultural, political, and economic issues related to media production and consumption. Through seminar discussions, lectures, and films, we will consider how changing modes of production and consumption are enabling the emergence of new media forms and altering the ways in which citizens engage with media. The seminar will examine both the potentially empowering effects of such transformations and the repressive consequences of increasingly corporatized mass media. We welcome your participation as we explore how media spaces are constructed and emerge as terrains of contestation. This seminar is part of an ongoing effort on behalf of PUKAR to engage with a diverse group of participants on the theoretical and practical implications of urban knowledge and action. The first seminar (Winter Institute) held January 2004, focused on various forms of urban knowledge and how knowledge is appropriated by individuals and institutions to elicit action. Last year's Winter Institute examined language as a means by which knowledge is acquired and transmitted. It also explored the intersection of language, identity, and urban space, considering the cosmopolitan character of the city through its linguistic diversity. This year, we will continue the broader conversation on urban knowledge by placing "mediascapes" at the centre of the discussion. Mediascapes, a concept coined by Prof. Arjun Appadurai, describes the contentious spaces within which media representations are produced, circulated, and distributed. Sessions and Presenters: (The schedule and speakers' list is still being finalized, but the following presenters have confirmed participation.) 1. CHANGING MODES OF PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION: THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL - Dr. B. Manjula, TISS - Dr. B. P. Sanjay, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad - Dr. Vinod Pavarala, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad 2. OPEN FORUM ON MEDIA EDUCATION: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES - Dr. Shobha Ghosh, Head, Dept. of English, SIES College - Dr. Saradha Ganapathyraman, K.C. College - Dr. Sudhakar Solomon Raj, Wilson College - Dr. B. P. Sanjay, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad 3. MORAL PANICS: NEGOTIATING GENDER - Dr. Shohini Ghosh, Jamia Milia Islamia - Ms. Shilpa Phadke, PUKAR Gender & Space - Ms. Bishakha Datta, Point of View 4. RETHINKING THE CITY AND URBAN IDENTITY - Mr. Venkatesh Chakravarthy, Film maker and researcher - Mr. Abeer Gupta, Film maker and researcher - Ms. Paromita Vohra, Film maker - Mr. Rahul Srivastava, Researcher 5. PANEL ON MEDIA CENSORSHIP - Mr. Anand Patwardhan, Film maker - Dr. Shohini Gosh, Jamia Milia Islamia 6. NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND OLD BOUNDARIES - Mr. Shuddhabrata Sengupta, SARAI, New Delhi - Dr. Vinod Pavarala, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad - Mr. Indranil Chakravarty, Comet Media Foundation 7. IMAGING RESISTANCE - Ms. Madhusree Dutta, Documentary Film maker, Majlis - Ms. Charu Gargi, Filmmaker/Researcher We will also be showing "She Write" and "Naata," two films produced by Drs. Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jaysankar; and "Cosmopolis: Two Tales of a City" by Paromita Vohra. The keynote speaker will be Mr. Shekhar Gupta, Editor in Chief, Indian Express. The keynote address will be delivered on Friday, 10 February, at 6:30pm, at Jai Hind College Auditorium at Churchgate. The final schedule and description of panel sessions will be distributed in advance of the seminar. LOCATION: The Seminar will be held at the Tata Institute of Social Science, Opp. Deonar Bus Depot, V.N. Purav Marg (Sion-Trombay Road), Deonar, Mumbai 400 088. REGISTRATION: Registration is required for the seminar. To register in advance, please send an email to: pukar at pukar.org.in with the following details by Tuesday, 31 January 2006. - Name - Institutional Affiliation - Email address - Postal Address - Telephone Number REGISTRATION FEES: Although registration for the seminar is free, a nominal fee of Rs. 150.00 will be charged to cover lunches and refreshments over 3 days. CONTACT DETAILS: PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) Address:: 1-4, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Sir P. M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Telephone:: +91 (22) 5574 8152 Fax:: +91 (22) 5664 0561 Email:: pukar at pukar.org.in Website:: www.pukar.org.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060116/5be2492b/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From sadaf.siddique at gmail.com Mon Jan 16 12:21:15 2006 From: sadaf.siddique at gmail.com (Sadaf Siddique) Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 22:51:15 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] call for submissions Message-ID: <641d4ed20601152251j202d0659te9b96bfc053d1b04@mail.gmail.com> I am writing from the International Museum of Women where we are currently working on a project called "Imagining Ourselves: A Global Generation of Women." We are inviting women from every corner of the globe to submit their stories in answer to the question: "What Defines Your Generation of Women?" Right now, we are working on the on-line exhibit which will make submissions available to one hundred million women worldwide through a multilingual, interactive online site. (There is more information about the project available at http://www.imaginingourselves.org/.) We are seeking submissions in the form of writings, photographs, films, paintings, audios, from young women all over the world. We are are trying to get as much visibility as possible. Please help us pass along this information to women you think would be interested. Although our deadline has passed, we are still accepting submissions. Please let me know if you can help extend our invitation to women around the world. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060115/011a07ab/attachment.html From mail at shivamvij.com Mon Jan 16 19:14:31 2006 From: mail at shivamvij.com (Shivam) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 19:14:31 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Gareeb Admi ka kaun Dekhta hai? Post 1.0 by Aman Sethi In-Reply-To: <995a19920601151043g11ff6310pbe6b42ee0f357587@mail.gmail.com> References: <995a19920601140537t1e2e6ba2ne7593c0742404143@mail.gmail.com> <995a19920601151043g11ff6310pbe6b42ee0f357587@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <210498250601160544i1d2176a8obf9e0ee3e07cc5a@mail.gmail.com> That was an absolutely rockacious first post, Aman. I was particularly struck by how the idea of "abjectification" has been internalised by the subjects as a bargaining tool. To add my two cents, I think the problem is not one of language alone. Cliches such as "the poor and the oppressed" could well be symptoms of a larger problem - that of the lack of imagination and creativity in writing developmental journalism. I realised this some time ago when I read some very fine stories written by foreign correspondents, like this one by John Lancaster of the Washington Post on the Japanese Encephalitis epidemic in Uttar Pradesh: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/10/AR2005091001208.html You write: "Thus, narratives like "She lay helplessly in her tiny , smoke filled hut, oblivious of the misery and poverty that surrounded her" would fall into this category. Such narratives sometimes slip into "stream of consciousness" mode where the sensitive journalist divines the inner-most hopes, desires and feelings of his subject." However, narrative journalism need not always be condescending, and Lancaster's story is a good example. Japanese Encephalitis is an annual feature in UP, but in 2005 it killed way too many children - over a thousand even by skewed official estimates. Yet it did not catch the attention of the national (read Delhi) English media, which covered it as a routine story. For example: http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=326105 That's a link to a wire report which has five banal, single-sentence paragraphs. I would tend to think that the lack of space that developmental journalism gets in the media has to do at least partly with the media's inability to make developmental journalism appealing. I excitedly look forward to your experiment with the labour mandis. Shivam On 1/16/06, Aman Sethi wrote: > > > > > Gareeb Admi ka kaun Dekhta hai? > > > > Have you ever read something in the papers, watched it on television, or simply seen it happen around you, and asked out loud, (in a manner reminiscent of Arjun questioning Krishna on the eve of battle), "Why is no-one doing something about this? Why isn't there a law to prevent this?" or, more crucially, "Why doesn't the government do something about this?" > > As a journalist for Frontline, I often found myself in situations where such questions seemed thoroughly appropriate; in fact they seemed absolutely essential. As I looked around, and read the work of others who had come before, I realized that I was in very good company. Practically even other newspaper, or magazine, had been there, done that, and in some cases, launched a campaign with a grainy photograph and a catchy kicker.(The Indian Express is particularly good at campaigns; their latest being the graphically titled "Building House, Breaking Law" on demolitions in Delhi). The other thing that struck me was that they all said the same things, often about rather different people, and came to conclusions that could be best described as "foregone". To quote my I-fellow proposal, " they could well be an extract … … describing the plight of the Indian farmer, factory worker, construction worker, woman laborer, child or dalit. The narrative usually begins with a laundry list of loss, deprivation, anguish and oppression, followed by the shrewd, rapier-like, query – "After fifty years of Independence, why is Kallu/ Mohandas/ Mohammed Ashraf / Bannodevi still hungry?", and is finally closed out with a plea to politicians, bureaucrats and civil society to put aside their petty differences, and work towards the emancipation and empowerment of India's "poor and oppressed." > > > > What made things worse was that my observations in one particular case were markedly different from what I had expected to find. Quoting again, "for my most recent story on construction workers in Delhi, I found it difficult to reconcile the reality I saw with the journalistic mode I had subconsciously chosen. There was no doubt that the workers I met were financially impoverished migrants, but they were a far cry from the helpless, anguished "beings" that I expected them to be. Instead, I met a group of skeptical, often humorous, workers; completely alien to the "official" world with its formal institutions of schools, banks, and hospitals, yet deeply enmeshed in vibrant, dynamic, trust-based networks of their own." > > > > While it is nobody's case that poverty and oppression do not exist, two basic questions need to be asked of the existing discourse – Who are such texts written for? And, what purpose are they supposed to serve? > > > > While I agree that the two questions listed above are rather "eve-of-battle"-ish themselves, I shall attempt to play with them through the course of my fellowship, titled "Alternative ways/ means of representation of the "poor and oppressed" by studying informal networks at labour mandis in Delhi." While that is the official title, I hope to come up with a less boring title at some point in the future, preferably in a foreign language. > > > > At the risk of making a rather obvious point, one of the most basic problems of the existing journalistic narrative is the fixity of language. Words/ Phrases like 'poor', "oppressed", "under privileged' and (my personal favourite) "the economically weaker sections of our societies' conjure up images that are often counter-productive. Years of media coverage have fixed the pictures in our heads, ensuring that all we know about India's "poor and oppressed" is that they are "poor and oppressed." Often, there isn't even an acknowledgment of the fact that some of the "economically weaker sections of our societies" might be less or more "poor and oppressed" than others. And so my fellowship shall not just look at different ways of writing about people, but also look at different ways of writing people. > > > > The difference between writing about people and writing people is a rather subtle one. When you write about people, you describe them as a zoologist would describe a fruit bat – their appearance, diet, ecological threat to their habitat (forest clearance or slum clearance as the case may be), future as a species etc. Thus, narratives like "She lay helplessly in her tiny , smoke filled hut, oblivious of the misery and poverty that surrounded her" would fall into this category. Such narratives sometimes slip into "stream of consciousness" mode where the sensitive journalist divines the inner-most hopes, desires and feelings of his subject. > > > > Writing people themselves is a far trickier exercise. It is usually a sub-conscious exercise where by repeatedly using the same metaphors to describe someone you create an icon, that can clicked to get a spontaneous, yet utterly predicable, response. Over the years, the media and the state have successfully written people so vividly, that as a journalist, one no longer feels the need to talk to anyone at all. You already know what they are going to say, and the real thing is invariably a poor step-cousin in comparison to the idealised creation, unable to describe their "condition" as you would like them to. One perfectly written person is the "old man from the village". No description is required. One can already imagine the wrinkles on his face, the salt and pepper subtle, and the shawl (usually greenish-brown) draped over his shoulders. If intelligently deployed, he is devastating as old farmer remembering the partition, the Naxal movement, the time Indira Gandhi came to their village, the drought of 1965 or the flood of 1976. The chances are that he will say something like, "Mahaul badal gaye hai, ab gareeb aadmi ka kaun dekhta hai?" > > > > I would like to call this process "abjectification". The process by which a person is reduced to an "abject" – devoid of individuality or expression beyond an articulation of the condition of "abjectness". I find that, apart from opening up interesting avenues for wordplay, the word/term "abject/abjective" conveys a sense of what I am trying to express without the accompanying pictures and sounds that are associated with so many of the other words that we encounter. To use it in a sentence, "An examination of existing media trends suggests that to be successful as a journalist today, abjectivity is a must." > > > > While the point that such discourses essentialise their subjects is an obvious one, what is interesting is the fact that the subjects often take on the role that the media assigns them. While photographing people for a story on slums in Delhi, I noticed that slum residents had a certain trademark expressions, that could only be described as "abjective." Thus, skeptical, animated faces would transform into masks of sorrow at the earliest sighting of a camera of any shape, size or description. Many would attain heightened states of "abjectment" at the first indication that I was, in fact, a journalist. However, to conclude that this is a sign of how the media has beaten an entire population into thinking, and seeing themselves, in a particular way would be to draw the wrong lesson. In fact, it would be just the kind of lesson that the "meediyaa" would draw. > > > > (The meediyaa, as I see it, represents the throng of television, and print, journalists who routinely descend on slums, and night-shelters in search of deprivation, and introduce themselves by saying, "namaste, hum meediyaa se aaye hai". They are then taken to meet the pradhan, who says "Kaun se meediyaa se hai? Humari photo ekbar meediyaa mein aaie thi.") > > > > The point that I am trying to make is that, well aware of the meediyaa's proclivities, the residents simply use it as a bargaining tool. While quiet, hidden processes continue in the background, the media is used as a platform to issue ultimatums, raise the ante, or signal intention by government departments and slum residents alike. > > > > To bring things back on track, through my fellowship (quoting once again) "I would like to focus on the concept of the labour mandi in Delhi, study its informal networks and institutions in detail and arrive at a possible template for representation of its inhabitants as other than abject, helpless and desperate. > > > > Through detailed research, it should be possible to obtain a deeper understanding of the functioning of the labor mandi. This should facilitate a multi-layered narrative that does not rob the subjects of their agency or humanity. While the present narrative urges the state to intervene, it also creates a distance between the subject of the story and the reader; placing the subject in a different universe, far removed from the reader. I would like to explore a narrative form that reduces this distance between the subject of my story and the reader." > > > > Over the next six months I shall try and generate text that shall break free from the existing discourse that I so irreverently described. I shall also try and understand why it exists. In the meantime, I shall also put up a blog with interesting articles that I come across. > > In conclusion I would like to highlight the fact that, irrespective of how misguided they may be (or seem), meediyaa discourses prepare the foundation for state intervention and policy. Thus, alternative discourses that highlight the tactility and efficacy of informal networks should prove useful in enhancing the bargaining power of Kallu, Mohandas, Mohammed Ashraf, and Banno Devi, should they require it. > > Aman > > > > > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > > From zainab at xtdnet.nl Mon Jan 16 20:07:37 2006 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 18:37:37 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Regularity Message-ID: <3691.219.65.11.126.1137422257.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Jaunts on Regularity / Regularity Jaunts Street lights emitting an orange glow are still keeping the city aglow. It’s a bit chilly. The sky is foggy. There is a semblance of winter in this city of dust, grime, heat and dreams. (Time: 7 AM) I set out to explore notions of locality and regularity through the local train network this morning (and soon I may become one of the regulars, of the regularity regime which provides a framework for existence in the city). I walk down the streets. Coming from the front is a short smiling man dressed in black athletic clothes. I realize he is the watch guard of our building, Kadam. Soon he will wear his uniform and settle in his regular regime. (Uniforms and the city name tags regularity ) I walk past the pavement market of Byculla. I nearly trample over a little flyer on which are pictures of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and a bearded man, smiling, and advocating inter-faith harmony. I somehow cannot care for inter-faith harmony right now because I am in a rush to board the train (like some of the millions in the city who are too involved in the everyday business of travel-work-travel-home – cannot miss the train!!!). As I walk down, I notice that the pavement dwellers are still asleep (and I wonder about their notions and practices of regularity). I see a woman who has cuddled up in her own body and has made enough space on the hessian mattress for a roadside dog (who is a regular there). I now understand what the term squatting means. And I realize that squatting is not something which only pavement dwellers, hawkers and slum dwellers indulge in. Squatting is also a mental phenomenon. ‘Citizens’ and ‘commuters’ squat in the local trains. Mr. Lalchandani and his family squat in their little house in Marine Drive. I squat in my one-bedroom house with my parents. At every moment, we are squatting, negotiating, transforming and producing space, irrespective of whether the space is public, private or personal. Yet, I can’t seem to understand what makes us so harsh towards slum dwellers, pavement dwellers and hawkers? What is it about them or their lifestyle which irks us, bothers us, disgusts us (and produces conflicts over rights and space)? Design and Space – transforming regularity and negotiations over space At Byculla railway station, the train arrives. It is the ‘new train’ where seats are meant for two persons and there is ample standing space. The design of the train is somewhat like the modern metro, except that the doors are perpetually open in this case. The women are kind of surprised at this design (and cleanliness of the train). There is a mental readjustment to space. Somehow, I am accustomed to the old design which is dark and mundane. The space in the older design is intimate and the negotiations for space are tough. The older design also provides an added sense of anonymity which the new design does not afford. Too much standing space is not what commuters are used to. The confusion in the mind (and in the biological patterns of regularity) is how to use the extensive passage space, how to organize, how to negotiate (and women just want to sit because they enter the trains tired in the morning after performance of morning chores). At each station, women who enter the compartment are a bit frazzled and surprised before they settle down (shifts in regularity ). At Dadar Station, vendor women enter the train. An old woman is too surprised at the design of the train. She is amazed, befuddled and in awe. Gaadi ata peeshal jhaali (Train has become special) She continued moving about, wondering where to settle down. Gaadi ata english vatayla lagli (Train appears to have become English), she said loudly. Ultimately, she settled down in one corner near the door. The metal handles in the train are bright, sparkling white metal. But they are a bit too high to reach. Amidst the open passage space, I can watch women engaged in their everyday activities. Students are studying. Some women are listening to cell phone radio. Some are just there, watching around here and there, as and when. One woman in front of me is reading her prayer book. The nail paint on her fingers is scratched out. She is concentrated and focused on her prayers (praying being one of the critical nuances of regularity framework among a segment of women on the trains). (The one sitting next to her is peering inside her prayer book, perhaps as a confirmation of her faith!) And then there are some of us who are thinking, indulged in existential angst. The woman in front of me has a somber and grim look, but it appears that a flurry of thoughts are flowing below the exterior. I am thinking of the guy in my life presently. The praying woman who is now finished with prayers has a calm exterior over her. A thought crosses my mind – does the framework of regularity provide a calm, superficial exterior? What happens when this exterior is disturbed? What happens when violence hits the city? What are the phenomena of violence in the city? (I am itching for answers ) Glass Dreams One hawker enters the compartment. She is selling food stuff. She makes her first sale and brings out her pursue from her blouse. She touches the ten rupee note on her forehead, suggesting the auspiciousness of the first sale of the day. I am watching her. She looks at me and smiles, justifying her action. I smile back, in confirmation. A bangle seller steps in. Very tempting bangles! I purchase a feminine glass dream of two sky blue bangles and two sea blue bangles – they now adorn my hands! A trend has been set. The woman sitting diagonally opposite me indulges in her feminine glass dream – two red bangles and two black ones. But she has a hundred rupee note and the bangle seller has no change money. I wonder whether the glass dreams will be shattered or will be left incomplete today. The woman holds on to the bangles and requests for change among passengers. The bangle seller is also requesting change among passengers. A passenger offers change to the bangle seller and one offers change to the female. The dream is sustained. She puts the bangles back in her purse, but she takes a last look at them. She is pressing a smile. She is contended. I wonder whether she is thinking of her lover who she will charm with her glass dreams. A little joy in the midst of regularity (Glass dreams – happiness – Price: Rs. 10/-) (This city and its systems are still somehow managing to fulfill our fantasies, dreams and aspirations) (Glass dreams – desires – Price: Rs. 10/-) (Glass dreams – for sale – Price: Rs. 10/-) (Glass dreams – chiming – Price: Rs. 10/-) Return Journey – Train Groups – Musings on Locality, Regularity and Cosmopolitanism (Time: 8:10 AM) I got off at Thane Station. I boarded a train bound for CST junction starting from Thane station. The design of the train is the old one. There is still empty space in the train. (I wonder whether I will be able catch a train group today.) The train started moving. I plugged the ear phones in my ears and began listening to GO 92.5 FM. Reports of yesterday’s marathon are still flowing in today. At Mulund Station, three women enter the train. They quickly begin to ask where each one of us is getting off – making ‘claims’ on seats. I am caught up with three women who are a ‘group’. Two are definitely Maharashtrian. The third one, I can’t make out. (Is marking a practice of locality?) They are talking mundane stuff. I am not interested. They are settled around fourth seats. They have made claims which will ensure them comforts within a couple of stations’ time. (I am still thinking of the design of the previous train and now this one. There is a definite intimacy in this design though it causes a lot of jamming as well. However, women can maintain their balance in this old design because the space is intimate and it means that they are literally being ‘held up’ by the seated women and standing fellow passengers. In the new design, this may not be possible.) A song of freedom rings through the radio station in my ears. I am absolutely enjoying the anonymity of space. What a remarkable sense of freedom to go unnoticed! They are talking mundane stuff, this train group. And another thought crosses my mind as I listen to them: daily conversation in local trains – train groups – what kind of respite does it offer to these women? How does the train group fit into the framework of regularity for these women? Who are these women? What are their lives? My mind also goes to back to the Dombivali Ladies’ Special, First Class Train group that I have known for sometime. In there, there are women who are working in global firms like ICICI finance, Tata-MTNL, new finance firms, etc. They hold positions like sales executive, finance assistants, etc. In here, today, are women working perhaps in government firms at positions of clerk, typists, etc. Does working in a global firm make any difference to mindsets and notions of cosmopolitanism? Does working in global firms open up the mind to differences – cultural, religious, interpersonal? – making it more receptive? We have to become bold. I have become bold, says the woman with frog-like eyes. The thin, camel-like looking (stooped) woman is listening intently. And the fat elephant-like woman sitting next to me is engaged in the conversation. We have to take decisions, frog says. Elephant nods. Camel is still listening. Monopause is like that (frog is talking of menopause). Weight increases. Tension increases. I get palpitations in my heart, in my chest. Monopause is like that (and she smacks her lips, talking as if monopause is one of the ‘regular’ phenomenon in a working Maharashtrian woman’s life). (I am thinking about the bedroom and sexual lives of these women ssshhhssshhh) Soon stations arrive and time to swap seats. Camel is about to switch seats when another woman is about to sit on camel’s claim. Frog intervenes and settles the matter. The other woman settles in camel’s place when the girl sitting in front of camel intervenes and tells the woman that she had already claimed camel’s seat. The woman verifies with camel whether this is true. Camel verifies. The woman gets up. The girl sits down. (I think of slum lords, claims, space, rights and entitlements and some amount of negotiations at the everyday level). These women continue chatting – camel, elephant and frog. As they talk, I try to make entries into their notions of cosmopolitanism. Is cosmopolitanism another exterior which people in this city wear? Is cosmopolitanism superficial? I look around the compartment and wonder how train groups get formed. What are the bases of these transitory localities (if I can call them locality at all!)? How do these groups fit in the frame of regularity which the local train network brings into the lives of the working peoples? What is this regularity? Is it changing now? How? Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From debjanisgupta at yahoo.com Mon Jan 16 20:34:34 2006 From: debjanisgupta at yahoo.com (debjani sengupta) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 07:04:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] posting Message-ID: <20060116150434.2466.qmail@web54207.mail.yahoo.com> Hello everyone. This is my first posting and I must introduce myself (although virtually). It feels a little unreal that I shall be writing and reading a lot of people whom I shall meet many months later, and by then I would know a lot about some of you as some of you would know me. I am Debjani and I suspect I am the oldest among the I-fellows this year. I teach literatures in English at Indraprastha College in Delhi and read in my spare time. Sometimes I translate short stories from Bangla to English as I love to work with words. My research proposal is called Colony Fiction: Refugee Colonies and their Representation in Post Partition Calcutta. I will be looking at the history of migration and refugee settlement in Calcutta, but through the lens of literature. My training has been about reading texts and I will look at short stories,essays, plays and films, roughly between the years1948 to 68 and see how the refugee colony figures in them. A city thrives and grows if there is a rhythmic flow of people from outside. Calcutta is no exception. By 1951, the city recorded an enormous influx of people from East Bengal, now Bangladesh, a migration so large that the 'displaced persons' made up nearly 18 percent of the city's population. The refugees establish colonies in and around the Calcutta Metropolitan area. Named after famous Benglais like Netaji and Rabindranath, these spaces play out the silent drama of identity, survival, exile amd rootlessness. From these spaces emerge some familiar stereotypes of Bengali Popular Fiction. The lumpen political cadre, the fallen woman, the desperate clerk walking the dusty pavements have their genesis in the colonies. The city viewed them with suspicion and wariness. The refugee was different from the original inhabitants. Speaking their peculiar tongue, their weary eyes, their marginality and their lonely optimism made them stand out amongst the citizens of Calcutta. To look at Colony Fictions is to see the ways in which the city responded to this enormous humanitarian and political crisis. The refugee colonies generated their own discourse of anxiety and accomodation and created their own spaces of political and economic thoughts that were in turn reflected in the way Calcutta thought about itself. I wish to look at texts, talk to writers and colony residents, look at corporation and municipal archives to see the extent colonies shaped and reshaped themselves as did their inhabitants. By August, I hope to hand over all this material. I think I would also have a full length paper on what conclusions I have drawn. I would be pleased if some of you asked questions on what I have written. It is always fruitful to know how one's hobby-horses appear to others. Bye and goodnight. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From vnr1995 at gmail.com Tue Jan 17 10:48:14 2006 From: vnr1995 at gmail.com (V NR) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:18:14 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] some more questions In-Reply-To: <3694.219.65.9.101.1136867695.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> References: <3694.219.65.9.101.1136867695.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Message-ID: Legal system grants legal rights to institutions, individuals, authorities, etc. Philosophical defenses are given for such a legal system. Similarly, natural rights are founded in a *particular* conception of human beings. Best, Reddy, V. On 1/9/06, zainab at xtdnet.nl wrote: > So I have some more questions now: > > What does intervention mean? > What is/are the line/s of difference/s (nuance/s) between intervention and > interference? > How does someone (institution/authority/person) acquire the right to > intervene? > > Cheers, > Zainab Questions Bawa > > > Zainab Bawa > Bombay > www.xanga.com/CityBytes > http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From lizaw at uchicago.edu Mon Jan 16 18:43:57 2006 From: lizaw at uchicago.edu (Liza Weinstein) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 18:43:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Mediascapes Seminar Message-ID: <91abab2e.7b88d962.81b8200@m4500-01.uchicago.edu> FYI - Upcoming seminar... MEDIASCAPES: SHIFTING BOUNDARIES, CONTESTED TERRAIN 10 - 12 February, 2006 @ Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai Campus http://www.mediascapes.cjb.net/index.htm This national seminar, co-sponsored by PUKAR and Tata Institute of Social Sciences, will bring together leading scholars and practitioners from all across India to explore a broad set of cultural, political, and economic issues related to media production and consumption. Through seminar discussions, lectures, and films, we will consider how changing modes of production and consumption are enabling the emergence of new media forms and altering the ways in which citizens engage with media. The seminar will examine both the potentially empowering effects of such transformations and the repressive consequences of increasingly corporatized mass media. We welcome your participation as we explore how media spaces are constructed and emerge as terrains of contestation. This seminar is part of an ongoing effort on behalf of PUKAR to engage with a diverse group of participants on the theoretical and practical implications of urban knowledge and action. The first seminar (Winter Institute) held January 2004, focused on various forms of urban knowledge and how knowledge is appropriated by individuals and institutions to elicit action. Last year’s Winter Institute examined language as a means by which knowledge is acquired and transmitted. It also explored the intersection of language, identity, and urban space, considering the cosmopolitan character of the city through its linguistic diversity. This year, we will continue the broader conversation on urban knowledge by placing “mediascapes” at the centre of the discussion. Mediascapes, a concept coined by Prof. Arjun Appadurai, describes the contentious spaces within which media representations are produced, circulated, and distributed. Sessions and Presenters: (The schedule and speakers’ list is still being finalized, but the following presenters have confirmed participation.) 1. CHANGING MODES OF PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION: THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL - Dr. B. Manjula, TISS - Dr. B. P. Sanjay, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad - Dr. Vinod Pavarala, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad 2. OPEN FORUM ON MEDIA EDUCATION: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES - Dr. Shobha Ghosh, Head, Dept. of English, SIES College - Dr. Saradha Ganapathyraman, K.C. College - Dr. Sudhakar Solomon Raj, Wilson College - Dr. B. P. Sanjay, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad 3. MORAL PANICS: NEGOTIATING GENDER - Dr. Shohini Ghosh, Jamia Milia Islamia - Ms. Shilpa Phadke, PUKAR Gender & Space - Ms. Bishakha Datta, Point of View 4. RETHINKING THE CITY AND URBAN IDENTITY - Mr. Venkatesh Chakravarthy, Film maker and researcher - Mr. Abeer Gupta, Filmmaker and researcher - Ms. Paromita Vohra, Filmmaker - Mr. Rahul Srivastava, Researcher 5. PANEL ON MEDIA CENSORSHIP - Mr. Amit Khanna, Reliance Entertainment - Dr. Shohini Gosh, Jamia Milia Islamia - Ms. Surabhi, Filmmaker 6. NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND OLD BOUNDARIES - Mr. Shuddhabrata Sengupta, SARAI, New Delhi - Dr. Vinod Pavarala, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad - Mr. Indranil Chakravarty, Comet Media Foundation 7. IMAGING RESISTANCE - Ms. Madhusree Dutta, Documentary Filmmaker, Majlis - Ms. Charu Gargi, Filmmaker/Researcher - Mr. Faroque Shaikh, Filmmaker We will also be showing “She Write” and “Naata,” two films produced by Drs. Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jaysankar; and “Cosmopolis: Two Tales of a City” by Paromita Vohra. The keynote speaker will be Mr. Shekhar Gupta, Editor in Chief, Indian Express. The keynote address will be delivered on Friday, 10 February, at 6:30pm, at Jai Hind College Auditorium at Churchgate. The final schedule and description of panel sessions will be distributed in advance of the seminar. LOCATION: The Seminar will be held at the Tata Institute of Social Science, Opp. Deonar Bus Depot, V.N. Purav Marg (Sion- Trombay Road), Deonar, Mumbai 400 088. REGISTRATION: Registration is required for the seminar. To register in advance, please send an email to: pukar at pukar.org.in with the following details by Tuesday, 31 January 2006. - Name - Institutional Affiliation - Email address - Postal Address - Telephone Number REGISTRATION FEES: Although registration for the seminar is free, a nominal fee of Rs. 150.00 will be charged to cover lunches and refreshments over 3 days. CONTACT DETAILS: PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) Address:: 1-4, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Sir P. M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Telephone:: +91 (22) 5574 8152 Fax:: +91 (22) 5664 0561 Email:: pukar at pukar.org.in Website:: www.pukar.org.in From shuddha at sarai.net Mon Jan 16 21:27:38 2006 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:27:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Tariq Ali in Kolkata and Delhi Message-ID: <43CBC272.9060208@sarai.net> Tariq Ali, 68er, writer and polemicist, is shortly to tour Kolkata and Delhi, courtesy Seagull (Kolkata). Here is a schedule of his public appearances. CALCUTTA *19 January 2006: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO INDIA’S FOREIGN POLICY?* *H. N. Dutta Memorial Lecture * for students and faculty *4 pm, Dr K. P. Basu Memorial Hall, Jadavpur University* *20 January 2006: DEMOCRACY OR DICTATORSHIP OF CAPITAL?* Tariq Ali talks with students *11 am, St Xaviers Auditorium* *23 January 2006: IN CONVERSTION. TARIQ ALI AND SITARAM YECHURY 6.30 pm G. D. Birla Sabhagar* (Free passes may be collected from Seagull Arts & Media Resource Centre: 24556942 / 43 or Seagull Bookstore: 24765865 / 69) *DELHI 24 January 2006 IN CONVERSTION. TARIQ ALI AND ACHIN VANAIK 5.30 pm, Gandhi Peace Foundation * (near ITO) New Delhi Co-presented with *Forum for Democratic Initiative* *25 January 2006 DEMOCRACY OR DICTATORSHIP OF CAPITAL? 9.15 pm, JNU, New Delhi* *27 January 2006 IS A SOUTH ASIAN UNION POSSIBLE? Moderated by Aijaz Ahmed 2 pm, The U-Special Bookshop,* Student Activity Centre (near DSU office) -- Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Raqs Media Collective) The Sarai Programme Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India Phone : + 91 11 23960040 Fax : + 91 11 23943450 E Mail : shuddha at sarai.net http://www.sarai.net http://www.raqsmediacollective.net _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From jamie.dow at pobox.com Tue Jan 17 14:53:14 2006 From: jamie.dow at pobox.com (Jamie Dow) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 09:23:14 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] some more questions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: There is a more commonsense understanding of what's going on here, namely a "realist" understanding. Legal systems perhaps *stipulate* a system of rules, encluding the entitlements that will be recognised by that legal system ("rights" in just that sense, or - more technically - 'artificial' rights) A defense of a legal system will try to show that it gets these things correct. This may involve many things - perhaps showing that this particular system of rules is to the best advantage of the state and its citizens, etc.. But in particular, what we really want of our legal systems is that they be just. One part of that will be that the "rights" that are recognised by that legal system are the very same rights that people actually have. If people have a right to self-development, we would expect this to be something that the legal system recognised. So, in the common sense view, legal "rights" should simply embody the recognition of natural rights. Now for the realist bit. If we have some natural rights, this is in virtue of some particular facts about what we're like as human beings. Simple as that. Now, suppose that those facts obtain, and we do indeed have some natural rights. Necessarily theories that deny these facts and those rights are false. They do not accurately describe how things are. I think this is the truth in the claim that "natural rights are founded in a *particular* conception of human beings". Natural rights are not compatible with all and every conception of what human beings are like. So if they exist, some conceptions of what human beings are like must be false. Supposing we have natural rights, some theories will explain and elucidate why and how those natural rights obtain - and those are the theories that stand a chance of being true, other theories will obscure or even deny that and how and why those natural rights obtain - and these are the theories that will have turned out to be false. (There's something misleading about the statement too, though. If natural rights exist, they are not founded in a *conception* of human beings. They exist in virtue of certain *facts* about human beings. Conceptions and theories don't "ground" or "found" things. Theories & conceptions are attempts to recognise the way things actually are. And since we are rather fallible theory-makers, it very often turns out that the facts when they emerge, show our particular conceptions to be false.) This of course does not involve any kind of implausible or arrogant claim. It *would* perhaps be a bold (maybe arrogant) claim to think that we had infallible or exhaustive knowledge of what human beings are like. So it may behove us to be humble about our theories of human nature. But it isn't in the least bit surprising that the existence of natural rights (like the existence of quarks) is compatible with some theories and not with others. Of course, there are non-realist ways of thinking about the justification of legal systems. And some think there is something not just false but incoherent about the idea of natural rights. The point of this post is just to show that there is nothing wildly unusual or problematic about the commonsense realist way of thinking in this area. And in particular, that there is nothing problematic about thinking that not every theory or conception gets things right in the moral / legal arena. That is not to say that there are no *practical* problems getting a diverse body of citizens to consent to a legal system! Even an ideal one that gets things exactly right! J ____________________________________________ Jamie Dow Tel: +44 131 467 2115 Mob: +44 7801 033499 Email: jamie.dow at pobox.com Web: www.jamiedow.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk -----Original Message----- From: reader-list-bounces at sarai.net [mailto:reader-list-bounces at sarai.net]On Behalf Of V NR Sent: 17 January 2006 05:18 To: zainab at xtdnet.nl Cc: reader-list at sarai.net; urbanstudygroup at sarai.net Subject: Re: [Reader-list] some more questions Legal system grants legal rights to institutions, individuals, authorities, etc. Philosophical defenses are given for such a legal system. Similarly, natural rights are founded in a *particular* conception of human beings. Best, Reddy, V. On 1/9/06, zainab at xtdnet.nl wrote: > So I have some more questions now: > > What does intervention mean? > What is/are the line/s of difference/s (nuance/s) between intervention and > interference? > How does someone (institution/authority/person) acquire the right to > intervene? > > Cheers, > Zainab Questions Bawa > > > Zainab Bawa > Bombay > www.xanga.com/CityBytes > http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: From vnr1995 at gmail.com Tue Jan 17 16:21:53 2006 From: vnr1995 at gmail.com (V NR) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 02:51:53 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] some more questions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The gist of the issue is this: the so-called facts, which the existence of natural rights are postulated to explain, are of nature common to all human beings. The question is whether such nature obtains? If yes, natural rights exist; if not, they are of unicorn type. There are folks, who defends the existence of natural rights on fictionalism. For instance, http://hiphi.ubbcluj.ro/JSRI/html%20version/index/no_9/patrickloobuyck-articol.htm Recently, there appeared an article in Critical Review, which argues about incoherence of libertarian conception of natural rights; the paper is "Libertarian natural rights: Siegfried van duffel, Critical Review, 16(4). From mohaiemen at yahoo.com Tue Jan 17 20:10:51 2006 From: mohaiemen at yahoo.com (NAEEM MOHAIEMEN) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 06:40:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Politics of Image, from Frankfurt Message-ID: <20060117144051.95593.qmail@web50306.mail.yahoo.com> >From http://www.shobak.org mailing list To join, email shobak-subscribe at yahoogroups.com These are some of the texts that were presented at the just-concluded symposium on POLITICS OF THE IMAGE at Staedelschule Art Academy in Frankfurt, which I attended. Most of these texts were presented there. Hito Steyerl presented some of her work and thoughts, but this is one of her earlier essays. Migrant-rights group Kanak Attak was represented by friend and ally Sandy K (who is moving to NY this week!)-- the text here is from some other members of Kanak Attak. Finally French group Intermittent Spectacle could not make it at last minute, due to breaking event/agitations in France-- but we have included a text from them. Naeem Mohaiemen/Visible text is lecture notes-- not a coherent essay, but some elements may be useful for tactical media activists. Naeem Mohaiemen, Visible Collective http://www.disappearedinamerica.org http://www.shobak.org Jeronimo Voss, Staedelschule Flo Maak, Staedelschule +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1. Voss, Maak, Ostoya (Frankfurt): Opening Statement for POLITICS OF THE IMAGE Symposium 2. Die Weisse Blatt (Vienna) : Manifesto for an Emancipative Production of Images 3. Intermittent Spectacle (Paris): Social Rights and the Appropriation of Public Spaces 4. Hito Steyerl (London): The Articulation of Protest 5. Jeronimo Voss (Frankfurt): Neo-DANDYism 6. Naeem Mohaiemen (New York/Dhaka): Sarah Jessica Parker Effect, Beard is Making Ruckus, & Other Random Thoughts 7. Kanak Attak: Speaking of Autonomy of Migration... Introduction to: Politics of the Image - Symposium on the Boundaries of the Visible, 6th and 7th of January, Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main. Our aim in this conference is to speak about Politics of the Image. There for we invited different cultural producers from various professions. We very much welcome: Linda Bilda and Kristina Haider from vienna, representing the magazine-project „Die weiße Blatt“. A Magazine dealing with politics, art, economy, emancipatoriy critique and feminism (www.dieweisseblatt.org). Berlin based artist Judith Hopf. Who mostly works in collective forms of production using Video, Drawing, Performance and Installation. Graphic designer Sandy Kaltenborn as well from Berlin producing images for posters, books, cards and other print materials in different political contexts and campaigns, such as “Kein Mensch ist Illegal” and “Kanak Attak” (www.image-shift.net). Naeem Mohaiemen, filmmaker and digital-media activist from New York and Dhaka. He is (besides many other projects) director of a New York based collective called VISIBLE dealing with intersection of Migration Paranoia, Islamophobia, National Security Panic and questions of Nation-State Identity in North America and Europe (www.disappearedinamerica.org, www.shobak.org). Hito Steyerl, documentary filmmaker and author living in Berlin. She published filmic and written essays centred around questions of globalisation, racism and postcolonial critique and is involved in the movement of feminist migrants and women of colour in Germany. We would like to begin with a short introduction to explain our understanding of the subject. First of all we of course consider every image to be political, meaning that it always stands in a specific context of certain political power play. These reigning systems of visibility are constituted through, among other things, the implicitness of surveillance, normative body images and the reproduction of racist and sexist stereotypes as well as the aesthetizised self-representations of corporations, nations and politics in general. We see the term „Politics of the Image” or “Image Politics” as a conceptual response to different projects and discourses that occurred in the last years and which deal with the rise of every-day image production and image confrontation. Meanwhile most of scientific disciplines are busy reflecting their own production of images. There are tons of academic conferences discussing for example the imagery of medicine, the role of the pixel in biology or the image as source within sociology. Whether in these debates image-supported production of truth is critically reflected shall not be discussed here. But regarding these projects from a critical perspective certain mistrust appears. What is most disturbing about all these discussions is (especially in the german context of visual studies or “Bildwissenschaften”) the dominating question of “What is an Image?” These ontological attempts of defining the image tends to fade out political determinations and instrumentalisations within visual culture; and they barely support any critical image production. There is as well a reason to be dissatisfied with the Politics of the Image on the site of visual arts. Exhibitions with politically engaged titles and contributions (like the last Documenta or the Utopia Station) have increased within the last years. But what occurs all-to often is discomfort with different curatorial concepts as well as with certain artistic strategies. Certain projects become suspect of using the political sign loaded with social meaning purely as overaesthetizised abstract radicalism and “radical chic”. A discussion around Image Politics is rather focused on the function of images and on developing criteria and tools for an emancipatory image practice. This debate might be connected to the discussion around image-science when we ask our selves how the relation between image, text and spoken word has changed in nowadays times. But our perspective is rather focused on specific contemporary practices and the conditions of production, presentation and reception that are inscribed in these images. - Who produces images for whom? - How are they functionalised and when do they get out of control? - How far can its reception be controlled at all? - How do processes of inclusion/exclusion and outsider/insider work through images? Politics of the Image deals with the practice of production as well as with its reception. A discussion on Image Politics neither can be fulfilled in debates around image science nor art theory. It should rather be understood as a discussion beyond fixed discourses like "autonomous art" vs. "applied image production". The Artworld is not the priviliged space for this discussion, that’s why so many different positions are gathered here today. Nevertheless the potentials and limits of the institution of art should be discussed. Visual artists have always dealt with the constitution of the visible. They are visual pioneers with the supposedly longest tradition and are also, as a result of their profession deemed ‘experts in seeing’. Since modernity at the latest, the boundaries of the visible have been of special interest to artistic production. These boundaries form areas where the represented can no longer be named without difficulty and where identification can be fallable – so to speak these areas can be seen as a contact point of artists and political activists as it concerns both. Taking a perspective on these edges of visibility is of very importance for the question: what can ‘be seen’ at all under the present circumstances and which counter-imagery should it be confronted by, if any? Artistic practice has the potential to support a discussion around politics of the image with relevant contributions. But at the same time specific limits of artistic production challenge the attempt to put this potential into practice. Regarding this we see two main problems: At first it becomes increasingly obvious that the art world is more and more structured by economic criteria. This goes along with a lack of influence of critical discourses accompanying the evaluation of contemporary art as well as the eventisation of public exhibition spaces. Furthermore artistic gestures are basic homages to highly individualistic concepts of subjectivity. Individualism has to be seen as a critical statement against collective disciplinary pressure. But why should we as artist think that our radical individualism would be of any resistant power when these ideas of life nowadays fit so well with the societal mainstream of highly individualised subjects. We have to take into consideration that in certain cases the myth of the starving, unattached, autonomous artist of modernity rather functions as a glamorous and legitimizing pendant to the trend for highly insecure living conditions caused by neoliberal reforms that deregulate social security systems. These tendencies of individualisation seem to make any emancipatory organisation nearly impossible - How can we as image producers face this critically? We think a discussion on the potentials and limits of strategic cultural representations focussing on visual image productions might help answering this question. Flo Maak, Anna Ostoya, Jeronimo Voß ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Manifesto for an Emancipative Production of Images By Die Weisse Blatt (Vienna) it is not possible not to see The field of visual perception today is the most important space of production for ideologies, myths and ideas. Aesthetic representations are open for ideological inputs while image-campaigns, films and visual strategies are working to invade our perception, to mould and to manipulate it. We therefore regard it important to strengthen the emancipative intentions of visual thinking processes (Beuys). Images are consumed Images in large quantities are consumed via TV - channels, movies and the electronic and other media and the responsible industries, in their efforts to survey the human mind, reach perfection and virtuosity of manipulation to approximate the subject i. e. (that is) the consumer to the object (that is) the product and to create similarity between those two. The object – e.g. appearing in form of an image – shall project itself onto the subject and a similar process will happen to the subject. As a result the consumer starts to perceive him/herself as a merchandize. Subject and object of consumption begin to resemble each other efforts to halt this process weaken continuously. And thus issues of taste become existentially crucial. Our capacity to understand the world and society we live in are more and more defined by the above mentioned processes and have to be undermined because the gradual turning of the subject into an object dissolves their human qualities. In other words: in the transforming process towards becoming an object the legitimacy to be a human being is at stake in its core and we can state a struggle for life. The commercials continue even when radios and TV – sets are turned off The merchandized images produced by film-, media-, entertainment- and commercial-industries have something in common: they make promises and set up terms. The promises are well known: in buying and consuming a product the subject’s lusts, fun, happiness as well as his or her desires, drives, guilt, minority complexes and hurt feelings etc. shall become satisfied. The terms are even better known: to own a product the subject must work and the more urgent the desire or the longer the satisfaction should last (minutes: a chocolate bar, month: an i-pod, years: a car) the longer and harder the subject must work to attain those goods and the longer the real desires have to be harnessed to be able to transform and bind them into labour. Ha ha. Destroyed Love The drives evoked by images cannot be compensated by images. Product values boosted by images cannot fulfil the desire for an intensely loving sexuality and a creativity that means a self-reliant life. Never. The drive of destruction that among other things serves to destroy unbearable, degrading and immoral circumstances of insults and guilt is pacified by consumption. The circular course to boost the needs that can be compensated by goods with ever more needs into infinity and to create more of that out of the resource of subdued drives transforms human beings into ever unsatisfied subjects thus raising the acceptability of unpleasant and annoying social demands such as more disagreeable labour terms and more subordination. Images suggest action Every image suggests action and consensual options of representation thrust aside all alternatives. In this sense the image functions as an ideological tool to secure the thought of the majority within the dominant order. As Marx states the dominant thoughts are the thoughts of the dominant. The objectification of such thought becomes materially manifest in movies, photos, computer games etc. and thus achieves a dimension of the real. The misery of every day life and the suffering evoked by it is muted by non-representation/imagelessness. Thus the problem becomes inconceivable and appears to be irrevocable. Image production as a medium of ideology must not be underestimated especially since the permanent presence in daily life; the easy access and the replacement of reality facilitate the progressive internalisation of convenient messages. Despite the illusionary superiority of consumers to commercial messages and the media in general these industries are constantly creating a usually subconscious and therefore uncontrollable anxiousness to miss something important. Are you the solution or part of the problem? We wish to encourage an effort for a politically emancipative approach towards image production that extends the above analysis. We thereby point towards the production of images not in the sense of art but in the sense of concrete, progressive, controversial image policy intervening against the highly funded dominance of merchandized images. Commercial ads aren’t art either. The following request are directed to persons who tackle the problem of image policy critically and in an emancipative context or wish to do so in the future. For a social political emancipative image policy the following request appear essential to us: 1. Art as such cannot carry out the task of an emancipative image policy all by itself since it is already available for diverse social functions see for instance image and distinction surplus (Flick Collection), refinement of taste, opening up of new perspectives of perception, neutralization of socially deviate subject positions etc. It is a matter of taking emancipation in our own hands instead of saddling the task on art. 2. Requesting an image production that takes a pluralistic approach towards representational options that dissolves both in formal aspects and in aspects of contents clichés and role models and finds ways of representing those aspects that are almost never represented – which means ruling out the blind rehearsals of repertoires of such like as the drawn fist, the rebellious child, the picturing of flags or flag processions in public space etc. 3. Opening up a communicative space to facilitate discussions and analysis beyond subjective and culturally preformed dispositions of taste in opposing for instance favourite colour with clear assertion Raising the ability of communicative exchange in matters of representing and communicating images, depose the subject idolatry often found within informal hierarchies. 4. Assembling a toolbox containing tools of analysis as well as tools of production for purposes of emancipative image production. Recording and promoting successful image policy campaigns and strategies 5. Achieving autonomous image production by linking it to inutilizable contents whereby the image denies its convertibility into a merchandize. 6. Creating images putting up ethical and categorical issues without as often in the left presuming upon ones moral superiority in the mere postulation since that would be unproductive and remain an ambiguous method. 7. Envisioning corporate identity for political groups as a possibility for transparent representation of one’s self and finding one’s self as a productive process to enlarge (self) knowledge which may well lead to non corporate identity. 8. Using irony and self-criticism to lay open mechanisms of image production. 9. Attacking the permanent presence of visual manipulation by conformist image production by means of juristic measures and a broadened discussion on the totalising subsumption effected by commercial ads in public space and on television actually reducing individual personal private freedom (visual terror). 10. Visual information on the manipulative character and (in)credibility of images that are able to transport their manipulative intentions much more unguarded than any text. We are convinced of the basic success that a social intervention in an emancipative campaign will obtain because even the most advanced producers of image policies, even if they work for the industries depend for their inspirations just as well on ideas from outside those industries resulting from socially generated cultural achievements such as trends, subcultures and innovative cooperative accomplishments. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Hito Steyerl The Articulation of Protest [09_2002] Every articulation is a montage of various elements - voices, images, colors, passions or dogmas - within a certain period of time and with a certain expanse in space. The significance of the articulated moments depends on this. They only make sense within this articulation and depending on their position. So how is protest articulated? What does it articulate and what articulates it? The articulation of protest has two levels: on the one hand, it indicates finding a language for protest, the vocalization, the verbalization or the visualization of political protest. On the other, however, this combination of concepts also designates the structure or internal organization of protest movements. In other words, there are two different kinds of concatenations of different elements: one is at the level of symbols, the other at the level of political forces. The dynamic of desiring and refusal, attraction and repulsion, the contradiction and the convergence of different elements unfolds at both levels. In relation to protest, the question of articulation applies to the organization of its expression - but also the expression of its organization. Naturally, protest movements are articulated at many levels: at the level of their programs, demands, self-obligations, manifestos and actions. This also involves montage - in the form of inclusions and exclusions based on subject matter, priorities and blind spots. In addition, though, protest movements are also articulated as concatenations or conjunctions of different interest groups, NGOs, political parties, associations, individuals or groups. Alliances, coalitions, fractions, feuds or even indifference are articulated in this structure. At the political level as well, there is also a form of montage, combinations of interests, organized in a grammar of the political that reinvents itself again and again. At this level, articulation designates the form of the internal organization of protest movements. According to which rules, though, is this montage organized? Who does it organize with whom, through whom, and in which way? And what does this mean for globalization-critical articulations - both at the level of the organization of its expression and at the level of the expression of its organization? How are global conjunctions repre-sented? How are different protest movements mediated with one another? Are they placed next to one another, in other words simply added together, or related to one another in some other way? What is the image of a protest movement? Is it the sum of the heads of speakers from the individual groups added together? Is it pictures of confrontations and marches? Is it new forms of depiction? Is it the reflection of forms of a protest movement? Or the invention of new relations between individual elements of political linkages? With these thoughts about articulation, I refer to a very specific field of theory, namely the theory of montage or film cuts. This is also because the thinking about art and politics together is usually treated in the field of political theory, and art often appears as its ornament. What happens, though, if we conversely relate a reflection about a form of artistic production, namely the theory of montage, to the field of politics? In other words, how is the political field edited, and which political significance could be derived from this form of articulation? Chains of Production I would like to discuss these issues on the basis of two film segments - and to address their implicit or explicit political thinking based on the form of their articulation. The films will be compared from a very specific perspective: both contain a sequence, in which the conditions of their own articulation are addressed. Both of these sequences present the chains of production and production procedures, through which these films were made. And on the basis of the self-reflexive discussion of their manner of producing political significance, the creation of chains and montages of aesthetic forms and political demands, I would like to explain the political implications of forms of montage. The first segment is from the film Showdown in Seattle, produced in 1999 by the Independent Media Center Seattle, broadcast by Deep Dish Television. The second segment is from a film by Godard/Mieville from 1975 entitled Ici et Ailleurs. Both deal with transnational and international circumstances of political articulation: Showdown in Seattle documents the protests against the WTO negotiations in Seattle and the internal articulation of these protests as the heterogeneous combination of diverse interests. The theme of Ici et Ailleurs, on the other hand, are the meanderings of French solidarity with Palestine in the 70s in particular, and a radical critique of the poses, stagings and counterproductive linkages of emanci-pation in general. The two films are not really comparable as such - the first is a quickly produced utility document that functions in the register of counter-information. Ici et Ailleurs, on the other hand, mirrors a long and even embarrassing process of reflection. Information is not in the foreground there, but rather the analysis of its organization and staging. The comparison of the two films is therefore not to be read as a statement on the films per se, but rather illuminates only one particular aspect, namely their self-reflection on their own specific forms of articulation. Showdown in Seattle The film Showdown in Seattle is an impassioned documentation of the protests revolving around the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999.1 The days of protest and their events are edited in chronological form. At the same time, the developments on the street are grounded with background information about the work of the WTO. Numerous short statements are given by a multitude of speakers from the most diverse political groups, especially unions, but also indigenous groups and farmers' organizations. The film (which consists of five half-hour single parts) is extraordinarily stirring and kept in the style of a conventional reportage. Along with this, there is a notion of filmic space-time, which could be described in Benjamin's terms as homogenous and empty, organized by chronological sequences and uniform spaces. Toward the end of the two and a half-hour film series, there is a segment, in which the viewer is taken on a tour through the production site of the film, the studio set up in Seattle. What is seen there is impres-sive. The entire film was shot and edited during the period of the protests. A half-hour program was broadcast every evening. This requires a considerable logistic effort, and the internal organization of the Indymedia office accordingly does not look principally different from a commercial TV broadcaster. We see how pictures from countless video cameras come into the studio, how they are viewed, how useable sections are excerpted, how they are edited into another shot, and so forth. Various media are listed, in which and through which publicizing is carried out, such as fax, telephone, WWW, satellite, etc. We see how the work of organizing information, in other words pictures and sound, is conducted: there is a video desk, production plans, etc. What is presented is the portrayal of a chain of production of information, or more precisely in the definition of the producers: counter-information, which is negatively defined by its distance to the information from the corporate media criticized for their one-sidedness. What this involves, then, is a mirror-image replica of the conventional production of information and representation with all its hierarchies, a faithful reproduction of the corporate media's manner of production - only apparently for a different purpose. This different purpose is described with many metaphors: get the word across, get the message across, getting the truth out, getting images out. What is to be disseminated is counter-information that is described as truth. The ultimate instance that is invoked here is the voice of the people, and this voice is to be heard. It is conceived as the unity of differences, different political groups, and it sounds within the resonator of a filmic space-time, the homogeneity of which is never called into question. Yet we must not only ask ourselves how this voice of the people is articulated and organized, but also what this voice of the people is supposed to be at all. In Showdown in Seattle, this expression is used without any problematization: as the addition of voices of individual speakers from protest groups, NGOs, unions, etc. Their demands and positions are articulated across broad segments of the film - in the form of "talking heads". Because the form of the shots is the same, the positions are standardized and thus made comparable. At the level of the standardized conventional language of form, the different state-ments are thus transformed into a chain of formal equivalencies, which adds the political demands together in the same way that pictures and sounds are strung together in the conventional chain of montage in the media chain of production. In this way, the form is completely analogous to the language of form used by the criticized corporate media, only the content is different, namely an additive compila-tion of voices resulting in the voice of the people when taken together. When all of these articulations are added together, what comes out as the sum is the voice of the people - regardless of the fact that the different political demands sometimes radically contradict one another, such as those from environmen-talists and unions, different minorities, feminist groups, etc., and it is not at all clear how these demands can be mediated. What takes the place of this missing mediation is only a filmic and political addition - of shots, statements and positions - and an aesthetic form of concatenation, which takes over the organiza-tional principles of its adversary unquestioningly.2 In the second film, on the other hand, this method of the mere addition of demands resulting together in the "voice of the people" is severely criticized - along with the concept of the voice of the people itself. Ici et Ailleurs The directors, or rather the editors of the film Ici et Ailleurs3, Godard and Mieville, take a radically critical position with respect to the terms of the popular. Their film consists of a self-critique of a self-produced film fragment. The collective Dziga Vertov (Godard/Morin) shot a commissioned film on the PLO in 1970. The heroizing propaganda film that blusters about the people's battle was called "Until Victory" and was never finished. It consisted of several parts with titles such as: the armed battle, political work, the will of the people, the extended war - until victory. It showed battle training, scenes of exercise and shooting, and scenes of PLO agitation, formally in an almost senseless chain of equivalencies, in which every image, as it later proved, is forced into the anti-imperialistic fantasy. Four years later, Godard and Mieville inspect the material more closely again. They note that parts of the statements of PLO adherents were never translated or were staged to begin with. They reflect on the stagings and the blatant lies of the material - but most of all on their own participation in this, in the way they organized the pictures and sound. They ask: How did the adjuring formula of the "voice of the people" function here as populist noise to eliminate contradictions? What does it mean to edit the Internationale into any and every picture, rather like the way butter is smeared on bread? Which political and aesthetic notions are added together under the pretext of the "voice of the people"? Why did this equation not work? In general, Godard/Mieville arrive at the conclusion: the additive "and" of the montage, with which they edit one picture onto another, is not an innocent one and certainly not unproblematic. Today the film is shockingly up to date, but not in the sense of offering a position on the Middle East conflict. On the contrary, it is the problematizing of the concepts and patterns, in which conflicts and solidarity are abridged to binary oppositions of betrayal or loyalty and reduced to unproblematic additions and pseudo-causalities, that makes it so topical. For what if the model of addition is wrong? Or if the additive "and" does not represent an addition, but rather grounds a subtraction, a division or no relation at all? Specifically, what if the "and" in this "here and elsewhere", in this France and Palestine does not represent an addition, but rather a subtraction?4 What if two political movements not only do not join, but actually hinder, contradict, ignore or even mutually exclude one another? What if it should be "or" rather than "and", or "because" or "instead of"? And then what does an empty phrase like "the will of the people" mean? Transposed to a political level, the questions are thus: On which basis can we even draw a political comparison between different positions or establish equivalencies or even alliances? What is even made comparable at all? What is added together, edited together, and which differences and opposites are leveled for the sake of establishing a chain of equivalencies? What if this "and" of political montage is functionalized, specifically for the sake of a populist mobilization? And what does this question mean for the articulation of protest today, if nationalists, protectionists, anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists, Nazis, religious groups and reactionaries all line up in the chain of equivalencies with no problem at anti-globalization demos? Is this a simple case of the principle of unproblematic addition, a blind "and", that presumes that if sufficient numbers of different interests are added up, at some point the sum will be the people? Godard and Mieville do not relate their critique solely to the level of political articulation, in other words the expression of internal organization, but specifically also to the organization of its expression. Both are very closely connected. An essential component of this problematic issue is found in how pictures and sounds are organized, edited and arranged. A Fordist articulation organized according to the principles of mass culture will blindly reproduce the templates of its masters, according to their thesis, so it has to be cut off and problematized. This is also the reason why Godard/Mieville are concerned with the chain of production of pictures and sound, but in comparison with Indymedia, they choose an entirely different scene - they show a crowd of people holding pictures, wandering past a camera as though on a conveyor belt and pushing each other aside at the same time. A row of people carrying pictures of the "battle" is linked together by machine following the logic of the assembly line and camera mechanics. Here Godard/Mieville translate the temporal arrangement of the film images into a spatial arrangement. What becomes evident here are chains of pictures that do not run one after the other, but rather are shown at the same time. They place the pictures next to one another and shift their framing into the focus of attention. What is revealed is the principle of their concatenation. What appears in the montage as an often invisible addition is problematized in this way and set in relation to the logic of machine production. This reflection on the chain of production of pictures and sounds in this sequence makes it possible to think about the conditions of representation on film altogether. The montage results within an industrial system of pictures and sounds, whose concatenation is organized from the start - just as the principle of the production sequence from Showdown in Seattle is marked by its assumption of conventional schemata of production. In contrast, Godard/Mieville ask: how do the pictures hang on the chain, how are they chained together, what organizes their articulation, and which political significances are generated in this way? Here we see an experimental situation of concatenation, in which pictures are relationally organized. Pictures and sounds from Nazi Germany, Palestine, Latin America, Viet Nam and other places are mixed wildly together - and added with a number of folk songs or songs that invoke the people from right-wing and left-wing contexts. First of all, this much is evident, this results in the impression that the pictures naturally attain their significance through their concatenation. But secondly, and this is much more important, we see that impossible concatenations occur: pictures from the concentration camp and Vnceremos songs, Hitler's voice and a picture of My Lai, Hitler's voice and a picture of Golda Meir, My Lai and Lenin. It becomes clear that the basis of this voice of the people, which we hear in its diverse articulations and at the level of which the experiment takes place, is in fact not a basis for creating equivalencies, but instead brings up the radical political contradictions that it is striving to cover up. It generates sharp discrepancies within the silent coercion - as Adorno would say - of the identity relation-ship. It effects contraries instead of equations, and beyond the contraries even sheer dread - everything except an unproblematic addition of political desire. For what this populist chain of equivalencies mainly displays at this point is the void that it is structured around, the empty inclusivist AND that just keeps blindly adding and adding outside the realm of all political criteria. In summary we can say that the principle of the voice of the people assumes an entirely different role in the two films. Although it is the organizing principle in Seattle, the principle that constitutes the gaze, it is never problematized itself. The voice of the people functions here like a blind spot, a lacuna, which constitutes the entire field of the visible, according to Lacan, but only becomes visible itself as a kind of cover. It organizes the chain of equivalencies without allowing breaks and conceals that its political objective does not go beyond an unquestioned notion of inclusivity. The voice of the people is thus simultaneously the organizing principle of both a concatenation and a suppression. Yet what does it suppress? In an extreme case we can say that the empty topos of the voice of the people only covers up a lacuna, specifically the lacuna of the question of the political measures and goals that are supposed to be legitimized by invoking the people. So what are the prospects for the articulation of a protest movement based on the model of an "and" - as though inclusion at any cost were its primary goal? In relation to what is the political concatenation organized? Why actually? Which goals and criteria have to be formulated - even if they might not be so popular? And does there not have to be a much more radical critique of the articulation of ideology using pictures and sounds? Does not a conventional form mean a mimetic clinging to the conditions that are to be critiqued, a populist form of blind faith in the power of the addition of arbitrary desires? Is it not therefore sometimes better to break the chains, than to network everyone with everyone else at all costs? Addition or Exponentiation So what turns a movement into an oppositional one? For there are many movements that call themselves protest movements, which should be called reactionary, if not outright fascist, or which at least include such elements easily. The movements this involves are those in which existing conditions are radicalized in breathless transgression, scattering fragmented identities like bone splinters along the way. The energy of the movement glides seamlessly from one element to the next - traversing the homogeneous empty time like a wave moving through the crowd. Images, sounds and positions are linked without reflection in the movement of blind inclusion. A tremendous dynamic unfolds in these figures - only to leave everything as it was. Which movement of political montage then results in an oppositional articulation - instead of a mere addition of elements for the sake of reproducing the status quo? Or to phrase the question differently: Which montage between two images/elements could be imagined, that would result in something different between and outside these two, which would not represent a compromise, but would instead belong to a different order - roughly the way someone might tenaciously pound two dull stones together to create a spark in the darkness? Whether this spark, which one could also call the spark of the political, can be created at all is a question of this articulation. Thanks to Peter Grabher / kinoki for calling attention to the films. Translated by Aileen Derieg 1Showdown in Seattle, Deep Dish Television. USA 1999. 150 min. 2This is not intended to imply that there is any film that could take over this work of mediation. However, a film could insist that this cannot be replaced by simple adjurations. 3Ici et Ailleurs, Jean-Luc Godard, Anne-Marie Mieville, France 1975. 52 min. 4And what does "Here and Elsewhere" mean now, if synagogues are burning in France? ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ GlobalProject / Coordination des Intermittents et Précaires d'Ile de France Spectacle Inside the State and Out Social Rights and the Appropriation of Public Spaces: The Battles of the French Intermittents [2004] The strength of a political movement is found not only in its ability to reach a concrete objective. These kinds of successes depend mostly on the economy of power relations. The strength of a movement reveals itself more in its potential for raising new questions and providing new answers. And this much is certain: the battles of the precariously employed French cultural workers have raised new questions demanding new answers.1 A new regulation has been in effect in France since 1 January 2004. The agreement provides for the cancellation or reduction of the claims of hundreds of thousands of unemployed people. Those that this applies to are the so-called intermittents du spectacle, "independent" cultural workers. Prior to this there was a separate regulation for them, the so-called "cultural exception". Under this regulation, cultural workers in between two productions with no income were paid from the unemployment fund – under the condition (which was already difficult for many to fulfill) that they could prove 507 hours of working time for a total of twelve months. This resulted in a twelve-month claim to unemployment benefits. However, since businesses and three unions signed the "Protocol Unedic" on a new regulation of unemployment insurance last summer, the regulation above is no longer valid since the beginning of this year. Now the same number of working hours has to be proven in eleven months, and then unemployment benefits can only be claimed for eight months. This means that 35% of those who could previously claim benefits are no longer entitled to them. "We are performers, interpreters, technicians. We are involved in the production of theater plays, dance and circus performances, concerts, records, documentary and feature films, TV shows, Reality-TV, the evening news and advertising. We are behind the camera and in front of it, on stage and backstage, we are on the street, in classrooms, prisons and hospitals. The structures we work in range from non-profit projects to entertainment corporations listed on the stockmarket. As participants in both art and industry, we are subject to a double flexibility: flexible working hours and flexible wages. The regulation on the insurance and unemployment of the Intermittents du spectacle originally arose from the need to secure a continuous income and cushion the discontinuity of employment situations. The regulation made it possible to flexibly arrange production and ensure the mobility of wage-dependent persons in between different projects, sectors and employments."2 And ... action! The Intermittents resisted with demonstrations and spectacular occupation and strike actions throughout the summer of 2003. Numerous cultural events had to be canceled or were turned into discussion forums; one evening, activists even succeeded in interrupting the broadcast of the evening news from the public television channel France 2. Organized in local coordinations networked throughout the country, the Intermittents raise the question of precarious employment, but also beyond the realm of cultural production. Their battles are about more than just the demand for payment. They attack not only a legal or economic relationship of subordination with regards to a public or private employer. Instead, they show us that it is a matter of attacking the foundations of the production of public goods such as education and culture, along with the institutional procedures and utilization technologies that go with 1Revised and expanded translation of an article from global. Global Project – Paris: L'Europe est à nous, special edition for the ESF 2003. The Italian newspaper is linked with a transnational Internet project: www.globalproject.info. 2Quotations in italics are from the declarations of the Intermittents et Précaires d'Ile de France. Cf. Jungle World 26 and 32/2003. http://www.republicart.net 1 them: the funding of culture, the distribution of access rights, and finally the production of consumer-subjectivities through schools, cultural industries and media. "For us, this conflict led to a more in-depth reflection about our professions. In an era when the utilization of labor is increasingly based on individuals bringing themselves into their work with all their subjective resources, and in which the space afforded to this subjectivity is increasingly limited and formatted, this battle represents an act of resistance: we need to reappropriate the sense of our work at a personal and collective level." The cultural and communication industries are not just new fields of capitalist accumulation, but they also produce desires, beliefs and emotions in the control societies. Here the Intermittents occupy a nexus between these industries, the production of the public sphere and the consumers of the various cultural industries. In principle, it is no longer possible to speak of a "special position of culture": first of all, because cultural practices have long since become an integral component of capitalist production. Secondly, because the production of emotions precedes material production. The consumer-subjectivity produced through marketing, advertising, communication policies and artistic practice is a fundamental precondition for the cultural industry, and yet it cannot be limited to utilization by the cultural industry. The unemployment "reform" with its implicit promotion of corporate art accelerates the standardization and norming of this generalization of cultural production and consumption. "The new regulation only spares one category of wage-dependent persons, namely the group with regular contracts. Originally the point was to ensure a continuity of income in the fields, where the logic of profits does not come first. Now only the most profitable companies – especially those in the audiovisual industry – are able to continue to profit from employees, who are under more pressure than ever to accept the 'contents' and working conditions of the proposed employment." As both the actors in and those affected by this situation, the Intermittents raise the question of possibilities for escaping this capitalist occupation of the emotions and challenge us to more thoroughly examine contemporary forms of exploitation. As industrial capitalism appropriates natural raw materials and labor power in order to exploit them for the production of material goods, contemporary capitalism seizes cultural and artistic resources to subordinate them to the logic of profit – yet without bearing the costs of production. "As an assault on collective rights, this 'reform' introduces a specific idea of the cultural exception: a showcase art with its especially promoted exemplary projects on the one hand and an industry of standardized culture on the other, which is capable of competing in the world market." For a Generalization of the "Cultural Exception" ... In the course of the movement of the Intermittents, hotel and restaurant owners and merchants from Aix-en-Provence took legal action against unknown persons. The cancellation of the "festival d'art lyrique" by its director due to strikes by the Intermittents led to a 30% loss of profits for the local tourist industry. Together with the cultural and communications industries, the tourist industry is most desirous of cultural and artistic resources: of traditions, ways of living, rites, world views, as well as festivals, theater and art works of all kinds. The tourist industry colonizes public goods such as art works, architecture, landscapes or historical city centers, appropriates them at no cost and changes their status: from "human heritage" to the private inheritance of the industry and tourism. A walk through the historical city center of any European city suffices for us to understand how the transformation of the experience of time and space into commodity form is carried out. This is not only a tremendous reduction of the social public sphere to the coupled terms "provider" and "customer". In addition, a huge amount of labor is utilized without any financial compensation. "In the strict perspective of accounting on which the new regulation is based, employment is the only basis for calculation; only the amount is paid that corresponds to the social security contribution. The portion of socially produced wealth that goes beyond this is not taken into consideration." In principle, it is possible to advocate for social rights as cultural workers from two directions. One way would be to insist on the "cultural exception" in the sense of a professional privilege. Another would be to http://www.republicart.net 2 understand the insurance of artistic precariousness as an example for all those precariously employed, thus inscribing one's own, initially relatively limited demands into the battle for social rights. "Is it not symptomatic that inroads are systematically being made in what could be a model for other categories of precariousness? Developing a model for unemployment insurance based on the reality of our practices is a basis for an open discussion of all the forms of reappropriation, of the dissemination and the spread of this battle into other areas." The latter perspective additionally makes it possible to separate the general characteristics of post-fordist working conditions from the neo-liberal rhetoric of individualization, making this visible as a terrain of political battles. "Our demands have nothing to do with a battle for privileges: flexibility and mobility, which are becoming a general requirement, must not lead to precariousness and misery. The development of a concept of unemployment compensation that recognizes the reality of our work, in other words the continuity of the activities and the discontinuity of payment, opens the door for forms of reappropriation and circulation." ... and the Appropriation of the Social The battles of the Intermittents from last year call on us to raise new questions and to find new answers. The point is to subvert the subordination to the conditions of public or private "work", to propel the production of public goods outside the realm of their utilization by capital, and finally to decouple productive time from payment and thus secure access for everyone to segments of life not under surveillance. It is a matter of canceling out separations: between the invention and the reproduction of cultural goods, between producers and users, between experts and amateurs. The Intermittents' battle for social rights, specifically for a state-guaranteed system of social security, is a precondition for this, precisely because it goes beyond this demand, when it rejects the reproduction of state-conform subjectivities, the division into "artists" and "other precariously employed persons" and conjoins the assurance of social rights with the battle for the social appropriation of public goods. The demands posed to the state thus serve to create a new public sphere: a sphere that is no longer determined by the state. "Only collective social rights can guarantee the freedom of persons, also the continuity of work outside of periods of employment, also the realization of the most improbable projects, thus guaranteeing diversity and innovation. Dynamics, inventiveness and daring, which characterize artistic work, are based on the purposeful independence attained through interprofessional solidarity and the sustainment of acceptable living conditions." English translation by Aileen Derieg based on the German translation by Michael Sander http://www.republicart.net 3 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Neo-DANDYism By Jeronimo Voss To the bourgeois You are the majority – in number and intelligence; so you are power, which is justice. Some of you are learned, some landed; the glorious day will come when the learned will become landed and the landed learned. Then your power will be complete, and nobody will protest against it any longer. Charles Baudelaire, The salon of 1846 I applied to study communication design, was rejected, subsequently drew even more avidly, did internships in various advertising agencies, applied again and was finally accepted a year after my first attempt. But despite the energy, time and money I had invested, I broke off my design studies after the first semester. Frustrated by the overly school manner of teaching and hostility to experimentation, the permanent stress in the agency, the daily failure to meet the demands of my effective everyday routine. There may be many reasons to study art – mine was basically: no more work! And I don’t believe I am alone in that. I expected to get something else from art. Art was something I saw as a means of being engaged in something that was removed from the general utilization dogma, being independent, making my own decisions, winning recognition with what really interests me and above all never again doing wage-labour – for any boss, agency, firm or factory. Ofcourse, I also had reservations about the art world, considered it to be elitist, exclusive and undemocratic – but I was fairly sure that here other criteria applied. Though I turned out to be right on several points, in others I was thoroughly disillusioned. Studying fine arts really is an extremely relaxing affair: there is no strict syllabus, hardly any pressure to perform, in fact no reason to get stressed out – a Bohemian lifestyle at its best. But for all that there is pressure here too and though it is more subtle it is all the more efficient. There is nobody to scream at me about deadlines for submitting the PDF files for the Karstadt shoe ads. Instead, I am the one to whisper my deadlines to myself: How long will they continue to pay my grant? How long have you been studying already? What happens after that? What is with the next project for your portfolio? Etc. etc. Plus, there are lots of things to deal with - 24 hours a day: Attending exhibition openings, producing art, making contacts, cultivating, socialising etc. The toughest amongst us claim they can manage on five hours’ sleep and to be addictive to coffee at least. Today, art production appears to be like any other freelance job. And that being the case you are subject to great economic insecurity and instability thanks to the total lack of regulations with regard to your rights in uncontinuous work context, such as the existence of a union. That was always the case for artists. Indeed, those in question have always demonstrated scant or no enthusiasm for any forms of organization. Rather, despite all the statistical evidence (to the contrary) everyone hopes their career will be extraordinary. Those that fall by the wayside are primarily those who have the greatest need of protective agreements such as single parents or people whose age and/or health prevents them from working flat out. And if you fail as an artist you fail across the board, not only financially on account of your inadequate social protection; your failure takes in the entire system you have constructed for yourself comprising 24 hours of art, love of art and living art. But at this point hardly anyone would admit to failure, but would waiter/ress their way through life, keep going on part-time jobs and rehabilitate themselves to the stage when they achieve their deserved success. If I do what I do with passion, identify with it completely and would not even consider ever doing anything else, would I talk of that as ‘work’? Would I relentlessly negotiate a price for this ‘work’, if I actually enjoy doing it, because it seems I do it for myself to all intents and purposes? Would I, if necessary, refuse to ‘work’ in order to exert pressure? Strike? Against whom? What is the meaning of leisure time when being an artist is a full-time job – even if those things that need doing are totally un-artistic such as all those everyday tasks involved in being a social being - caring for yourself and caring for others. It is obvious to see art not only as an opening to a celebrity career but also as an alternative to wage-labour. The hegemonistic understanding of artistic production ever since constructed its practice within distance to its own utilization. In line with such an interpretation art is viewed as an homage to the free individual’s inventive potential. As such, art continues to be the very own space of evolvement of the myth of singular authorship even though from time to time there are isolated attempts to replace it by the myth of its own abolition. In their book Le Nouvel Esprit du Capitalisme (The New Spirit of Capitalism) Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello describe the call for individual freedom implicit in this artistic model of life to be a fundamental model of emancipatory critique. As the authors see it, the indignation-motive of “artistic critique” is rooted in the lifestyle pursued by the Parisian bohemians of the early 19th century. They cite Charles Baudelaire as a representative of the unattached intellectual and artist, “whose embodiment in the figure of the dandy – with the exception of self-production - stylizes non-production and the culture of uncertainty as the highest ideals”. As a narcissistic, eccentric super individualist the dandy despised the bourgeoisie, which accompanied the rise of capitalism, found its barbaric obsession with profit to be in poor taste and encountered it with individualized, aesthetic transgression and aristocratic distinction. The book ventures to formulate a sociology of the criticism of capitalism since 1968, and follows the transformation of various forms of criticism in late capitalism. Boltanski and Chiapello describe how the indignation-motives of artistic critique are reflected in student movements, during the hippy era as well as in the intellectual and artistic avant-garde of the post-war period. With demands for autonomy, authenticity and creativity, as well as through artistic actions that went beyond the classic concept of artwork they attacked the consumerist nature of the welfare state, the discipline of the factory, bureaucratic rigidity and the hierarchy of power in industrial societies. The political movement of 1968 - particularly as it occurred in France – is interpreted as the combination of artistic critique and the social critique of the Labor movement. However, this social criticique is based more on demands for social justice, or more precisely the demand for the redistribution of wealth and equality at a political level. Boltanski and Chiapello then proceed to postulate the theory that precisely the modification of capitalism in response to this “artistic critique” increasingly deprived the politization of life and social criticism of its roots and is the prerequisite for neo-Liberalism. Given the obvious analogies between artistic self-identification and the profile of todays de-regulated network economy together with the phenomenon of the ‘cultural turn’ confirmed by various quarters it is difficult to disagree with Boltanski and Chiapello. It is not simply that the myth of the starving, unattached, autonomous artist of modernity functions as a glamorous and legitimizing pendant to the trend for highly insecure living conditions. Artistic practices also interfuse the economies of knowledge and the social sculpture of neo-Liberalism. Pictorial competence as the basis for contemporary entrepreneurial action, gentrification as an urban policy designed to oust those on the edges of society, artists as “the nation’s experts” on deregulated social cover. In short: artistic critique – developed in Bohemian circles, consumers of mescaline lamenting the passing of the Rococo - updated by the neo-dandies of the acid culture, in the context of a global social movement; integrated within the processes of the post-1968 reorganization phase to an aestheticized ‘society of control’. From the current perspective ‘artistic critique’ is the productive rhetoric of hippy capitalism’s network economy on the one hand, and on the other effective subversion against Fordism. As such it contributed decisively to the emancipation from certain methods of exploitation and discipline to which I would definitely not like to return to. Though artistic self-identification is very much intertwined with the contemporary ideological situation, the societal potentials of cultural production are not limited within these borders. Progressing beyond complicity with the regimes of culturalized economy a large number of interesting issues arise, for instance: what can cultural representation strategies achieve (and what not) in the context of social movements? Given that life and work generally become more and more insecure and ‘precarious’, the virtual impossibility of political organization is a key problem as regards prospects for resistance. On the one hand an increasing number of social risks are borne by pseudo autonomous subjects, on the other hand the problems they have seem to be theirs alone. How can those involved in the production of culture draw on their ability to make things visble as a means of supporting social movements to meet their specific challenges dealing with people who face seemingly inevitable social fragmentation and isolation? It’s a question of these politics of the image to venture beyond a selfconstruction as a 24-hour, individualized artist. Re-examining this ideological identity created in the light of current societal circumstances would mean to contribute ones own conditions of life and the potential skills of imageproduction to the process of resistant organization in order to establish new solidary relations. “Our culture is run on carefully crafted words and images. They are given tremendous authority, and have the power to shape society's responses.” ~ Gran Fury, Good Luck ... Miss You Jeronimo Voß ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Politics Of Image: Discussion Points for Staedelschule, January 7, 2006 Visible Collective/Naeem Mohaiemen Project 1: Disappeared In America Sarah Jessica Parker Advertising is hypervisible, and forces itself into our mental space. It seems, therefore, to be the appropriate tool for making visible the most invisible segment of society. One of our inspiration moments was looking at the giant banners for the GAP Casual Fresh American Style campaign. For a brief year, the Sex & The City star was everywhere in the New York landscape. The sheer size of the banners (yet even at that magnified scale, no wrinkles were visible!) made us think of the scale of visual representations for migrant populations. Typically the visual for these workers are the vendor licenses for newspaper sellers, bagel, and fruit carts. Another variation is the hack license in the cloudy, scratched glass partition of a taxi. The maximum size of a photo in these licenses is usually a few inches. The one variation to this is when an immigrant is killed, especially if the alleged protagonist is Black, which allows a set of racial codes to be deployed. In that case, there will be a reprinted black & white grainy photograph, or a family photograph. Our idea was to take those migrants (mainly Muslim and men) who were particular targets for post 9/11 security sweeps and make them larger-than-life. The focus was first on images, then text in form of names and laws, and finally composites. The fact that there were lawyers, activists and academics associated with our collective pushed us towards the text, and especially laws. There was often a feeling that we had to focus on “hard facts” so that audiences would “believe” us and not dismiss it as “art.” The experience of being curated by, and showing with, Walid Raad/Atlas Group was an interesting experience. Our monomaniacal focus on facts contrasted at these venues with Atlas Group’s questioning of what is, or is not, a fact. The Cricket Test Another area we are exploring in this project is the issue of Identity and Citizenship. National Identity, hyphenated or otherwise, is a charged conversation in North America and Europe. Questions of “loyalty”, “belonging” and “core values” are expressed in instruments like the proposed test of “Britishness” and German Citizenship test in Baden-wurthemberg. Norman Tebbitt’s “cricket test” has returned in new forms. There is of course dissent, as when BBC viewers proposed the following satirical “Britishness” questions: What side should the port be passed on? Which breed of dog does the Queen favour? What’s in a chip butty? If you bump into someone, and it’s not your fault, do you still say sorry? What we note however is that, actions that may be characterized as racist can now be cloaked within national-security conversations. Xenophobes of the past can rebrand themselves as super-patriots who want to protect borders. Non-representational Authors One of the issues in image production is the need to locate the lived experience of the work in the author. For this project, some audiences needed to see the Collective as representing the group that is most vulnerable in post 9/11 security panic—that is Migrants and/or Muslims. First, on an objective level, this definition does not apply to all members of the Collective. Second, even if it did, our level of vulnerability is mediated by class privilege and access. In fact, the group most affected is unable to speak up precisely because of the issue of legality and citizenship. In this context, I quote from my essay Protesting While Immigrant: If a protester is arrested for any reason, no matter how minor, this will affect their naturalization application. In fact, even if the arrested person is not convicted, the arrest alone is enough to sabotage their citizenship. On the Citizenship (Naturalization) application, there is a page of questions the applicant has to answer. The relevant question here is: "Have you ever been arrested?" The question does not ask for more details-- what were you arrested for, were you convicted, etc? Being arrested for any reason, even if it is wrongful arrest, would result in a refusal of citizenship. The applicant would have to wait five years after the arrest to reapply. Collective Dynamics Finally we come to the dynamic of working in a collective, and here there are interesting dynamics between the styles of those who are working in visual arts, and those coming from a grassroots activist background. There are sometimes debates about whether the project is becoming overly aestheticized and losing its political “bite.” Another area of concern is the open-ended questions that are engendered by this medium and context. For example, even though the title of the project is “Disappeared In America”, some of our recent work and essays have looked at the context of Europe and Middle East. This is sometimes seen as taking away the pressure from the current US administration. But of course, we are not constructed as a “pressure group.” Our work is more along the line of the “butterfly wing” effect. Project 2: Muslims Or Heretics? The Beard Is Making A Ruckus This project started a year ago from a simple premise. It was a human rights project, intending to protect the rights of a minority sect inside Islam, In addition to the more commonly known variations such as Sunni, Shi’a, Sufi, Aga Khani, Ismaili, etc., the Ahmadiyas are a relatively recent sect within Islam that started during British India. Because they call their leader a prophet, some mainstream Muslim groups consider them heretical. In Pakistan, they were banned in 1974, and in Bangladesh, a movement to ban them was started in 2003. This film looked at the ways in which this issue was primarily about political power games, not about theology. On the surface, this was an uncomplicated project. However, within the post 9/11 political conversation, it was impossible for this film to be “just about” human rights. Audiences inside Bangladesh were concerned that this film would invite US meddling in some form or another. Muslim audiences outside the US expressed similar concerns that, regardless of our intention, the images here could easily be appropriated by those wishing to stereotype Muslims. A Pakistani man at a New York screening summed it up when he said: You can say what you like at the introduction to the film—how this is not about religion, but politics. But I am still left with those images of angry mobs, and what I see there is that “the beard is making a ruckus”. It is not enough to state what the intentions of the author are. Nor is being from the community itself any defense from unconscious or conscious stereotypes. I was recently re-reading Edward Said’s critique of Bernard Lewis in Orientalism: Lewis goes on to proclaim that Islam is an irrational herd or mass phenomenon, ruling Muslims by passions, instincts, and unreflecting hatred According to Lewis, Islam does not develop, and neither do Muslims: they merely are, and they are to be watched, on account of that pure essence of theirs (according to Lewis), which happens to include a long-standing hatred of Christians and Jews Lewis always takes care to say that of course Muslims are not anti-Semitic the way the Nazis were, but their religion can too easily accommodate itself to anti-Semitism and has done so. And I was struck by some of these phrases could as easily be applied to the visual impact of the mob scenes in Muslims Or Heretics? Who Is Filming Who? In the first version of Muslims Or Heretics?, there is a great deal of grainy, out of focus footage shot from a great distance. These were the footage of the anti-Ahmadiya rallies organized by militant Islamist groups. The impact on the viewer is to think of all this as clandestine work, with a subject so ferocious that they can only be viewed at a distance. But when I returned to the project after a year’s gap, and went to film a militant rally, I discovered this was far from the truth. The rally organizers welcomed the press, in fact they embraced the presence of cameras. The footage this time is up close and personal, filmed sometimes from a distance of a few feet. Repeatedly, the militant leaders would form a human chain, and then when I would approach, would yell, “Let the journalist brother through, let him through!” Similarly, at one point there were ten photographers taking pictures of the same “ferocious” protesters, and they obligingly held their poses long enough for photos to be taken. At this point, the challenge became filming anything where there was not another photographer also in the frame. Nor was this welcome limited to “local” photographers. A photographer from Reuters brusquely asked a maulvi giving a speech to lower his microphone so his face would be visible, and the man interrupted his speech to oblige. This time I also noticed, as I had not previously, that there was a camera on the truck of the rally organizers. It was filming the speeches, but at times it was also filming us, Where was that tape going, who was its intended audience? Without intending to downplay any potential threat, I became conscious of the highly theatrical nature of the enterprise of militant Islamist politics. The New York Times once described plane hijacking as auteur filmmaking with real people. Here too, the militant groups are in control of their own image production, and at times it feels that I am playing along with the script. That day, I left the rally at 4 PM, exhausted after a day of filming. But there was still an hour of daylight, enough time to take some photographs, and nothing “dramatic” had happened. The militants obliged by staging a confrontation with the police, and the next day all the newspaper photographs were from that last hour. Pictures of pitched battles, rocks being thrown and bloody faces were obligingly laid out. The militants are now very savvy about the news cycle—they know very well that speeches and marches won’t be enough to get on the news and newspapers. Of course, those of us working on these issues will continue to make films on these themes, but there needs to be more awareness of where “perceptions” and “realities” bleed into each other. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Speaking of Autonomy of Migration... Racism and Struggles of Migration Kanak Attak http://www.kanak-attak.de/ka/text/esf04.html No one right in his or her mind would argue that migration takes place in a realm of peace and freedom. No one imagines a migrant calculating the degree of utilization on the global labour market in the morning, deciding on a country of immigration in the afternoon and enjoying the fruits of mobility ever since. That's how racist and fascists would like to see it when they call us the parasites of the European welfare system. The opposite is true: The process of privileging certain migrants goes together with the exclusion of others. Whether they appear as Acts and policy statements or through checks in pedestrian precincts, in train stations and on the streets, they all steal time and space from the people. To say nothing of the attacks on life and limb, that are an increasingly everyday reality everywhere in Europe. This is not only the business of jungle law on the streets, but also one of state asylum and deportation centres. Recently it has been critized that the concept of Autonomy of migration ignores this misery and the conditions of migration. Is this true? Can we not critise racist, postcolonial and capitalist structures when we talk about Autonomy of Migration? How can we fight those who white wash and tell us that racism has watered down in modern societies? What role does racism play in Europe today? Throughout Europe, for quite some time, the current configuration of European racism is an anti-immigrant racism. Of course, we find different aspects and traditions in European states. But they ground - more or less - on two ideological schemes: the colonial and the antisemitic. This anti-immigrant-racism, also known as Neo-Racism, is far more flexible than the traditional racism that grounds on absolute categories of race and segregation. Through Neo-Racism ethnic groups are being gradually differentiated and hierarchised in everyday life practices and discourses. Far from working purely on culturalist grounds it shifts between biological and cultural patterns of explanation, ascriptions and stigmatisations. Superiority and inferiority, inclusion and exclusion are being aligned on cultural norms and then biologically essentialised - and vice versa. In this sense any configuration of racism in history is a projective conception that attempts to explain social differences, social hierachies and domination. These 'explanations' are inscribed in everyday life practices or in state regulations of populations. In the case of anti-islamism the colonial and the antisemitic scheme join perfectly: here notions of racist superiority flash in with cultural and relgious rivalry. Of course, Anti-Islamism is not a new phenomenon. For quite some decades, even centuries, it has its base in Europe. Cultural ascriptions are central here as they are aiming at the immediate visibilisation of racist defined differences. Since 9/11 the veil has become the visible sign of talk about immigration, of talk about terrorism and when they fuse one with the other. One might add that whilst Islam historically was Europe's outside enemy, jews represented the inner. In both cases the conjunction of religion and citizenship helped drawing the line between inclusion and exclusion. But racism doesn't exist without its counterpart, the struggles against it. This is not to downplay the dreadful impacts of racism, but to understand both the way racism changes throughout history and the way it constitutes the subjects of the struggles against racism. Migrants and their descendants always resisted discrimination and disfranchisement. They still do. Whether it was the struggles of housing and labour in the 1960ies and 70ies in Britain, Germany and France or struggles for payment for "sans papiers", against deportation and for Legalization from the 1990ies until today. Often, new forms of oppression against migrants can be seen as reactions to these struggles, like the administrative regulations in the 1970ies in Germany that would ban migrants from moving to certain neighbourhoods, just because these neighbourhoods were considered to be uncontrollable due to their big migrant communities. When after the end of guest-worker-recruitment in the 1970ies legal entry to Europe seemed impossible, migrants organized it nonetheless through marriage and family reunion. Migrants fake their papers, states invent new alleged fraud-resistance documents and so on. These struggles imply a certain concept of autonomy, although not in the traditional, emphatic sense. Autonomy of migration is not supposed to mean sovereignty of migrants, but rather that migrants are not simply objects of state control - that migrants defy controls and resist racist discrimination. Autonomy of migration represents the rather complicated fact that struggles of migration constitute a specific level of the political. Autonomy is thus not a tale about the new revolutionary subject called migrants, but tries to handle the contradictions related to racism and migration. By doing so we can perhaps create a third option beyond universalism and difference. Let us exemplify. One of the problems we face when fighting against racism are our own communities and identity politics. After the (re)unification of the two Germanies in 1990, the uprise of nationalism and racist attacks - hundreds of migrants or their offspring were killed, even more were injured - led to a trauma within the migrant communities. The attacks also provoked nationalist attitudes within these communities. More recently, the effects of Anti-Islamism on our communities and struggles can not be brushed aside. To cut a long story short: How to deal with veils or e.g. turkish flags, if they are part of a struggle against discrimination? In our struggles against racism we have to aim the criticism at both sides: at the racist regime of those in power and at the ethnic identity policy of those ruled over. Since racism and ethnicising have always had the function of supporting an authoritarian, homogenising formation of collectives. Would it not be possible to find a link between the autonomous tactics and struggles we have listed and an extended social, individual and collective Autonomy in this perspective of double criticism? This can not be an abstract critic from behind a desk as to how people may or may not conduct their lives. The identity policy of those ruled over always is a strategy of self-authorisation under the conditions of a misery stratified in consequence of racism. When we refer to migrant communities, we are well aware that they provide migrants with protection under the conditions of the racist regime, and that this improves their conditions of survival. This aspect is often withheld, but it is very important. However, it does not mean that everything should remain as it is in these communities. By autonomous tactics we understand something which takes place in everyday life anyway. The tactics can never be fully reduced to identity politics. Rather they have materiality in the concrete political and social living conditions. The shaping of identity and its fetters can only be set aside if internal aspects in the reproduction of living conditions are altered. That's why we plead in favour of practical criticism which uses what is already inherent in the present practices and articulates this use politically and in favour of a better life. When we talk of the Autonomy of Migration we point to the transgression of borders and a life on the base and by means of networks of migration. Just as racism can not be fought directly, we can only gain autonomy by fighting for changes in our everyday lives and against the patronising and killing at or between the borders. Be it the combat for payment of illegalized workers on a construction site in Berlin and Hamburg, be it the campaigning against racist and anti-islamic laws in Paris, be it the disappearance of a whole handball team in the south of Germany, be it the struggle for better housing conditions in Trieste, be it the support for health care of illegalised migrants in Barcelona and Tel Aviv, be it the contesting of disenfranchisment and detention camps in Ljubljana, be it the fight for insurance of houseworkers in London, be it the squatting of churches or embassies for papers in Brussels and Paris. Thus for the Autonomy of Migration an understanding of historical and current Struggles of Migration is inevitable. http://www.shobak.org To join mailing list email shobak-subscribe at yahoogroups.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From amc at autonomous.org Wed Jan 18 04:09:27 2006 From: amc at autonomous.org (amanda mcdonald crowley) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 17:39:27 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Letter to Supporters: Update on the case of Steve Kurtz and CAE (PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY) Message-ID: <55DB1E45-D197-42AC-9914-B1AEDA381362@autonomous.org> -PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY- January 17, 2006 Dear supporters of Steve Kurtz and Critical Art Ensemble, Your support is needed now more than ever. Whereas the hopes for dismissal of Steve’s case were high last fall, on Thursday we received bad news on the recommendation concerning the pre-trial motions. Although it has been over 18 months since Steve was charged with “mail fraud” and “wire fraud”—charges carrying a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in jail—he will now have to wait at least 8 months, and possibly much longer, for the final decision on these motions. (Please see http://www.caedefensefund.org for more about the case.) Magistrate H. Kenneth Schroeder recommended that all our motions for dismissal of the case and suppression of evidence be denied, with one exception: there will be a hearing on the suppression of statements made while Steve was illegally detained. (Schroeder’s recommendations also include a footnote stating that since Steve’s co-defendant Robert Ferrell is gravely ill at this point, Ferrell’s case is being held in dormancy.) Magistrate Schroeder's recommendations will next go to the Federal District Court to be heard by Judge John T. Elfvin, who will make the final ruling on the pre-trial motions, thereby determining whether or not the case will go to trial. If the motions are denied by Elfvin, Steve can choose to appeal to the next higher federal court, or go directly to trial. LEGAL DETAILS AND TIMELINE Schroeder’s recommendation cited legal precedent that “An indictment returned by a legally constituted and unbiased grand jury… if valid on its face, is enough to call for trial of the charge” [even if] “the grand jury acted on the basis of inadequate or incompetent evidence.” (Please see http://www.caedefensefund.org/announcements/order1.12.06.pdf for the full text of the recommendation.) In other words, once the legal machine is turned on, it is very difficult to turn off. Therefore, supporters should prepare for the likelihood that Steve’s case will go to trial. Within the next 10 days Steve’s lawyer, Paul Cambria, will file an appeal of Schroeder's recommendations. Steve’s lawyers will then get a hearing for their appeal of all of Schroeder’s recommendations in Judge Elfvin's court. There, Cambria will make essentially all the same arguments as at the hearing last spring before Schroeder. (For the press release detailing those arguments and more information about the case, please see http://www.caedefensefund.org/releases/051705_Release.html) This appeal hearing will probably happen in mid-summer of 2006. We will then have to wait once again for Elfvin’s final ruling on all the motions for dismissal and suppression. (There is no date for the other hearing, on the suppression of statements, but it will happen sometime within the next 60 days.) SUPPORT NEEDED MORE THAN EVER Although any actual trial is still far off, your continued support has made, and continues to make, all the difference in this case. Without your support, Steve would probably be in jail now awaiting trial. As we know, justice in politically motivated trials is won in the court of public opinion as much as in the court of law. Because of your support, we have raised the more than $200,000 necessary for Steve and Robert Ferrell’s defense. Due to the overwhelming success of this fundraising effort, there are 3 main forms of support that we now need: 1) Publicizing this precedent-setting case and its implications for artists, intellectuals, researchers and others—particularly in outlets that will reach the Buffalo population. In this regard, we are still hoping for a real investigative story into the DoJ’s and prosecuting District Attorney William Hochul’s motivations in this case. Anyone who is interested or knows such a journalist—particularly one who could spend some time in the Buffalo area—is encouraged to contact the Defense Fund at: media (at) caedefensefund.org 2) Publicizing this case wherever possible. Anyone interested in helping to publicize this case through creative means at the College Art Association Annual Conference (February 22-25 in Boston) please contact the Defense Fund at: media (at) caedefensefund.org 3) At the time of the actual trial, should one occur, helping to mobilize support for a massive demonstration in Buffalo, NY. Thank you once again for your continued support. In solidarity, The CAE Defense Fund media @ caedefensefund.org From amc at va.com.au Wed Jan 18 04:01:52 2006 From: amc at va.com.au (amanda mcdonald crowley) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 17:31:52 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Update on the case of Steve Kurtz and CAE Message-ID: <3A5F6B00-F307-42AF-9B35-8450E6DA99C8@va.com.au> -PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY- January 17, 2006 Dear supporters of Steve Kurtz and Critical Art Ensemble, Your support is needed now more than ever. Whereas the hopes for dismissal of Steve’s case were high last fall, on Thursday we received bad news on the recommendation concerning the pre-trial motions. Although it has been over 18 months since Steve was charged with “mail fraud” and “wire fraud”—charges carrying a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in jail—he will now have to wait at least 8 months, and possibly much longer, for the final decision on these motions. (Please see http://www.caedefensefund.org for more about the case.) Magistrate H. Kenneth Schroeder recommended that all our motions for dismissal of the case and suppression of evidence be denied, with one exception: there will be a hearing on the suppression of statements made while Steve was illegally detained. (Schroeder’s recommendations also include a footnote stating that since Steve’s co-defendant Robert Ferrell is gravely ill at this point, Ferrell’s case is being held in dormancy.) Magistrate Schroeder's recommendations will next go to the Federal District Court to be heard by Judge John T. Elfvin, who will make the final ruling on the pre-trial motions, thereby determining whether or not the case will go to trial. If the motions are denied by Elfvin, Steve can choose to appeal to the next higher federal court, or go directly to trial. LEGAL DETAILS AND TIMELINE Schroeder’s recommendation cited legal precedent that “An indictment returned by a legally constituted and unbiased grand jury… if valid on its face, is enough to call for trial of the charge” [even if] “the grand jury acted on the basis of inadequate or incompetent evidence.” (Please see http://www.caedefensefund.org/announcements/order1.12.06.pdf for the full text of the recommendation.) In other words, once the legal machine is turned on, it is very difficult to turn off. Therefore, supporters should prepare for the likelihood that Steve’s case will go to trial. Within the next 10 days Steve’s lawyer, Paul Cambria, will file an appeal of Schroeder's recommendations. Steve’s lawyers will then get a hearing for their appeal of all of Schroeder’s recommendations in Judge Elfvin's court. There, Cambria will make essentially all the same arguments as at the hearing last spring before Schroeder. (For the press release detailing those arguments and more information about the case, please see http://www.caedefensefund.org/releases/051705_Release.html) This appeal hearing will probably happen in mid-summer of 2006. We will then have to wait once again for Elfvin’s final ruling on all the motions for dismissal and suppression. (There is no date for the other hearing, on the suppression of statements, but it will happen sometime within the next 60 days.) SUPPORT NEEDED MORE THAN EVER Although any actual trial is still far off, your continued support has made, and continues to make, all the difference in this case. Without your support, Steve would probably be in jail now awaiting trial. As we know, justice in politically motivated trials is won in the court of public opinion as much as in the court of law. Because of your support, we have raised the more than $200,000 necessary for Steve and Robert Ferrell’s defense. Due to the overwhelming success of this fundraising effort, there are 3 main forms of support that we now need: 1) Publicizing this precedent-setting case and its implications for artists, intellectuals, researchers and others—particularly in outlets that will reach the Buffalo population. In this regard, we are still hoping for a real investigative story into the DoJ’s and prosecuting District Attorney William Hochul’s motivations in this case. Anyone who is interested or knows such a journalist—particularly one who could spend some time in the Buffalo area—is encouraged to contact the Defense Fund at: media (at) caedefensefund.org 2) Publicizing this case wherever possible. Anyone interested in helping to publicize this case through creative means at the College Art Association Annual Conference (February 22-25 in Boston) please contact the Defense Fund at: media (at) caedefensefund.org 3) At the time of the actual trial, should one occur, helping to mobilize support for a massive demonstration in Buffalo, NY. Thank you once again for your continued support. In solidarity, The CAE Defense Fund media @ caedefensefund.org From joel at well.com Tue Jan 17 23:32:42 2006 From: joel at well.com (Joel Slayton) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 10:02:42 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] ISEA2006_Call_Extended Message-ID: <84D0090A-50E7-497B-B70D-D8F59240CD0A@well.com> ISEA2006 Symposium Call for Papers, Posters and Artist Presentations Deadline Extended to January 30th More information on the Call for Participation to come! Joel Slayton Chair, ISEA2006/ZeroOne San Jose Steve Dietz Director, ISEA2006/ZeroOne San Jose -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060117/fedbcefd/attachment.html From rajeshmehar at yahoo.com Wed Jan 18 13:11:37 2006 From: rajeshmehar at yahoo.com (rajesh mehar) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 23:41:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] I-Fellow Rajesh Mehar: Introductory Posting Message-ID: <20060118074137.40529.qmail@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi all, This is the customary first post by me, Rajesh Mehar, one of the fellows of the Sarai Independent Fellowship, 2006. I am both nervous and flattered to be a part of what has come to be a crucial stepping stone for quite a few people. I live in Bangalore, am 25 years old, have a corporate MNC day-job, and fantasize about returning to my fulltime-musician lifestyle of 3 years (2002 to 2005). The title of my research research project is Exploring notions of creative ownership among contemporary musicians in India. I will reduce the burden on your inboxes by pointing you to the blog that I've created to track my thoughts and findings through these next 6 months. You can find a short description of the project itself at the userinfo page --> http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=whosemusic You can find the actual posts themselves, within the journal --> http://www.livejournal.com/community/whosemusic/ I will leave you with a point to ponder about, related to the area that my research hopes to delve into: If there was one (and only one) name that you could associate with the song, All Along the Watchtower, who would you choose, and why? (http://www.livejournal.com/community/whosemusic/696.html) That's it for now. Have a peaceful month. Regards, Rajesh. Gonna make a lot o'money, gonna quit this crazy scene. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Photos – Showcase holiday pictures in hardcover Photo Books. You design it and we’ll bind it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060117/39f534c0/attachment.html From blauloretta at yahoo.com Tue Jan 17 12:59:01 2006 From: blauloretta at yahoo.com (Gustaff Harriman) Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 23:29:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Call for Papers - Intl Seminar & Workshop on Urban Culture - Bandung 21-23 July 2006 Message-ID: <20060117072901.83523.qmail@web51001.mail.yahoo.com> News from Bandung. Regards, -Gustaff __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: PSUD_ITB Subject: Call for Papers - Intl Seminar & Workshop on Urban Culture - Bandung 21-23 July 2006 Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 18:24:24 +0700 Size: 33699 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060116/2963ac16/attachment.mht From manmeet85 at gmail.com Tue Jan 17 18:53:14 2006 From: manmeet85 at gmail.com (manmeet unity) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:53:14 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re:call for submissions Message-ID: <9fc76fcf0601170523t7bf3788evea413f80c83f2c8c@mail.gmail.com> > hey Saddaf i just wanted to find out. when is the deadline for this project. i can forward it to soem people wh may be interested but your website says that the deadline was 15th jan. let me know. thanks manmeet -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060117/39860c25/attachment.html From knsunandan at gmail.com Tue Jan 17 21:16:20 2006 From: knsunandan at gmail.com (Sunandan K.N.) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 21:16:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] First posting: 'Workshop boys of coimbatore- City and Tacit Knwoledges' Message-ID: <2a1c900c0601170746j23982e09h51756af6e5a68542@mail.gmail.com> Hello all, I am Sunandan and this is my first posting as Sarai independent fellow. I am a Malayalee and now I am doing PhD at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. I have an (much clichéd) interdisciplinary background: B-Tech in Production cum Plant Engineering, MA in Sociology and MPhil in History of Technology….. Now the research project: The very idea of city is indiscernible with some or other aspect of technology; and city is the place where technology 'happens'. If somebody wants to mention technologies in other places it could be represented only through hyphenated words: rural-technology or indigenous-technology. My attempt is to focus on this 'normalization' of the relation between city and technology. I am planning to analyze the 'informal training process' (which is usually mentioned as 'apprentice form' against professional training) of workshop boys who work in different type of workshops such as small foundries, automobile engineering etc. at Coimbatore. We know that the role of the workshop boys is critical in maintaining the transport system in any city. But they are usually not trained in the 'modern' institutional centers; and their knowledge is usually considered as tacit knowledge. I wish to explore through this study the nature of the training, the question of power in production of this knowledge and in general the question of relevance of the dichotomy of modern and nonmodern practices. The study will start with direct interaction with the workshop boys who are at different stages of their training and expertise. I will try to gather information regarding their background – formal educational, caste and economical – through informal interviews. At this stage I am also looking for the comments of workshop owners regarding their expectation and method of training of these 'technicians'. I would also like place this technical training in comparison with other type of formal trainings. In second stage I would analyze the life of the workshop boys outside the workshop. What are the expectations at home and what are their responses to those expectations? As earners, even though meager amounts, at an early age, how do they view job, leisure, city-life and politics? These are some of the questions that could be raised at this stage. The most important point I am trying to put forward is that, the two processes – their life as technicians and their life as city dwellers – are not separable. I wish to visually document some of these moments – especially of their work, and different locations of their presence – and then partially describe it through written narratives. These narratives in different Media would form the basis of this study and they themselves could become an archival source for further interpretations. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060117/ddc4ecf3/attachment.html From vikharjnu at gmail.com Wed Jan 18 13:01:12 2006 From: vikharjnu at gmail.com (Vikhar Ahmed) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 13:01:12 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] First Posting Message-ID: <3dd9e6810601172331k110a4712q8309d596e7002e98@mail.gmail.com> Hi everyone, I'm Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed and am studying journalism at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. I completed my M. A in Modern History from JNU last year and came here to postpone the decision about what I wanted to do in life and to avoid the parochial confines of academic research. At some level I've been a drifter…my graduation was in commerce and then I went on to study history (I didn't know that I would be studying history till a day before the results came out, my first choice was for another course) – but I've enjoyed the ride so far so I might even recommend it! I intend to continue research on a topic that I've explored in some detail for my M. A seminar paper. The paper I wrote was on 'Intra- Islamic Rivalry in late 19th Century and early 20th Century: A Case Study of the *Fatawas *of Sanaullah Amritsari'. In this paper I had looked at the differences that existed amongst the various sects within Indian Islam and I demonstrated how *fatawas* were used to foster these differences. In my research as an Independent Fellow at Sarai (my topic is 'Indian Print Media and it's Reportage on *fatawas*) I want to see how much the media has been sensitive when they report about *fatawas*. Do they understand what a * fatwa* is? Do they understand the role it plays in the lives of Muslims, if it plays any role at all? Why does an obscure *maulvi *issuing a *fatwa*become a newsworthy item at all? I will try to trace the history of *fatwa *reportage in the Indian print media going back to the time of the reports of the infamous *fatwa* that was given about Salman Rushdie, depending of course, on the access to archives. I will also try to look at the manner in which the whole world of *fatawas* operates and try to find out the relevance it holds for a contemporary Indian Muslim by trying to visit prominent *madrasas* across India that are affiliated to the various sects within Indian Islam. Comments and suggestions are invited… Will be more punctual with my next posting, Vikhar Ahmed. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060118/ab5313d3/attachment.html From samina at vsnl.com Wed Jan 18 16:18:32 2006 From: samina at vsnl.com (Samina Mishra) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 16:18:32 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] DELHI SCREENING Message-ID: THE HOUSE ON GULMOHAR AVENUE 30 Minutes / 2005 Hindustani & English with English subtitles SCREENING AT THE TRI CONTINENTAL FILM FESTIVAL 2006 ON JAN 23 AT 7:45 PM AT STEIN AUDITORIUM INDIA HABITAT CENTRE NEW DELHI ABOUT THE FILM Sometimes the story of a life is the story of a search to be at home. The House on Gulmohar Avenue traces the personal journey of the filmmaker through the ideas of identity and belonging. The film is set in a part of New Delhi called Okhla, where four generations of the filmmaker¹s family have lived. An area that is predominantly inhabited by Muslims. An area that is sometimes also called Mini Pakistan. The filmmaker¹s personal history is a hybrid one but she grew up as a Muslim. Set against a quiet presence of the political context in India, the film seeks an honest and deeply personal understanding of what this means ­ when is she aware of being Muslim, when does it matter to her and when is it easier to forget it. In the journey to answer these difficult questions, the film seeks out encounters with other residents of Okhla to arrive at a complex understanding of what it can mean to be Muslim in India today. CREDITS Direction Samina Mishra / Camera Mrinal Desai / Editing Shan Mohammed Location Sound S Subramanian / Music Sawan Dutta From bawree at yahoo.com Wed Jan 18 17:24:21 2006 From: bawree at yahoo.com (mamta mantri) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 03:54:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] "Tamanna", 'Pakeeza", , , photo studios on Maulana Shaukat Ali road Message-ID: <20060118115421.40050.qmail@web33104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I visited the cinema halls on Bakr-Eid. The two roads outside the seven cinema halls were crowded, not very heavily though. As they waited outside the halls, a large crowd gathered around two photo studios, ‘Tamanna’ and ‘Pakeeza’. What’s interesting about these studios is that have photo-placards of a majority of Bollywood stars. These photo- placards are the size of an average person. One needs to put ones arms around these placards and click!!!, you have just been clicked with Priyanka Chopra or John Abraham for a mere 20 rupees. I too joined the spree and got myself clicked with Salman Bhai (as they call him). While I enjoyed the entire experience and was laughing throughout, my friend kept deterring me from the act, as it wasn’t a very sophisticated place, and meant for ‘them’. These photo shops have no demarcated and separate space between the studio and reception. A dark purdah is the only means to understand the demarcation, which, by the way, is visible only when one gets in to click a snap of oneself. The wall has two to three kinds of backgrounds, flowers, scenery, a house, etc. and you can choose one. One of the studios did have a digital camera. The other one had a ‘saada’ camera. Should I think or read anything into it or simply get myself clicked myself with John Abraham next time???? what say mamta __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From bawree at yahoo.com Wed Jan 18 17:35:39 2006 From: bawree at yahoo.com (mamta mantri) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 04:05:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] pictures, religius fundamentalism??? Message-ID: <20060118120539.95466.qmail@web33107.mail.mud.yahoo.com> This happened two months ago,,, I was walking towards Sagar Restaurant from Mumbai Central Railway station on a teaching assignment again. The area is predominantly an upper middle-class and rich area, with Muslim majority, and you can see burqas and fez caps all around (pardon me for this). I pass through a telecommunication shop, which has Reliance posters (the one which has a woman with the phone and the caption reads as ‘Celebrate diwali till holi’), on the glass pane at the entrance. However, what was missing was the woman’s face, which was cut off in a very perfect manner. At first thoughts, it looks like any poster tearing event, but if looked at, closer, a very different picture emerges. When asked about the poster, the shopkeeper cited religion as the reason for the act of removing the woman’s face, and he obviously had to keep the poster as a command from the company. I was definitely very disturbed at the incident. The horrors of fundamentalism were just there. I do have clicked pictures of the same. Hoping for some responses here on,,,, __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From jumpshark at gmail.com Wed Jan 18 19:37:23 2006 From: jumpshark at gmail.com (Prashant Pandey) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 19:37:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Page 3, Making of Music/Prashant Pandey Message-ID: Remaining part of the conversation with Music Director Shamir Tandon Let's talk about your film Page 3. Were you nervous when you got the project? No I was not because I had done 100 jingles and watta babe(Rakth) which did very well. Then Lataji and Asha ji blessed the project. How was it working with Lata Mangeshkar? She is a goddess because she is Lata Mangeshkar because she is Lata Mangeshkar because she is Lata Mangeshkar (Its not a grammatical or typing error, Shamir is repeating it). She did three rehearsals with us she would arrive before most of the people. She learnt the song thoroughly. She told me "Tandonji if I make a mistake please scold me" now how can you correct Lata Mangeshkar because she never makes a mistake. She also had several suggestions we took some and we did not take some. Lata and Asha are in a different world altogether. They make us so comfortable. She has done a brilliant job. A lot of critics said that this song (Kitne Ajeeb) is a return to an old school of composing. Also you have taken care with her scales. Yes… also because she is not singing it for the young lady in the film. There is no nubile nymphet lip-synching to her. So the whole focus goes on the song and its structure and intonations. Then the song Hujoore Aala by Asha Bhosle ……… You mail a minus one track to her in U.S and she records it there and sends it to you …. We were clear that we will record that song if Asha Bhosle does it. Pressure Tactics? No its not pressure tactics…. you have heard the song? Yes. No other singer in the country can sing like that the way she has sung it.. Do you agree or not? Yes I do. She has given so many interpretation of the hook phrase Hujoor- e- aala. Yes that's her style… the harkats and the halchal that is there. You don't have to politically correct. Only Ashaji could do full justice. Tell me about the song? We called her residence and found out that she was on a U.S tour so we some how got her sons email id. We mailed him and he was very cooperative. He told us that she would be back after two months. Now we could not wait. So we asked if we put the song on internet and give you a password will you sing. To our surprise that a lady who is 70 plus. And not known to be very techno friendly agreed to do it. She said that for the first time she is going to sing a song where there is no composer, no lyric writer, no arrangers, no film director and no producer. Just a gora sound recordist(who would not understand the song)and her son. So she was singing there and it was getting recorded here. No they got the password opened the FTP link. Downloaded the minus one track and then sang it which got stored on the hard-disk of their computer and then they put it back on the internet and we opened and downloaded it here. You did not use email here? No ……if you use email it will screw your quality as there is compression. What is the password thing? Yes technologically it is possible … it's an FTP Site….You create a site…give a password… they tell you that the vocals are being loaded. So we download it here. What was the brief that you gave it to Ashaji? I said imagine that you are singing it for Helen …..That did it …The engineer there took several takes and put all of it on the site. She is such a sweet heart she gave 3 different variations for Huzoor-e – Aala…(Starts to sing all the takes). That's how this song becomes chocolate and sexy. Was there a reaction from your colleagues in this industry…. I am sure people must have said several things …. But the greatest benefit here is that if I need Asha ji or any other singer who can not come due to certain reasons I do not have to make compromises I can record my song even if they physically can not come to the studio. Why take a singer for whom the song is not tailor made? But if the singer comes to the studio then there is lots of communication that goes into making a song. There is eye contact between the singer and director and technician…. There is feedback Yes ……. I am sure in fact Asha ji told me that she could have sung it better had she been here… but that's just a hypothetical thing. You fancy doing a live take? This not my fantasy……… this is confirmed and I am soon going to make it true. Yes by doing this you could offset some the adverse impacts that the new technologies of making music have brought. Yes. Links to this Article- http://imdb.com/name/nm1340084/ http://www.24x7updates.com/FullStory-News-Asha_Bhonsle_records_in_US-ID-23386.html http://www.saindia.com/article/articleview/308/1/38/ http://www.nowrunning.com/MusicReviews/musicReview.asp?it=1705 http://in.news.yahoo.com/050618/43/5z0bg.html http://www.bollywhat.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=e83e7c5562f96114bb4515c993d7d9d0&topic=6281.msg73948 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ End of the Interview Prashant Pandey From blauloretta at yahoo.com Wed Jan 18 20:43:39 2006 From: blauloretta at yahoo.com (Gustaff Harriman) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 07:13:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Intl Confrence on Philosopy, Bandung - Indonesia, July 18-20, 2006 In-Reply-To: <20060117072901.83523.qmail@web51001.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20060118151339.21092.qmail@web51011.mail.yahoo.com> International Conference CIVILIZATION AND CULTURE Culture as Burden and Opportunity Bandung, July 18-20, 2006 I n d o n e s i a Background The increasing global interdependence today has brought with it global risks and global problems, since it is characterized also by anarchy of relations, imbalance of wealth distributions, unpredictability of its unintended consequences, divergent claims of rationality as well as contradictory certainties. In such an ambivalent “glocal” context, where terrorism seems to be the most possible act of resistance, where the destiny of the global human race is at stake and particular cultures are experienced as both opportunity and burden, it is high time to rethink the interconnection between the concepts of civilization and culture. To give an opportunity for a deeper reflection on the issue, Parahyangan Catholic University, in collaboration with the Asian Association of Catholic Philosophers (AACP), is organizing an international conference on “Civilization and Culture : culture as burden and opportunity”, July 18-20, 2006, in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. Main Aim The aims of the conference are : 1. to explore and offer new ways of thinking the identity and self. 2. to ponder over what ultimately is the most valuable for the growth of humanity in general. 3. to rethink the meaning of intellectual leadership in this context. 4. Hoping that at the end some concrete implications for action can be envisaged and recommended. Term of Reference Historically, the notion of civilization developed as a category under which various socio-cultural processes internal to the West, such as capitalism, nation-building, industry and democracy, could be gathered and understood, while at the same time providing a broader framework to interpret other different societies that Europe came in contact with. This interest soon led to the development of comparative civilizational analysis with its distinction between the pre-civilizational and the civilizational, in terms of which civilizational historiography was then set up, taking the Sumerians, the Egyptians, and so on, as the origins of civilization. And later on, along with the optimism of modernity, civilization became a normative ideal which was based on universal basic ideas such as evolution, progress, freedom or rationality. But, while it had succeeded in shaping a homogeneous world, by the end of the twentieth century the modern notion of civilization had also given rise to many forms of criticism. Post-colonial discourse and Postmodernism have disclosed the ideological as well as the fictive side behind such modern universal “grand-narratives” in which the concept of civilization is then seen as a sort of imperialism in disguise. Thus, the notions of civilization and culture carry with them an accumulated heritage of meanings, perspectives and theoretical strategies that have developed throughout the course of contemporary reflection. The concept of civilization, especially, has become a site of tension between the tendency that emphasizes universalistic images of the human race, and the tendency that emphasizes the plurality of cultures and society. And many issues related to it are basically ambiguous, such as : the interconnection between civilization and political transformation, civilization and identity, images of self-transformation behind any civilizing project, etc. The complexity of the issue is such that, while it is often regarded as the universal parameter of cultural evolution, civilization may also be viewed as harassment of human cultural wealth. And on the other hand, culture, while it is normally viewed as the repository of the best local-genius, in terms of comparative civilizational perspective could also be seen as a burden or a threat. In fact not everything in tradition or culture is worth holding on to. Therefore, further rethinking of all these is required. Time and Venue July 18-20, 2006 Savoy Homann Hotel, Jl. Asia Afrika no 112, Bandung 40261, West Java, Indonesia. Participants Philosophers from Asia, Europe, and USA Official Language English Program July 17 : arrival July 18 : - Registration - Opening Ceremony - Coffee Break - Keynote Speech: 1. Anthony Giddens (England) 2. Keping Wang (China) 3. Azyumardi Azra ( Indonesia) 4. Franz Magnis-Suseno (Indonesia) - Lunch - Session 1 - Coffee Break - Workshop : “Democracy and the Treatment of the ‘Other’ - Dinner July 19 : - Session 1 - Coffee Break - Session 2 - Lunch - Session 3 - Coffee Break - Workshop : “Civilization,Culture and Religious Bias” - Excursion + Dinner July 20 : - Excursion - Closing ceremony + Recommendation - Dinner (Farewell Party) July 21 : Departure Registration - Registration Fee : $ 150 (to be paid in cash on the first day) - Contact : 1. Bambang Sugiharto E-mail : ignatiussugiharto at yahoo.com Phone : +62-22-4205476 ext 102 +628122002133 Fax : +62-22-4205476 ext 117 +62-22-7106392 2. Slamet Purwadi E-mail : yohanes_purwadi at yahoo.co.id Phone : +62-22-4205476 ext 310 +6281320334920 - Secretariat : Faculty of Philosophy Parahyangan Catholic University Jl. Nias 2, Bandung 40117 Indonesia Steering Committee : - Dr. Bambang Sugiharto - Goenawan Mohamad - Dr. Haryatmoko - Dr. Gadis Arivia - Dr. Budiono Kusumohamidjojo Organizing Committee : - Fabianus S.Heatubun, Drs, LSL - Y.Slamet Purwadi M.A - Fransiskus Borgias Drs, LTh Event Organizer : - Wawan Juanda, “Republic of Entertainment”. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From editorial at himalmag.com Thu Jan 19 04:54:02 2006 From: editorial at himalmag.com (Editorial) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 15:24:02 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] JAN-FEB 2006 Himal Southasian Message-ID: <006501c61c86$46eb29d0$0400a8c0@carey> JAN-FEB 2006 Himal Southasian Publication Notice http://www.himalmag.com/ COVER FEATURE: Gandhi, The Southasian MK Gandhi was an 'Indian' before 1947. That makes him retroactively a Southasian, and his thoughts and deeds should be able to provide a roadmap for the entire region's political and civil society. ALSO, articles on the people's movement in Nepal and the Maldives, looking back at the Bhutani refugees, a report card on the Indian Left, the cautious India-Pakistan thaw, Nirmal Verma, interview with Tariq Ali, HK-WTO report, BIMSTEC's promise, Queen Karachi, and China in Southasia. Special report: Kashmir ka Sawaal http://www.himalmag.com/ ______________________________________________________ Himal's preferred spelling for our region is 'Southasia' as one word. See: www.himalmag.com/2005/november/editorial_note.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060118/ae391db6/attachment.html From joel at well.com Wed Jan 18 23:47:04 2006 From: joel at well.com (Joel Slayton) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 10:17:04 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] ISEA2006_Call_Update Message-ID: <40EBA665-F42C-4A8E-AE93-E62E2A9357CA@well.com> ISEA2006 SYMPOSIUM CALL FOR PARTICIPATION FOR PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS. Important Notice: We listen. There has been considerable feedback that the original Symposium call did not clearly include a call for Panel proposals. We have revised the call so that proposals for practice-based panels are encouraged. The deadline for submission of proposals for ISEA2006 papers, artist presentations and posters has been extended to January 30th to accommodate this change. Please note updates to the Symposium Call description. < http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/symposiumcall/> ISEA2006 seeks paper and presentation proposals responding to the Symposium themes of Transvergence, Interactive City, Community Domain or Pacific Rim. This is the only call for papers and presentations that there will be for ISEA2006. What tactics, issues and conceptual practices expose or inform the distinctions of these subject terrains relating to contemporary art practice? What theoretical analyses illuminate art practice engaged with new technical and conceptual forms, functions and disciplines; provide for innovative strategies involving urbanity, mobility, community and locality; examine the role of corporations, civic cultural organizations and their relationship to strategic planning; serve to expose new portals of production and experience; and provide for provocative analysis of contemporary political and economic conditions? The ISEA2006 Symposium is discussion and conversation based. This orientation is intended as a break from the tradition of reading academic papers and the formalities of panels and is the result of a month-long online discussion with 21 international participants (see list below). All sessions are moderated, include respondents and are designed to encourage audience participation. Session formats will emphasize questioning, debate and provocation. Papers, abstracts and poster texts will be pre-published on the web and in print. There will be a pre-symposium online public forum designed to encourage interaction between symposium presenters and the public to provide for discussion and debate. We are seeking proposals for papers, artist and poster session. SUBMISSION PROCEDURE FOR OPEN CALLS You must login and create a submission using the official ISEA2006 submission tool. http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/register/submission.php Open: November 15th, 2005 Closed: January 30th, 2006 The ISEA International Program Committee will evaluate submissions. On the Submissions Call Page be sure to: Select "Symposium" from the CALL pull down menu Select the theme your are responding to from THEME pull down menu SYMPOSIUM THEMES INTERACTIVE CITY: http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/thematic.html#interactive http://www.urban-atmospheres.net/ISEA2006/ There is an invisible city growing among the growth of the megacity, and it is the electromagnetic, hertzian spectrum that flows ceaselessly with data about and from and between us, but which is always activated by the interfaces of commerce and government-cell phones, surveillance cameras, marketing databases, navigation systems that will alert us to a nearby sale. We imagine the city itself as an interface, which accesses the future, the past, the distant, the present, the communal, the individual in marvelous ways that allow us to enjoy the 'opaque and fictitious thickness' of an invisible city made visible. PACIFIC RIM: http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/thematic.html#pacific http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/prnmscall2/ The political and economic space of the Pacific Rim represents a dynamic context for innovation and creativity framed by issues of economic globalization, isolationist nationalism, regional integrations and environmental change. The concept of a Pacific Rim is that of a complex geo-political-economic framework that necessarily includes a vast network of city-states, regions and their associative relationships that exist beyond the mere geographic location or assignment of populations. Artists, designers, theorists, cultural producers, researchers, urban planners and creative strategist responsive to the rapidly transforming cultural ecology of Pacific-Asia conditions are invited to submit proposals that serve as platforms for discussion and debate. TRANSVERGENCE: http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/thematic.html#trans http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/transvergence/index.html Transvergence goes beyond the disciplinary. Creative interplay of disciplines to catalyze artistic, scientific, and social innovation is evidenced by decades of multi-/ pluri-, inter-, and trans- disciplinary discourse and practice. The models of the think-tank, media lab and research centre have shown their limits since the 80s and 90s, as have tactical media activism tied to the logic of events, and NGOs facing the donor system's arduous accountability requirements; university research is often encumbered by best- practice driven managerial culture, and 'creative industries' clusters are subject to economies of scale and uneven divisions of labour. ISEA seeks new visions of organizational and participatory models as structures of possibility for transvergent practice. COMMUNITY DOMAIN: http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/thematic.html#community http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/communitydomain1 The Community Domain theme stands in relation to contemporary debate about 'Public Domain 2.0' (Kluitenberg, 2003), but emphasizes the idea of domain from a grass roots perspective and the idea of community starting with the individual rather than the demographic. In other words, the goal is not to train people to become artists but to use digital and networked technologies to allow people to participate in the creation of their own stories - to become producers rather than only consumers. SYMPOSIUM STRUCTURES AND CALLS There are three types of Calls for Participation: Papers Posters Artist Presentations – including panels CALL FOR PAPERS: All accepted papers will be part of a pre-Symposium online discussion. Papers accepted will be pre-published on-line with presentations at the Symposium limited to 10-15 minutes to encourage moderated discussion among the panel and with the audience. Paper presenters will be grouped thematically to encourage discourse that presents divergent perspectives and views that serve as a catalyst for conversation. Submission of proposal abstracts: January 30th, 2006 Notification: March 15th, 2006 Abstracts due: April 1, 2006 On-line forum: April 15-May 15, 2006 Final manuscripts: June 15, 2006 Papers published: August 1, 2006 Abstracts of accepted proposals will be posted online April 15. A one-month online pre-symposium public discussion forum will feature discussion with the authors of the accepted proposals in one week sessions dedicated to each symposium theme. Draft full manuscripts will be pre-published online beginning July 1st for Symposium attendees to be able to read prior to the Symposium. Authors must commit to having papers available for publication by June 15, 2006. Print publication TBD. CALL FOR POSTERS: Poster presentations provide the opportunity to showcase individual or group projects or research of excellence. ISEA2006 will integrate accepted Poster submissions in a special Poster Session as part of the main track of Symposium activities. While Posters will be on view throughout the Symposium, the Poster Session provides a focused, featured platform for the sharing of creative, research, scholarly or community based initiatives with Symposium attendees. The Poster Session is a special feature of the main Symposium track. We strongly encourage submissions of projects and research that would benefit from the opportunity this format and exchange enables. Submission for Posters: January 30th, 2006 Notification of acceptance: March 15th 2006 Posters submissions must be presented in a standardized format. Posters are 4 x 5 ft. and must be in form that can be attached to presentation boards at the Symposium. A limited number of standard, networked computer stations will be available to complement the posters. CALL FOR ARTISTS PRESENTATIONS and PANELS: Artists Presentations are organized into 50-minute sessions. These are open content presentations for the presentation of artwork, projects or research initiatives. Sessions can be organized as individual presentations, panels or in any appropriate format. Presentations do not have to be specific the Symposium themes. We recognize, of course, that the Artist Presentations are inadequate to fully present one's work, and we encourage artists to present paper and poster proposals as well as work (We especially encourage artists whose work has been accepted to the Symposium and Festival to submit a presentation proposal. Submissions should include a brief description of the proposed presentation, inclusive work and participants along with appropriate documentation. Submission of proposals for artist presentations: January 30th, 2006 Notification: March 15th, 2006 Artist Presentations will be Webcast live and also available as podcasts immediately following presentation. OTHER CATEGORIES OF PARTICIPATION There are five additional categories of Symposium presentations that contribute to the overall scope of Symposium proceedings: Keynotes, Emergent Topics, Summit Presentations, Organizational Meetings, and Break Out Rooms. These are described below. Presenters in these categories will be determined by ISEA2006. They may be selected from submissions for Papers, Posters, and Artist Presentations - including Panels, but please, except for Organizational Meetings, it is not possible to submit directly in these categories: Keynotes: Keynote presentations are invited featured speakers. Sessions include a respondent/moderator and have extended opportunities for audience interaction. Emergent Topics: Dedicated sessions on day 3-4 of the Symposium that are a direct response to the discourses, topics and interactions stemming from days 1-2. Speakers and topics will be identified through a ballet system involving all Symposium participants and audiences. Summit Presentations: There are four pre-symposium Summits focused on special topics: The Pacific Rim New Media Summit hosted by San Jose State University; Interactive City hosted by Intel Berkeley Lab; Creative Communities Forum hosted by the City of San Jose; Artists, Corporation and Policy hosted by Montalvo Arts Center; and Technology Ethics and Environment hosted by Santa Clara University. Each will have a dedicated session for presentation of research, projects and analysis outcomes. Organizational Meetings: Provision for meeting times and spaces for international cultural organizations, institutes and programs to host meetings specific to their constituency. Joel, don’t we want people to be able to request these? To request an Organizational meeting please email ISEA2006 directly. Break Out Rooms: Break Out Rooms provide for discussions and emergent conversations stemming from Symposium interactions. These are self- organizing sessions based on Symposium interactions and trajectories. - Other Calls: Please note, Calls for Workshops and Tours are open until Jan 30th. See http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/calls.html. The structure of the 13th International Symposium for Electronic Arts was discussed and outlined in an invited online discussion forum and finalized by a Local Host Committee. An International Program Committee will jury selections. SYMPOSIUM DISCUSSION FORUM Joel Slayton Steve Dietz Alex Adriaansens Peter Anders Andreas Broeckmann Danny Butt Steve Cisler Nina Czegledy Sara Diamond Ken Goldberg Honor Harger Doug Kahn Patrick Lichty Kim Machan Amanda McDonald Crowley Gunalan Nadarajan Marisa Olson Christiane Paul Julianne Pierce Trebor Scholz Ana Serano Rejane Spitz Carol Stekenas Mark Tribe SYMPOSIUM LOCAL HOST COMMITTEE Joel Slayton Steve Dietz Jonathan Berger Natalie Bookchin Geoffrey C. Bowker Danny Butt Laura Esparza Peter Lunen Feld Ken Goldberg John Kreideler Margaret Morse Gunalan Nadarajan Sally Jane Norman Marisa Olson Narendra Pachkhede Christiane Paul Eric Paulos Huan Sauss Trebor Scholz Carol Stakenas Eddo Stern Mark Tribe Rob van Kranenburg Victoria Vesna Steve Wilson INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE To be announced. Co-Chairs: Steve Dietz and Joel Slayton IMPORTANT DATES Submissions Due January 30 Notification of Acceptance March 15th Abstracts April 1 Online Forum April 15 - May 15, 2006 Papers due June 15 Papers published August 1 Summits, Workshops Tours August 7-8 Grand Opening Night August 8 ISEA2006 Symposium August 9 - 13 For help or questions: iseahelp at cadre.sjsu.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060118/b6aacdef/attachment.html From chauhan.vijender at gmail.com Thu Jan 19 12:07:47 2006 From: chauhan.vijender at gmail.com (Vijender chauhan) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 12:07:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Regularity In-Reply-To: <3691.219.65.11.126.1137422257.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> References: <3691.219.65.11.126.1137422257.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Message-ID: <8bdde4540601182237y1a2eaebdw8848b152526689f7@mail.gmail.com> Hi all, Issue of negotiating space and slipping into regularity definitely defines city creatures. The comfort Zainab experiences in 'anonymity of space' is what in my opinion characterises this regularity. Yes we all are squats, we actually try our best 9and it involves conflicts) to appropriate the space (and changes therein) we encounter in such a way so as to be able to enjoy the 'freedom to go unnoticed'. Here this freedom is usually shaken when inertia of space is disturbed- so if Metro is introduced in Delhi or new coaches in Mumbai local, it means new space- new challenge to negotiate space and island of anonymity is to be rediscovered. Glass dream part of your writing is a jewel. Please keep writing for our sake. On 1/16/06, zainab at xtdnet.nl wrote: > > Jaunts on Regularity / Regularity Jaunts > > Street lights emitting an orange glow are still keeping the city aglow. > It's a bit chilly. The sky is foggy. There is a semblance of winter in > this city of dust, grime, heat and dreams. > (Time: 7 AM) > > I set out to explore notions of locality and regularity through the local > train network this morning (and soon I may become one of the regulars, of > the regularity regime which provides a framework for existence in the > city). > > I walk down the streets. Coming from the front is a short smiling man > dressed in black athletic clothes. I realize he is the watch guard of our > building, Kadam. Soon he will wear his uniform and settle in his regular > regime. > (Uniforms and the city … name tags … regularity …) > > I walk past the pavement market of Byculla. I nearly trample over a little > flyer on which are pictures of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and a bearded man, > smiling, and advocating inter-faith harmony. I somehow cannot care for > inter-faith harmony right now because I am in a rush to board the train > > (like some of the millions in the city who are too involved in the > everyday business of travel-work-travel-home – cannot miss the train!!!). > > As I walk down, I notice that the pavement dwellers are still asleep > (and I wonder about their notions and practices of regularity). > > I see a woman who has cuddled up in her own body and has made enough space > on the hessian mattress for a roadside dog (who is a regular there). > > I now understand what the term squatting means. And I realize that > squatting is not something which only pavement dwellers, hawkers and slum > dwellers indulge in. Squatting is also a mental phenomenon. 'Citizens' and > 'commuters' squat in the local trains. Mr. Lalchandani and his family > squat in their little house in Marine Drive. I squat in my one-bedroom > house with my parents. At every moment, we are squatting, negotiating, > transforming and producing space, irrespective of whether the space is > public, private or personal. Yet, I can't seem to understand what makes us > so harsh towards slum dwellers, pavement dwellers and hawkers? What is it > about them or their lifestyle which irks us, bothers us, disgusts us (and > produces conflicts over rights and space)? > > Design and Space – transforming regularity and negotiations over space > At Byculla railway station, the train arrives. It is the 'new train' where > seats are meant for two persons and there is ample standing space. The > design of the train is somewhat like the modern metro, except that the > doors are perpetually open in this case. The women are kind of surprised > at this design (and cleanliness of the train). There is a mental > readjustment to space. Somehow, I am accustomed to the old design which is > dark and mundane. The space in the older design is intimate and the > negotiations for space are tough. The older design also provides an added > sense of anonymity which the new design does not afford. Too much standing > space is not what commuters are used to. The confusion in the mind (and in > the biological patterns of regularity) is how to use the extensive passage > space, how to organize, how to negotiate (and women just want to sit > because they enter the trains tired in the morning after performance of > morning chores). > > At each station, women who enter the compartment are a bit frazzled and > surprised before they settle down (shifts in regularity …). At Dadar > Station, vendor women enter the train. An old woman is too surprised at > the design of the train. She is amazed, befuddled and in awe. > Gaadi ata peeshal jhaali (Train has become special) > She continued moving about, wondering where to settle down. > Gaadi ata english vatayla lagli (Train appears to have become English), > she said loudly. > Ultimately, she settled down in one corner near the door. > > The metal handles in the train are bright, sparkling white metal. But they > are a bit too high to reach. Amidst the open passage space, I can watch > women engaged in their everyday activities. > Students are studying. > Some women are listening to cell phone radio. > Some are just there, watching around here and there, as and when. > One woman in front of me is reading her prayer book. The nail paint on her > fingers is scratched out. She is concentrated and focused on her prayers > (praying being one of the critical nuances of regularity framework among a > segment of women on the trains). > (The one sitting next to her is peering inside her prayer book, perhaps as > a confirmation of her faith!) > And then there are some of us who are thinking, indulged in existential > angst. > The woman in front of me has a somber and grim look, but it appears that a > flurry of thoughts are flowing below the exterior. > I am thinking of the guy in my life presently. > The praying woman who is now finished with prayers has a calm exterior > over her. > A thought crosses my mind – does the framework of regularity provide a > calm, superficial exterior? What happens when this exterior is disturbed? > What happens when violence hits the city? What are the phenomena of > violence in the city? > (I am itching for answers …) > > Glass Dreams > One hawker enters the compartment. She is selling food stuff. She makes > her first sale and brings out her pursue from her blouse. She touches the > ten rupee note on her forehead, suggesting the auspiciousness of the first > sale of the day. I am watching her. She looks at me and smiles, justifying > her action. I smile back, in confirmation. > A bangle seller steps in. Very tempting bangles! I purchase a feminine > glass dream of two sky blue bangles and two sea blue bangles – they now > adorn my hands! A trend has been set. The woman sitting diagonally > opposite me indulges in her feminine glass dream – two red bangles and two > black ones. But she has a hundred rupee note and the bangle seller has no > change money. I wonder whether the glass dreams will be shattered or will > be left incomplete today. The woman holds on to the bangles and requests > for change among passengers. The bangle seller is also requesting change > among passengers. A passenger offers change to the bangle seller and one > offers change to the female. The dream is sustained. She puts the bangles > back in her purse, but she takes a last look at them. She is pressing a > smile. She is contended. I wonder whether she is thinking of her lover who > she will charm with her glass dreams. A little joy in the midst of > regularity … > (Glass dreams – happiness – Price: Rs. 10/-) > (This city and its systems are still somehow managing to fulfill our > fantasies, dreams and aspirations) > (Glass dreams – desires – Price: Rs. 10/-) > (Glass dreams – for sale – Price: Rs. 10/-) > (Glass dreams – chiming – Price: Rs. 10/-) > > Return Journey – Train Groups – Musings on Locality, Regularity and > Cosmopolitanism > (Time: 8:10 AM) > I got off at Thane Station. I boarded a train bound for CST junction > starting from Thane station. The design of the train is the old one. There > is still empty space in the train. > (I wonder whether I will be able catch a train group today.) > The train started moving. I plugged the ear phones in my ears and began > listening to GO 92.5 FM. Reports of yesterday's marathon are still flowing > in today. > At Mulund Station, three women enter the train. They quickly begin to ask > where each one of us is getting off – making 'claims' on seats. > I am caught up with three women who are a 'group'. Two are definitely > Maharashtrian. The third one, I can't make out. > (Is marking a practice of locality?) > They are talking mundane stuff. I am not interested. > They are settled around fourth seats. They have made claims which will > ensure them comforts within a couple of stations' time. > > (I am still thinking of the design of the previous train and now this one. > There is a definite intimacy in this design though it causes a lot of > jamming as well. However, women can maintain their balance in this old > design because the space is intimate and it means that they are literally > being 'held up' by the seated women and standing fellow passengers. In the > new design, this may not be possible.) > > A song of freedom rings through the radio station in my ears. I am > absolutely enjoying the anonymity of space. What a remarkable sense of > freedom to go unnoticed! > > They are talking mundane stuff, this train group. And another thought > crosses my mind as I listen to them: daily conversation in local trains – > train groups – what kind of respite does it offer to these women? How does > the train group fit into the framework of regularity for these women? Who > are these women? What are their lives? > My mind also goes to back to the Dombivali Ladies' Special, First Class > Train group that I have known for sometime. In there, there are women who > are working in global firms like ICICI finance, Tata-MTNL, new finance > firms, etc. They hold positions like sales executive, finance assistants, > etc. In here, today, are women working perhaps in government firms at > positions of clerk, typists, etc. Does working in a global firm make any > difference to mindsets and notions of cosmopolitanism? Does working in > global firms open up the mind to differences – cultural, religious, > interpersonal? – making it more receptive? > > We have to become bold. I have become bold, says the woman with frog-like > eyes. > The thin, camel-like looking (stooped) woman is listening intently. > And the fat elephant-like woman sitting next to me is engaged in the > conversation. > We have to take decisions, frog says. > Elephant nods. > Camel is still listening. > Monopause is like that (frog is talking of menopause). Weight increases. > Tension increases. I get palpitations in my heart, in my chest. Monopause > is like that (and she smacks her lips, talking as if monopause is one of > the 'regular' phenomenon in a working Maharashtrian woman's life). > (I am thinking about the bedroom and sexual lives of these women … > ssshhhssshhh) > > Soon stations arrive and time to swap seats. Camel is about to switch > seats when another woman is about to sit on camel's claim. Frog intervenes > and settles the matter. The other woman settles in camel's place when the > girl sitting in front of camel intervenes and tells the woman that she had > already claimed camel's seat. The woman verifies with camel whether this > is true. Camel verifies. The woman gets up. The girl sits down. > (I think of slum lords, claims, space, rights and entitlements and some > amount of negotiations at the everyday level). > > These women continue chatting – camel, elephant and frog. As they talk, I > try to make entries into their notions of cosmopolitanism. Is > cosmopolitanism another exterior which people in this city wear? Is > cosmopolitanism superficial? > > I look around the compartment and wonder how train groups get formed. What > are the bases of these transitory localities (if I can call them locality > at all!)? How do these groups fit in the frame of regularity which the > local train network brings into the lives of the working peoples? What is > this regularity? Is it changing now? How? > > > > > Zainab Bawa > Bombay > www.xanga.com/CityBytes > http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > From vikharjnu at gmail.com Thu Jan 19 15:47:44 2006 From: vikharjnu at gmail.com (Vikhar Ahmed) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 15:47:44 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] First Posting Message-ID: <3dd9e6810601190217r5ff5b972waae7ee7af8b7ae66@mail.gmail.com> I tried to send the posting two days back but it bounced off for some reason...Anyway sending it again. Hi everyone, I'm Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed and am studying journalism at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. I completed my M. A in Modern History from JNU last year and came here to postpone the decision about what I wanted to do in life and to avoid the parochial confines of academic research. At some level I've been a drifter…my graduation was in commerce and then I went on to study history (I didn't know that I would be studying history till a day before the results came out, my first choice was for another course) – but I've enjoyed the ride so far so I might even recommend it! I intend to continue research on a topic that I've explored in some detail for my M. A seminar paper. The paper I wrote was on 'Intra- Islamic Rivalry in late 19th Century and early 20th Century: A Case Study of the Fatawas of Sanaullah Amritsari'. In this paper I had looked at the differences that existed amongst the various sects within Indian Islam and I demonstrated how fatawas were used to foster these differences. In my research as an Independent Fellow at Sarai (my topic is 'Indian Print Media and it's Reportage on fatawas) I want to see how much the media has been sensitive when they report about fatawas. Do they understand what a fatwa is? Do they understand the role it plays in the lives of Muslims, if it plays any role at all? Why does an obscure maulvi issuing a fatwa become a newsworthy item at all? I will try to trace the history of fatwa reportage in the Indian print media going back to the time of the reports of the infamous fatwa that was given about Salman Rushdie, depending of course, on the access to archives. I will also try to look at the manner in which the whole world of fatawas operates and try to find out the relevance it holds for a contemporary Indian Muslim by trying to visit prominent madrasas across India that are affiliated to the various sects within Indian Islam. Comments and suggestions are invited… Will be more punctual with my next posting, Vikhar Ahmed. From s0454533 at sms.ed.ac.uk Thu Jan 19 15:27:03 2006 From: s0454533 at sms.ed.ac.uk (A Khanna) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 09:57:03 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] introductory i-fellow posting In-Reply-To: <20060118074137.40529.qmail@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20060118074137.40529.qmail@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20060119095703.vv8wg52g0g4oc0ss@www.sms.ed.ac.uk> Hi all, This is akshay, one of the new i-fellows. Apologies for the delay in making this introductory posting. I have been most excited about many of the projects that people have described, finding resonances with my own concerns and interests and look forward to lots of brain picking and interaction. I am presently in the fieldwork phase of a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. I am interested in experiences of sexuality, the constitution of sexuality related identities, the criminalisation of desire and the ‘social life’ of law (with a special focus on Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code), amongst other things. Calling this ‘fieldwork’ feels a little strange coz this is my life, my home and the issues that I’ve been concerned with for a large part of my life. The (ever changing) focus of the PhD is presently on interactions between Queer movements and various forms of activism – people’s movements, NGOs, the HIV/AIDS sector and academia. I am looking at the uptake and re-constitution of discourses relating to sexuality in these. Looking, for example, at how people from the right to health movment articulate their concerns around sexuality, and the activisms that they engage in. Its exciting and, well, fun. I often present myself as a ‘Queer activist’, and am associated with a group in Delhi called Prism. I generally live out of a backpack, and have homes in a range of different spaces. I am queer – which means that I engage in, and am open to, a range of relationalities and sexual experiences that challenge heteronormative imaginations of the way the world should be. Now, about the project that’s being enabled by the Sarai fellowship. The last few years have seen the emergence of a range of ‘queer friendly’ spaces in Delhi. The context of the initial emergence of these spaces is the ‘human rights approach’ to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The perfect example of this would be support groups for queer folk – the provision of ‘safe spaces’ for people like us to meet other people like us. While these spaces have been extremely significant, there is some peculiarity about the infrastructural relationship between the HIV/AIDS sector/context and queer movements. My sense is that the formation of communities is related, in a complex way, to space where this happens. My premise is that architecturally, and in terms of objects that are present, the way the space is organised, imaginaries of the boundaries of the space, and the terms of one’s presence – what is permissible and what is not, at what point is one corssing the boundary – affects, in complex ways the possibilities of interactions, reflection and self-representation. This relationship between space and community formation is recognised in queer community in Delhi. Jagah, an initiative of the Nigah Media Collective, which attempts to provide a temporal space for queer artistic representations is one example of the recognition of ‘space’ as a significant factor in the politics of sexualitry. At a more mundane level, we see that queer groups, such as Prism, choose to meet outside of NGO spaces, often in cafés, with the explicit concern of avoiding weaving themselves into the fabric of the NGO sector. It is in this context that I intend to enable a ‘queer’ space – apni jagah, zara hut ke. My next post wil be more descriptive of what I imagine this space to be like, but briefly – I envisage this space to be one where: - activists could drop in, talk, read, interact, watch and reflect on representraions of queerness in mainstream movies etc. unfettered by constraints of speaking to an ‘outside’ audience – generally a space that is open all the time - Queer people may engage with representations and articulations by other queer people – where people who visit articulate for themselves and other queer people, ideas, feelings vagera exhibitions, painting on walls, writing, dance and theatre performances – where people may engage, constest, respond, add to each others representations of ‘community’, and exchange experiences. - As a palimpsest of such queer experiences, this space could provide a particularly warm context for interviews, group discussions and the like focussing on biographies, framings of memories and issues of the queer movements and constructions of the queer movement and its futures. I guess a lot is going to happen in this space. The Sarai fellowship, in particular enables me to focus on the processes involved in the creation and negotiation of this space. Right from the start (looking for a place – the experience of being thrown out by landlord because hijras, for example, visit often, is not something new to the queer movement) I hope to have the process of setting up the space and how it emerges, itself, documented, with queer film makers, photographers, and the like. To start with, I’m going to be meeting landlords and estate agents in different parts of Delhi, (perhaps with dictaphone in pocket) and telling them about this plan to see how they react. Anyone who wants to join me in this exciting endeavour, please email! Much warmth on cold winter night, akshay From dripta82 at yahoo.com Thu Jan 19 15:50:37 2006 From: dripta82 at yahoo.com (Dripta Piplai) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 10:20:37 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] First Posting Message-ID: <20060119102037.7764.qmail@web37002.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Dripta Piplai, I-Fellow, Sarai I am Dripta, an M.Phil student of Linguistics from University of Delhi. I have research interests in music and musicology-specially in areas like sociology of music, language of music etc. My upcoming work for Sarai is related to the Calcutta Music schools of Tagore songs and their hegemonic traditions in urban culturescape. My work is divided into two parts. At one part, I am trying to make an archive of some Tagore songs which have more than one style, rhythm or tune –and which have never been systematically documented. Visva Bharati, Santiniketan had tried to make an archive of such songs in the year 2003. Some experts and research scholars were appointed for the work, too. But finally, they could not do it. The Akashbani, Kolkata had tried for an archive, also but they concentrated basically on the printed notation forms and neglected the undocumented forms, which can be found in the Calcutta music-schools. There is a striking fact that, though there are variations of the songs, still some particular varieties get preference and recognition (e.g. get approval from the music board, record companies, Critiques, cultural programme committees etc). My work will try to find out the reasons for the dominance of some particular variations of Rabindra Sangit, which is essentially a part of power-game in Calcutta-based Rabindra Sangit circle. My study will include collection of different varieties of notations, course materials of the schools, and interviews with the teachers etc. The work will be presented as an academic paper, and CDs of the documented versions of Rabindra Sangit will also be presented to the Sarai archive. Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060119/7f2eb563/attachment.html From abhinandita81 at rediffmail.com Fri Jan 20 10:51:29 2006 From: abhinandita81 at rediffmail.com (abhinandita d mathur) Date: 20 Jan 2006 05:21:29 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] First Post-My building and the Shahar Message-ID: <20060120052129.27796.qmail@webmail67.rediffmail.com> Hi All!! This is Abhinandita Mathur, my mother Venu and I have collaborated on this project titled, My building and the Shahar funded by Sarai this year. This is a study of a community living set up in a middle class east Delhi suburb, Patparganj . The study seeks to observe and document the day-to-day life in Shree Ganesh Group Housing Society where more than 100 Mathur families live together! Dilliwale Mathurs are one of the early inhabitants of Delhi and lived in the walled city. Shree Ganesh Group Housing Society was formed by the Mathurs who were jointly moving out of the old city. The project engages with the following ideas: Social history The history of the Mathur community and the city are closely related. Therefore by researching the history, studying the changing culture and documenting the community life of Dilliwale Mathurs the project attempts to correlate the history of the city and the community. Also, how does this community view the change in the city? Community and culture Certain cultural practices are developed and nurtured within a community setup. How has this Mathur community retained some of these cultural practices and how have these changed since the days of living in the Shahar? What strategies did the community develop to retain some of these cultural practices and how have they adapted to change? Concept of community living The community can be a site of conflict between the individual and society. The idea of personhood is determined by the competition between the individual v/s family v/s clan v/s caste v/s class v/s state In the clash between tradition and modernity which of these social units are becoming more dominant over the others? How is this Mathur community facing up to these challenges? Transforming communities How is the idea of a community changing? No longer confined by physical and geographical proximity, old communities are using telecommunication technologies to retain and propagate their networks. How is this Mathur community coping with nostalgia? Is there a clash between the hardliners and the liberals and who is winning? Have the individuals of this community found stronger associations in newer communities based on alma mater, profession, class status, specific interests, political affiliations, sexual preferences, etc.? This shall be presented as an interactive multimedia website with a virtual model of the building complex. Clicking on the different flats in the virtual model shall allow the user to enter the house, so to speak, and access the biographies of the residents, their photographs, stories, recipes, songs, clips of shaadi videos etc. About us: We moved to Shree Ganesh Group Housing Society in April, 1990. I grew up here in Delhi and moved to Bombay after BA in 2002. I do research and take photographs. I am in Delhi for the next few months. Mummy works in a 5 star hotel where she heads the Telecommunication department. She is super excited and it’s the first project of this kind that she would be working on. You can contact us at abhinandita at gmail.com or venu.mathur at gmail.com We also have blogs but they have been quite dead past few months. But now we will be uploading updates and photos as regularly as we can. Here are the links: abhinandita.blogspot.com and venumathur.blogspot.com Thank you for your time and have a remarkable day! Abhinandita with Venu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060120/4be1e696/attachment.html From kranenbu at xs4all.nl Fri Jan 20 04:33:24 2006 From: kranenbu at xs4all.nl (Rob van Kranenburg) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 00:03:24 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [waterjustice] Re: New Delhi's Watermafia References: <20060116023038.DC46C89848D@mail> Message-ID: <1CF8C0F2-309B-4DB4-B9A3-EAF751BE11CC@xs4all.nl> Begin forwarded message: > From: "Mary Ann Manahan" > Date: January 16, 2006 3:26:41 AM GMT+01:00 > To: > Subject: [waterjustice] Re: New Delhi's Watermafia > > New Delhi's Watermafia > > The tale of Delhi's water mafia No capital in the world has > the kind > of water availability like that of Delhi, yet its 15 million people > face > water scarcity. How come? > > > Sandeep Yadav Delhi > > > Delhi Jal Bard (DJB) officials assure that Delhi has enough water > for its > residents. The scarcity then is artificial and the result of the > theft of > public utility supplied water. The leaked water finds itself in > commercially > bottled drinking water bottles, water tankers and water cans, > available > round the clock, but of course at a price. There is no estimate of the > turnover, but by all reckoning, it is impressive. > Ashish Kundra, additional chief executive officer, DJB says "Tanker > supplies are part of supplementing the water scarcity needs. Mostly > it is > DJB water tan-kers¡­supplemented by private tankers." But the > fact is > that powerful nexus of politicians, officials and water traders is > actively > engaged in profiteering through sale and theft of water. An elected > representative from Rohini owns tankers that sport 'Sonia Gandhi > zindabad' > slogans which imply that they are connected to social welfare and not > business. Ram Dev Baliyan, a resident of Rohini declined from > revealing the > name of the owner who runs the water tankers in the area but said > "Netaji ke > hain" (They belong to a politician). It is this water mafia who in > collaboration with the enforcement cell of the DJB is keeping the > government > taps dry. The five star hotels in the city are other big guzzlers > of water. > Some laws to regulate these activities are imperative. > After the Delhi government abandoned its plan to privatise the > Delhi Jal > Board (DJB), the next step of the Sheila Dixit government has been > to set up > an expert committee to examine water sector reforms in Delhi. It > has invited > Right to Water Campaign, an NGO, for suggestions. This NGO had > carried a > robust campaign against the Delhi government's decision to > privatise the > DJB. The idea that competition in the market forces the private > players to > provide quality service and the market decides the price of the > product is > not possible in case of a public utility monopoly. A private > company is > driven by profit motives and would always work towards maximising > these > profits. Arvind Kejriwal, president, Parivartan, an anti-corruption > group > warns "the privatisation of monopolies can never work. Private sector > monopoly can become a great demon and play havoc in the lives of > ordinary > citizens." > The Delhi water privatisation fiasco holds lessons for the other 20 > states > and union territories where the privatisation of water boards is in > various > stages of completion. Water supply in three districts of Karnataka has > already been privatised. The experience the world over has proved > that water > tariffs had taken off wherever water utilities have been handed > over to > private water companies, be it Manila, Cochabamba (Bolivia), Sofia > (Bulgaria) or Valencia (Spain) and the experiment has proved > disastrous. > Delhi's problem is not technical. What is needed is mere internal > accountability. According to Kundra, Delhi has 670 million gallons > per day > (MGD) of water supply (which would go up to 810 MGD after the Sonia > Vihar > project). And if divided by the 150 million people, the population > of Delhi, > it comes to 220 litres per capita per day (almost 11 buckets). No > city has > this kind of availability of water. Government says that they lose > 50 per > cent of water. If so, where is this 335 million gallon of water > going? If it > goes underground, the water table should rise, which is not > happening. If > not going under ground this amount of water should flood the roads. > Again > this is not happening. So where exactly is the water going? Even if we > accept the thesis of "genuine" loss of water, we are left with a > stock of > 110 litres of water per person per day. This is still not an absolute > shortage. Where is this water? > The serious lack of accountability is quite evident in case of > Delhi Jal > Board functioning. Delhi has been divided into 21 water zones, each > headed > by an executive engineer who is provided with the fixed amount of > water and > a budget for his zone. Yet, he is not held responsible for the > water/money > invested in his zone. There is no functioning bulk water metre in > the zones. > Nobody knows the amount of water a particular zone is receiving. > Same is the > case of the metre to record the water supply to Delhi. Who can tell > who is > getting how much? > Not sorting out the issues of governance, accountability and the > plugging > of water theft by the DJB and the government of Delhi would render > the whole > exercise of reforms and committees futile > > > R.Ajayan > Convener > Plachimada Solidarity Committee > Ph:- Res 0471-2730464 > Mob- 09847142513 > Res Add - Neerajam, > Kudappanakunnu, > Trivandrum-695043 > Kerala, India > > > > > --------------------------------- > Yahoo! Photos > Ring in the New Year with Photo Calendars. Add photos, events, > holidays, > whatever. > > [This message contained attachments] > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > __ > ______________________________________________________________________ > __ > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- > Yahoo! Groups Links > > <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WaterWatch/ > > <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > WaterWatch-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com > > <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: > http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > waterjustice mailing list > waterjustice at tni.org > https://mail.tni.org/mailman/listinfo/waterjustice > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060120/2038a99b/attachment.html From ravis at sarai.net Fri Jan 20 13:08:15 2006 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:08:15 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] more china protest news Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20060120130601.03259860@mail.sarai.net> from the NYtimes. Compare to the Orissa firing reports here surely one of the most under reported stories in India. Seizure of property, local protests -death. Its a familiar story. Ravi ________ January 20, 2006 Pace and Scope of Protest in China Accelerated in '05 By JOSEPH KAHN BEIJING, Jan. 19 - Chinese took to the streets to protest land seizures, corruption, pollution and unpaid wages in record numbers in 2005, the national police said Thursday, with mass incidents that involved violent confrontations or attacks on government property surging at the fastest rate. The number of "public order disturbances" rose 6.6 percent last year, to 87,000. Mass protests that involved "disturbing social order" jumped 13 percent, while those that "interfered with government functions" surged 19 percent, the Public Security Bureau, the national police, told Chinese reporters at a news conference on Thursday that was reported by the New China News Agency. Although the mounting social disorder has not slowed China's economy, which continues to power ahead at nearly a double-digit clip, it does present a major challenge to the Communist Party, which has struggled to resolve the grievances of those left behind in the long boom. Peasants, migrant workers and former employees of bankrupt state-run factories in the cities - collectively the overwhelming majority of China's 1.3 billion people - have tended to benefit far less from the prosperity than the budding urban middle class and the party elite. Most legal scholars say that courts are too weak and tightly controlled to resolve grievances that ordinary people have against the government or the party. In 1994, the police recorded about 10,000 protest incidents, but the statistics show that both the frequency and the scale of the unrest have increased rapidly every year since, even as the economy has expanded faster than that of any other major country. Unrest has worsened especially quickly in the last several years because the government has seized millions of acres of rural land, which peasants can farm but not own, to make way for factories and real estate developments. Compensation is very low and many peasants say they have no choice but to protest to win attention for their claims. The scale of unrest is extraordinary for any country in peacetime, with an average of 240 incidents each day. In 2004, when the country had 74,000 recorded protest events, 3.76 million people were involved, the police said. They were no figures provided for the total number of protesters in 2005. From dilip.sarai at gmail.com Fri Jan 20 15:33:11 2006 From: dilip.sarai at gmail.com (Dilip D'Souza -- Sarai) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 15:33:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Dilip D'Souza, first posting Message-ID: <1a57bfd0601200203t72430773k6982481a6c41ac36@mail.gmail.com> Jan 20 2006 Good day to all! My name is Dilip D'Souza. I'm a once-computer scientist, now-writer, in Bombay. I'm honoured and delighted to be part of this eclectic group of people, humbled by the range of things all of you are attempting. I'm appending below a summary of what I want to do with this fellowship. Any comments/help/critiques welcome. cheers, dilip d'souza. Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com --- Village in the City: Bombay in microcosm Bombay, the big city, and everywhere else seems rustic. That's the way I invariably feel whenever I return home to Bombay after a trip somewhere in the country. And yet the oldest truth about Bombay is that it, too, was once a collection of villages. What's more, there are ways in which the big city has not lost that character. Or let's say this: in this big city, you can still find traces of that character. There are parts of Bombay that are still essentially villages. In my suburb of Bandra alone, lanes narrow to warrens, houses look over low walls into each other, you can even see ducks being raised. Ranwar, Chimbai, Sherly, Pali Malla, these are the old villages of the Queen of Bombay's suburbs. And there is also Khotachiwadi in Girgaum, still held up as a model of urban living; also parts of Agripada, CP Tank, Kalbadevi and more. Yet there's another theme I'm trying to get at here. This lies in the way people deal with each other in these neighbourhoods, the humanity that large cities make us pessimistic about finding. For example, in CP Tank I once saw first- and higher-floor residents lowering baskets on ropes to the pavement, to buy vegetables from cooperative vendors. Seems to me a small indicator of a different time, a different place, a different pace. More and more city residents go to large supermarkets for their supplies, or pick up the phone and get their vegetables delivered in minutes. Yet in Bombay's congested heartland, some housewives use baskets on ropes. Bits of humanity intrigue and appeal to me, not least because I fear they are vanishing as even these little spaces in the city get torn down and built over. So my plan is simple: go hunting for them and tell those stories. I want to document not just the physical reality of these villages in Bombay, but the little signs in them that speak of a possibly disappearing, or at least forgotten, humanity. My interest is also in the larger lessons: what do these daily interactions say about life in a city? Or about the great conundrums of modern India: secularism, liberalization, poverty? I want to emphasize that I don't see this project as a paean to the past, nor as a mournful ode to a nearly-vanished history. I'm interested in making the case that life in a city is an experience made of these small interstices. That these may have been villages, but they are the foundation of great metropolises. Very simply, I would like my essays to get my readers thinking about the people who make up a city. Not the buildings or parks or flyovers, but the people. From dilip.sarai at gmail.com Fri Jan 20 15:51:39 2006 From: dilip.sarai at gmail.com (Dilip D'Souza -- Sarai) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 15:51:39 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] First Post-My building and the Shahar In-Reply-To: <20060120052129.27796.qmail@webmail67.rediffmail.com> References: <20060120052129.27796.qmail@webmail67.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <1a57bfd0601200221s4d9fe3bt4976cbce3ecb72e4@mail.gmail.com> I don't know, there's something heartwarming about a mother/daughter pairing working on a project under a fellowship! Reminds me of the time my mother and her father worked on a long article together, and perhaps more of us can follow their, and your, example. Good luck! cheers, dilip d'souza. --- Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com From lawrence at altlawforum.org Fri Jan 20 16:50:20 2006 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:50:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Patent Comic In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi All We have finished our last installation of our parody and spoof of the WIPO Comics. This one is on Patent Law You can download the comic from http://www.altlawforum.org/lawmedia/patent%20final.pdf You can also have a look at the original WIPO version at http://www.wipo.org/freepublications/en/patents/485/wipo_pub_485.pdf For those who are new on the list or missed our previous efforts, do have a loot at the ones on copyright and TM, which are available at http://www.altlawforum.org/lawmedia/TM.pdf http://www.altlawforum.org/lawmedia/CC.pdf For any further details and suggestions etc contact namita at altlawforum.org Enjoy, and do spread the word Lawrence From cahen.x at levels9.com Fri Jan 20 21:04:58 2006 From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:34:58 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] pourinfos Newsletter / 01-13 to 01-19-2006 Message-ID: <43D10322.1030500@levels9.com> pourinfos.org l'actualite du monde de l'art / daily Art news ----------------------------------------------------------------------- infos from January 13, 2006 to January 19, 2006 (included) ------------------------------------------------------------------- (mostly in french) ------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 Call : XIVth Barcelona International Women's Film Festival, Barcelona, Spain. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2654 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 Call : commonplaces, Centre d'exposition les RÉSERVOIRS, Limay, France. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2653 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 Call : Spring 2006 Teaching Artists, eyebeam, New-York, Usa. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2652 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 Call : Space Art Track of ISDC 2006, Los Angeles, Usa. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2651 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 Call : achtung berlin - new berlin film award, Hackesche Hoefe Film Theatre in Berlin, Berlin, Germany. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2650 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 Call : Seminar & Workshop on Urban Culture, Bandung July 2006, Indonesia. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2649 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 Call : The Great Takeover, Atelier Dolce Vita , Brussels, Belgium. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2648 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 Meetings : national meeting of the higher schools of art, le 6-7 avril 2006, Rennes, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2647 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 09 Meetings : A small walk with Kant, Thierry Vigier, Which force to think, Maison populaire de Montreuil, Montreuil, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2646 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Meetings : In the presence of : Raitis Smits et Janis Garancs du RIXC, Plasticiens du web, special Lettonia, Thursday January 19, 2006, Pompidou center, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2645 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 Meetings : "But what's criticism do ?!", Wednesday January 25, 2006, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2644 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 Job : Seek trainee, remunerated, Le confort Moderne, Poitiers, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=2643 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Publication : N°1, sklunk.net, New monthly magazine on line dedicated to arts, politics and society, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2642 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 Publication : Maria Theodora de Jakob Gautel , editions Au Figuré, Thursday January 26, 2006, librairie Bookstorming , Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2641 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 Publication : Places and Non-Places of Contemporary Art, editions esse, Montreal, Canada. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2640 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 Program : de visu n° 60 letter, pour de visu, photographic I-gallery, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2639 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 Program : next meetings and evenings organized by panoplie.org, Montpellier, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2638 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 18 Various : Petition, Cry of Emergency concerning education and the culture, letter sent to the Minister for the Culture in the name of the collective of the students of the Arson Villa, Nice, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=2637 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Various : The manufacture of American, Eric Giraud, Joffrey Ferry, Jean Couturier, radiofrance.fr, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=2636 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 Various : Claude Lévêque on Arte, art and manner, international center of art and the landscape of the island of Vassivière, Vassivière, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=2635 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 Exhibition : Philippe Van Snick, Rudi Laermans, Etablissement d'en face, Brussels, Belgium. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2634 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 Exhibition : Let's turn or turn around, Melik Ohanian, Institut d’art contemporain de Villeurbanne, Villeurbanne, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2633 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Exhibition : International Queer Festival 2006, Copenhagen, Denmark. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2632 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 Exhibition : "A whole Louvre", Katy Couprie and Antonin Louchard, Centre Culturel, Centre de Créations pour l'Enfance, Tinqueux, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2631 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 Exhibition : Daily noise - 22 days of sound art, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Columbia, NY, Usa. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2630 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 26 Call : Manifesta 6, Nicosia, Cyprus. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2629 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 Call : "Luxury's Lap", Quirk, Bangalore, India. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2628 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 Call : Imagining Ourselves, San Francisco, CA, Usa. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2627 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 Meetings : The Memo Book : Matthias Müller, Light Cone - Scratch Projection, aux Voûtes, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2626 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 Meetings : pragmatic of criticism: the relevant context of art, Monday it is theory, Monday January 23 Espace Paul Ricard, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2625 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 31 Meetings : Visual arts and public: reasons of a divorce, Jean-Didier Vincent, Olivier Leguay, Jean Clair, Mardi 24 janvier, La Fondation pour l’innovation politique, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2624 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 32 Meetings : The return of xenophobia? Rendez-vous de l'imaginaire, Friday January 27, Espace Paul Ricard, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2623 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 33 Meetings : DIALOGUE n° 9, Christine Buci-Glucksmann, François Soulages, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2622 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 34 Meetings : Visit of Jonas Dahlberg exhibition, Invisible Cities, Frac Bourgogne, Dijon, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2620 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 35 Publication : New media, new languages, new writings Co-édition Alphabetville / l’Entretemps, alphabetville, Marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2619 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 36 Publication : "361° of HAPPINESS" and "to change the course", collection le point sur le i, incidences, Marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2618 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 Sceening : English films, German films, Monday February 6, 2006, Les lundis de la Brigade, Le Barbizon, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2617 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 38 Exhibition : Olympia, Sophie von Hellermann, Christian Jendreiko, Matthias Lahme, Dietmar Lutz, André Niebur et Marie-Céline Schäfer, Plublic, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2616 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 39 Exhibition : Madam the baronne, Centre d'art Mira phalaina , Maison populaire de Montreuil, Montreuil, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2615 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 40 Exhibition : Dubuffet and rough art, guided tour, Samedi 28 janvier Musée d’art moderne Lille Métropole, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2614 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 Exhibition : 9 Numeric Festival of Numerical Arts Bandits-Images, Bourges, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2613 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 42 Exhibition : The paradise of the men without head, Marc Gérenton, Collectif La Briqueterie, Amiens , France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2612 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 43 Exhibition : window on street, vitrine de la petite Galerie de l'Aître Saint-Maclou à, l'École Régionale des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, Rouen, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2611 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 44 Exhibition : The Net: towards a semantics and social cartography. | Rémi Sussan | 12/14/2005 | http://pourinfos.org/encours/item.php?id=2427 ------------------------------------------------------------------- From arshad.mcrc at gmail.com Fri Jan 20 19:36:36 2006 From: arshad.mcrc at gmail.com (mohd arshad) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 06:06:36 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] First Posting_Journalism in madrasas and madrasas in journalism Message-ID: <2076f31d0601200606u5778b2fcy88ea5b1c66d2585c@mail.gmail.com> To Sarai Reader List, Hi all, Myself Arshad Amanullah. I'm based in New Delhi and am with the department of visual documentation of Kabir, a communication initiative to promote and popularize the Right to Information Act, 2005. I completed the masters degree in the discipline of mass communication from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in 2005.I have co-directed a couple of documentary films about call centers as a lucrative career option for the young generation Before coming to Jamia in 2000, I graduated from *Jamia Salafia,* an apex madrasa of the Ahl-e-Hadees sect of muslims (known for its non-adherence to any of the conventional schools of the muslim jurisprudence and a bit adamant towards a more puritanical interpretation of Islam and monotheism) situated in Varanasi. In the last phase of my stay in the madrasa which lasted for nine years, I developed my interests in the media affairs, particularly with reference to muslim issues and took to the writing. Considering two of my Urdu papers saleable commodity, my publishers printed them into book form (so it's not my fault!).One of them deals with the relationship between media and muslims in the post-independence India (*Media Aur Musalman: Azadi Ke Baad*).The part of the book which discusses Urdu media, contains a few paragraphs on the journals brought out by madrasas. In an interview with me, *Maulana Sultan Ahmad Islaahi*, an Aligarh based noted Muslim scholar, termed the sort of journalism practiced in those magazines as *backdoor journalism (Oqbi Darwaaze Ki Sahaafat).*It's from that time I had *the madrasa journalism* in my mind as a theme to be explored in detail applying appropriate research tools of media studies. Now I am doing it as an independent fellow of Sarai. The madrasa journals are the portals to the minds of the madrasa folk. What they think of the contemporary trends among the Indian muslims, of the current affairs and of the mainstream media? Apart from the thematic concerns, I will also analyze their political economy and the technology in use to bring them out. For the study, earlier I decided to select three Urdu magazines, each from the three main sects will be selected: Ahl-e-Hadees (*Mohaddis*, Varanasi), Deobandis (*Tarjuman-e-Darul Uloom*) and Barelvis (*Ashrafiya*).But after going through different journals, I discovered variations in the approach to the same issue and to the printing technology among the publications of the madrasas of the same sects. So, now I will take two or three journals representing the whole range of a particular sect .The reference period of the study will be taken from 2000 to 2004.This analysis will put the study at the confluence of qualitative as well as quantitative methods. Apart from the contents of the selected magazines, the interviews of their editors, women madrasa graduates and other concerned people will be another primary source of the research. The first posting will be an introduction to the history and current scenario of the madrasa journals in India. Each of the next three postings will deal with the detailed content analysis of the journals of the three main sects of the Indian muslims. The sixth of the series will throw light on the wall magazines brought out by the madrasa students. In the final report, I will sum up my findings with a reference to the conceptual and methodological issues which I will have come across during my research. Arshad Amanullah. -- arshad amanullah 35,masihgarh, jamia nagar new delhi-25. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060120/e59b5145/attachment.html From budhaditya_chattopadhyay at rediffmail.com Fri Jan 20 20:42:17 2006 From: budhaditya_chattopadhyay at rediffmail.com (budhaditya chattopadhyay) Date: 20 Jan 2006 15:12:17 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] I-Fellow Budhaditya Chattopadhyay: First Posting Message-ID: <20060120151217.6477.qmail@webmail52.rediffmail.com> Hi all I’m Budhaditya, a student of Sound Engineering in Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata. For the last two years I am actively working in the area of Audio Restoration. I feel a very strange fascination for sound with an old look. And I always would like to share my love for sounds with that warm and worn out texture. For me, digitally generated sound has its own kind of odour that I’m not comfortable with. Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong to the world of cold, clear and stiff binary sound. So I decide to work with analogue recordings: the forgotten, misinterpreted and dusty bunch of old spools and shellacs. They are piling up in dustbins without care. I discover some of them from chorai market of rejected commodities, some of them from dark and farthest corner of cupboards. And I develop a pitiful love for them. But they are unplayable. Years of neglect has put bruise marks on them. Even if some chemical treatment follows, it is difficult to make them play, either the players are not available or they are pretty expensive. What I need to do is to make them playable for at least once and dump them on the all pervasive work stations. Then the rigorous task of critical noise reduction, keeping originality and warmth, and then processing them to extract the quintessential sound quality and finally mastering them to take them up on a storage device for further listening pleasures and archiving, for re-reading and re-searching and for the so called posterity. Obviously the whole process needs time, dedication, concentration and money. In any casual visit to Bishnupur one will get struck by the indifference of people towards their own history. Drawing rooms, pan stalls, fare grounds and street corners are always blaring out the same tunes of the latest item number. It’ll seem that the sameness of a mundane soundscape is all the city of red-dust now capable of. But this land was a land of antiquity - of heritage architectures, finer crafts, a hundreds of years old music style and a handful of amazing voices. This particular style of music is one of the oldest gharanas in northern India and the only established one in the music history of Bengal. The tradition is dying as people don’t care about the practice and performance of the gharana. If somebody seizes to memorize, then he is forgetting himself. And if a community starts to forget the roots then it denies the very basis of its collective unconscious. A small girl on the way to her new school for music lessons with a heavy school bag on her back is never aware of the treasure of music close to her. Only in some corners of the city a few people of another generation are talking in soliloquy about the magnificent sound that was once heard. Then where is it if somebody wants to hear it again? It might be lying on the garbage, inside an old almirah or in a dead personal collection, as hardly playable tapes, scratched discs or dementia. Between memory and oblivion stands the chronicler, who reminds of forgotten melodies. Every society needs the chronicles to look at their own bodies at least for once. My job is to help remembering some lost sounds: lost from a community of singers, musicians and musical practice. For my project with SARAI, I am going to locate, document and restore the recordings of the exponents from Bishnupur Gharana to make an audio archive for everybody. It can be used as the resource for any further research work on the gharana system itself. I’m thankful to SARAI for supporting me. Regards, Budhaditya My livejournal blog URL http://tumbani.livejournal.com/   -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060120/98a07985/attachment.html From info at hansikgebert.de Fri Jan 20 21:37:30 2006 From: info at hansikgebert.de (Hans Gebert) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 17:07:30 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] hansik gebert archiv Message-ID: <226dae8e19e4a1556026de777dee0782@hansikgebert.de> Hansik Gebert Archive We are proud to acknowledge that the first and second work block is completely inserted. The relaunch of the site http://www.hansikgebert.de gives opportunity to a complete online showing and download. All pdf.s you reach from the sitemap are linked internal as external as well, this way you are allowed, following the intentions of the artist to walk through the work body in an intuitive, nonlinear way. We are looking forward to your feedback and are thankful for any linking to our site. The Staff info at hansikgebert.de From pukar at pukar.org.in Fri Jan 20 12:41:59 2006 From: pukar at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 12:41:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [announcements] PUKAR-Marathi Public Sphere: Talk by Rajeev kalelkar on Jan. 23 Message-ID: <001301c61d90$d59f4980$10d0c0cb@freeda> PUKAR - Marathi Public Sphere invites you to a talk in Marathi by Rajeev Kalelkar on Urbanisation and Disability: Fences or Horizons? Date: Monday, 23rd January 2006 Time: 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM Venue: Self Vision Centre, Ruia College, Matunga, Mumbai - 400 019 The process of urbanisation affects the lives of disabled people directly and indirectly. In a city, the disabled may find more employment opportunities as well as better options for communication and transport. However, little attention is paid to their daily struggle for survival. More often than not, they are viewed as parasites. A concerted effort needs to be made for their inclusion in the society. Rajeev Kalelkar is the co-editor of 'Parivartanacha Vatsaru', a Marathi fortnightly that explores trends in social change. He is himself a physically challenged person and has written several articles in Marathi and English on the problems of the disabled. He has been associated with various cultural movements for over 30 years. He has written plays, and has translated feminist poems from Marathi to English and vice-versa. He has also been associated with Men Against Violence and Abuse (MAVA) and People's Union for Human Rights. PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) Address:: 1-4, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Sir P. M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Telephone:: +91 (22) 5574 8152 Fax:: +91 (22) 5664 0561 Email:: pukar at pukar.org.in Website:: www.pukar.org.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060120/73b79646/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From turbulence at turbulence.org Fri Jan 20 21:10:40 2006 From: turbulence at turbulence.org (Turbulence) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 10:40:40 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Turbulence Artists' Studios: {transcription} by Michael Takeo Magruder Message-ID: <000001c61dd7$e2d56d90$6601a8c0@t5x1c0> January 20, 2006 Turbulence Artists' Studios: {transcription} by Michael Takeo Magruder http://www.turbulence.org/studios/takeo/index.htm [Note: this piece has very specific viewing requirements. See {transcription} homepage] {transcription} is a network-driven, heavily layered mesh of texts, sounds and moving images captured live from the British Broadcasting Corporation's internet news service. The random intersection of multiple data streams is algorithmically recombined into a structured array that is simultaneously garbled and readable. For instance, the apparent Asian characters--a rare autobiographical allusion for the artist--are illegible, thus assuming a symbolic quality for all viewers alike. The ephemeral images, submerged beneath a static two-dimensional grid, both embody a machine-code aesthetic and an intermittent depth that lends to their reality. {transcription} is also a real-time media installation specifically created for and currently installed in the Courtauld Institute of Art's back six-level staircase. It consists of dynamic audio/visual structures intermixed with static wall-drawn elements. The net-driven data is back-projected onto a horizontally suspended screen situated in the lowest well of the staircase. Monochrome, geometric patterns are painted directly onto the ceilings above the staircase landings, visual abstractions of the equations generating the network data stream--scribed in a data-language that, like the fundamental components of the media itself, is opaque to human perception. BIOGRAPHY Michael Takeo Magruder is an American artist based in the UK who received his formal education at the University of Virginia, USA, graduating with a degree in biological science. His artistic production has been exhibited worldwide and encompasses an eclectic mix of forms ranging from futuristic stained-glass windows, digital light-screens and modular sculptures, to architectural manipulations, ephemeral video projections and interactive net-installations. His work seeks to reflect upon the dualistic nature of media as both information source and cultural stimulant. {transcription} is supported by: Courtauld Institute of Art Turbulence.org Arts Council England King's Visualisation Lab, Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: http://turbulence.org New American Radio: http://somewhere.org Networked_Performance Blog: http://turbulence.org/blog Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From zainab at xtdnet.nl Sat Jan 21 11:43:29 2006 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 10:13:29 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Dilip D'Souza, first posting In-Reply-To: <1a57bfd0601200203t72430773k6982481a6c41ac36@mail.gmail.com> References: <1a57bfd0601200203t72430773k6982481a6c41ac36@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62685.202.88.213.38.1137824009.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Dear Dilip, I cursorily ran through your idea of the fellowship project. Just a quick comment. I am not exactly sure at this point where you will be getting to/at through the process and period of six months, but an important things to think through is not just the humanity aspect of the city, but aspects of local relationships, systems and practices which are being transformed in the making of the global city - what are these local relationships? why are they important that is if they are at all? what happens in the making of the global city? Focussing exclusively on the humanity aspect makes things very mushy-mushy, romantic and teary eyed which is something that I consciously avoid in my methodology and processes of research. Cheers, Zainab > Jan 20 2006 > > Good day to all! My name is Dilip D'Souza. I'm a once-computer > scientist, now-writer, in Bombay. I'm honoured and delighted to be > part of this eclectic group of people, humbled by the range of things > all of you are attempting. I'm appending below a summary of what I > want to do with this fellowship. Any comments/help/critiques welcome. > > cheers, > dilip d'souza. > > Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com > --- > > Village in the City: Bombay in microcosm > > Bombay, the big city, and everywhere else seems rustic. That's the way > I invariably feel whenever I return home to Bombay after a trip > somewhere in the country. And yet the oldest truth about Bombay is > that it, too, was once a collection of villages. What's more, there > are ways in which the big city has not lost that character. Or let's > say this: in this big city, you can still find traces of that > character. > > There are parts of Bombay that are still essentially villages. In my > suburb of Bandra alone, lanes narrow to warrens, houses look over low > walls into each other, you can even see ducks being raised. Ranwar, > Chimbai, Sherly, Pali Malla, these are the old villages of the Queen > of Bombay's suburbs. And there is also Khotachiwadi in Girgaum, still > held up as a model of urban living; also parts of Agripada, CP Tank, > Kalbadevi and more. > > Yet there's another theme I'm trying to get at here. This lies in the > way people deal with each other in these neighbourhoods, the humanity > that large cities make us pessimistic about finding. > > For example, in CP Tank I once saw first- and higher-floor residents > lowering baskets on ropes to the pavement, to buy vegetables from > cooperative vendors. Seems to me a small indicator of a different > time, a different place, a different pace. More and more city > residents go to large supermarkets for their supplies, or pick up the > phone and get their vegetables delivered in minutes. Yet in Bombay's > congested heartland, some housewives use baskets on ropes. > > Bits of humanity intrigue and appeal to me, not least because I fear > they are vanishing as even these little spaces in the city get torn > down and built over. So my plan is simple: go hunting for them and > tell those stories. I want to document not just the physical reality > of these villages in Bombay, but the little signs in them that speak > of a possibly disappearing, or at least forgotten, humanity. My > interest is also in the larger lessons: what do these daily > interactions say about life in a city? Or about the great conundrums > of modern India: secularism, liberalization, poverty? > > I want to emphasize that I don't see this project as a paean to the > past, nor as a mournful ode to a nearly-vanished history. I'm > interested in making the case that life in a city is an experience > made of these small interstices. That these may have been villages, > but they are the foundation of great metropolises. Very simply, I > would like my essays to get my readers thinking about the people who > make up a city. Not the buildings or parks or flyovers, but the > people. > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From zainab at xtdnet.nl Sat Jan 21 19:23:44 2006 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 17:53:44 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Dilip D'Souza, first posting In-Reply-To: <2d42d32e0601202233h68055855m5b54380a1440fdde@mail.gmail.com> References: <1a57bfd0601200203t72430773k6982481a6c41ac36@mail.gmail.com> <62685.202.88.213.38.1137824009.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> <2d42d32e0601202233h68055855m5b54380a1440fdde@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62798.202.88.213.38.1137851624.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Dear Aditi, Thank you for responding to this conversation. As I had mentioned in my email, I had cursorily ran through Dilip D'souza's proposal and therefore my apologies for making assumptions. Thanks also for bringing forward the 'definitions' of humanity. I definitely have a narrow conception of humanity and it emerges from an image. From what I understand now of Dilip D'souza's proposal, he will invariably be mapping transformations of the city (and I stand to be corrected here if I have misinterpreted his proposal) through his essays on people's interactions and practices in the village pockets. And what will be interesting to see is what of the interactions of the people of the villages influences/sustains/nourishes/enriches the present everyday life in the city. >From my own experiences, one aspect of mapping transformations is through conversations with people and in that sense, one gets the 'humanity' aspect. What I however find most critical is to watch how networks get transformed and what happens to the city in the context of the larger political economy (of which culture is an important aspect), something which Dilip's works will bring out when he refers to liberalization, secularism, etc. >From the last one and a half years of investigation (literally), I find that my position against the global city is that it is not a sustainable system. It causes gentrification, has severe ecological implications, and public policies and civil society initiatives sometimes perpetuate the very violence and systems which we want to change (or at least I want to change). For instance, in a recent presentation by Mukesh Mehta where he presented his plan for transforming Dharavi and rehabilitating the slum dwellers in Dharavi (as part of the global city dream), one member of the audience pointed out that Mukesh Mehta was not doing anything different from the present SRA (Slum Rehabilitation Authority) policy. Through using FSI in-situ, Mehta was simply promoting more density. In a later discussion with the same person who made the comment, he mentioned clearly that one of the solutions is to give the land free to the slum dwellers and enable them to build their own houses there, through their own labour, and allow them to pay for the houses through rent-free installments while the state pays the subsidy for interests. While he made this comment, it dawned on me that this could be a decent solution because there is no TDR game. But, the political machinery through the press has created a brilliant campaign against the slum dwellers through raising the argument of 'public land' and 'entitlements of citizens' and this campaign allows the political machinery to continue with the regulatory system of FSI and TDR along with the builders! Similarly, projects like Khotachiwadi illustrate the dangers of alluding to village life (and humanity there). Invariably we make specimens of the 'culture' and of the 'people of that culture'. In some public forums where I have heard residents of Khotachiwadi speak, they speak of themselves and their 'lifestyles' as 'unique' and make their case of that of privelged peoples. Therefore, I question intervention and consciousness of interventions and their consequences on people's lives and their environments. In the local trains of Mumbai also, one comes across numerous examples of 'humanity' with people helping each other, supporting each other, finding respite and comfort in each other's company through train groups or incidents which take place in the compartments and these definitely give a lot of hope. But is humanity all that there is to the local trains?Down the line, I am trying to think in terms of everyday practices of locality and systems in the local trains. What need does a train group fulfill? Why do people form groups in trains? One refers to cosmopolitanism of Mumbai through its local trains but does that cosmopolitanism penetrate deeper into people's mentalities when it comes to prejudices against Muslims and Hindus? Are there public spaces like the local train which can facilitate interactions between people and enable new experiences and deeper interactions? Can there be designs of such public spaces and are these designs 'contextual/local' or 'global'? As a researcher, I find it important to be conscious of the fact that instead of alluding only to humanity (which I understand as conditions of human beings), it is useful to think in terms of system. I will admit that my own position comes from the question of where is research directed towards? Is it research for research's sake? - sure, and there is nothing wrong in that. But for me, the process of research is a deeper understanding of society and looking at what changes in systems can bring about paradigm shifts. In that sense, I am candidly a researcher-cum-wanting to bring about change in the world being. Dilip, I would apologize for two things: one, if I was too harsh, though that was not my intention and secondly, if I am projecting myself and my ideas on your proposal (which I am certain you will not allow me to as a matter of freedom and democracy!!!) Continuing conversations, Warmly, Zainab > I don't agree with you at all Zainab on this. I think your understanding > and > definition of humanity is extremely narrow and I would argue, incorrect, > in > this context. The dictionary definition of humanity (and I quote from the > Websters dictionary) > > 1. the quality or state of being > humane > *2 a* *:* the quality or state of being > human > *b* *plural* *:* human attributes or > qualities humanities* -- Pamela H. Johnson> > *3* *plural* *:* the branches of learning (as philosophy, arts, or > languages) that investigate human > constructs and concerns as > opposed to natural processes (as in physics or > chemistry) and social relations (as in anthropology or economics) > > Being human or humane (even if you include both these in the context of > Dilip's work) is neither romantic or teary-eyed. After all humanism, even > though there are several critiques of it now which I agree with you, was > one > of the tenets of Renaissance Europe as also modern western civilization. > Here, humanism refers to not merely the shift to a more secular world > vision, but also the inclusion of modern science/scientific methods, > technology, ancient wisdom (in the form of Greek and Latin texts), but > above > of all of accessibility - > which is why a number of these texts were translated into the local > languages in several parts of Europe. > > Even if you understand Dilip's definition of humanity as the focus on > being > humane, I would argue this is not romantic. In fact if you read his > proposed > research carefully, you will see that he wishes to juxtapose these > against > the values of secularism, liberalization etc. > > I have a huge issue with this kind of value judgement, without > understanding > the social, historical or political context of someon'e work. > > In fact, if you come to the matter of subjectivity, I think you will find > a > lot of material on anthropological research that talks of the involvement > of > the researcher with his subject and this is definitely not teary -eyed. I > suspect that subjectivity is very much present in your work. > > > > On 1/21/06, zainab at xtdnet.nl wrote: >> >> Dear Dilip, >> >> I cursorily ran through your idea of the fellowship project. Just a >> quick >> comment. I am not exactly sure at this point where you will be getting >> to/at through the process and period of six months, but an important >> things to think through is not just the humanity aspect of the city, but >> aspects of local relationships, systems and practices which are being >> transformed in the making of the global city - what are these local >> relationships? why are they important that is if they are at all? what >> happens in the making of the global city? >> >> Focussing exclusively on the humanity aspect makes things very >> mushy-mushy, romantic and teary eyed which is something that I >> consciously >> avoid in my methodology and processes of research. >> >> Cheers, >> Zainab >> >> >> >> > Jan 20 2006 >> > >> > Good day to all! My name is Dilip D'Souza. I'm a once-computer >> > scientist, now-writer, in Bombay. I'm honoured and delighted to be >> > part of this eclectic group of people, humbled by the range of things >> > all of you are attempting. I'm appending below a summary of what I >> > want to do with this fellowship. Any comments/help/critiques welcome. >> > >> > cheers, >> > dilip d'souza. >> > >> > Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com >> > --- >> > >> > Village in the City: Bombay in microcosm >> > >> > Bombay, the big city, and everywhere else seems rustic. That's the way >> > I invariably feel whenever I return home to Bombay after a trip >> > somewhere in the country. And yet the oldest truth about Bombay is >> > that it, too, was once a collection of villages. What's more, there >> > are ways in which the big city has not lost that character. Or let's >> > say this: in this big city, you can still find traces of that >> > character. >> > >> > There are parts of Bombay that are still essentially villages. In my >> > suburb of Bandra alone, lanes narrow to warrens, houses look over low >> > walls into each other, you can even see ducks being raised. Ranwar, >> > Chimbai, Sherly, Pali Malla, these are the old villages of the Queen >> > of Bombay's suburbs. And there is also Khotachiwadi in Girgaum, still >> > held up as a model of urban living; also parts of Agripada, CP Tank, >> > Kalbadevi and more. >> > >> > Yet there's another theme I'm trying to get at here. This lies in the >> > way people deal with each other in these neighbourhoods, the humanity >> > that large cities make us pessimistic about finding. >> > >> > For example, in CP Tank I once saw first- and higher-floor residents >> > lowering baskets on ropes to the pavement, to buy vegetables from >> > cooperative vendors. Seems to me a small indicator of a different >> > time, a different place, a different pace. More and more city >> > residents go to large supermarkets for their supplies, or pick up the >> > phone and get their vegetables delivered in minutes. Yet in Bombay's >> > congested heartland, some housewives use baskets on ropes. >> > >> > Bits of humanity intrigue and appeal to me, not least because I fear >> > they are vanishing as even these little spaces in the city get torn >> > down and built over. So my plan is simple: go hunting for them and >> > tell those stories. I want to document not just the physical reality >> > of these villages in Bombay, but the little signs in them that speak >> > of a possibly disappearing, or at least forgotten, humanity. My >> > interest is also in the larger lessons: what do these daily >> > interactions say about life in a city? Or about the great conundrums >> > of modern India: secularism, liberalization, poverty? >> > >> > I want to emphasize that I don't see this project as a paean to the >> > past, nor as a mournful ode to a nearly-vanished history. I'm >> > interested in making the case that life in a city is an experience >> > made of these small interstices. That these may have been villages, >> > but they are the foundation of great metropolises. Very simply, I >> > would like my essays to get my readers thinking about the people who >> > make up a city. Not the buildings or parks or flyovers, but the >> > people. >> > _________________________________________ >> > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >> > Critiques & Collaborations >> > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with >> > subscribe in the subject header. >> > List archive: >> > >> >> >> Zainab Bawa >> Bombay >> www.xanga.com/CityBytes >> http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html >> >> _________________________________________ >> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. >> Critiques & Collaborations >> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with >> subscribe in the subject header. >> List archive: >> > > > > -- > Aditi Thorat > Officer on Special Duty to Chief Minister > Government of Rajasthan > 0141-5116629 (Tele/Fax) > Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From eye at ranadasgupta.com Sun Jan 22 10:30:36 2006 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 10:30:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Desperate British Asians fly to India to abort baby girls Message-ID: <43D31174.6010806@ranadasgupta.com> Someone should write a really detailed book about all the sorts of networks that sustain the idea of the Indian diaspora. Fascinating article, including details about how medical regulations and ethics are shifting in the UK to accommodate an indian social norm. R Desperate British Asians fly to India to abort baby girls Women refused terminations on the NHS are joining the millions of Indians who have surgery to uphold a sons-only tradition. Dan McDougall reports from Delhi Sunday January 22, 2006 The Observer Bringing up a girl, to quote a Punjabi saying, is like watering a neighbour's garden - and it is widely acknowledged that India's patriarchal society has long been based on a simple need for male heirs, often at the cost of unborn females, who are widely seen as little more than an economic burden. As many as 13 million female foetuses may have been aborted in India in the past two decades following prenatal gender checks. Hi-tech mobile ultrasound technology, it seems, is responsible for sending millions of women to backstreet abortion clinics across the country. But abortion of female foetuses has long been a part of life in Britain and The Observer has uncovered evidence that pregnant British Asian women, some in effect barred by the NHS after numerous abortions, are now coming to India for gender-defining ultrasounds and, if they are expecting girls, terminations. The medical procedure is called partial-birth abortion. After around 24 weeks in the womb, two-thirds of a full-term pregnancy, the foetus is pulled from the mother feet first, up to the neck. The doctor then creates a hole in the skull to take out the brain, making it easier to collapse the head and take out the foetus. 'We can abort at over 20 weeks pregnant and the delivery of the foetus at that stage is difficult,' says Dr Revati Mukundan matter-of-factly in the neat offices of the Kalkaji Family Planning Clinic in south Delhi, her clipped English making the matter sound clinical and routine. 'Certainly we can do it, but we would need to have specific grounds for the procedure, and I can assure you a complaint about the sex of the child is not a good reason. We have had a number of British clients, but also clients from the Middle East and Germany. We offer a professional and caring service.' Behind her, in a waiting room, Ritu, 27, is fidgeting impatiently with her scarf. This mother of two children from Leicester has come to India while her husband, an engineer, has stayed with his family. With her is a cousin she barely knows. Ritu is just over 14 weeks pregnant. 'I'm here because we were already coming on holiday to see relatives,' she says quietly, motioning her cousin away. 'I had an ultrasound here a few days ago. It cost about £20 and we found out I was having a girl. My mother-in-law suggested we aborted the baby because the family wants a boy, but insisted we do it in Delhi. I've had an abortion in the UK and she is worried the NHS won't let it happen again; anyway, it is cheaper here - only £100 - and the doctors are excellent.' Ritu says two of her aunts in Britain have had five abortions between them in their quest for a boy. Both were eventually refused ultrasound tests in Leicester and had them privately. 'There are clinics in Leicester that won't identify the sex of babies to Asian women. They have a policy, they say, so more British Asians are coming to India when they are pregnant to make sure everything goes to plan. All I want to do is keep my family happy. My husband doesn't seem to care. We already have two daughters and he agrees with his mother that we need a boy, so I'm going through with it; I don't have any choice. We are going on holiday after this and we will try again for a boy.' There is more than anecdotal evidence that some British Asians are timing family visits to Amritsar, Ahmedabad and Delhi with trips to ultrasound and abortion clinics. For many couples in the UK, under pressure from traditional extended families, multiple abortions at home in their quest for male heirs are seen as increasingly risky. Another case brought to the attention of The Observer is of Kulwant Seghal, 37, not her real name, from Sheffield, who horrified her own relatives by going to extreme lengths to give birth to a baby boy. Despite having two healthy daughters, she felt barren for not having produced a son and, above all, felt the scrutiny of her in-laws, in the UK and India, over her perceived failure. When she finally had a boy after three abortions he had a mental impairment so she is now trying for a second son. 'I might have two daughters,' she told The Observer, 'but they don't mean anything to me without a son. Who is going to look after me and my husband, who is going to take care of the family business? No woman is complete without a son.' Asked about her son's learning difficulties, Kulwant goes quiet. A relative says she may have had four abortions, the third on a trip to India last autumn. Last month, Saroj Adlakha, 59, a GP, stood in the dock with Shilpa Abrol, 20, at Birmingham magistrates' court. The doctor, with a surgery in the King's Heath area, is now on bail, alleged to have passed details of a clinic in Barcelona to the young expectant mother, who had passed the 24-week UK abortion limit. A report by the Commons Science and Technology Committee conceded last year: 'Some UK communities do have a decided preference for boys over girls and permitting such choices leads to increased opportunities for reinforcing sexist attitudes.' It cited research at De Montfort University, Leicester, proving that a social need for male children, particularly among Britons of Indian descent, was widespread. Dr Sabu George, a gender rights expert based in New Delhi, said aborting healthy baby girls was well documented among British Asians, and multiple abortions for married Indians in Britain had become increasingly common. 'The desire for boys transcends caste, social, educational and economic status. One in seven girls in Delhi is killed in the womb and the situation goes on in Britain, where the belief systems are identical. Only health centres and clinics in the UK, particularly those in Asian communities, are now increasingly refusing to declare the sex of unborn babies,' he said. 'It is getting complicated and becoming an issue of a "right to know", but permissiveness by these clinics leads to abortions and the doctors working in them are digging their heels in. This is why we believe more and more British Indians are coming here for abortions.' Another key issue is the development of gender pre-determination technology. Senior members of the Asian community in Scotland have called for the closure of a gender selection clinic in Glasgow after it placed adverts in the Punjabi press exploiting the preference for boys. There is little dignity to be found in the small queue outside the entrance the Kalkaji Family Planning clinic. Shivering in the freezing night air in thin shalwar kameez, the painted nails and gold sandals of the women look out of place in this Delhi suburb. There are no men in sight. The damp, windowless basement they are waiting to descend into has three rooms. The teenage nurse there gave The Observer a tour earlier in the day. Patients are met in a dark hallway and taken to an examination room where they lie on bedsheets stained brown with blood and urine. Next door is the operating theatre where, under a flickering sodium light, they are clamped on to a medieval-looking iron operating table, padded with a thin foam mattress. Strapped into two worn leather leg stirrups, the patient can see jars of formaldehyde or broken glass phials on metal surgical trays. The last thing they see before leaving the clinic is the thick layer of mould growing on the ceiling of the recovery room. The abortion costs 1,000 rupees (£13). It takes less than an hour between the initial examination and returning to the street. The majority of the women in the queue are married and are giving up healthy unborn girls under pressure from husbands or other relatives. Dr Puneet Bedi, a foetal medicine specialist in Delhi, said: 'People don't look at this as a life or death issue, or even as an ethical question. It's just an extension of our consumer culture. If someone can afford to buy a Mercedes, they feel they can afford to secure themselves a son. 'There is a common saying among Indians, Ladka marey kambakth ka; Ladki marey bhaagwaan ki (It is a fool who loses his male child and the fortunate who loses a girl). It's the logic these people hold and they will keep going until they get what they want, a son.' From aditi.thorat at gmail.com Sat Jan 21 12:03:03 2006 From: aditi.thorat at gmail.com (Aditi thorat) Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 12:03:03 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Dilip D'Souza, first posting In-Reply-To: <62685.202.88.213.38.1137824009.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> References: <1a57bfd0601200203t72430773k6982481a6c41ac36@mail.gmail.com> <62685.202.88.213.38.1137824009.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Message-ID: <2d42d32e0601202233h68055855m5b54380a1440fdde@mail.gmail.com> I don't agree with you at all Zainab on this. I think your understanding and definition of humanity is extremely narrow and I would argue, incorrect, in this context. The dictionary definition of humanity (and I quote from the Websters dictionary) 1. the quality or state of being humane *2 a* *:* the quality or state of being human *b* *plural* *:* human attributes or qualities *3* *plural* *:* the branches of learning (as philosophy, arts, or languages) that investigate human constructs and concerns as opposed to natural processes (as in physics or chemistry) and social relations (as in anthropology or economics) Being human or humane (even if you include both these in the context of Dilip's work) is neither romantic or teary-eyed. After all humanism, even though there are several critiques of it now which I agree with you, was one of the tenets of Renaissance Europe as also modern western civilization. Here, humanism refers to not merely the shift to a more secular world vision, but also the inclusion of modern science/scientific methods, technology, ancient wisdom (in the form of Greek and Latin texts), but above of all of accessibility - which is why a number of these texts were translated into the local languages in several parts of Europe. Even if you understand Dilip's definition of humanity as the focus on being humane, I would argue this is not romantic. In fact if you read his proposed research carefully, you will see that he wishes to juxtapose these against the values of secularism, liberalization etc. I have a huge issue with this kind of value judgement, without understanding the social, historical or political context of someon'e work. In fact, if you come to the matter of subjectivity, I think you will find a lot of material on anthropological research that talks of the involvement of the researcher with his subject and this is definitely not teary -eyed. I suspect that subjectivity is very much present in your work. On 1/21/06, zainab at xtdnet.nl wrote: > > Dear Dilip, > > I cursorily ran through your idea of the fellowship project. Just a quick > comment. I am not exactly sure at this point where you will be getting > to/at through the process and period of six months, but an important > things to think through is not just the humanity aspect of the city, but > aspects of local relationships, systems and practices which are being > transformed in the making of the global city - what are these local > relationships? why are they important that is if they are at all? what > happens in the making of the global city? > > Focussing exclusively on the humanity aspect makes things very > mushy-mushy, romantic and teary eyed which is something that I consciously > avoid in my methodology and processes of research. > > Cheers, > Zainab > > > > > Jan 20 2006 > > > > Good day to all! My name is Dilip D'Souza. I'm a once-computer > > scientist, now-writer, in Bombay. I'm honoured and delighted to be > > part of this eclectic group of people, humbled by the range of things > > all of you are attempting. I'm appending below a summary of what I > > want to do with this fellowship. Any comments/help/critiques welcome. > > > > cheers, > > dilip d'souza. > > > > Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com > > --- > > > > Village in the City: Bombay in microcosm > > > > Bombay, the big city, and everywhere else seems rustic. That's the way > > I invariably feel whenever I return home to Bombay after a trip > > somewhere in the country. And yet the oldest truth about Bombay is > > that it, too, was once a collection of villages. What's more, there > > are ways in which the big city has not lost that character. Or let's > > say this: in this big city, you can still find traces of that > > character. > > > > There are parts of Bombay that are still essentially villages. In my > > suburb of Bandra alone, lanes narrow to warrens, houses look over low > > walls into each other, you can even see ducks being raised. Ranwar, > > Chimbai, Sherly, Pali Malla, these are the old villages of the Queen > > of Bombay's suburbs. And there is also Khotachiwadi in Girgaum, still > > held up as a model of urban living; also parts of Agripada, CP Tank, > > Kalbadevi and more. > > > > Yet there's another theme I'm trying to get at here. This lies in the > > way people deal with each other in these neighbourhoods, the humanity > > that large cities make us pessimistic about finding. > > > > For example, in CP Tank I once saw first- and higher-floor residents > > lowering baskets on ropes to the pavement, to buy vegetables from > > cooperative vendors. Seems to me a small indicator of a different > > time, a different place, a different pace. More and more city > > residents go to large supermarkets for their supplies, or pick up the > > phone and get their vegetables delivered in minutes. Yet in Bombay's > > congested heartland, some housewives use baskets on ropes. > > > > Bits of humanity intrigue and appeal to me, not least because I fear > > they are vanishing as even these little spaces in the city get torn > > down and built over. So my plan is simple: go hunting for them and > > tell those stories. I want to document not just the physical reality > > of these villages in Bombay, but the little signs in them that speak > > of a possibly disappearing, or at least forgotten, humanity. My > > interest is also in the larger lessons: what do these daily > > interactions say about life in a city? Or about the great conundrums > > of modern India: secularism, liberalization, poverty? > > > > I want to emphasize that I don't see this project as a paean to the > > past, nor as a mournful ode to a nearly-vanished history. I'm > > interested in making the case that life in a city is an experience > > made of these small interstices. That these may have been villages, > > but they are the foundation of great metropolises. Very simply, I > > would like my essays to get my readers thinking about the people who > > make up a city. Not the buildings or parks or flyovers, but the > > people. > > _________________________________________ > > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > > Critiques & Collaborations > > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > > subscribe in the subject header. > > List archive: > > > > > Zainab Bawa > Bombay > www.xanga.com/CityBytes > http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > -- Aditi Thorat Officer on Special Duty to Chief Minister Government of Rajasthan 0141-5116629 (Tele/Fax) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060121/14ef85b5/attachment.html From aliak77 at gmail.com Sun Jan 22 03:16:28 2006 From: aliak77 at gmail.com (Kath O'Donnell) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 10:46:28 +1300 Subject: [Reader-list] [OT] where to find new media/exp music performance notices for a visitor to Delhi Message-ID: <383607190601211346p672d6698pea4a7eb833e8326f@mail.gmail.com> Hello, forgive this off topic request, but it looks like I'm going to be working in Delhi for a few months on a project and was wondering what are the best websites/mail lists to find out about any upcoming Delhi media arts/experimental electronic music performances/festivals. especially things on the weekends as I'm usually too tired or it's too late during the week. I was in Bangalore for a few months last year but didn't come across anything so was obviously not looking in the right places, so this time I'd like to be more prepared. I've heard about sarai of course - are there any more collectives to keep an eye on? I think I'll be in Delhi for at least a few months from April/May onwards. thanks in advance Kath --- http://www.aliak.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060122/2b21ba9e/attachment.html From amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in Sat Jan 21 12:19:28 2006 From: amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in (Amit Basu) Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 06:49:28 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] A Tasty Cup for Tea Lovers Message-ID: <20060121064928.22509.qmail@web8508.mail.in.yahoo.com> A Tasty Cup for Tea Lovers Last month an interesting exhibition was held in Kolkata on the culture of tea drinking. Keeping in tune with the practice of culture in this city this was no doubt a unique and enriching exhibition. A book by the curator historian Gautam Bhadra (From an Imperial Product to a National Drink: The Culture of Tea Consumption in Modern India. Kolkata: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta & Tea Board of India, 2005, Paperback, Pp. 52, Rs. 150.00) has been published that document this exhibition. For me, being an avowed addict of this stimulant for more than 35 years and a researcher on history of addiction, I could not resist my urge to share my experience of reading this tiny yet informative and insightful book. It is not that no one has written on tea in India. Rather forty-four dense notes and references speak more on that, which can be a handy resource for the fresh researcher. What is engaging in this book is its strategy of representation of 56 prints of the original billboards, posters, calendars, cartoons, drawings, illustrations, photographs and lobby cards with narratives. By the arrangement of this visuals and writings Gautam Bhadra has made it possible to see the cultural history of tea drinking from the perspective of tea becoming a “national product”. His innovative interpretations of the visuals and reading of printed texts has made a convincing disposition of his arguments. He wrote: The focus of this exhibition is thus more on social practices and cultural nuances associated with the consumption of tea in India than on the oft-told narrative of political and economic struggles between labour and capital in tea production and trade (p.2). However, there are many issues related to addiction to this particular stimulant (after tobacco brought by the Portuguese) is not touched upon. For example, the processes that why addiction for this stimulant became so overwhelming remains unexplored. As far as the history of colonial medicine is concerned, we now know that the consenting process by the addicted population to a product promoted by the colonialist is complex. The colonized were not just victims of imperial operations and mixed reactions to this drink are not rare in nineteenth and twentieth century health periodicals in Bengali. Slowly tea also transforms into a health drink and today tea without milk or sugar is being preferred across the state. More than being a descriptive catalogue, this book provides drink for thought and opens up possibilities for new historical writings that engage with such diverse visual materials and blends it with well researched historical sources. I am sure that some of you in the Reader-List of Sarai will be curious to taste this fresh cup of stimulating book! Amit Basu/21.01.2006 Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060121/d1aef84d/attachment.html From induverma_virgo at yahoo.co.in Sat Jan 21 18:54:48 2006 From: induverma_virgo at yahoo.co.in (Indu Verma) Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 13:24:48 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] POSTING-1: Inside the soap factory , by Indu Verma Message-ID: <20060121132448.74120.qmail@web8505.mail.in.yahoo.com> Inside The Soap Factory (by Indu Verma) POSTING –1: An Introduction A dream to be famous, a dream to be big, a dream to be applauded .is what an Actor craves for. Acting to me is just an extension of showing what lies within, as a layer of emotions which if carefully placed & played can fit in the so called “Characters”. Often the world hears actors talking about their acting style, the detailed research they do & the methods they follow to get into the skin of the characters they play. I personally do not subscribe to any style or method of acting. As for the Rasa [1] Theory, there are only nine rasas in which the whole acting world lies! One just needs to place the correct emotion required by a character at the right moment of the character’s life. I certainly do not deny the fact that every single human being would do it in his or her own different way, yet the outcome is only an emotion. And the closest to the character would be the actor playing the right emotion at the right time. Again, it would differ from the viewer’s point of view because what to you would be a delight to watch, may not appeal to others at all. So the debate on what is correct & what is good is unending. Since I am and for now will call myself a “TV Actor”, I will look into the TV soaps which I, fortunately or unfortunately, am a part of. Its not as if I am forced to act on TV. Acting on screen, big or small, was always my dream, but the unfortunate part is the working condition of the TV industry (read: the Soap Factory). Both as an Actor as well as a viewer I feel pity on myself for what I am subjected to. Today the world of soaps mostly revolves around female emotions aiming closely on the desperate housewives who either want to be Tulsis & Parvatis or want their daughters or daugter-in-laws to be one of these Demi-Goddesses. The Soap factory thrives on repetitive conflicts capturing the viewers to the extent of breaking their houses. No exaggerations, but the unending tales of the saas-bahu dramas are many a times not even scripted till the eleventh hour when the scene has to be finally shot! The shoots go on without actual scripts so that the deadlines of the telecast are met. On screen, what looks like a scene of two or more actors talking in the same space & at the same time, might actually be a scene shot separately with each of the actors because their dates could not match with each other. This is a crazy world of make believe. Well, nothing against the Producer who casts the busy actors and manages their schedule like a juggler. Everything is fair in business. Money precedes morality, ethics and even logic. A maddening phase leads to a mammoth quantity of TV soaps, being churned out day after day, episode after episode. All you readers out there won’t like me saying this but the truth is that till you continue to watch, we continue to produce. Only if you stop demanding, will we stop supplying. Till then, bring on the make up! --------------------------------- [1] An ancient Indian acting theory mentioned in Bharat muni’s NATYASHASTRA. Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060121/8137866f/attachment.html From induverma_virgo at yahoo.co.in Sat Jan 21 18:54:47 2006 From: induverma_virgo at yahoo.co.in (Indu Verma) Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 13:24:47 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] POSTING-1: Inside the soap factory , by Indu Verma Message-ID: <20060121132447.73324.qmail@web8507.mail.in.yahoo.com> Inside The Soap Factory (by Indu Verma) POSTING –1: An Introduction A dream to be famous, a dream to be big, a dream to be applauded .is what an Actor craves for. Acting to me is just an extension of showing what lies within, as a layer of emotions which if carefully placed & played can fit in the so called “Characters”. Often the world hears actors talking about their acting style, the detailed research they do & the methods they follow to get into the skin of the characters they play. I personally do not subscribe to any style or method of acting. As for the Rasa [1] Theory, there are only nine rasas in which the whole acting world lies! One just needs to place the correct emotion required by a character at the right moment of the character’s life. I certainly do not deny the fact that every single human being would do it in his or her own different way, yet the outcome is only an emotion. And the closest to the character would be the actor playing the right emotion at the right time. Again, it would differ from the viewer’s point of view because what to you would be a delight to watch, may not appeal to others at all. So the debate on what is correct & what is good is unending. Since I am and for now will call myself a “TV Actor”, I will look into the TV soaps which I, fortunately or unfortunately, am a part of. Its not as if I am forced to act on TV. Acting on screen, big or small, was always my dream, but the unfortunate part is the working condition of the TV industry (read: the Soap Factory). Both as an Actor as well as a viewer I feel pity on myself for what I am subjected to. Today the world of soaps mostly revolves around female emotions aiming closely on the desperate housewives who either want to be Tulsis & Parvatis or want their daughters or daugter-in-laws to be one of these Demi-Goddesses. The Soap factory thrives on repetitive conflicts capturing the viewers to the extent of breaking their houses. No exaggerations, but the unending tales of the saas-bahu dramas are many a times not even scripted till the eleventh hour when the scene has to be finally shot! The shoots go on without actual scripts so that the deadlines of the telecast are met. On screen, what looks like a scene of two or more actors talking in the same space & at the same time, might actually be a scene shot separately with each of the actors because their dates could not match with each other. This is a crazy world of make believe. Well, nothing against the Producer who casts the busy actors and manages their schedule like a juggler. Everything is fair in business. Money precedes morality, ethics and even logic. A maddening phase leads to a mammoth quantity of TV soaps, being churned out day after day, episode after episode. All you readers out there won’t like me saying this but the truth is that till you continue to watch, we continue to produce. Only if you stop demanding, will we stop supplying. Till then, bring on the make up! --------------------------------- [1] An ancient Indian acting theory mentioned in Bharat muni’s NATYASHASTRA. Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060121/0a2242d7/attachment.html From uddipana at gmail.com Sun Jan 22 21:03:41 2006 From: uddipana at gmail.com (Uddipana Goswami) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 21:03:41 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] First Posting Message-ID: with apologies for late posting... CITY AS SETTING: REFLECTIONS OF THE CHANGING FACES OF GUWAHATI IN AXAMIYA LITERATURE In a way, this project of mine had begun way back in 2000 when I was working with tehelka.com as a trainee journalist and the editor of the lifestyle channel on the site, had asked me to write a piece for her on Guwahati which I always touted as a better place to live in than Delhi. The editor loved the piece I wrote but I couldn't figure out why because to me it only revealed my ignorance. I had been thinking of sitting down somebody and taking myself to task over it and learning more about the city I loved to call home. If it hadn't been for this fellowship, I don't know when I would have found the required time, motivation and money to do it. For starters therefore, I think I should post a copy of the piece on Guwahati that I had written in 2000. It is from here my journey of rediscovery begins. Taking an ecumenical approach, my subsequent postings shall traverse genres of creative writing, autobiography, literary criticism, sociological research, oral history and journalism, all aimed at studying Guwahati as reflected in literature, and linking such literary reflections with contemporaneous socio-politics. But to begin with, a monologue… http://my-guwahati.blogspot.com/... From janicepariat at gmail.com Sun Jan 22 21:51:57 2006 From: janicepariat at gmail.com (Janice Pariat) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 21:51:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] First Post (The Notion of Home) Message-ID: <72cca7600601220821n63607839m@mail.gmail.com> The Notion of Home: A Creative Writing Project Hello everyone. Although the title of my project would hint otherwise, I drew a blank when sitting down to writing a 'first-time' post. My name is Janice. I am in the process of applying for a PhD in English Literature. My project entails writing six (or more) pieces of fiction/non-fiction that deal with the various aspects of building/discovering a notion of home. Perhaps a little background would help. I'm sure I'm not the only one to have faced this…but when people ask me where I'm from, I usually hesitate because I don't know what to say. My mother is Portuguese, my father is half British and half Khasi (a tribe that belongs to the state of Meghalaya). Since he worked in the tea estates of Assam, I was sent to school in Shillong (the capital of the state) and lived most of my early life there and then in boarding school. Working in tea means moving from one place to another every three to four years. I did my undergrad in Delhi, my masters in London and now am back for a year in Delhi again. I do apologise if that sounded rather long winded but trust me, it is necessary! I guess all the moving around, the uprooting and adjusting made me question what 'home' is or should be: a geographical place where your 'roots' are supposed to be or a mental space which you identify with. Is 'home' a space where various narratives are woven, where certain images stay with you (a view from a window?) or is it found with family and friends?More specifically, how is a notion of home formed in an urban setting...a city that can be hostile, desolate, impersonal. My project seeks to explore that. Each 'story' will (as of now at least!) attempt to capture an aspect of creating 'home'. How far do you have to travel To be sure to return Is it necessary to wrench your roots To find them How many farewells does it take Before you realise You never went away. Cheers! Janice Pariat From naresh.rhythm at gmail.com Sun Jan 22 22:49:29 2006 From: naresh.rhythm at gmail.com (Naresh Kumar) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 22:49:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: <9e53509a0601220919n2d603011ibb0b09e4f41234a@mail.gmail.com> From hfg at konsumerziehung.de Mon Jan 23 00:14:12 2006 From: hfg at konsumerziehung.de (he tears consume) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 19:44:12 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [syndicate] ArtNews: online archive of performative arts In-Reply-To: <9e53509a0601220919n2d603011ibb0b09e4f41234a@mail.gmail.com> References: <9e53509a0601220919n2d603011ibb0b09e4f41234a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <39ca8849faca921d5554c1a41c0b51e4@konsumerziehung.de> > > 1989–2004 various performative appearances > complete listing of beate zurwehme performances > http://zurwehme.org/appearances.html > > > also re-terretorializing: > > statement for the french people > against giscard's war plans > http://zurwehme.org/FrenchKissGenderCaster.mp3 > > ArtBadges by beate zurwehme > http://zurwehme.org/mondale.html > > > | interlinking of media > | practice with gender related issues > http://zurwehme.org/ > > beate zurwehme, herderstr. 9, 61350 bad homburg v.d.h. > germany, phone no. +49-177-8400827 > contact, beate(at)zurwehme.org %@@@@. %@@@@ > > publications, > Zen und Kunst. Zeremonielle in der Gegenwartskunst, München 1997 > Dankräume, in: Thomas Erdelmeier, Figuren, Filderstadt 1993 > Der Flaum vor den Kameras: Die Videokunst, in: Die Bibliothek, Kunst > und Kultur, Brockhaus, Bd. 6, Mannheim 1999 > sowie zahlreiche Aufsätze zu zeitgenössischen KünstlerInnen (u.a. Bill > Koons, Eija-Lisa Parastou, Bad Kleinen). > > > > -----Syndicate mailinglist----------------------- > Syndicate network for media culture and media art > information and archive: http://syndicate.anart.no > to post to the Syndicate list: > Shake the KKnut: http://syndicate.anart.no/KKnut/ > no commercial use of the texts without permission From rahulpandita at yahoo.com Sun Jan 22 16:54:13 2006 From: rahulpandita at yahoo.com (rahul pandita) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 11:24:13 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] The Sampaati Club Message-ID: <20060122112413.60927.qmail@web31713.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The Sampaati Club Life is so difficult in Delhi. Sometimes I feel there are more vehicles on roads than human beings. Everyone is rushing everywhere. Some people live on Bread, Butter, Maggi and Pepsi. Some live on Royal Stag and Chicken Tikka Masala. And some people live on credit cards. So much so that their life becomes a loan; each day an instalment. That is why probably call centres are booming. Tele marketing is thriving. I left a conventional job three months ago. People asked why and I claimed to be working on a novel. Some are still asking but now I answer depending upon how good they look and what mood I am in. Some people thought that I was planning to live on my wife’s earnings and few even asked. But thankfully, I now have the Sarai contract to flash in front of their eyes. So, yes, I was sitting one day, in front of the computer, staring at the empty computer screen. The cursor seemed to say, Sir, come on, I am ready for any word. And I said, Shut Up. I was trying to think. Think of those words, which would fill my novel. And just as I thought a few were coming, my cell phone rang. Hello. Hello Sir, am I speaking to Mr. Rahul Pandita? Yes. Good afternoon Sir, this is Shweta from ICICI Bank limited. Do you have any requirement of a loan? No. Sir, we are really offering it a very low interest rate. I said I am not interested. Bang. Words. Where did thee go? I sought solace in Poetry, inspired by a friend Tanzan Senzaki. He has been tolerating my nonsense verses for quite some time and just a day ago, he suggested, in an exasperated tone, a book by American poet Ted Kooser. It is called The Poetry Home Repair Manual. Finally I wrote a poem about Sampaati, the vulture from Ramayana. The brother of legendary Jatayun, who while trying to save Sita from the clutches of Ravana, became a victim of his sword. It went like this (English translation provided at the end of the poem, kindly edited by Tanzan): Haan, mein hi Sampaati hun Jeevan ki andheri gufa mein rehne wala giddh Wo mera hi anuj tha Jisne Ravan ke parakram ki parvah nahi ki aur uski talvaar ki bhent chadkar taara ban gaya Samay ki sui kai nashtar chubo gayi lekin mein data raha, kyunki Ram aane wale the Muje patniyon ke mehatv ka gyaan nahi tha aur na hi mujhse kisi ne prem kiya Pur Ram ke chehre par chaaye peelepan ne Mere lahu ko aur arun kar diya Mujhe pata tha ki mein Lanka mein jaakar aag lagane se to raha Lekin maine apne shareer ke taap se Hanuman ki poonch mein jwar bhar diya Maine jeevan bhar udaan bhari Na jaane kitne parvat, saagar mere pankhon ka graas bane Aur aaj in boodhe pankhon mein koi jaan nahi hai Lekin Jatayun ke praanon ko mein vyarth nahi jaane dunga Mein jeevan ki isi andher gufa mein eik naye Ram ki prateeksha karunga Yes, I am the one Who is Sampatti, the vulture Living in the dark caves of life Jatayun was my borther, Ignoring the valor of Ravana He fell victim to his sword And turned into a star The daggers of time Piecred me many times, But I stood tall As Rama was coming I didn’t know What wives meant to men As no one ever loved me once, But the pallid face of Rama Boiled my blood to redness I knew I couldn’t set Lanka ablaze But my body’s heat set tail of Hanuman on fire I flew high all my life How many mountains and oceans My wings devoured, only God knows! Today my wings are lifeless. But I won’t let Jatayun’s life go as waste, In this dark cavern of my life I will wait till a new Rama comes. And then this thought stuck my mind. Like a thunder, I tell you. After a series of consultations with a like-minded (read mad like me) friend, we formed ‘The Sampaati Club’. And what would be the primary task of The Sampaati club? To help the humankind get rid of unwanted calls for car loans, bank loans, mobile service change etc etc. A day after, our first victim called. Hello. Good afternoon Sir. This is Anuj from ABN Amro Bank. Am I speaking to Mr. Rahul Pandita? No, I am Sampaati. Sampaati? I began shooting from the hip. I roared: Haan, mein hi Sampaati hun Jeevan ki andheri gufa mein rehne wala giddh Wo mera hi anuj tha Jisne Ravan ke parakram ki parvah nahi ki aur uski talvaar ki bhent chadkar taara ban gaya A silence of almost three seconds. And then I get to hear: Sorry Sir. And Anuj disconnects the phone. Since yesterday, I have not received any unsolicited call. I think the word has spread. Ps: Membership to Sampaati Club is open for fifteen days. Those who wish to join are required to mail me at rahulpandita at yahoo.com. Every member will be called Sampaati and shall introduce himself/herself to the telemarketing executives as Sampaati. Those who fail to join in fifteen days will nevertheless be made members, but only after they agree to listen to my fifty-one poems. Rahul Pandita www.sanitysucks.blogspot.com Mobile: 9818088664 --------------------------------- To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060122/9c934e94/attachment.html From aesthete at mail.jnu.ac.in Sun Jan 22 16:00:54 2006 From: aesthete at mail.jnu.ac.in (Dean School of Arts and Aesthetics) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 16:00:54 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Lecture by Ellen Driscoll Message-ID: <1137925854.cd7b2ec0aesthete@mail.jnu.ac.in> Slide Lecture by sculptor E l l e n D r i s c o l l School of Arts and Aesthetics Gallery 24th January 4pm All are cordially invited Ellen Driscoll is a Professor of Sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design. Her work includes installations such as “The Loophole of Retreat” (Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris, 1991), and “Passionate Attitudes” (Threadwaxing Space, New York, 1995), public art projects such as “As Above, So Below” for Grand Central Terminal (1999), a suite of 20 mosaic and glass works for the tunnels at 45th,47th and 48th streets, “Catching the Drift”, a women’s restroom for the Smith College Museum of Art (2003), and “Aqueous Humour”, a kinetic sculpture for the South Boston Maritime Park (2004). Ms. Driscoll has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Anonymous Was a Woman, the LEF Foundation, and Radcliffe’s Bunting Institute. Her work is included in major public and private collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of Art. Artist statement My work in sculpture, drawing, and public art is drawn from diverse sources such as architecture, the ancient memory arts, and primitive imaging techniques such as shadow play. As an artist I am drawn to making things through bricolage, and the happy unpredictable chances that materials, sites, and social histories can suggest. Through this process, I set up unpredictable encounters in which viewers are asked to make an imaginative whole out of disparate parts, in the way that the protective architectural form of a magpie’s nest is built from a scrap of cloth, a shiny piece of wire, and selected twigs. I am also fascinated by cycles of decay and regeneration. For example, the strange phenomenon of a phantom limb still feeling sensation, is evidence of our brain circuitry re-wiring itself to compensate for loss. I see my work as an imaginative parallel to this biological phenomenon.. I am also interested in different forms of paradox; motion and stasis, weight and weightlessness, light and dark, wholeness and fragmentation are all held in tension in the physical act of encountering my work. Using materials as disparate as LEDs, Roman style mosaic, cloth, newspaper, steel, and glass, my work presents an ancient idea borne out by the most recent research into genome mapping-- that underneath what is seemingly “unlike” is a more profound affinity. In the words of Italo Calvino in Six Memos for the Next Millenium, “Knowledge of the world tends to dissolve the solidity of the world, leading to a perception of all that is infinitely minute, light, and mobile… But these are only the outward appearances of a single common substance that ...if stirred by profound emotion...may be changed into what most differs from it.” ============================================== This Mail was Scanned for Virus and found Virus free ============================================== _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From jeebesh at sarai.net Sun Jan 22 21:37:48 2006 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 21:37:48 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] www.justiceforworkers.org Message-ID: Dear friends, Please see the newly launched website www.justiceforworkers.org for details on the Michael Aram Exports metal workers’ protests, news updates, press coverage, global petition, and photographs of Michael Aram’s metal polishing factory in Delhi. ___________________________________________________ The Michael Aram Exports metal workers will be in public dialouge with their placards at the following locations and times this week: Monday, Jan 23: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Sanya Motors, Okhla Phase I 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Tuesday, Jan 24: 11:30 am - 2 pm, Sujan Singh Park near Ambassador Hotel Wednesday, Jan 25: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Basera Hotel main road, Okhla Phase I 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Thursday, Jan 26: HOLIDAY Friday, Jan 27: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Gole Chakkar Okhla Phase I 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Saturday, Jan 28: 8:30 - 9:30 am, Okhla Phase II Power House 1-2 pm, C109 Okhla Phase I Please stop by and meet us if you are in the area. Sincerely, Shankar Ramaswami PhD Candidate University of Chicago (Please call 9818630612 for directions) Justice for Workers www.justiceforworkers.org _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From aditi.thorat at gmail.com Mon Jan 23 12:31:42 2006 From: aditi.thorat at gmail.com (Aditi thorat) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 12:31:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Dilip D'Souza, first posting In-Reply-To: <1a57bfd0601220933w3478c3a5ra35ec22668ae202b@mail.gmail.com> References: <1a57bfd0601200203t72430773k6982481a6c41ac36@mail.gmail.com> <62685.202.88.213.38.1137824009.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> <2d42d32e0601202233h68055855m5b54380a1440fdde@mail.gmail.com> <62798.202.88.213.38.1137851624.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> <1a57bfd0601220933w3478c3a5ra35ec22668ae202b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d42d32e0601222301p31ba4710j12e0a86201685741@mail.gmail.com> Thanks for this detailed response Zainab and Dilip, for your comments. I apologise if I sounded too harsh, as well. Its just that the hierarchies between what is conventionally considered valid academic exercise (such as understanding of systems, interlinkages etc , along with extensive intellectualising) as opposed to other forms of recording- whether that is oral history, story-telling, music, folk etc, jars with me. I believe that these forms very often reveal as much, if not more and they speak for themselves as well, we do not need to intermediate with interpretation. Anyway, keep the discussions alive! Aditi On 1/22/06, Dilip D'Souza -- Sarai wrote: > > Dear Zainab and Aditi, > > Thank you for the welcome exchange on my proposal, something I didn't > at all expect! First of all, Zainab, there's no need to apologize, and > I am quite happy for you to project your ideas on my proposal. > > Let me say this: I've never been much good at posing the larger > research or academic questions (I think I first realized that when I > failed my PhD exams). What I think I can do reasonably is write the > stories of people I meet, and use those stories to ask questions or > touch on broader themes. When I look back on the stuff I've written, > this is the pattern I see, and it's the only way I know how to write. > > So my proposal to Sarai was, in essence, this: I want to write those > stories -- about Bombay's villages, in this case -- so will you give > me the funding? > > no facetiousness meant. > > What questions those stories will pose when I write them, we'll have > to see, and my readers will have to tell me. > > As for humanity: perhaps I used the word for want of a better one. I > have no use for the romantic view of people's interaction, for the > assumption that we are all really good-hearted do-gooders at heart. > Though two things interest me in that vein: the dark things that > people do, and the way people survive and live through them anyway. > > But with this project, what I hope to get some handle on is what makes > up those large issues -- secularism, poverty, development, those > things. We debate them, but how do they translate into everyday lives > (or do they translate at all)? Again, when I look back at my writing, > it's the times that I've had conversations with ordinary individuals > when I've gained some better understanding of themes. Not the papers > I've read, or seminars I've attended. So I hope to keep on with that > over the next six months. > > I don't know if I've done anything better than a stream of > consciousness reply to you both, nor if it has clarified anything. But > I thank you again for thinking about what I wrote and for letting me > know your thoughts; for giving me things to think about. Any other > thoughts always welcome. > > cheers, > dilip. > -- Aditi Thorat Officer on Special Duty to Chief Minister Government of Rajasthan 0141-5116629 (Tele/Fax) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060123/0be0f842/attachment.html From express_yourself at rediffmail.com Mon Jan 23 13:07:05 2006 From: express_yourself at rediffmail.com (express yourself) Date: 23 Jan 2006 07:37:05 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] translation of first posting Message-ID: <20060123073705.23762.qmail@webmail29.rediffmail.com>   Hi everybody, My name is Yunus, I am from Delhi and I do social work for a living. Being in this profession for last three years and during my education I have been associated with many voluntary organizations that work on various issues like child rights, women empowerment and livelihoods etc. for last one year I have been associated with a Child help line, run by a voluntary organization and where my major responsibility is to coordinate with other organizations to help children in distress. As part of my work I got few opportunities of interacting with those parts, systems and mechanisms of the city, which I wouldn’t have done otherwise. This experience showed me a different picture of Delhi, which is usually distorted or ignored. The curiosity of exploring more and sharing my findings with others motivated me to Join Sarai as a researcher. During last fifteen years because of new economic policies and structural adjustment program there has been dynamic changes in the concept and process of urbanization itself .all this has resulted in the increased complexities in city and city lives. To address these complexities and problems ,initiatives were taken up by both governmental and non-governmental organizations. ‘Help line’ is one of them. Through this research I will study Delhi from a perspective of help line workers . As the title suggests it will throw light at Helplessness of the national capital Delhi. However as case it will raise question about the social changes in any city ,due to LPG (liberalization Privatization and Globalization) it will also highlight the contemporary meaning of Help for city dwellers and the web of HELP, NEEDS and SERVICES. For the purpose of research ,I will be interacting, interviewing and observing help line workers to study their lives, Work, Activities and client from close quarters. I intend to make transit walks with them to get their version of the city. I will take Pictures and facilitate them to click pictures of the significant parts of their life as a helpline worker and will try pen down their comments. Along with exploring Helpline as new work And mapping lives of help line workers this research will also enter in the domains of other areas like impact of new technology on people, their behavior and communication, the integration of seemingly differentiated problems of people living in a city. also it will lead to a better insight into the various systems and mechanisms responsible for smooth functioning of the city. i will try to share my future posting with reader list along with dewane sarai. Your feed back and comments are welcome. Regards, S M Yunus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060123/59457055/attachment.html From aarti at sarai.net Mon Jan 23 19:28:26 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 19:28:26 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for Applications: Blogs/Zines/Comix Message-ID: <43D4E102.9010202@sarai.net> Call For Applications: BLOGS/ZINES/COMIX 17, 18, 19 February 2006 Facilitated by: Anand V. Taneja, Samit Basu + Sarai.txt Editorial Collective + Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Sarnath Bannerjee Blogs/Zines/Comix is a workshop designed to introduce you to the discussion and production of three exciting media forms. If you ever wanted to make and design your own blog, edit your own zine or draw your own comics, then this workshop is for you. Interact with leading comic book writers based in Delhi such as former Sarai Independent Fellows Sarnath Bannerjee and Vishwajyoti Ghosh, find out what keeps the blogosphere active by talking to hot bloggers Samit Basu, Anand Taneja and others,and have a hands on experience in designing and editing different print media forms like broadsheets, stickers, pamphlets and more with the Sarai.txt team. The three day workshop will consist of practitioner presentations on the first day in which facilitators will introduce the forms. Participants will then choose to work on and produce one form in a group over the next two days. Sessions will focus on both the conceptual and practical aspects of media work. Last date for registration 5 February 2005. The workshop is free but limited seats are available so do get your application in on time! Send a short bio and why you wish to attend the workshop to: aarti at sarai.net From aarti at sarai.net Mon Jan 23 19:35:58 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 19:35:58 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Open Mic / Open Screen Message-ID: <43D4E2C6.8080105@sarai.net> ====================== Open Mic / Open Screen ====================== Open Mic/Open Screen: An Evening of Experimental Film, Video, Audio-work,Poetry and Spoken Word. 5:30 pm, Tuesday, 31 January 2006 This month we invite friends interested in experimenting with the film, video and audio forms to jam in the Sarai cafe. We hope this can become a regular event in which people working across forms such as film, image-making, sound and text can come together and share their work in an open, relaxed and fun context. Everyone will get 5-7 minutes to screen/play video/audio works, and read/perform text based work. You can share video, audio, poetry, spoken word, a short prose piece, a performance, singly or in groups, in any language (though do be prepared to translate for those uninitiated :) The screening/performance order will be decided on a first-come-first-serve basis. Films, Video and Audio pieces should be between 1-7 minutes long. You can share a complete work, parts of a work, a work in progress, even stills, in B/W and or colour. Film and Video must be in DVD format, Audio work on CD. Contact aarti at sarai.net for further details From aarti at sarai.net Mon Jan 23 22:49:07 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 22:49:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Listening Lounge @ Sarai Message-ID: <43D5100B.6030506@sarai.net> ======================== Listening Lounge @ Sarai ======================== “Transit Lounge...Sonic Landscapes: Journeys in Sonic Fieldwork” Sara Kolster + Sophea Lerner 5:30 PM, Tuesday, 24 January 2005 We invite you to be transported by a selection of sonic journeys and composed field recordings featuring: SoundTransit a collaborative sonic world tour Sara Kolster & Derek Holzer “Many sounds in our everyday lives slip past our notice simply because they are too small, or because we lack the proper receivers to pick them up. 'resonancity' is an ongoing project to gather these microscopic sounds from various cities, and to amplify and transform them. The goal is to build a new city of sound and visuals inside the old one, and to inspire curiosity and exploration of one's own environment.” [Sophea Lerner is an Australian radiomaker, sound engineer and new media artist currently based in Helsinki where she teaches media and sonic arts at the Centre for Music & Technology. Her work combines experimental radio and new media art into a collaborative practice that explores audience interaction through movement and sound. Sara Kolster is a visual artist with a background in design. Recently, the focus of her work shifted more towards video and film; capturing details from urban locations, visualizing fragments of stories of these environments. She uses different strategies, from time-based media (video, film, photography) to appropriated research methods belonging to different observational disciplines (journalism, documentary & archeology).] From dilip.sarai at gmail.com Sun Jan 22 23:03:02 2006 From: dilip.sarai at gmail.com (Dilip D'Souza -- Sarai) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 23:03:02 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Dilip D'Souza, first posting In-Reply-To: <62798.202.88.213.38.1137851624.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> References: <1a57bfd0601200203t72430773k6982481a6c41ac36@mail.gmail.com> <62685.202.88.213.38.1137824009.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> <2d42d32e0601202233h68055855m5b54380a1440fdde@mail.gmail.com> <62798.202.88.213.38.1137851624.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Message-ID: <1a57bfd0601220933w3478c3a5ra35ec22668ae202b@mail.gmail.com> Dear Zainab and Aditi, Thank you for the welcome exchange on my proposal, something I didn't at all expect! First of all, Zainab, there's no need to apologize, and I am quite happy for you to project your ideas on my proposal. Let me say this: I've never been much good at posing the larger research or academic questions (I think I first realized that when I failed my PhD exams). What I think I can do reasonably is write the stories of people I meet, and use those stories to ask questions or touch on broader themes. When I look back on the stuff I've written, this is the pattern I see, and it's the only way I know how to write. So my proposal to Sarai was, in essence, this: I want to write those stories -- about Bombay's villages, in this case -- so will you give me the funding? no facetiousness meant. What questions those stories will pose when I write them, we'll have to see, and my readers will have to tell me. As for humanity: perhaps I used the word for want of a better one. I have no use for the romantic view of people's interaction, for the assumption that we are all really good-hearted do-gooders at heart. Though two things interest me in that vein: the dark things that people do, and the way people survive and live through them anyway. But with this project, what I hope to get some handle on is what makes up those large issues -- secularism, poverty, development, those things. We debate them, but how do they translate into everyday lives (or do they translate at all)? Again, when I look back at my writing, it's the times that I've had conversations with ordinary individuals when I've gained some better understanding of themes. Not the papers I've read, or seminars I've attended. So I hope to keep on with that over the next six months. I don't know if I've done anything better than a stream of consciousness reply to you both, nor if it has clarified anything. But I thank you again for thinking about what I wrote and for letting me know your thoughts; for giving me things to think about. Any other thoughts always welcome. cheers, dilip. From D.F.J.Wood at NEWCASTLE.AC.UK Mon Jan 23 19:41:41 2006 From: D.F.J.Wood at NEWCASTLE.AC.UK (D F J Wood) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 14:11:41 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Hegemony and Control in the East Asian City (Modified by Geert Lovink) Message-ID: <243d3eb10f2636ee6ab1bf4c1f078008@NEWCASTLE.AC.UK> From: Urban Geography Discussion and Announcement Forum [mailto:URB-GEOG-FORUM at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Federico Caprotti Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 9:15 PM To: URB-GEOG-FORUM at JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: [URB-GEOG-FORUM] FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS - hegemony and control in the East Asian City Call for Papers - Hegemony and Control in the East Asian City 2006 East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography (EARCAG), Taipei, Taiwan. June 24-30 2006. Conference information: http://www.geog.ntu.edu.tw/news/20060624/index.htm ---- 'Hegemony and Control in Public and Social Urban Space in Asia' Two sessions on critical urban geography at EARCAG 2006 Control of public space, the city, the urban environment, and associated visual-geographical 'imaginations' imposedby overarching political and statal organizations, and maintained through various mechanisms of sociopolitical control, have been the subject of fruitful recent analysis by critical urban geographers. The dynamic spaces of the city, and the articulation and intermeshing of power relations through the built environment, has created particuar and engaging - albeit at times sinister - geographies of control. Cities in Asia have been under-researched with regards to these topics. This session aims to redress the balance by considering power, control and the construction of hegemony in cities in East Asia. The focus is on those spaces where traditionally examined spaces - public space etc. - intermingle with the more subtle and liminal spaces of 'the social'. From political discussion in Singapore to Falun Gong in Shanghai, from the erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong to spaces of disaffected youth in Tokyo, this session aims to explore the spatial and social urban reprecussions of control and hegemony in what is arguably the most dynamic urban region of the world today. Geographers and academics from cognate disciplines from Asian countries, and those from elsewhere who are doing research on similar topics, are welcome to submit proposals. Proposals are welcome on a broad range of topics. Please send abstracts of c.250 words to federico.caprotti at geog.ox.ac.uk _______________________________________________________ URB-GEOG-FORUM at jiscmail.ac.uk An urban geography discussion and announcement forum List Archives: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/URB-GEOG-FORUM Maintained by: RGS-IBG Urban Geography Research Group UGRG Home Page: http://www.urban-geography.org.uk From zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in Tue Jan 24 01:03:07 2006 From: zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in (khalid jamal) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 19:33:07 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] translation of first posting In-Reply-To: <20060123073705.23762.qmail@webmail29.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <20060123193307.88647.qmail@web8605.mail.in.yahoo.com> Yunus, You seems to have had interesting encounters with the city..i am keenly looking forwrd to listen to the tale of the city through the narrative of a Helpline.. GOODLUCK.. express yourself wrote: Hi everybody, My name is Yunus, I am from Delhi and I do social work for a living. Being in this profession for last three years and during my education I have been associated with many voluntary organizations that work on various issues like child rights, women empowerment and livelihoods etc. for last one year I have been associated with a Child help line, run by a voluntary organization and where my major responsibility is to coordinate with other organizations to help children in distress. As part of my work I got few opportunities of interacting with those parts, systems and mechanisms of the city, which I wouldn’t have done otherwise. This experience showed me a different picture of Delhi, which is usually distorted or ignored. The curiosity of exploring more and sharing my findings with others motivated me to Join Sarai as a researcher. During last fifteen years because of new economic policies and structural adjustment program there has been dynamic changes in the concept and process of urbanization itself .all this has resulted in the increased complexities in city and city lives. To address these complexities and problems ,initiatives were taken up by both governmental and non-governmental organizations. ‘Help line’ is one of them. Through this research I will study Delhi from a perspective of help line workers . As the title suggests it will throw light at Helplessness of the national capital Delhi. However as case it will raise question about the social changes in any city ,due to LPG (liberalization Privatization and Globalization) it will also highlight the contemporary meaning of Help for city dwellers and the web of HELP, NEEDS and SERVICES. For the purpose of research ,I will be interacting, interviewing and observing help line workers to study their lives, Work, Activities and client from close quarters. I intend to make transit walks with them to get their version of the city. I will take Pictures and facilitate them to click pictures of the significant parts of their life as a helpline worker and will try pen down their comments. Along with exploring Helpline as new work And mapping lives of help line workers this research will also enter in the domains of other areas like impact of new technology on people, their behavior and communication, the integration of seemingly differentiated problems of people living in a city. also it will lead to a better insight into the various systems and mechanisms responsible for smooth functioning of the city. i will try to share my future posting with reader list along with dewane sarai. Your feed back and comments are welcome. Regards, S M Yunus _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: ONE LIFE. ONE SHOT. Happiness, Health & Peace, Syed Khalid Jamal Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060123/5004b005/attachment.html From uddipana at gmail.com Tue Jan 24 13:56:17 2006 From: uddipana at gmail.com (Uddipana Goswami) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 13:56:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] more on guwahati Message-ID: Here's the dual face of the Guwahati mentality that I tried to explore: http://www.xcp.bfn.org/goswami.html Comments welcomed. From turbulence at turbulence.org Mon Jan 23 22:32:18 2006 From: turbulence at turbulence.org (Turbulence) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 12:02:18 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Competition URL Now Available Message-ID: <001301c6203e$cd94f3b0$6601a8c0@t5x1c0> Turbulence New England Initiative II: Net Art and Hybrid Networked Art Competition http://www.turbulence.org/ne2/guidelines.html WHAT: 3 commissions @ $3,500 each ELIGIBILITY: New England Residents (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont) DEADLINE: February 28, 2006 JURY: Julian Bleecker, Michele Thursz, and Helen Thorington EXHIBITION: commissioned works will be exhibited on Turbulence (http://turbulence.org) and at Art Interactive (http://artinteractive.org) SUPPORT: LEF Foundation Questions? Contact me: turbulence at turbulence.org Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: http://turbulence.org New American Radio: http://somewhere.org Networked_Performance Blog: http://turbulence.org/blog Upgrade! Boston: http://turbulence.org/upgrade _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From aarti at sarai.net Tue Jan 24 12:17:34 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (aarti at sarai.net) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 07:47:34 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Listening Lounge @ Sarai Message-ID: <1125.61.246.29.165.1138085254.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> ======================== Listening Lounge @ Sarai ======================== “Transit Lounge...Sonic Landscapes: Journeys in Sonic Fieldwork” Sara Kolster + Sophea Lerner Sara Kolster and Sophea Lerner are artists in residence at Sarai-CSDS as part of "Towards a Culture of Open Networks", a cross-cultural collaborative intiative supported by the EU-India Economic and Cross-Cultural Programme. 5:30 PM, Tuesday, 24 January 2005 We invite you to be transported by a selection of sonic journeys and composed field recordings featuring: SoundTransit a collaborative sonic world tour Sara Kolster & Derek Holzer “Many sounds in our everyday lives slip past our notice simply because they are too small, or because we lack the proper receivers to pick them up. 'resonancity' is an ongoing project to gather these microscopic sounds from various cities, and to amplify and transform them. The goal is to build a new city of sound and visuals inside the old one, and to inspire curiosity and exploration of one's own environment.” [Sophea Lerner is a radiomaker, sound engineer and new media artist currently based in Helsinki, Finland where she teaches media and sonic arts at the Centre for Music & Technology. Her work combines experimental radio and new media art into a collaborative practice that explores audience interaction through movement and sound. Sara Kolster is a visual artist with a background in design. Recently, the focus of her work shifted more towards video and film; capturing details from urban locations, visualizing fragments of stories of these environments. She uses different strategies, from time-based media (video, film, photography) to appropriated research methods belonging to different observational disciplines (journalism, documentary & archeology).] _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From pukar at pukar.org.in Mon Jan 23 16:58:08 2006 From: pukar at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:58:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [announcements] Lecture series on the Mumbai Deluge Message-ID: <001401c62010$17dfdb30$10d0c0cb@freeda> PUKAR Youth Fellowship Programme and Mumbai University presents A lecture series on the Mumbai Deluge On July 26, 2005, Mumbai was caught unawares by the highest rainfall of the century. The metropolis received 37.1 inches or 94.4 centimeters of rain in a 24-hour period between July 26 and 27, higher than the annual average. The lecture series uses the floods as an entry point to talk about infrastructure, town planning, disaster management and the city's future. The Venue for all the lectures is Room No. 26, Mumbai University, Fort Campus, Fort, Mumbai. 1. Representatives of the Western and Central Railways and the General Manager, BEST 24th January, 2 pm 2.. Mr. Suresh Khopade, Railway Police Commissioner 30th January, 2 pm 3.. Rajendra Sathe, Bureau Head, E TV and Alhad Godbole, Resident Editor, Loksatta 27th January, 2pm 4.. Sanjay Deshmukh, Department of Life Sciences, Mumbai University 28th January, 2pm 5.. Chandrashekhar Prabhu, architect and former President, MHADA 31st January, 2pm 6.. Mr. Nawab Malik, MLA (Kurla) 1st February, 2pm 7.. S S Bhandare, former CEO, Bombay First 3rd February, 11 am to 1 pm 8.. Arvind Adarkar, architect and lecturer, Academy of Architecture 4th February, 2pm -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) Address:: 1-4, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Sir P. M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Telephone:: +91 (22) 5574 8152 Fax:: +91 (22) 5664 0561 Email:: pukar at pukar.org.in Website:: www.pukar.org.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060123/35556c6a/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From zainab at xtdnet.nl Tue Jan 24 15:46:06 2006 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 14:16:06 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Dilip D'Souza, first posting In-Reply-To: <2d42d32e0601222301p31ba4710j12e0a86201685741@mail.gmail.com> References: <1a57bfd0601200203t72430773k6982481a6c41ac36@mail.gmail.com> <62685.202.88.213.38.1137824009.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> <2d42d32e0601202233h68055855m5b54380a1440fdde@mail.gmail.com> <62798.202.88.213.38.1137851624.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> <1a57bfd0601220933w3478c3a5ra35ec22668ae202b@mail.gmail.com> <2d42d32e0601222301p31ba4710j12e0a86201685741@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62523.202.88.213.38.1138097766.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Dear Aditi and Dilip, I think this has been a very interesting and useful interaction. To me, it reveals issues about academia and methods, a discussion which I think is important and useful for a list like this. Raising the questions that each one of us has about academics, 'knowledge production', research, I believe, gets me to question my own work as a researcher (if I may call myself one, though the people I interact with call me a journalist. Looking forward to more of this! Warmly, Zainab > Thanks for this detailed response Zainab and Dilip, for your comments. I > apologise if I sounded too harsh, as well. Its just that the hierarchies > between what is conventionally considered valid academic exercise (such as > understanding of systems, interlinkages etc , along with extensive > intellectualising) as opposed to other forms of recording- whether that is > oral history, story-telling, music, folk etc, jars with me. I believe that > these forms very often reveal as much, if not more and they speak for > themselves as well, we do not need to intermediate with interpretation. > > Anyway, keep the discussions alive! > Aditi > > > On 1/22/06, Dilip D'Souza -- Sarai wrote: >> >> Dear Zainab and Aditi, >> >> Thank you for the welcome exchange on my proposal, something I didn't >> at all expect! First of all, Zainab, there's no need to apologize, and >> I am quite happy for you to project your ideas on my proposal. >> >> Let me say this: I've never been much good at posing the larger >> research or academic questions (I think I first realized that when I >> failed my PhD exams). What I think I can do reasonably is write the >> stories of people I meet, and use those stories to ask questions or >> touch on broader themes. When I look back on the stuff I've written, >> this is the pattern I see, and it's the only way I know how to write. >> >> So my proposal to Sarai was, in essence, this: I want to write those >> stories -- about Bombay's villages, in this case -- so will you give >> me the funding? >> >> no facetiousness meant. >> >> What questions those stories will pose when I write them, we'll have >> to see, and my readers will have to tell me. >> >> As for humanity: perhaps I used the word for want of a better one. I >> have no use for the romantic view of people's interaction, for the >> assumption that we are all really good-hearted do-gooders at heart. >> Though two things interest me in that vein: the dark things that >> people do, and the way people survive and live through them anyway. >> >> But with this project, what I hope to get some handle on is what makes >> up those large issues -- secularism, poverty, development, those >> things. We debate them, but how do they translate into everyday lives >> (or do they translate at all)? Again, when I look back at my writing, >> it's the times that I've had conversations with ordinary individuals >> when I've gained some better understanding of themes. Not the papers >> I've read, or seminars I've attended. So I hope to keep on with that >> over the next six months. >> >> I don't know if I've done anything better than a stream of >> consciousness reply to you both, nor if it has clarified anything. But >> I thank you again for thinking about what I wrote and for letting me >> know your thoughts; for giving me things to think about. Any other >> thoughts always welcome. >> >> cheers, >> dilip. >> > > > > -- > Aditi Thorat > Officer on Special Duty to Chief Minister > Government of Rajasthan > 0141-5116629 (Tele/Fax) > Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From prem at cnt-semac.com Tue Jan 24 16:20:36 2006 From: prem at cnt-semac.com (Prem Chandavarkar) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 16:20:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] lanka tech/culture mag - writers out there? In-Reply-To: <43CA3EED.5000307@media.com.au> References: <20060115120716.55614.qmail@web33110.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <43CA3EED.5000307@media.com.au> Message-ID: <43D6067C.9030005@cnt-semac.com> In case you have not done so already, you could also post this to the south asia IT mailing list hosted by the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) http://www.apnic.net/community/lists/index.html sam de silva wrote: > hi, > > i am currently helping out a bunch of people here in colombo with > re-shaping an IT Magazine in to more of a cultural/tech type magazine - > eventually being distributed across South Asia. > > so, interested to hear from potential writers - who are good (and > ideally have experience) at writing in an accessible way about topics > relating technology / computing / net / tech-culture ... also > interested in people who do music / video / dvd reviews ... > > the magazine pays writers too ... > > thanks, sam :-) > > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > From image.science at donau-uni.ac.at Tue Jan 24 21:41:45 2006 From: image.science at donau-uni.ac.at (Image Science) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 17:11:45 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] virtualart.at - new advisory board Message-ID: DEAR COLLEAGUES AND DATABASE OF VIRTUAL ART USERS, We are happy to announce the new affiliation with improved and long term support provided by the department for Cultural Studies of the Danube University Krems, Austria, which will assure preservation and growth of the Database of Virtual Art. D V A As pioneer in the field, the Database of Virtual Art has been documenting the rapidly evolving field of digital installation art since 1999. It is supported by the German Research Foundation and various other institutions. Our research-oriented, complex overview of immersive, interactive, telematic and genetic art has been developed in cooperation with renowned media artists, researchers and institutions. The database is based on open-source-technologies and allows individuals to post material themselves. Currently it contains hundreds of work descriptions including several thousand digital documents, videos, technical data, institutions and bio-bibliographical information. As one of the richest resources online, with a freshly implemented scientific Thesaurus the database responds to the demands of the field. www.virtualart.at We encourage your remarks and suggestions! DANUBE UNIVERSITY KREMS (DUK) The cultural studies department in Krems contains, in addition to the program in image science, also film, contemporary music and intercultural studies programs - so that the approach is already multimedial, like the subject of Media Art History. With our international faculty members we will continue offering new global programs in the field of media art, collection, curation, preservation and image management. Center for Image Science: www.donau-uni.ac.at/cis DUK NEWSLETTER: http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/zbw/engnewsletter PERFECT COMBINATION Beside the Database of Virtual Art - the Goettweig Print Collection (collection database online soon), which contains 30.000 original prints from Renaissance to Barock until now, allows in-depth research into its large resources. We are glad to report that Danube University is able to provide our field soon with an open archive contextualizing media art in art and image history. NEW ADVISORY BOARD At the same time, we are also excited to inform the field of researchers, artists, scholars, students who have found the database a value to their studies, that we have a newly formed advisory board who will help guide the Database of Virtual Art in the future. Their contributions to the field and their importance to the ongoing developments of media art as the art of our times needs no introduction, but further biographical can be found under: http://www.virtualart.at/common/advisoryBoard.do We welcome Roy ASCOTT, Beryl GRAHAM, Erkki HUHTAMO, Jorge LA FERLA, Gunalan NADARAJAN, Christiane PAUL, Martin ROTH, and Steve WILSON as advisors to the Database of Virtual Art. Problems veiwing the streaming videos? Windows: Click Start>Settings>Control Panels>QuickTime Mac: Click Apple Menus>Control Panels>QuickTime Settings -- choose: streaming transport - http - port 80 Best Regards, Wendy Jo Coones, M.Ed. From cawnpore at rediffmail.com Wed Jan 25 13:39:35 2006 From: cawnpore at rediffmail.com (Maitrey Bajpai) Date: 25 Jan 2006 08:09:35 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] "Cawnpore" First Posting Message-ID: <20060125080935.30010.qmail@webmail8.rediffmail.com>   Hi! all, (Joining the late postings club) apologies! I am Maitrey Bajpai, one of the Sarai fellows this year, honored to be amongst great minds. Who am I? Ok. No PhD’s or degree's in sociology. A plain commerce graduate. Like most of us,I was a just an average film buff, until I took my fascination a step forward and decided to learn filmmaking, so I packed my bags and came to Mumbai. After spending most of my childhood in a boarding school, when I returned to my hometown of “Cawnpore”, I noticed that these big red-brick ‘gothic’ structures (Textile Mills) which were once backbone of city's economy are on a verge of collapse. Orders for closure Mills had already passed. The immature filmmaker in me got exited and wanted to use this as a first film platform. Well it had all the ingredients. There was downfall of industrial economy; there was a worker and owner conflict, politics, government involvement, hugely affected population, question about employment. As I started analyzing it and developed a sensitive approach, I saw the closure had led to a complete change in the socio-economic ethos of the city. Also there was history, of Mills, of people working in it, of families who had suffered the burnt of closure, and history of my family, what?? . Yup! My family was involved in the trade of cloth since 1907. My father was the last generation to run the family business, but we, my brother and I chose to opt for other avenues. More than anything else there were emotions, sufferings; a sense of failure, a feeling of being incapable to change with the times...it was about death of an industrial city. A story that needed to be told. Woof! I know it was pretty exhausting, but think of a young (I am turning 23 this Feb) wannabe filmmaker, it was pretty exiting. One of the questions that instantly pop’s up is "what’s new about this" ... this has happened in Mumbai, Ahemdabad and a whole lot of other cities around the world. That’s right it seems to have happened everywhere, and why not, change is inevitable. To me primary difference between any other city and “Cawnpore” is that, it is about my own city. The other difference is that most of other cities have been able to catch up with the times, say for Mumbai, it did not have time even to think about the change, it just changed. May be “Cawnpore” would also catch up with 'globalization' but that answer awaits in future’s womb. My project for Sarai is titled "Cawnpore" For those who don’t have a clue what “Cawnpore” is, a brief history: “Kanhpur” a simple insignificant village in central Uttar Pradesh, passed into British hands under the treaty of 1801 with Nawab of ‘Oudh’. Soon ‘Kanhpur’ became an important military center for ‘East India Co.’. On March 24th 1803 ‘Kanhpur’ along with its neighboring villages was declared a District. They pronounced it “Cawnpore”. With the establishment of Railways in 1859, city developed into an economic center with textile mills at its center. The process of development continued, by 1920’s city had seven big mills. Due to this industrial development Cawnpore was termed as “Manchester of the East”. On 15th August 1947 India got its independence and so did the city of "Cawnpore". The city which was nurtured by the colonial rulers came to its end and changed to "Kanpur". The question that’s tickling your mind is why “Cawnpore”, why not simply Kanpur? Well I have two reasons for it (1)because that’s the 'word' with which a cluster of villages was registered as a District and (2) that’s the city which has died, Kanpur is still very much alive. THE MILL CLOSURE: Signs of decay were clear as early as in the '70s. In 1975, J.K. Manufacturers, a Singhania group company, was closed down. One of the reasons cited was the over involvement of trade unions. But as many as 1,500 workers lost their jobs. Increasing number of strikes and lowering profit margins gave an opportunity to the Mill owners to shift to other sectors, which had better returns. After their closure, Government nationalized these sick units under National Textile Corporation (NTC) and British India Corporation (BIC) to save the poor from unemployment. In the days of socialist planning (before 1991), the mills were kept on costly life support machines by the government. But no money was invested to modernize them. Decrepit and hopelessly uncompetitive, the mills were killed off by the market forces unleashed by 90’s liberalization drive. Machines that stopped working cobwebbed doors of factories, depressing tales of unemployment and hunger and faces which forgot how to smile long ago. Once hailed by India's British colonial rulers as "Manchester of the East", this dilapidated city is nothing but shadow of its former industrial glory. Now they call it an "Industrial Graveyard". Families like mine along with mill workers failed the test of time; it was our lack of ability to switch gears when it was required the most. On the path of development, when an Economy shifts gears from ‘Manufacturing oriented to Service sector’ there is a large chunk of population that is unable to change itself. The affect of closure of the mills is across all layers of society. Closure of textile mills not only left the working class of the city jobless, but also ruled out any possibility of emergence of lower middle class in the city. In a city where machines roared day in and day out, chimneys never went cold, cycles filled the roads like anything, today there is calm. There is something uneasy about this calm. Nobody talks about the mills anymore. On the foot hold of changing times, probably, it’s time to talk about the mills. During the course of this research I wish to... Study the history of 'Cawnpore', its existence, impact of the British Colonial rule and the development of cotton industry, evolution of the city and different economic scenarios that would help understand city’s relationship with the Textile mills and people who were integral part of the change. Understanding the various socio-political reasons for the closure of textile industry in “Cawnpore” will help calculate the affect of damage. Interactions with workers and business families and an account their emotional experiences is the most important part of the research. An insight into my family history, which is in a way symbolic of the city, will help me draw parallels between city, mills and different periods in history. As this research is geared towards a documentary film, I hope this journey would help me weave various facets of my subject as I will try to comprehend history of “Cawnpore” city and its mills through the stories that its people have to tell. Queries, suggestions and comments are welcome. Peace, Maitrey Bajpai -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060125/e5ea7e7a/attachment.html From peerzadaarshad at gmail.com Tue Jan 24 15:52:29 2006 From: peerzadaarshad at gmail.com (arshad hamid) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 15:52:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] My first posting Message-ID: <83db55e00601240222y2ac95e9s9396173ff2ad368c@mail.gmail.com> Hi all, I am Peerzada Arshad Hamid, a Srinagar based freelance journalist. Reporting violence and human sufferings from one of the known conflict zones inspired me to pursue the research project at Sarai. Having done post graduation in Mass communication and Journalism from University of Kashmir, I have been in the field for around five years now. Apart from reporting day to day events and news, in depth human interest stories has always been a priority for me. Although some of my favourite stories were never published. The turmoil that Kashmir is going through has given birth to many serious problems. To find a way out, these problems mostly concerning the humanity need an empirical approach to study. My research project titled "Lone Psychiatric Hospital Battles with Chaos in Srinagar City" is a step forward in this regard to study the psychiatric problems and the functioning of hospital. My postings to Sarai during my fellowship period will explore: 1. the root cause behind sharp increase in the number of psychiatric patients particularly Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD). 2. how much the continual violent episodes like Killings, arrests, bloody scenes, are telling upon the mental health and psyche of patients. 3. case study of some patients will be evaluated and detailed interviews with the patients and their family members will be carried out to get a feel of the problem. Ironically prior to the diagnosis of psychiatric diseases, the majority of the patients were treated for heart ailments or anxiety and the process is still going on. In this backdrop, focus of the study will remain the functioning of Psychiatric hospital. How the doctors employed there treat their patients and whether the hospital is fully equipped to tackle the burgeoning number of patients? Cheers, Peerzada -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060124/9cf73b6f/attachment.html From rinchin at gmail.com Tue Jan 24 14:17:25 2006 From: rinchin at gmail.com (rinchin etc) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 14:17:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] First posting: Tracing the history of Girl's Education (since 1921) in a Small Town through the life of its first Woman Teacher Message-ID: <261872920601240047w2fbf1c26p26f6f5be0368054d@mail.gmail.com> Hi, my name is rinchin. I live in bhopal. This my first posting. My reasearch project for the fellowship deals with tracing the history of girls education through the eyes of a 90 year teacher who taught and then ran the first school for girls in Haat pippaliya. a small town in the malwa region of madhya pradesh. * * Haat Pipaliya is a small town in the Dewas (Malwa region) district of Madhya Pradesh. The verbal history of Dewas accords the town a special status as being the home of the oldest girls school and names its oldest surviving teacher – Mrs HD James, more commonly known as "Bua to towns people or James Madam to outsiders", as a legend in herself. She continues to live in the town at the age of 90 years. A small chance meeting with her, where she narrated small anecdotes about her school, her own interaction with others in the town, small glimpses of her own life told us, that an account of her life in this town and in her school, is not simply a story of herself but reveals the history of the town, of girls education, and that of education of Dalit children. It becomes difficult to distinguish if she speaks about herself, or events that shaped the history of a little known town, its growing form a small hamlet to a flourishing commercial hub, of the challenges of bringing dalit and other girls into the school. She leans over and conspiratorially discusses all the strategies she employed to "lure" the communities to send their children to the baithak under the tree and later to the little kuchcha one room school. How she dealt with being treated as an " untouchable" herself by the other upper caste communities. Where she could teach the children, but not eat in their homes. She frowns as she sinks into the memories of social distances, untouchability, the value of education and gender imbalances, and slowly recounts the history of these in the small town, a space which comprised the entire world to its residents, over almost a century. It was a biography that had to be written. Her life history would reflect her context, the journey of her school and the town that she has lived in for almost 70 years. The project therefore is : *Tracing the history of Girl's Education (since 1921) in a Small Town through the life of its first Woman Teacher*** This study attempts to look at three lives – the life of the teacher and through it the life of the school, and the life of the town. All these lives and their biographies are closely intertwined, each covering a journey through time from 1921 to 2006 - a time that saw the country's independence, urbanization, popularization and the commercialization of education and changing gender and caste relations among many other macro and micro processes. *James Madam* The journey of her life from 20 year old, when she came into the town as a young semi educated tribal Christian teacher , latter married a tailor , the town pastors son. her experience of teaching, educating herself, settling into a new family, a new town and region, her interaction with the town and its people town. Her experience of the caste and gender taboos. The narrative will capture her life till the present times, where she lives the age of 90 behind her school. ** *Method*** *The life history method will be used to capture James madam's biography. This will be supplemented by interviews with her family, old students and residents of the town, of different generations. These will be recorded as their oral narrative on tapes, with photographs and illustrations of all our interactions with her as well of old photographs or pictures that can be found with her or others.*** * * ** * * *The School * Exploring the founding visions of the school, recording the growth and change which occurred in it over time. The many generations of students that have passed through its rooms, what accounts can we find of them, through their teacher and of their teacher through them. At that time it was the only school now there are at least ten other primary and middle schools, some government, some schools with specific community affiliations and some private schools. How have all these other changes impacted the outlook towards education and particularly girls education * * *Method*** *In such a context, where does the school stand in relation to its counterparts. What is the profile of the students and teachers today and how does it compare with the profiles of the more than 10 other schools, many of which are community affiliated. In what way do the present attitudes of people about caste and gender, reflect its heritage ( of being home to the districts oldest girls, mixed caste school) and how does the town perceive it today. A mix of open ended interviews and narratives will be documented and transcribed.*** *The Town* Located in the Malwa region, in the tribal Baghli bock, the town evolved from a small " *kasba*" into one of the most flourishing towns of Baghli tehsil. *Method*** *The history of the town will be built to reflect the changes demographic, geographic, economic and social. It will look at the the process of commercialization, urbanization, other settlers, expansion of the town, changing occupations and livelihood patterns. This will be based on secondary data and old census and town records of the town and oral accounts. *** Output The output would be a *written and visual (pictures and sketches) bilingual life history of James Madam, her school and the Haat pipalliya. * * * Materials that would be generated through the research project include the main research document which would be a *bilingual biography of James Madam containing transcripts of interviews with her and that of students and residents of the town, photographs and sketches. Audio tapes of her recorded interviews. * * * * *All material will be such that it is relevant to the schools and people of the the area, (in terms of language and presentation) as well as to others outside of the regional context. ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** *Objectives* · To trace the history of girls education since 1921, when the first girls school was opened in the town, through the eyes of the a 90 year old school teacher. · To trace the history of a town through the history of its first school since 1921,through the narrative of the oldest school teacher who worked in the school since 1926. · To examine how the town reflects it's heritage of being the home to one of the oldest girls school in the district. To examine the attitude of towns people regarding the school and what it stood for, in the context of the changing space. · To chart the changes in economy, commercialization and changing profile of the town, its growing into the commercial hub of the small tribal block , as backdrop and context of the study. Rationale While speaking of education problems/issues related to gender and caste still exist – what does not is an account of how they were dealt with. To understand these and document them through the examples that are still available would be a simple yet powerful way of understanding and capturing the development and dynamics of smaller units and spaces which seldom find a space in history. To use personal capture a personal life history of a significant person in order to give it place within local written history as well as seeing it as a documentation reflective of the time and space that the life encompasses. This is the aim of the proposed study.. The interest of the study also revolves around how the changing times affect the towns attitude towards the school and its teachers and the fact that the school primarily admitted dalit children, and only girls. And though the Communities practised strict taboos, still allowed for their children to study in this school, that had children of all caste. In 1921 the first school began under a tree. It was a school only for girls The study attempts to capture the interaction and response of the communities (Jains , Patidars, Dalits and traders) through their interactions with and within the school and its non upper class staff. For the first time the school spoke about educating girls, of children all castes sitting and learning together with its Indian woman missionary teacher who was considered to be untouchable. Mode of Public Presentation The document and its derivatives which include illustrations, photographs and pictures will be published through children's magazines and wall papers in schools. The study itself will be shared with the students and teachers of that area in meetings and *baithaks. * Prints of the the document, published/unpublished as *reading material for children and teachers along with pictures, illustrations and sketches through children's magazines/ wall papers and stand alone documents.* To share it with groups working in the area and issues of education, through circulating the written and visual text. Do send in your comments and suggestions on the same. Rinchin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060124/3638a60f/attachment.html From vasundhara.prakash at gmail.com Tue Jan 24 20:14:18 2006 From: vasundhara.prakash at gmail.com (Vasundhara Prakash) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 20:14:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Pehli Posting Message-ID: <489e03b80601240644r21f8b459jbf3a020dd4c9e605@mail.gmail.com> 15 Seconds of Fame! Lives of Bollywood Extras: Junior Artistes in Popular Hindi films My project aims to explore the world of extras, to uncover their space in films. Though this goes against the whole concept of an extra, a faceless, nameless entity that merely fills the celluloid space without imposing its identity, it would be interesting to explore how some have unknowingly broken the boundaries of being restricted to the non-entity status of an extra and through their quantity as well as quality of work taken that leap into the world of recognition though still far away from fame. I would like to examine the "faceless" world of the extras by focusing on a number of themes. How does gender inflect the extras' relations to the film industry? How are women treated differently from men? How different are their expectations and responsibilities and how that affects the choices they make? My concern is also issues such as prejudices and biases against the extras, their treatment on the sets. There are also class and linguistic hierarchies at work – the stars are middle and upper class and English speaking while the extras are lower middle class and non-anglicized. We have very little understanding of how these factors play into the experiences of the extras on the set. I would like to be able to combine historical and biographical study with ethnography and textual analysis of a select body of films and will study junior artistes as "subaltern" stars that provide a counter narrative to the dominant figurations in Indian Cinema. I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, contacts or references that could help my work. Vasundhara Prakash # 9833644748 vasundhara.prakash at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060124/94ca847a/attachment.html From sdipta_paul at yahoo.com Wed Jan 25 12:30:33 2006 From: sdipta_paul at yahoo.com (Sudipta Paul) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 23:00:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] 1st posting In-Reply-To: <20060124110259.F278B28DCBD@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20060125070033.58216.qmail@web52002.mail.yahoo.com> Sudipta Paulmailto:sdipta_paul at yahoo.com wrote: Title: Response of the labour force to the changing urban formation in Asansol industrial area – who survives and who cannot. Area: Asansol industrial area, a subdivision of Burdwan district of West Bengal. Professionally I am an electrical engineer and an employee of West Bengal State Electricity Board. Last year (2004-2005) I have done a full time “Research Training Programme” (RTP) from Centre for Studies in Social Science, Calcutta (CSSSC). I have just completed a project entitled ‘Collection of Oral History of Coal Workers with Special Emphasis on Impact of Outsourcing’ for V.V. Giri National Labour Institute. Also I am actively involved with a local, by-monthly little magazine “UDYOG” about social, political and cultural issues related to Asansol area of West Bengal for last four years. We have an aspiration to give it an orientation towards honest and alternative media. Also we are trying to build an organization, “Adhikar” which will document the conditions of the unorganised labour force in the Asansol area. About our work We came to know from the history of the Asansol-Ranigange coal field area that Prince Dwarakanath Tagore, grandfather of Rabindranath was the first Indian businessman of coal. Bengal Coal was the company Dwarakanath founded.Till the establishment of rail lines, coal was transported through river. In 1854, first rail line in India was established up to Ranigange. After the railway linkage up to Asansol, the city began to flourish on both sides of G.T. Road. Due to the easy availability of coal and the abundance of water from the river Damodar and near by sources of necessary minerals, steel industry was established at Kulty at the end of nineteenth century. After that gradually different industries flourished in that area. As the Asansol town was growing, small urban formations were taking shape near the clusters of collieries within the Asansol subdivision. However, all these urban formations till now exist in very close tie with the rural areas. The present scenario is one of decay of the old industry and the closure of the private sector. The situation has changed in the new globalized world. Unemployment and with it unused labour force is increasing rapidly. There is no new major alternative source of income which can generate sustainable job opportunity. A small section of workers are getting employment at new industries under contractors with the salary near about one third of the salary of the organised workers. These contract workers are unorganised till now. But there is an organized effort by the party in power to maintain its full dominance on this unorganized labour force or informal ways of survival. It is the party that decides who will get the work and who will not. This way in the apparently unorganized form there is an underlying regulation or organized effort that serves two purposes. One is the maintenance of control by the dominant parliamentary party. Second one is to check the unrest among the people evicted from their own livelihood and mainstream employment. Objective of the Project: The main objective of the project is to sketch the response of the labour force (‘Subaltern people’) to the changes in Asansol industrial area in the form of narratives. The labour force can be broadly categorized into - (a) traditional/organised labour force, (b) people newly adopted to industry and (c) who are excluded from industry. Is the labour force able to adopt them to the changed situation? If anybody can, what is the process of adoption/inclusion and if anybody cannot what is the process of exclusion? What are the major factors that determine their response to the changed situation? What are the new mechanisms to control the new workers of these new industries - within the trade union and/or outside? We will also try to give some impression about the feelings of one category of workers about the other. Does the parallel existence of old organised and new unorganised workers lead to any conflict or not? Based on the response we can try to address the question - for whom these development projects or the new industries. Now I give about the first phase of work. It is necessary to identify the changes take place at the Asansol subdivision within 15 years after new economic policy. But the process of urbanization has not been stopped. The epicenter of urbanization has been shifted from industrialization to the Urban development like –entertainment park, real estate business, different urban facility etc. The main changes are listed bellow. 1. Changes in the Coal sectors. 2. Changes in the manufacturing sectors 3. Changes in the urban formation a. Shifting of the workers from the residence of the closed industry b. Establishment of new industry c. Hawker eviction d. Establishment of new township with closed enclaves and shopping malls 4. Changes in labour force. Already we have collected the documents of the changes in the coal sectors and very few of the manufacturing sectors(steel). Now we start to collect the information about the newly developed industries like sponge iron, cement factory and other small scale industries. So our first work is to collect the information about the new changes at this area. Then we will compile a preliminary report of the changes. Paralally we will make visit for selection of interviewee and take representative photographs like Hawker eviction, hoarding of the new town-ships etc. Recently we came in contact with the South Bengal Association of Photographers. We ask them for the photographs of the past events. They have agreed to give us. We think to make an photography exhibition about “Urban Development” at the end of March at the Seminar of our Magazine on “The question of Development and the Future of this Coal field / industrial city”. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? With a free 1 GB, there's more in store with Yahoo! Mail. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060124/e7fdf618/attachment.html From maitreybajpai at rediffmail.com Wed Jan 25 13:48:42 2006 From: maitreybajpai at rediffmail.com (Maitrey Bajpai) Date: 25 Jan 2006 08:18:42 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] "Cawnpore" First Posting Message-ID: <20060125081842.961.qmail@webmail25.rediffmail.com>   Hi all, (Joining the late postings club) apologies! I am Maitrey Bajpai one of the Sarai fellows this year, honored to be amongst great minds. Who am I? Ok. No PhD’s or degree's in sociology. A plain commerce graduate. Like most of us, I was a just an average film buff, until I took my fascination a step forward and decided to learn filmmaking, so I packed my bags and came to Mumbai. After spending most of my childhood in a boarding school, when I returned to my hometown of “Cawnpore”, I noticed that these big red-brick ‘gothic’ structures (Textile Mills) which were once backbone of city's economy are on a verge of collapse. Orders for closure Mills had already passed. The immature filmmaker in me got exited and wanted to use this as a first film platform. Well it had all the ingredients. There was downfall of industrial economy; there was a worker and owner conflict, politics, government involvement, hugely affected population, question about employment. As I started analyzing it and developed a sensitive approach, I saw the closure had led to a complete change in the socio-economic ethos of the city. Also there was history, of Mills, of people working in it, of families who had suffered the burnt of closure, and history of my family, what?? . Yup! My family was involved in the trade of cloth since 1907. My father was the last generation to run the family business, but we, my brother and I chose to opt for other avenues. More than anything else there were emotions, sufferings; a sense of failure, a feeling of being incapable to change with the times...it was about death of an industrial city. A story that needed to be told. Woof! I know it was pretty exhausting, but think of a young (I am turning 23 this Feb) wannabe filmmaker, it was pretty exiting. One of the questions that instantly pop’s up is "what’s new about this" ... this has happened in Mumbai, Ahemdabad and a whole lot of other cities around the world. That’s right it seems to have happened everywhere, and why not, change is inevitable. To me primary difference between any other city and “Cawnpore” is that, it is about my own city. The other difference is that most of other cities have been able to catch up with the times, say for Mumbai, it did not have time even to think about the change, it just changed. May be “Cawnpore” would also catch up with 'globalization' but that answer waits in future’s womb. My project for Sarai is titled "Cawnpore" For those who don’t have a clue what “Cawnpore” is, a brief history: “Kanhpur” a simple insignificant village in central Uttar Pradesh, passed into British hands under the treaty of 1801 with Nawab of ‘Oudh’. Soon ‘Kanhpur’ became an important military center for ‘East India Co.’. On March 24th 1803 ‘Kanhpur’ along with its neighboring villages was declared a District. They pronounced it “Cawnpore”. With the establishment of Railways in 1859, city developed into an economic center with textile mills at its center. The process of development continued, by 1920’s city had seven big mills. Due to this industrial development Cawnpore was termed as “Manchester of the East”. On 15th August 1947 India got its independence and so did the city of "Cawnpore". The city which was nurtured by the colonial rulers came to its end and changed to "Kanpur". The question that’s tickling your mind is why “Cawnpore”, why not simply Kanpur? Well I have two reasons for it (1) because that’s the 'word' with which a cluster of villages was registered as a District and (2) that’s the city which has died, Kanpur is still very much alive. THE MILL CLOSURE: Signs of decay were clear as early as in the '70s. In 1975, J.K. Manufacturers, a Singhania group company, was closed down. One of the reasons cited was the over involvement of trade unions. But as many as 1,500 workers lost their jobs. Increasing number of strikes and lowering profit margins gave an opportunity to the Mill owners to shift to other sectors, which had better returns. After their closure, Government nationalized these sick units under National Textile Corporation (NTC) and British India Corporation (BIC) to save the poor from unemployment. In the days of socialist planning (before 1991), the mills were kept on costly life support machines by the government. But no money was invested to modernize them. Decrepit and hopelessly uncompetitive, the mills were killed off by the market forces unleashed by 90’s liberalization drive. Machines that stopped working cobwebbed doors of factories, depressing tales of unemployment and hunger and faces which forgot how to smile long ago. Once hailed by India's British colonial rulers as "Manchester of the East", this dilapidated city is nothing but shadow of its former industrial glory. Now they call it an "Industrial Graveyard". Families like mine along with mill workers failed the test of time; it was our lack of ability to switch gears when it was required the most. On the path of development, when an Economy shifts gears from ‘Manufacturing oriented to Service sector’ there is a large chunk of population that is unable to change itself. The affect of closure of the mills is across all layers of society. Closure of textile mills not only left the working class of the city jobless, but also ruled out any possibility of emergence of lower middle class in the city. In a city where machines roared day in and day out, chimneys never went cold, cycles filled the roads like anything, today there is calm. There is something uneasy about this calm. Nobody talks about the mills anymore. On the foot hold of changing times, probably, it’s time to talk about the mills. During the course of this research I wish to... Study the history of 'Cawnpore', its existence, impact of the British Colonial rule and the development of cotton industry, evolution of the city and different economic scenarios that would help understand city’s relationship with the Textile mills and people who were integral part of the change. Understanding the various socio-political reasons for the closure of textile industry in “Cawnpore” will help calculate the affect of damage. Interactions with workers and business families and an account their emotional experiences is the most important part of the research. An insight into my family history, which is in a way symbolic of the city, will help me draw parallels between city, mills and different periods in history. As this research is geared towards a documentary film, I hope this journey would help me weave various facets of my subject as I will try to comprehend history of “Cawnpore” city and its mills through the stories that its people have to tell. Queries, suggestions and comments are welcome. Peace, Maitrey Bajpai -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060125/251452c2/attachment.html From aarti at sarai.net Tue Jan 24 16:26:31 2006 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 16:26:31 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Shahid Amin: =?windows-1252?q?=93Grierson=2C_Ram_?= =?windows-1252?q?Garib_Chaube_and_the_Great_Linguistic_Survey_of_India=94?= =?windows-1252?q?=2C?= Message-ID: <43D607DF.3060106@sarai.net> ================ Seminar @ Sarai ================ “Grierson, Ram Garib Chaube and the Great Linguistic Survey of India”, Shahid Amin 3:30 pm, Wednesday, 25 January 2006 Library CSDS Shahid Amin will present fresh work on language, history, vocabulary and the making of ‘common speech’. [Shahid Amin (Delhi) is Professor of History, University of Delhi. Among his publications are Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1992-1995 (1995), and, as co-editor, “Peripheral’” Labour? Studies in the History of Partial Proletarianization (1997). He is a founding editor of the journal Subaltern Studies, and had edited a Concise Encyclopedia of North Indian Peasant Life, (Manohar 2005)] _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From rakesh at sarai.net Wed Jan 25 14:29:13 2006 From: rakesh at sarai.net (Rakesh) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 14:29:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: [Deewan] Fwd: first posting by Mrityunjay Tripathi, Allahabad In-Reply-To: <200601251242.11169.ravikant@sarai.net> References: <200601251242.11169.ravikant@sarai.net> Message-ID: <43D73DE1.10406@sarai.net> Mritunjay bhai Apke sodh ka vishay aur Allahabad ki chhatra rajniti ki jo jhalak aapne di hai, dilchasp hai. Mere khayal se aapne ji mandal, kamandal, aur bhumanal(ikaran) ke baad campus ki rajniti par nazar dalne ka irada badhiya hai. Is daur mein aur campuson mein bhi khas tarah ki hulchalen dekhi-suni gayin, Vishesh kar uttar bharat ke campuson mein. Jaise aapne deligecy ke chhatron ki golbandi ke bare mein bataya ki rojgar ke masle par hone wale aandolon mein unki bhagidari bad-chad kar hoti hai: thik hai. Saath hi yah bhi padtal kiya jana chahiye ki ram shila pujan aur masjid vidhwans ke dauran chhatro ki kya bhumika thi aur us waqt kaise nare gunjte the sangam ke kinare. Mere hisab se mukhyadhara ki partiyon, khaskar BSP ke ubhar ke baad campus mein kya kuch ghata, dekhna dilchasp hoga; Kyonki Dilli mein to dalit chhatraon ke masle par, ya dalit utpeedan ke khilaf huye sangharshon mein dalit chhatra sangathnon ki koi khas bhumika hal tak nahin thi. Ab chhit-phut prayas dikhte hain. Yah dekhna bhi dilchasp hoga ki kis-kis tarah ke masle chhatra aandolan ne uthayen hain. Yahan Dilli ke anubhav ke aadhar par ek aur salah - Yahan, undergraduate level par ya MA previous ke dauran bilkul nishkriya rahne wale chhatra achanak MA final ya M Phil. tak aate-aate behisab sakriya ho jate hain. Iski ek mukhya wajah vishwavidyalaya mein adhyapki haasil karna hota hai. Kya aisi sakriyata wahan bhi dikhti hai. Filhal itna hi. Posting achchhi lagi. Aur daba ke likhiye. salam rakesh Ravikant wrote: >---------- Forwarded Message ---------- > >Subject: Re: sab thik hai >Date: Tuesday 24 Jan 2006 6:42 pm >From: mrityunjay tripathi >To: Ravikant > > main mrityunjay tripathi allahabad ke ek hostel main rahta hoon. allahabad > university me hindi me research kar raha hoon,'hindi aalochana me > cannonisation' par.chatra rajniti me sakriya bhagedari aur dilchaspi pichle > sat salon se hai.nai samajik parighatnao aur badlavon me dilchaspi > hai,khaskar unme jahan pratirodh ke naye roop dikhlai parte hain. > >Sarai/CSDS ke liye mera project 'allahabad ki chatra rajniti' par hai.chunki >90ke dashak me samuchi chatra rajniti me naye asar dekhne me aaye isliye is >daur par khastaur par meri najar hogi.mandal- kamandal aurbhoomandalikaran >ki nai rajniti ne chali aa rahi chatra rajniti me bhari ulat pher >kiye.campason, hostelon, aur deligesiyon me rah rahe chatron par iska gahara >asar para.bahut sare aise log parhne aaye jinki samajik aur aarthik sthitian > behad kharab thi aur unke pahale ki kisi pirhi ne vishvavidyalyon ka munh > nahi dekha tha. allahabad ki chatra rajniti me hostalon [kul 13 ] aur > deligesion me rahane vale regular chatron ki bhagedari ke sath hi un chatron > ka bhi bara prabhav hai jo vishyavidyalay to chor chuke hain lekin abhi bhi > compitition [mukhyatah ias-pcs] ki paricchaon me lage hue hain.yah tabaka > kafi bara hai , vishvavidyalay ke regular lagbhag 36000 chatron ke mukabale > 3-4 guna hai. chunki yah tabka samuche sahar me rahta haiisliye isliye sahar > ke tamam hissey bhi chatra rajniti se jur jate hain. hostel chunavon main > Mathadison [ve, jo aksarhan purane chatra neta ya prabhavi allahabadi hote > hain,aur aapni jation ke chatron ke vote,unake mutabik ,aapani jeb me > rakhate hain. ]ke addey ban jate hain. chunki hostlon se sangathit voting > hoti hai isliye ve chunav me jyada mahatvapurna ho jate hain. aandolno me, > sabse aage hostalon ke hi log rahate hain, karan yah ki sabse jyada aur > jaldi sangathik bhid ve hi hote hain.delegesi ke chatron ki bari tadat > aandolano me utarti hai basarte muddey rojgar se jure hon. > > chatranetaon ke mote taur par teen hissey kiye ja sakate hain_pahala hissa > un vibhinn sangathano ke chatra netao ka hai jo kisi vichardhara se jure > hokar aapni vichardhara ke mutabik aandolano ,acadmics aur tamam dusare > muddon par hastakchep karate hain.inka sangathanik dhancha majboot aur sal > bhar kam karne vala hota hai.inme AISA,ABVP,ICM,AIDSO se jure chatraneta > hain.dusara hissa unka hai jo mukhyadhara ki rajnaitik partion ke chatra > sangathan hain.aamtaur par sangathan ke roop me sal bhar inka koi kam nahi > hota.ain chunav ke vakht inme ticatarthi netaon ki katar lagati hai aur > jatiya samikarno par aadharit rajnaitik partion me carreere talase jate > hain. vaise to sal bhar inka sangathan behad lachila aur dhila hota hai > lekin chunavon me ye behad sadhi hui karyashaili ka parichay dete hain.inme > NSUI,SCS[samajvadi chatra sabha],BCF[bahujan chatra front] aadi hain.ABVP > is tarah ki bhi karyashaili aapnati hai. tishara aur sabse bara hissa un > chatranetaon ka hai jo vyaktigat roop se sakriya rahate hain chatro ke galat > aur sahi dono tarah ke kam karvate hain[jaise marksheet me nam sahi karvana > ,farji marksheet banvana,no. barhvana,cochingon me saste dar par addmition > dilvana aur dalali khana, vagairah vagairah] chatra rajniti ko aam taur par > rajnaitik partion me jane ki narsary ke roop me dekhane ka chalan hai.70 ke > dhasak me jab SYS [samajvadi yuvjan sabha] ka majboot kamkaj yahan tha tab > kai chatra neta [chandrashekhar, mohan singh aadi] mukhyadhara rajnitime > gayi. bad me vampanthi sangathano me bhi kai chatra neta bari bhumikaon me > gaye. rakesh dhar tripathi jaise ekadh nam ABVP se bhi liye ja sakate > hain.lekin 90 ke dashak me is trend me bhari giravat aai.mukhyadhara partion > me chatra netaon ki vakat kam hoti gai.iska andaj pure desh me chatra > aandolano me aaye tharav se lagaya ja sakata hai.is dashak me U.P.me satta > ki bhagedari ko vyagranai rajnaitik takaton ke pratinidhion aur rajniti me > aapradhion ke bolbale ne chatra netaon ke liye jagah kam kar di.U.P. ki > rajniti me bante naye samikarno se ye bat aur saf ki ja sakati hai. > allahabad ki chatra rajniti me ,chunav me chatraon ki bhagedari ka chit fut > silsila 80 ke bad hi dekhane me aata hai.lekin chunav me voting aur parinamo > me unki dilchaspi jabardast hai.sahar me rahane vali larkion ka kam > pratishat vote deta hai, jabki girls hostalon [kul 3] me rahane vali larkion > ka kafi bara % isme utsah se sirkat karata hai. allahabad me is daur me > chatra rajniti ki aavsyakta ko lekar bhi bahash chali. yah bahas chatron > banam prasashan ki hai.ECC (iwing cristion college)me prasashan ne is par > chatron me sarvekshan karaya aur faisala chatra rajniti ke pakcha me > raha.allahabad high court ke taja tareen faisale ke mutabik chatro ko khud > hi chatra rajniti ke bare me faisala lena chahiye.aur filvakht union chatron > ki ray janane ke liye seminar karva rahi hai. naron ki yaha khasiyat unka > kam rajnaitik hona,lyrikal hona aur deth hona hai. pichale chunav me lage > kuch naron ka mulahija farmayen: > >brahma - vihnu - mahesh ! jai ganesh jai ganesh! > (ganesh singh maha mantri ke liye lar rahe the) > bhaia chunar munaria jai ho! > bhaia raghunath bhaia jai ho! > bhaia cay piaihain jai ho! > bhaia bhauji diaihain jai ho! > (aantim line dhire se boli jati hai.)(raghunath dvivedi ,umra 54 sal, kai > pco aur aato chalte hain,president ke liye) gunje dharti aur aakash! jai > vikash jai vikash! > (ak digri college ke president rah chuke, mahamantri ke liye) > meri rai teri rai ! rinku rai rinku rai! > jit gaye to ram chalega ! nahi to goli bam chalega! > rinku bhaia harega ,to gand pe goli marega! > (rinku rai ,mahamantri ke liye,hatya aur apaharan ke aaropi) > aapna neta chaure se ! baki sab laundey se! > > fees vridhi ke kilaf chale aandolan ka mukhya nara-jab m m joshi ed. > minister they- joshi tumko dand milega ! vote nahi aab land milega! > > > samagrri ka aabhav is vishay ko jahan ek taraf kathin kar deta hai vahi > sahar me iska failav ise rochak banata hai. interviues(netao,university ke > aas pas ke dukandaron shariyon aur chatro ke) aur akhabar mere madadgar > honge. > > > >Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com > >------------------------------------------------------- >_______________________________________________ >Deewan mailing list >Deewan at mail.sarai.net >http://mail.sarai.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/deewan > > -- Rakesh Kumar Singh Sarai-CSDS 29, Rajpur Road Delhi-110054 Ph: 91 11 23960040 Fax: 91 11 2394 3450 web site: www.sarai.net web blog: http://blog.sarai.net/users/rakesh/ From "rajeshkumar at cds.ac.in>, rkomathcds" at rediffmail.com Wed Jan 25 15:14:09 2006 From: "rajeshkumar at cds.ac.in>, rkomathcds" at rediffmail.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Rajesh_Komath?=) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 15:14:09 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] My First Posting to Sarai. Message-ID: <24849.61.16.226.206.1138182249.squirrel@cds.ac.in> Dear Friends, It has been a great pleasure to read the posting of Sarai I-Fellows, not only because each research questions raised were distinct and cross- disciplinary, but the voices who raised those questions were equally vibrant. I am thankful to CSDS-Sarai, for giving me this opportunity to interact and share our views on a wider range of issues. Let me briefly introduce my-self and thereby my-work, on the first posting to Sarai. I am Rajesh Komath, an indigenous\traditional performer of Teyyam, a ritualistic folk art linked to the rich traditions of ancient cult system, largely performed in the northern regions (Malabar) of south Indian state, Kerala. The word ‘Teyyam’, derived from the word ‘Daivam’, means God in Malayalam language. It is performed annually or on festive occasions as an expression of local people’s faith in the divine and also, as an artistic expression of their collective social consciousness. Though performed for different purposes, generally it is towards satisfying some social needs. For instance, performance of fertility cult, in the paddy field for increasing agricultural productivity or the case of the Teyyam named ‘Vasurimala’ performed for warding off small pox from the village. Teyyam related rituals have a close connection with worship, life ceremonies, sorcery and belief in the daily life of the ordinary people of north Malabar. Its themes have originated from mythical and ritualistic imagination and the dancer give vent to the moods through his dances, movements and articulation. It is a colourful combination of dance, theatre and music. The dancer, who transforms into ‘Teyyam’, performs, admonishes, predicts the future, reads the past, and receives adulation and worship from villagers. Primarily, this art form is found in Kannur and Kasargod districts of Kerala, though such traditions do exist in southern Malabar region too and also in the border areas of south Kanara and Coorg districts of the neighboring state Karnataka, however the regional terminologies may differ. By training I am an economist, holding an M Phil degree in Applied economics and currently pursuing doctoral research on the theme “Negotiating for Social Development: Experience of Teyyam Performing Communities of north Malabar” at Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum. But I also perform Teyyam, both in traditional shrines and modern theatre stages as the art form is presently commodified. Thus, I straddle between two worlds—of Teyyam dancer and a researcher. I have a plan to document 400 Teyyams that face extinction and record Thottam that is recited during performance. I am also interested in music and musical production of Teyyam performances. Photographs of my performances are: link http://rajeshkomath.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_rajeshkomath_archive.html The present study, “Ethnography of Teyyam Performance as Practitioner”, attempts to analyze how long-term social transformation reflects on the life of a community in terms of their adherence to Teyyam performance and their traditional social position as legitimate artists/workers of the art form. The study intends to understand the predicament of marginal communities in the larger stratified society. Historically, marginalized/indigenous communities have been relegated to the conditions of the most backward communities in the hierarchical social structure of India. This study would investigate social and material conditions, social meanings, and aesthetic practices of the cultural production of Teyyam; performed by lower castes and Adivasi communities which can be considered as a resistance against, oppression of the dominant groups in the northern districts of Kerala. The analysis will be an ethnographic and folkloristic discourse on behalf of the community. This study will capture the “insider perspective”, as the researchers himself is an active performer of Teyyam and will be able to combine individual experiences with the social, cultural and economic aspects of the community. Next posting, based on the personal narrative of researcher, as a ‘performer’ will illustrate Teyyam performer’s social life, to communicate their dilemma in the changing social hierarchy of north Malabar society, where Communists ideology interfaces with the traditional ritual of Teyyam performance. With warm regards. Rajesh Komath. Rajesh Kumar.K. Doctoral Scholar Centre For Development Studies Prasanth Nagar, Ulloor Trivandrum- 695011 Kerala, India Ph : +91-471-2442481 Fax: +91-471-2447137 Mobile: 9895056659. From mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com Wed Jan 25 15:26:39 2006 From: mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com (mahmood farooqui) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 15:26:39 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Pehli Posting In-Reply-To: <489e03b80601240644r21f8b459jbf3a020dd4c9e605@mail.gmail.com> References: <489e03b80601240644r21f8b459jbf3a020dd4c9e605@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Dear Vasundhra, Looking greatly forward to your findings--would you agree that there is a difference between dancing extras-now known as dancer boys and girls-and the actors/artists who acted as extras...the rise of a new kind of dance instructor and new kinds of dancing schools would obviously have affected those extras as we now want 'fair and polished' faces in our beautiful films... So people who formed part of the crowd in say, Amitabh's inteha ho gayi song in Sharaabi would today perhaps be unacceptable for a saif number... and what about the crowd suppliers-people who provide numbers in throngs for crowd scenes...how is that affecting the extras life.. and lastly, where does the once powerful junior artiste association fit into all this-how does a junior artiste differ from an extra? Are you based in Bombay? Cheers, Mahmood On 24/01/06, Vasundhara Prakash wrote: > > > > 15 Seconds of Fame! > > Lives of Bollywood Extras: Junior Artistes in Popular Hindi films > > > > My project aims to explore the world of extras, to uncover their space in > films. Though this goes against the whole concept of an extra, a faceless, > nameless entity that merely fills the celluloid space without imposing its > identity, it would be interesting to explore how some have unknowingly > broken the boundaries of being restricted to the non-entity status of an > extra and through their quantity as well as quality of work taken that leap > into the world of recognition though still far away from fame. I would like > to examine the "faceless" world of the extras by focusing on a number of > themes. How does gender inflect the extras' relations to the film industry? > How are women treated differently from men? How different are their > expectations and responsibilities and how that affects the choices they > make? My concern is also issues such as prejudices and biases against the > extras, their treatment on the sets. There are also class and linguistic > hierarchies at work – the stars are middle and upper class and English > speaking while the extras are lower middle class and non-anglicized. We have > very little understanding of how these factors play into the experiences of > the extras on the set. > > I would like to be able to combine historical and biographical study with > ethnography and textual analysis of a select body of films and will study > junior artistes as "subaltern" stars that provide a counter narrative to the > dominant figurations in Indian Cinema. > > I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, contacts or references that > could help my work. > > Vasundhara Prakash > > # 9833644748 > > vasundhara.prakash at gmail.com > > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe > in the subject header. > List archive: > > > From anjalijyoti at yahoo.com Wed Jan 25 16:00:32 2006 From: anjalijyoti at yahoo.com (anjali jyoti) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 02:30:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] first posting:anjali jyoti Message-ID: <20060125103032.44529.qmail@web34604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi everyone, I’m Anjali. I am an architect presently working in Delhi. When in comes to communication, I usually end up writing staccato, and talking in cryptic, disjointed sentences with enough hand gesticulations to give a kuchipudi dancer a run for her money. So I took to other ways of expressing myself- photographs, film making, sign language, cartoons... I’d like to add that I’m a single girl child so had I been born in today’s day and age I would have gotten free education .Am also left-handed. Have no clue how such meaningful insights are related to my reasons for doing this particular research project, or maybe they are at some subconscious intrinsic level, (this comes after an overdose of Paulo Coelho). Enough of kidding around; though its kids, precisely, who are the basis of my research. Here’s what its about: Living in Delhi for anyone new can be nightmarish- with its grandness, its mysteriousness, its filth, is traffic, its traffic jams, its politics, its dark areas, its people. More so for children with no adult guidance; but their own sensibilities to guide them. Street children, who have learnt to outsmart Delhi and survive. Their Delhi must be quite different from ours. What is that Delhi? The idea behind ‘Home Street Home:A street child’s survival guide for Delhi’-is to put together a guide {something like a Lonely Planet for street children) which is packed with information given by the street children living in Delhi, about Delhi. The booklet would focus on various aspects of a street child’s life in the city and contained inputs from children themselves about their views, their ratings, and most importantly their first hand advice. Delhi as a city- how does it fascinate them, scare them, entertain them , does it protect them. Delhi through the eyes of the children-the character of places, the characters of the people, the class divide, police ,anti-social elements, work, crisis centres, hospitals etc. Based on findings an analysis will be made of the kinds of practices and systems prevalent in Delhi which the children of the street have taken advantage of in order to survive and also those which negatively affect these children and change them into’mini adults’. The guide would be in Hindi and English, with area level and city maps, cognitive maps drawn by children of areas, descriptive drawings by children, photographs In addition - relevant audio, film documented during project, which may be stored in the Sarai archives along with the printed compilation. Right now I’m working on a questionnaire for the children which I plan to upload soon. Then the idea is to go out there and talk to as many children as possible, dividing Delhi in 5 zones (N,S,E,W and Central) and covering a certain number of children per zone. till my next post anjali __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From chauhan.vijender at gmail.com Thu Jan 26 22:05:13 2006 From: chauhan.vijender at gmail.com (Vijender chauhan) Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 22:05:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Invitation for two day convention on caste question Message-ID: <8bdde4540601260835k2565b9efm158c4727c7e2022b@mail.gmail.com> Invitation for two day convention on caste question Hi all, I am forwarding an invitation I recd. [MAOIST_REVOLUTION] Invitation for two day convention on caste question [28-29 January, 2006] [MAOIST_REVOLUTION] Invitation for two day convention on caste question [28-29 January, 2006] Dear Friends A two-day convention had been organised in Nagpur on 26-27 of February 2005 by "Caste annihilation Committee" in which 62 organisations participated. Mainly south India based organisations participated in this convention. Continuing the same process, a North India level convention is going to be held in Delhi. The purpose of this convention is to discuss various dimensions of caste-system and to reach a common understanding so that we may proceed with the launching of a united peoples front and an anti-caste movement by making an effective strategy to annihilate the caste-system. Concentrating on these things a two day convention is to be held on 28-29 January, 2006. Ambedkar Bhawan, Rani Jhansi Marg, Delhi Topics and speakers are as follows: 1. Question of Caste-System and its Annihilation : Dr. Gopal N. Guru 2. Caste and Class in the era of Imperialism: Anand Teltumbde 3. Interrilationsip of Caste, Class and Gender: Uma Cakravarti 4. Struggle Against Atrocities on Dalits : Paramjeet 5. Dalit Movement and the Way Foreward: G. N. Saibaba We appeal to all individuals and organisations, who are against caste-system for being part of this convention and come forward to build a platform that could establish a powerful movement. -- Thank you With revolutionary Greetings Yours Dr. Darshan Pal Vice President, Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF) 67-A, Rameshwar Nagar AzadPur, Delhi Tel:+919417055994, +91-11-27675001 From avereec at hotmail.com Thu Jan 26 23:46:35 2006 From: avereec at hotmail.com (Averee Chaurey) Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 23:46:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] First posting of Independent Fellowships Sarai/CSDS Message-ID: PROJECT: THE SONG OF THE BAUL AVEREE CHAUREY INITIAL POSTING PERSONAL PROFILE I have been associated with theatre since my college days. As I entered Jadavpur University at Kolkata for my graduation, I joined one of the foremost groups of Kolkata, Bohurupee. Known for stalwarts like Shombhu Mitra and Tripti Mitra,Bohurupee was at the frontline of Bengali theatre. It was during the same time that I began my career as an announcer ,newscaster and an actress in TV serials and feature films.I completed my Masters in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University in 1982 . I left Kolkata to come toDelhi after marriage but continued to follow my passion,theatre.I have worked in many plays in English ,Hindi and Bengali with Habib Tanvir , Amal Allana,Rajendranath ,Feisal Alkazi and Tripurari Sharma.Along with theatre, I was also active in newsreading assignments for Doordarshan and TVI . I was responsible for founding the Bengali theatre group ,Bikalpa .I worked a full time job with the Public Relations of Kribhco for 20 years but have now taken early retirement to follow my creative instincts. PROJECT My project entails an attempt to understand the performance tradition of the Bauls ,the singing minstrels of Bengal .Throughout history , Bauls have remained an enigma .As a performer myself,it has been a lifelong dream to know more about them . This project also tries to look into their deep rooted tradition and how they have transformed in this age of globalisation . Though their origins can be traced to Silaidaho , now in Bangladesh ,the Baul tradition has thrived throughout Bengal since the 19th century .During the early decades of the twentieth century, especially since the 1920 s , Bengal �s leading intellectuals like Tagore and Kshitimohan Senshastri took up the Bauls� cause to explore their culture and spiritual thought. Their songs are indicative of different concerns ,from patriotism to social problems and romantic love .It is the philosophy of the Bauls which has drawn me to start this project. METHODS,MATERIALS & PROCESSES The methods employed will be : 1. Study of their music and the message they seek to give. 2. Study of reference books on their lives and philosophy. (Some books have been procured and some will be borrowed from libraries like National Library,Kolkata, Sahitya Akademi,Delhi,and Folk and Tribal Culture Centre,Department of Information and Culture,W.Bengal Government. 3. Travelling to and personally interacting with the Bauls at various locations and fairs in West Bengal.Personal interaction will include taped interviews and photographs whenever possible. 4. Drawing upon the resources of people like social historians etc. who have lived and interacted deeply with Bauls. INITIAL FINDINGS The Bauls live in a state of abject poverty,barring a few who have become famous through local patronage,television coverage and travel abroad .They earn their living through melas(fairs) and from begging for alms.Though traditionally nomadic,there are some who live in permanent settlement in a community.The west nup homes and some children of Bauls even go to school. However,they have their own social mores. For a Baul,the concept of Radha and Krishna�s love is important .They do not worship any deity and Guru is the supreme for them.Their sadhana is through�woman�,their `sangini� or wives.They hold women in high esteem which is obvious through their songs. The human body has an important place in the Baul tradition and philosophy. According to them,what is there in the universe is in the human body. (Jaha ache ei brahmande , tahai ache ei deho bhande ).For them ,it is a constant search of the man of the heart � Moner Manush. From geert at xs4all.nl Wed Jan 25 15:04:13 2006 From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 10:34:13 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for Speakers: GKP International Forum: "Creating Prosperity through Innovation: ICTs at Work in Development" - Extended Deadline 30 January 2006 Message-ID: <1ab3758aa50a2c4b86a445a62bedafac@xs4all.nl> > From: gkps at gkps.org.my > Date: 25 January 2006 10:31:18 AM > To: Maillist Recipients > Subject: [GKP_List1] Call for Speakers: GKP International Forum: > "Creating Prosperity through Innovation: ICTs at Work in Development" > - Extended Deadline 30 January 2006 > Reply-To: gkps at gkps.org.my > > ------------------------------------------ > From: gkps at gkps.org.my > To: gkp_list1 at globalknowledge.org > Subject: Call for Speakers: GKP International Forum: "Creating > Prosperity through Innovation: ICTs at Work in Development" - Extended > Deadline 30 January 2006 > ------------------------------------------ > > > Call for Speakers – Deadline Extended to 30 January 2006 > > GKP International Forum on Cross Sector Partnerships > "Creating Prosperity through Innovation: ICTs at Work in Development" > > Colombo, Sri Lanka - May 2006 > > This year's GKP International Forum will engage leaders from business, > civil society and government to share experiences and build new > partnership-based initiatives that create prosperity through the > innovative application of information and communications technology > for development. > > The Global Knowledge Partnership is seeking proposals for speakers who > illustrate innovation in using information and communication > technologies for development. > > Proposals should be developed according to the guidelines below and > sent using the attached 'GKP 2006 Forum Speaker Proposal Form' by the > deadline of 30 January 2006 to forumspeakers at gkps.org.my. > > Proposal Guidelines: > 1 Proposals should be for an individual speaker, although this > person may represent an innovative organization, project or work in a > particular region. >     > 2 Proposals should fit the context of the Forum theme, "Creating > Prosperity through Innovation: ICTs at Work in Development". >   > 3 Proposals should indicate how the speakers, their projects, or > organizations demonstrate innovation in applying information and > communication technologies for development. Innovation may be > demonstrated by the particular technology used, the application of > technology, the social context in which it is deployed, the way in > which the project is financed, the means of evaluation or measurement, > the way(s) in which partners collaborate, and/or other dimensions. >   > 4 Proposals should include the proposed speakers' name, their > contacts information, a biography of not more than 250 words, and a > rationale why their contributions fit the theme of innovation. This > should not be more than 250 words. >   > 5 Proposals, using the attached proposal form, must be emailed by 30 > January 2006 to forumspeakers at gkps.org.my. > >   > > > From shivam at sarai.net Wed Jan 25 19:35:48 2006 From: shivam at sarai.net (shivam at sarai.net) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 15:05:48 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: Research posting by I-Fellow Prabhat Kumar --- ========= I, Prabhat Kumar, am pursuing Ph.D. in modern history discipline at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The precise topic of Ph.D. research is "The Makings of an Intelligentsia in Colonial Bihar: 1870-1947". My research project at SARAI is an endeavour towards writing a history of a public association, namely, YUVAK SANGH, of Patna. Public associations like this had played a crucial role in drawing a large number of people into public life and building up linkages between the educated urban middle class and the people in rural areas. Yuvak Sangh or Youth League of Patna was established in 1928 by the young intellectuals of Bihar at the inspiration of the ongoing worldwide youth movements. Along with the establishment of the Yuvak Sangh, its mouthpiece Yuvak (Monthly) was also brought out. It was published from the Yuvak Ashram (office of the Yuvak Sangh in front of Patna College). The persons associated with the Yuvak Sangh had come out into active political life in the wake of the Champaran Satyagraha (1917) and the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-22). The C.I.D. Reports in the Home Political Special Department File suggest thast the same group of intellectuals not only proved to be casus belli in the formation of Bihar Socialist Party (1929) – a precursor of the Congress Socialist Party (1934), but also were proactive in the Civil Disobedience Movement (1930-32). The pages of Yuvak suggest that its contributors were the same group of intellectuals, viz. Rambriksha Benipuri, Prajapati Mishra, Gangasharan Sinha, Swami Sahajananda Saraswati, Awadheshwar Prasad Sinha, Kishori Prasanna Sinha, Phulan Prasad Verma, Jagdish Narayan, Manindra Narayan Roy, K.B. Sahay, Prof. Gyan Sahay etc. In the coming years all of them turned out to be leading local congressmen, socialists, communists, and peasant leaders. The editor of Yuvak and one of the founder members of the Sangh and the Bihar Socialist Party (B.S.P.), Benipuri wrote in his autobiography that Yuvak was the first journal disseminating socialist ideas among the youth of Bihar. The content of the journal suggests that the Sangh was not simply disseminating the socialist ideas among its targeted audience; its agenda was far broader. Its aim was to construct an image of ideal youth in the age of nationalism and shaping its readers along the same lines through poems, stories, sketches, essays etc. on a variety of issues. The subjects covered, ranged from the contemporary international youth movements and exemplifying biographical sketches of national and international personalities like Napoleon, Mussolini, Nehru, Jatin Das etc., to stories about male and female sports stars; health and physical exercises; the kinds of food to be taken; moral sermons like how the youth should act, behave and think; the kind of literature to be read; the careers to be pursued etc. The importance of celibacy (Brahmacharya) was emphasized more than once. These sermons were supported with vivid pictures depicting women tempting youth. There was a debate whether marriage was an obstacle or a necessity for the youth participating in the national movement. The contemporary agenda of social reform was reflected through the articles on the problems of untouchability, poverty and the ubiquitous woman question. It had pieces on the need of the youth to be patriotic, and the need to revolt against status quo. These articles were backed with theoretical essays on socialism and revolution. This paper will be divided into three sections. In the first, we shall try to situate Yuvak Sangh in the historical context of contemporary Bihar. A brief sketch of the different other existing and preceding public associations and social organizations will be given. For instance, Bihar witnessed the emergence of a number of caste associations, social reform and service organizations especially in the first two decades of the twentieth century. I shall analyse the similarities and departures in the agenda and the nature of Yuvak Sangh vis-à-vis different caste associations, seva-samitis, Bihari Chhatra Sammelan etc. This will be followed by brief biographical sketches of leading figures associated with the Sangh, which can gleaned from the available memoirs, autobiographies and biographies. This will throw some light on the nuanced understanding of a broader category of middleclass intelligentsia of Bihar. The last section will analyse in detail the ideas propagated by this group of intellectuals associated with Yuvak Sangh on the basis of their writings in Yuvak (whatever issues I could look into) and in the light of the larger intellectual circle in Patna, both contemporary and preceding, I would pose certain questions. What constituted an ideal youth an enunciated in their writings? Was this construction of the image of ideal youth simply informed by the brahminical Hindu masculinist discourses? If this was so, how did this nationalist imagery reconcile with the idea of socialism/revolution? Were socialism and revolution themselves amorphous categories? How did they reconcile with the "woman question" and the problem of caste? SOURCES Bihar State Archive, Patna Files and Documents of the Home Department of Bihar and Orissa on Sewa Dal, Bihari Chhatra Sammelan, various caste associations and the Yuvak Sangh. Annual Report on the Newspapers and Periodicals published from Bihar and Orissa for various years. Bihar Rashtra Bhasha Parishad Library and Khadga Vilas Press Library, Patna; Sharda Sadan Pustakalaya, Lalganj (Hajipur); Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi Kshatriya Patrika (Patna, 1980), Sri Harishchandra Kala (Patna, 1885), Shiksha (Patna, 1897), Lakshmi (Gaya, 1901), Manoranjan (Arrah, 1902), Patliputra (Patna, 1914), Desh (Patna, 1920), Marwari Sudhar (Arrah, 1921), Yuvak (Patna, 1928), Ganga (Sultanganj, 1930), Searchlight, Indian Nation, Bihar Herald (various years) etc. Autobiographies and Memoirs Rambriksha Benipuri, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Kishori Prasanna Sinha, Rahul Sankrityayana, Manindra Narayan Ror, Anugrahnarayan Sinha, Sahajananda Saraswati, Rajendra Prasad, Shivpujan Sahay etc. From sidharth.srinivasan at gmail.com Fri Jan 27 11:26:29 2006 From: sidharth.srinivasan at gmail.com (sidharth srinivasan) Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 21:56:29 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] First Posting: A photoroman feature film: A love story intertwined with the myth and folklore of Delhi's heritage sites Message-ID: <83e991100601262156t4a54bcfclf82769b216dd55e7@mail.gmail.com> Hi fellow fellows! I am an independent filmmaker who shuttles between Mumbai and Dilli, or between head and heart respectively! I have been based in Mumbai on and off for the past 5 years but Delhi is the city I belong to. I graduated from St. Stephen's College having studied Economics and immediately jumped into a life of filmmaking and glorious uncertainty! After 2 years assisting various people I went independent and my initial foray into direction was a short film titled THE TIGHTROPE WALKER (35mm, 15mins, Hindi) which made it in competition to Venice in 2000. The film was an experimental short on the anonymous life and (imagined?) love of a young woman who lives in a suburban highrise in Bombay. I followed this up in 2001 with one of the country's first digital feature films titled DIVYA DRISHTI (DVC, 95mins, Hindi) which was banned by the then censor board owing to profanity/street lingo and the casual depiction of a gay love affair between two married men (the cesnors said that homosexuality was against Indian culture). However to my joy this small film has carved a niche of its own being screened at various festivals (Singapore, Commonwealth, Karachi etc) and museums (Walker Art Centre, Museum of Contemporary Art, Nova Cinema etc). Currently I have finished my debut "multiplex" film, if you will, a supernatural thriller titled AMAVAS starring Konkona Sensharma, Victor Banerjee and others. The film should be released by mid 2006. I also make documentaries and most recently have shot a film on the endangered world heritage site of Hampi for UNESCO. Living away from Delhi and returning there from time to time made me look at the city differently. Hanging out at Safdarjung, Aurobindo Place and Green Park I was struck by the rambling and dilapidated ruins of monuments lying amidst the urban space of markets and colonies. I realized that I had taken them for granted to such an extent that I didn't even know what these structures looked like from within. A few trips made were enough to get my juices flowing and soon the germ of an idea took place in my mind. Delhi unlike Bombay was an urban city with space for clandestine love. Mosques and mausoleums, tombs and temples dotted the city and in turn were dotted by names of anonymous lovers etched forever on stone and granite. Who were these secret lovers, what was there story, for surely they had a story to tell, and by extension, there must be countless such myths and folk tales surrounding these various heritage sites...I decided to weave a contemporary clandestine love story among the ruins of Delhi - a love story where the young man and girl in question become influenced by the past to such an extent that it starts overtaking their conscious waking life... As a filmmaker I also took a conscious decision to treat the proposed film differently. Some years ago I had the good fortune of seeing Chris Marker's legendary film "La Jetee" a sci-fi film comprised entirely of still images with voice-over narration and sound design - Marker called the film a photoroman. The film was so influential that not only did Hollywood make an ugly remake (12 monkeys) but a La Jetee Bar also exists in Tokyo! I came up with the decision to make my film in a similar fashion albeit do away with voice over narrative and in its stead have many voices of both the present and the past imbue the sound design. And that is where SARAI/CSDS thankfully came in. My research is ostensibly on "excavating" the various stories, myths, legends, folk tales and "sthalapuranas" surrounding the heritage spots of Delhi City which would find there way into the script for my proposed photoroman - in short my research is on all the stuff that never finds its way into the text books. So if any of you have any bizarre, grotesque, cute, strange and downright fascinating stories to tell about nooks and corners and gullies and gates in Delhi please inform me. Also, if you know any wise old men and women who love hearing the sound/s of their own voices and talk about Delhi as if it were a loved one please put me on to them. I look forward to hearing from you and wish all of you all the very best with ur proposed research... Best, SIDHARTH SRINIVASAN -- MR. SIDHARTH SRINIVASAN Reel Illusion Films New Delhi/Mumbai India -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060126/efc7e734/attachment.html From tushar_bhor at yahoo.com Fri Jan 27 10:42:33 2006 From: tushar_bhor at yahoo.com (tushar bhor) Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 21:12:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] 1st Post - Tushar Bhor Message-ID: <20060127051233.21915.qmail@web51901.mail.yahoo.com> 1st Posting: Working Title: WATER LENSES - Prelude for new imagination for urban water of Mumbai. Hey every one, myself Tushar V Bhor, a Mumbaikar and is qualified as an Architect (2002-2003) and then pursued fellowship from Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies, Mumbai (2003-2004). Presently, I am working with a NGO, Aga Khan Planning and Building Service, India, on professional capacity as a Program Officer. In addition, I am also part of Mumbai Fort Forum (MFF), which is group of young Architects aspiring to do some work in conservation in the City of Mumbai. The present topic for Independent Fellowship titled “WATER LENSES - Prelude for new imagination for urban water of Mumbai” is developed through my recent investigation in informal system of water supply in old city of Mumbai for the purpose of documentary film. Rather, the investigation becomes part of the larger argument that I intend to make through this fellowship program. Imagine the infuriating moment, if there is sudden drop in the pressure of your tap while taking a bath. You surely do not forget to swear the unknown responsible person, who ranges from family member or the plumber, who must have recently repaired the system or infact the society secretary, you had a fight over GBM and even to an extent the municipal corporation. Such incidences, knowingly or unknowingly reminds some of the players involved in providing water to you. Consider this above incidence as one of the loop in the chain, then it can be assumed that there will be several such players involved in the water resource acquisition, allocation and consumptions. I further put forth the argument that, such players exist in the City with creation of their own territories. To begin investigation, the territory can be defined as - “It is a spatial entity endowed of its own identity. This own identity is characterized by its limits, its history, and also by the manner in which the social groups that live within in manifest themselves, and gives an impression to others outside. It is composed of a social and institutional actor organization”. (Anastasia Anguelatou, 2005: Reference from the synopsis of PhD. thesis titled, ‘The informal economy of water and sustainable development’). I will support my initial argument by stating an example of Mumbai City. The liberalization policy initiated in 90’s triggered for so called “new economy” in the city. One of the characteristics of this was the resultant role of State changing from provider to facilitator. This was evident through disinvestments of State and shift in development mechanism through private sector participation. The second characteristic was development of service economy, which created new working and living conditions in the City and these changing trends are seen in housing, transportation and resources utilization. Water being one of the important resources depicted a peculiar characteristic ranging from state provided centralized system to community based informal systems. In first case, although the centralized system of water supply is 8th largest in the world, there exists 33% of unaccounted consumption that is presumed to being consumed by government institutions (This is in reference to the study conducted by group Water Group in 2003). Second, is the increasing number of small scale water operators (also other then slums) functioning through extremely organized structure, which acquires and distributes the water by developing own tactics. Both the cases represent a peculiar imagination, one is the critical imagination on the role of the state as service provider/facilitator and second, in the context of marginalized community, where the system becomes mode of sustenance and livelihood. Further, if an assumption is made that in any system, the access to water is made available through number of negotiations at different levels, then it becomes imperative to identify the various hybrid systems and understand the players that operates on these territories. The territories will not be restricted to the mode of legality or illegality, but will be based on the opportunities, which allow specific negotiation for water resource acquisition, allocation and consumptions. Hence through this initial argument, I intend to construct an imagination, as against the ideal imagination, for water resource acquisition, allocation and consumption. Various players will be investigated ranging from political and bureaucratic players, big and small water owners & managers to society level water operators, plumbers and water vendors, etc. Various stories will be identified about the players in the context of their operating territories. These stories will be positioned through the layers of development of the Mumbai City. Regards .. TUSHAR BHOR ARCHITECT and INDEPENDENT RESEARCHER. Residence Address: 10/60, Madhu Sadan,Sion(w),Mumbai–400022,Maharashtra,India. Tel. No: +91 22 24083828. Mobile: +91 98190 35176. E mail: tushar_bhor at yahoo.com --------------------------------- Yahoo! Autos. Looking for a sweet ride? Get pricing, reviews, & more on new and used cars. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060126/48a59d27/attachment.html From ttsetan at yahoo.com Wed Jan 25 17:48:37 2006 From: ttsetan at yahoo.com (tenzin tsetan) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:18:37 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] "Dreaming Lhasa" screening at the Habitat and PVR Spiceworld In-Reply-To: <1a57bfd0601220933w3478c3a5ra35ec22668ae202b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20060125121837.22012.qmail@web50612.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Friends - This is to let you know that our film, Dreaming Lhasa, is going to screen at the India Habitat Centre on Saturday, 28th January, at 7 pm. Passes can be picked up from the Habitat Centre but in case of any difficulty, do let us know. The film also has a limited engagement at PVR Spiceworld in Noida, starting 3rd February, as part of their Meet the Filmmaker series. There will be one screening every evening for a week. We will be present at the screening on Saturday, 4th Feb. (The projection here will be much better than the one at Habitat.) If you know anyone who might be interested in seeing the film, please do pass on the information. We hope to see you at one of these screenings. With best wishes - Ritu and Tenzing Please check out the official website of our feature film, "Dreaming Lhasa": www.dreaminglhasa.com --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060125/7f77794e/attachment.html From monica.mody at gmail.com Wed Jan 25 16:53:29 2006 From: monica.mody at gmail.com (Monica Mody) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:53:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Mumbai: TRI Continental Film Festival 2006 Message-ID: <4badad3b0601250323x2e5511cej6087e1faabae05f1@mail.gmail.com> BREAKTHROUGH PRESENTS TRI CONTINENTAL FILM FESTIVAL 2006: HUMAN RIGHTS IN FRAMES ***SCREENING PROGRAMME JAN 26-27*** In association with Uhuru Productions, FFSI, & JACIC Little Theatre, NCPA, Mumbai JANUARY 26 10:30 am EMERGING SONGS Kitte Mil Ve Mahi (Where the Twain Shall Meet) Dir. Ajay Bhardwaj (India/ 2005/ 72 min) Travel to the heart of Punjab. Enter a world of Sufi shrines worshipped and looked after by Dalits. Listen to B.S. Balli Qawwal Paslewale, the first generation Dalit Qawwals born out of this tradition. Join a fascinating dialogue with Lal Singh Dil - a radical poet, a Dalit, converted to Islam. Meet the last living legend of the Gadar movement, Baba Bhagat Singh Bilga, who contests the subversion of a common past, while affirming a new consciousness among Dalits, within and beyond Punjab. "Kitte Mil Ve Mahi" is people's narrative of the little-known cultural/spiritual universe of Punjab. Rebel Music Americas Dir. Malcolm Guy & Marie Botie (Canada/ 2004/ 79 min) >From Tierra del Fuego to the Rio Grande, the "other" Americas are in turmoil, and in the midst of the social and political movements rocking the region are four groups of passionate musicians. Theirs is the music of the America of the South - popular, dynamic, rebellious and more often than not "anti-American". It's the rhythms and voices of Afro-Colombian musicians from communities forcibly displaced by the military; of Lila Downs and the struggle of women and indigenous peoples in Mexico; of Santa Reveulta and unemployed workers blocking access to a refinery in Buenos Aires, and Chico Cesar joining a land occupation of the Landless Worker's Movement (MST) in Brazil. (Best Documentary, Roma Independent Film Festival, Rome, 2005) 1:30 pm EVERY WAR HAS ITS IMAGE 14 Episodes Dir. Murad Muzaev (Ukraine, Netherlands & Chechen Republic of Ichkerya/ 2004/ 9 min) This documentary short consists direct and fragmentary narratives of dead, wounded and fleeing civilians and soldiers from the first and second Russian-Chechen wars. Torn metal, the bare face of death, helplessness - nothing is side-stepped, bearing testimony to the scale and severity of this extraordinarily savage war. The material was given by the Ukranian TV reporter Taras Protsuk, killed in Iraq on 8 April 2003, and also Adam Tepsurkaev (killed in Chechnya) and Islam Saydaev. (Award for Short Film Promoting Human Rights (special citation), Melbourne Film International Festival, Melbourne, Australia, 2005; Amnesty International Prize, International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam, 2004) Weapons of Mass Deception Dir. Danny Schechter (USA/ 2004/ 98 min) There were two wars going on in Iraq. One was fought with armies of soldiers, bombs and a fearsome military force. The other was fought alongside it with cameras, satellites, armies of journalists and propanganda techniques. The TV networks in America considered their non-stop coverage their finest hour, but different countries saw different wars. Why? WMD explores this story with the findings of a gutsy, media insider-turned-outsider, former network journalist, Danny Schechter, who is also one of America's most prolific media critics. (Best Documentary, Denver International Film Festival, Denver, USA, 2004) 3:30 pm SNAPSHOTS OF COURAGE Beauty Will Save the World Dir. Pietra Brettkelly (UK & New Zealand/ 2004/ 62 min) Before Saddam and Osama, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi was one of the most reviled leaders in the West. Then in 2002 he hosted the first Miss Net World beauty pageant, a first for Libya. "Beauty Will Save the World" follows the exploits of 19 year-old Teca Zendik, the American contender for the crown. She sets out with her political loyalties in check, even refusing to wear the competition uniform - a tshirt emblazoned with Gadaffi's likeness. How then does she assume the position of honorary consul to the US for Libya in a mere matter of months? Marvel at how diplomatic ties are re-established between two nations while enjoying the behind-the-scenes antics of a beauty pageant. 5:00 pm CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Justiça Dir. Maria Ramos (Netherlands/ 2004/ 102 min) In Justiça, Maria Ramos puts a camera where many Brazilians have never been - a criminal courtroom in Rio de Janeiro, following the daily routine of several characters. There are those that work there every day (public attorneys, judges, and prosecutors) and those that are merely passing through (the accused). The camera is used as an instrument that sees the social theater, the structures of power - that is to say, what is, in general, invisible to us. With her options clear, and unobscured by her choice for sobriety and simplicity, Maria Ramos makes it evident that, like documentary making, justice is a long way from being impartial. How and for whom the judicial system works for in Brazil is the fundamental question dealt with in this film, without providing any definite answers or making preconceived judgements. 7:00 pm BIRTH OF A NEW SOUTH AFRICA Homecoming Dir. Norman Maake (South Africa/ 2005/ 90 min) FEATURE "Homecoming" is a story of loves lost, futures promised and the price of freedom, but above all it is about friendship. Set in 1996, it is a heart-wrenching thriller about three boyhood friends, ANC exiles, who come back home to post-apartheid South Africa. Charlie, Peter and Thabo are forced to deal with the realities of the apartheid era and their friendship begins to take on a new meaning. This feature's cast includes South Africa's most acclaimed actors. JANUARY 27 10:30 am CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Acting Like a Thief Dir. Kerim Friedman & Shashwati Talukdar (India & USA/ 2005/ 15 min) WORLD PREMIERE "Acting Like a Thief" is a short film about the Budhan Theatre of Chharanagar. Starting with playwright Dakxin Bajrange discussing his arrest the film brings us inside the lives of a dedicated group of young actors and their families as they discuss what it means to be a "born criminal" and how theater changed their lives. The members of Budhan Theatre are Chhara tribals. They were notified as "born criminals" by the British, and imprisoned in a labor camp in Ahmedabad. After Indian independence they were de-notified, but the stigma of being a "born criminal" follows them to this day. (Dilip D'Souza, Author of "Branded by Law", present for interaction) Sisters in Law Dir. Kim Longinotto & Florence Ayisi (UK/ 2005/ 106 min) Selected for Cannes this year, "Sisters in Law" is a totally fascinating - often hilarious - look at the work of one small courthouse in South West Cameroon. The two women at the heart of the doco wouldn't be out of place in an Alexander McCall Smith bestseller. As the State Counsel and Court President, they dispense wisdom, wisecracks and justice in fair measure. The victims of crime - an abused child, a woman daring to accuse a man of rape, and another trying to end a brutal marriage in a society where divorce is taboo - are handled with fierce compassion. You will feel like cheering when justice is served. (Prix Art Et Essai, Cannes, France, 2005) 1:15 pm IN A VEIN IRREVERENT West Bank Story Dir. Ari Sandel (USA/ 2005/ 21 min) A musical comedy set in the fast-paced, fast-food world of competing falalfel stands in the West Bank. David, an Israeli soldier, falls in love with the beautiful Palestinian cashier, Fatima, despite the animosity between their families' dueling restaurants. Can the couple's love withstand a 2000 year old conflict and their families' desire to control the future of the chickpea in the Middle East? 1:45 pm CIVIL STRUGGLES The Take Dir. Avi Lewis (Canada/ 2004/ 87 min) In the wake of Argentina's spectacular economic collapse in 2001, Latin America's most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - the take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head. Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein take viewers inside the lives of ordinary visionaries, as they reclaim their work, their dignity and their democracy. Thirst Dir. Deborah Kaufman & Alan Snitow (USA/ 2004/ 62 min) Is water part of a shared commons, a human right for all people? Or is it a commodity to be bought and sold in the global marketplace? Filmed in Bolivia, India and the USA, "Thirst" depicts communities struggling with these questions as water becomes the world's most valuable resource. This groundbreaking new film exposes how a global corporate drive to commodify the world's water inspires new movements against globalisation. (Filmmakers present) (The Chris Statuette, Columbus International Film Festival, Columbus, Ohio, 2004; 1st Prize (Environment & Social Justice), Earth Vision Film Festival, Santa Cruz, California, 2004; CINE Golden Eagle Award, Fall 2004) 4:30 pm BIRTH OF A NEW SOUTH AFRICA Zulu Love Letter Dir. Ramadan Suleman (South Africa & France/ 2004/ 100 min) FEATURE A keen and insightful psychological drama, Zulu Love Letter presents the emotional journey of two mothers searching for their daughters. Tormented by the haunting images and unrelenting grief of the past, single mother and journalist Thandi has difficulty communicating with her estranged daughter, Mangi. Thirteen-year old Mangi is deaf and dumb due to the beating that the pregnant Thandi received at the same time that her friends, Mike and Dineo, were murdered by an Apartheid hit squad. Mike and Dineo's fate pursues her, especially when Dineo's mother appears requesting that Thandi testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (Grand Prix Du Mellieur Scenariste - Special Jury Award, organised by Sopadin, France, 2001) 6:30 pm RESCREENING: Jury Prize Winner - Weapons of Mass Deception Dir. Danny Schechter * THE SCHEDULE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. For details, visit www.breakthough.tv or contact: Monica Mody/ Alika Khosla 91 11 2617 6181/ 85 or 9811269257 tri-cff at breakthrough.tv _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From nc-agricowi at netcologne.de Wed Jan 25 20:09:31 2006 From: nc-agricowi at netcologne.de (NetEx) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 15:39:31 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] VideoChannel's SELECTION '03 at CeC &CaC - New Dehli Message-ID: <43D78DA3.80007@netcologne.de> VideoChannel's legendary SELECTION'03 now also at CeC & CaC 2006, New Delhi, India 27-29 January 2006 29. Jan. 2006 SELECTION'03 video compilation curated by Agricola de Cologne for VideoChannel http://videochannel.newmediafest.org featuring Digital Snapshots by Daniel LoIocono (Germany) 2:30 Colossus by the Sea by Jens Salander/Mikael Stroemberg (Sweden) 10:00 SALT by Christina McPhee (USA) 9:26 Infern Domestic by Empar Cubells (Spain) 7:50 Sample City by Calin Dan (Romania) 10:00 Time with Franz by Dana Levy (Israel) 10:00 Truth - Paradise Found by Agricola de Cologne (Germany) 3:00 No Title by Margerida Paiva (Portugal) 3:40 Smoke by Rafael Alcala (Puerto Rico) 3:00 Wo-men/Wo-rld by Li Hyung Kim (South Korea) 3:34 --------------------------------------------------------------- CeC & CaC is The Carnival of e-Creativity & Change-agents Conclave, addressing the Creative Empowerment of Individuals by the burgeoning spread of Technology, across multiple streams of Creative Human Endeavour. CeC & CaC is presented by India International Centre and The Academy of Electronic Arts, New Delhi, India. CeC is the Carnival of e-Creativity, Public Forum, themed "Touch-e Feel-e" for 2006. The event will be largely open to the public, with breakout sessions in the Gandhi-King Plaza and the Annexe rear-garden. CaC is the Change-agents Conclave, Peer Forum themed "Quo Vadis?" for 2006. http://www.theaea.org/cec_cac/ --------------------------------------------------------------- VideoChannel http://videochannel.newmediafest.org is a corporate part of the global networking project [R][R][F]2006--->XP http://rrf2006.newmediafest.org created, directed and curated by Agricola de Cologne [NewMediaArtprojectNetwork]:||cologne the experimental platform for art & New Media from Cologne/Germany www.nmartproject.net _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From nc-agricowi at netcologne.de Thu Jan 26 15:07:43 2006 From: nc-agricowi at netcologne.de (NetEx) Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 10:37:43 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] NetEX: recent calls Message-ID: <43D89867.6050500@netcologne.de> NetEX- networked experience http://netex.nmartproject.net added recently some new calls which might be of interest: ---> New!! 1. International call for videoart Lamia/Greece deadline 10 February 2006 ---> New!! 2. Call: Athens Videoart Festival deadline: 15 March 2006 ---> New!! 3. Call: Shortfilm Festival Forli/Italy deadline 31 July2006 ////////////////// Still running!! 4. Arizona shortfilm & video festival deadline: 10 February 2006 ---> 5. Call: Freewaves Los Angeles/USA deadline 15 February 2006 ---> 6. The 3rd Con-Con movie festival (Japan) deadline 28 February 2006 ---> 7. Call from Kaliningrad/Russia The 2nd International Festival of Multimedia Art “The Salt of Water”. deadline 5 March . all details on the calls can be found on http://netex.nmartproject.net/index.php?blog=8&cat=25 or info(at)nmartproject.net ///////////////////////////////////////// Three internal calls - can be found on http://netex.nmartproject.net/index.php?blog=8&cat=54 1. [R][R][F]2006--->XP - global networking project is looking for Internet based projects on the themes "memory" & "identity" deadline 1 March 2006 info(at) rrf2006.newmediafest.org ---> 2. VideoChannel extended the deadline for videos on the theme "gender identity" deadline 1 March 2006 info(at)videochannel.newmediafest.org ---> 3. ://selfportrait - a show for Bethlehem/Palestine is looking for artists selfportraits: digital prints, digital video interactive multi-media works on CD-Rom & Internet, soundart deadline 1 March info(at)rrf2006.newmediaffest.org . All details and the entry forms are issued on http://netex.nmartproject.net/index.php?blog=8&cat=54 ************************************************* NetEX - networked experience http://netex.nmartproject.net is a free information service by [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne the experimental platform for art & New Media from Cologne/Germany www.nmartproject.net . info(at) nmartproject.net _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From pukar at pukar.org.in Fri Jan 27 12:21:36 2006 From: pukar at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:21:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [announcements] Schedule for Mediascapes: PUKAR-TISS National Seminar Message-ID: <002f01c6230e$21c96980$10d0c0cb@freeda> Dear Friends, The PUKAR Winter Institute/ TISS National Seminar 2006 will be held from February 10th to 12th, 2006, in Mumbai. If you would like to attend, please register by January 31, 2006. Those who have registered earlier need not apply again. Mediascapes: Shifting Boundaries, Contested Terrains 10 - 12 February, 2006 @ Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai Campus Co-sponsored by PUKAR and Tata Institute of Social Sciences This seminar brings together leading media scholars and practitioners to engage in a conversation on the implications of changing modes of media production and consumption and its impact on social, cultural and contextual processes and identity formation. Please visit the seminar website www.mediascapes.cjb.net/index.htm Friday, 10th February 11:00 - 11:30 Opening Remarks Dr. S. Parasuraman, Director, TISS Dr. Anita Patil-Deshmukh, Director, PUKAR Introduction to the Seminar Dr. Anjali Monteiro, UMC, TISS 11:30 - 12:30 Session I Changing Modes of Production and Consumption: The Global and the Local Dr. B. Manjula, UMC, TISS Dr. B. P. Sanjay, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad Discussant Dr. Vinod Pavarala, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad 12:30 - 1:30 Lunch 1:30 - 3:00 Session II Open Forum on Media Education: Opportunities and Challenges Dr. Shobha Ghosh, Head, Dept. of English, SIES College Dr. Saradha Ganapathyraman, K.C. College Dr. Sudhakar Solomon Raj, Wilson College Discussant Dr. B. P. Sanjay, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad 6:30 - 8:00 Key Note Address (open to public) Jai Hind College Auditorium, Churchgate Mr. Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief, Indian Express Saturday 11th February 9:30 - 11:00 Session III Moral Panics: Negotiating Gender Dr. Shohini Ghosh, MCRC, Jamia Milia Islamia Ms. Shilpa Phadke, PUKAR Gender & Space Discussant Ms. Bishakha Datta, Point of View 11:00 - 11:15 Tea break 11:15 - 1:00 Session IV Rethinking the City and Urban Identity Mr. Venkatesh Chakravarthy, Filmmaker and researcher Mr. Abeer Gupta, Filmmaker and researcher Ms. Paromita Vohra, Filmmaker : Screening of 'Cosmopolis : Two Tales of a City' Discussant Mr. Rahul Srivastava, Researcher, PUKAR Associate 1:00 - 2:00 Lunch 2:00 - 3:30 Session V Panel on Media Censorship Mr. Amit Khanna, Chairman, Reliance Entertainment Ms. Surabhi Sharma, Filmmaker Discussant Ms. Shohini Ghosh, MCRC, Jamia Milia Islamia 3:30 - 3:45 Tea break 3:45 - 5:00 Screening and discussion: 'SheWrite' by Dr. Anjali Monteiro and Dr. K. P. Jayasankar, UMC, TISS 5:00 - 6:00 Consultation on Centre for Media and Cultural Studies - Networking Sunday 12th February 9:30 - 11:00 Session VI New Technologies and Old Boundaries Mr. Shuddhabrata Sengupta, SARAI Prof. Vinod Pavarala, S. N. School, University of Hyderabad Discussant Mr. Indranil Chakravarty, Comet Media Foundation 11:00 - 11:15 Tea break 11:15 - 1:00 Session VII Imaging Resistance Ms. Madhusree Dutta, Majlis Presenter: TBA Discussant: Mr. Farooque Shaikh, Actor, Activist 1:00 - 2:00 Lunch 2:00 - 3:15 Screening and Discussion: 'Naata' by Dr. Anjali Monteiro and Dr. K. P. Jayasankar, UMC, TISS 3:15 - 3:30 Tea break 3:30 - 5:00 Session VIII Open Session: Participants' Experiences Mr. Nitin Paranjape and Ms. Sujata Babar, Abhivyahti Ms. Shalini, Nirantar, Centre for Women and Education ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- LOCATION: The Seminar will be held at the Tata Institute of Social Science, Opp. Deonar Bus Depot, V.N. Purav Marg (Sion-Trombay Road), Deonar, Mumbai 400 088. REGISTRATION: Registration is required for the seminar. To register in advance, please send an email to: pukar at pukar.org.in with the following details by Tuesday, 31 January 2006. - Name - Institutional Affiliation - Email address - Postal Address - Telephone Number REGISTRATION FEES: Although registration for the seminar is free, a nominal fee of Rs. 150.00 will be charged to cover lunches and refreshments over 3 days. This amount can be paid at the venue on 10th February before 11:00 AM. CONTACT DETAILS: PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) Address:: 1-4, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Sir P. M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Telephone:: +91 (22) 5574 8152 Fax:: +91 (22) 5664 0561 Email:: pukar at pukar.org.in Website:: www.pukar.org.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060127/589d0d2c/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From sudhesh.unniraman at gmail.com Fri Jan 27 12:36:18 2006 From: sudhesh.unniraman at gmail.com (sudhesh) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:36:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] film screening in Delhi In-Reply-To: <73cd0cce0601262301n3c20093ag69dbd2e53cf6e377@mail.gmail.com> References: <73cd0cce0601262258v27554680h37666d7f5e10aa4c@mail.gmail.com> <73cd0cce0601262300q3ac51af2xf6a4c34f32e23b49@mail.gmail.com> <73cd0cce0601262301n3c20093ag69dbd2e53cf6e377@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <73cd0cce0601262306g2359baa4ibd6ead1077471f51@mail.gmail.com> Dear All Hi… LOTUS POND a film I had co directed is being shown as part of a package of films on Art at the India Habitat Centre tomorrow. The film documents the life of senior artist A Ramachandran and has traveled to various film festivals around the world including the Montreal Film Festival on Art and the Indian International Film Festival, Goa. The package of films is being screened 28th January 2006 at Gulmohar Hall, India Habitat Centre between 2:30 and 6:00 pm . Thanks Sudhesh Unniraman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060127/835c8766/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From shebatejani at gmail.com Fri Jan 27 15:20:42 2006 From: shebatejani at gmail.com (sheba tejani) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 15:20:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] First Posting- Queer Cityscapes Message-ID: <5f6114430601270150v3d070ce2tf8441f38ff146b11@mail.gmail.com> Hi everyone, My name is Sheba, I work for a social science journal and I live in Bombay. This is my first posting about my project. I moved to Bombay only a couple of years ago and since then I've had some interesting experiences and insights about living in this city as a queer person, and with another queer person. My project was/ is being born out of this dailiness of living in what many people call, somewhat ironically, the 'queer capital of India'. The project will involving creating an audio-visual of conversations between two women that centre around the experience of living and "translating" Bombay, as well being seen and being translated. Of course, the work will be pure fiction and I plan to script four different conversations and shoot appropriate still or moving images for each. For instance, the conversations could be about a particular media event, such as an advertisement, a television show, a movie or poster/s; about public transport, street fights, or social divisions; about finding/ creating/ imagining homes and families, coping with prejudice, or interacting with the gay community. Each of the conversations might have disjointed and individual trajectories but they would be united together in a larger narrative framework. I am interested in the 'queer encounter' with the city and would like to tap into the continuous processes of dialogue that enable a multi-layered connection to the urban space, or even produce it in the first place. So it is not only the city 'seeing' the queer, but the queer seeing the city, by cognising, assimilating, rejecting but all the while engaging with the space. As a part of my background work I plan to interview other queer women living in the city about their experiences and hope that somewhere these will inform my work. This will also form part of my archival material for Sarai. I'm excited about the work and look forward to any comments, suggestions, feedback, questions etc through the entire process. Cheers Sheba From hfg at konsumerziehung.de Fri Jan 27 17:36:18 2006 From: hfg at konsumerziehung.de (croatian sound art) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 13:06:18 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for Speakers: GKP International Forum: "Creating Prosperity through Innovation: ICTs at Work in Development" - Extended Deadline 30 January 2006 In-Reply-To: <1ab3758aa50a2c4b86a445a62bedafac@xs4all.nl> References: <1ab3758aa50a2c4b86a445a62bedafac@xs4all.nl> Message-ID: <4ab60673e9e801b59fda68a4025b249d@konsumerziehung.de> buärk, ist man vor the gäärt nirgends wo mehr sicher??? Am 25.01.2006 um 10:34 schrieb Geert Lovink: >> From: gkps at gkps.org.my >> Date: 25 January 2006 10:31:18 AM >> To: Maillist Recipients >> Subject: [GKP_List1] Call for Speakers: GKP International Forum: >> "Creating Prosperity through Innovation: ICTs at Work in Development" >> - Extended Deadline 30 January 2006 >> Reply-To: gkps at gkps.org.my >> >> ------------------------------------------ >> From: gkps at gkps.org.my >> To: gkp_list1 at globalknowledge.org >> Subject: Call for Speakers: GKP International Forum: "Creating >> Prosperity through Innovation: ICTs at Work in Development" - >> Extended Deadline 30 January 2006 >> ------------------------------------------ >> >> >> Call for Speakers – Deadline Extended to 30 January 2006 >> >> GKP International Forum on Cross Sector Partnerships >> "Creating Prosperity through Innovation: ICTs at Work in Development" >> >> Colombo, Sri Lanka - May 2006 >> >> This year's GKP International Forum will engage leaders from >> business, civil society and government to share experiences and build >> new partnership-based initiatives that create prosperity through the >> innovative application of information and communications technology >> for development. >> >> The Global Knowledge Partnership is seeking proposals for speakers >> who illustrate innovation in using information and communication >> technologies for development. >> >> Proposals should be developed according to the guidelines below and >> sent using the attached 'GKP 2006 Forum Speaker Proposal Form' by the >> deadline of 30 January 2006 to forumspeakers at gkps.org.my. >> >> Proposal Guidelines: >> 1 Proposals should be for an individual speaker, although this >> person may represent an innovative organization, project or work in a >> particular region. >>     >> 2 Proposals should fit the context of the Forum theme, "Creating >> Prosperity through Innovation: ICTs at Work in Development". >>   >> 3 Proposals should indicate how the speakers, their projects, or >> organizations demonstrate innovation in applying information and >> communication technologies for development. Innovation may be >> demonstrated by the particular technology used, the application of >> technology, the social context in which it is deployed, the way in >> which the project is financed, the means of evaluation or >> measurement, the way(s) in which partners collaborate, and/or other >> dimensions. >>   >> 4 Proposals should include the proposed speakers' name, their >> contacts information, a biography of not more than 250 words, and a >> rationale why their contributions fit the theme of innovation. This >> should not be more than 250 words. >>   >> 5 Proposals, using the attached proposal form, must be emailed by >> 30 January 2006 to forumspeakers at gkps.org.my. >> >>   >> >> >> > > > > > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with > subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > From mohaiemen at yahoo.com Fri Jan 27 19:35:11 2006 From: mohaiemen at yahoo.com (NAEEM MOHAIEMEN) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 06:05:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Love in Cell Phone Time Message-ID: <20060127140511.43437.qmail@web50307.mail.yahoo.com> Love in Cell Phone Time By Naeem Mohaiemen DAILY STAR (Bangladesh), January 26, 2005 Last week, the government launched another mini-salvo in their war against free speech. The new year already brought an amendment to the Telecommunications Act which gives intelligence agencies power to monitor, and stop, phone calls and e-mails in Bangladesh . But these are only steps to police the political sphere. For the enactment of a total surveillance nation, the private sphere and especially the area of “loose morals” has to be brought under state control. After all, we do trust our government to legislate morality. Don’t we? In this spirit, a letter was sent this week to all five of Bangladesh's cellular phone companies from the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, demanding that "free calls after midnight" offers be immediately shut off. According to press reports , this is to “protect the morals” of young people who were using the service to “form romantic attachments”, “losing sleep” and indulging in "vulgar talk". I put quotes around almost every phrase in the preceding sentence because the source for all this data are “scores of complaints from parents” (sure...). The BBC’s Ronald Buerk helpfully adds his own generalization-simplification, “Many people are conservative in Bangladesh”. All this teacup storming reminded me of our own times as “young people”. We were also trying to form “romantic attachments”, but more ineptly than today, and with fewer tools at hand. St Joseph, like all missionary schools, was single-sex, but our afternoons were brightened by the arrival of the Siddiqui’s girls. Siddiqui’s was an English Medium school, preparing students to take the A Levels and go abroad. In those days (early ‘80s), Dhaka teens were divided into BMT (Bangla Medium Type = St Joseph, Shaheen School, Government Lab, etc) and EMT (English Medium Type = Scholastica, Green Herald, Maple Leaf, etc.). Siddiqui’s was the rare EMT school without its own building, so they had to come to our school to use lab facilities. This meant we could get fleeting glimpses of girls, rare visions in our schoolyard. In our pathetic, callow youth, we would wait around for hours after class ended in the hopes of that brief glance. But in all my time at St. Joseph, I don’t recall a single person actually getting up the nerve to talk to one of the girls. All this unrequited swooning played havoc with our idea of relationships. Things got so bad that I was over the moon when an anonymous girl started calling my house. “Ami apnake kothai jani dekhechi” (I have seen you somewhere) was her coy flirtation and that was as hot and heavy as it got. But where had she seen me? WVA Meena Bazar? Newmarket? Elephant Road? The places to meet girls were very limited, so it could only be one of three places (this was before Aarong café added a fourth). But after a year of talking on the phone, I gave up because I realized that I had yet to meet her, and perhaps never would. All this intense gender-segregation meant that when we finally got to coed Dhaka University, we had no idea what to do with ourselves. If you fell for someone, there was an elaborate ritual. You would let a male friend of yours know. He would then tell his friend who would tell the girl in question. Eventually through a daisy chain of whispered confidences you would figure out if all this was mutual. It was a slow, byzantine process. All this sounds sweet-- innocent, bygone times, etc., but at the same time tremendously frustrating. There were few chances to meet and interact with women in a normalized setting. The first girl you fell for, you basically would have to marry, because there would be no second chances and no normal interaction outside marriage. You didn’t date, you got married. Through the decades, there were numerous interventions to ensure this suffocating condition continued. Recently I came across a photo from 1973 of my cousin in a band with local legend Bogey bhai (later founder of Renaissance). She was the tambourine girl and such innocent expressions of fun-loving high-jinks (think Josie & The Pussycats) were verboten. Similarly, Waves was a 70s rock band that faced morals tests. The sight of girls dancing on stage during the band’s first and only appearance on television sent the guardians into a frenzy, with cries of “oposhongskrithi” banishing them from screens. It’s especially worth remembering examples from the 1970s because, contrary to stereotype, virtue policing did not originate with the mullahs. In those days, it was the secularists that were up in arms, since their key plank was uber-Bangla nationalism. “Westernization” was the all-encompassing enemy, mullah politics still a twinkle in Jamaat’s eye. From Abba to Boney M, everything disco was eventually hounded off the screens. One flash of Donna Summers’ legs, and Solid Gold was also cancelled. For the rest of our school days, the only sanctioned music program was James Last Orchestra (German friends are baffled to hear this today!). Later of course, political Islam came to be seen as a bigger threat, and some secularists embraced the same opo culture as a weapon to goad the maulvis. The 1980s brought a fresh military dictatorship and a new legal enforcement against “free mixing of the sexes.” Tinted glasses on cars were banned to prevent “opokormo”. Special police squads roved the area around Parliament, hoping to catch young couples. The few friends who actually had girlfriends (there were not many!) developed the technique of driving to Airport Road while holding hands. As with any dynamic where law enforcement meets morality (look at the Iranian and Saudi virtue police), the clashes were ugly. Stories of young couples being brutally harassed by police officers were frequent. Unlike other situations, it was not in the hopes of a bribe-- the public humiliation was what the police relished. Today there is a tendency in the West to fetishize arranged marriages. This is pushed along by a segment of the Asian diaspora that wants to promote things from “the old country” as inherently better than “modern life”. Articles like “Looking for Love on Craigslist” (soon to be a book!) argue that since modern romance is so random, we may as well retreat and allow parents to arrange marriages again. Exhibit A may be a “successful” corporate lawyer, but at the end of the day he wants to come home to mummy, have her cook khichuri and find a girl just like her (and of course, she will be the same religion). Divorce rates are high today goes the argument, bring back the good old days. No one mentions that divorce rates are also a function of situations where single or divorced women can live productive, stigma-free lives on their own. Anyway, some of us have no interest in going back to the “old ways” of arranged marriages. Better to make our own mistakes and learn from them. Thinking back to those suffocating school years, it makes me happy to see today’s young Dhaka lovers. For the most part I only see people holding hands near Dhanmondi lake, more pda (public display of affection) is not here yet. Of course, all this enrages the vice squad. This Christmas, three police officers (one on motorcycle, two with bulky wirelesses) surrounded a young couple on a rickshaw and held them for interrogation outside our Dhanmondi gate. A crowd gathered, everyone was there to see the tamasha. When I came to protest, I was harshly told to mind my own business. “Era kharap lok, apni nak golaben na,” (these are bad people, don’t stick your nose in). There was almost a roman spectacle to the episode. As if the young couple would now be fed to the lions. Rokkhok jokhon bhokkok. All this may seem trivial compared to “bigger”, “life and death” issues we face, but culture wars are core struggles and often Trojan horses for larger battles. This is why the recent attempt to ban phone calls after midnight to stop teenage lovers bothers me so much. This is a nasty move that tries to stigmatize normal behavior and dictate an antique moral code. Relationship dynamics are slowly shifting in our urban centers. But there are people and forces (sometimes religious forces, but equally a city elite that is socially right-wing in spite of its pretences) that would like to turn the clock back. The problem they face is a genie out of the box, and they are now trying desperately to fold, tuck, nip, crinkle, and crush the new freedoms. In earlier essays, I argued that people needed to urgently make the connection between the loss of civil liberties in one sphere (phone tapping) and the loss of liberty everywhere. It’s already starting Naeem Mohaiemen (Mohaiemen at yahoo.com) is a filmmaker and media activist. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From cahen.x at levels9.com Fri Jan 27 20:03:13 2006 From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 15:33:13 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] pourinfos Newsletter / 01-20 to 01-26-2006 Message-ID: <43DA2F29.5040606@levels9.com> pourinfos.org l'actualite du monde de l'art / daily Art news ----------------------------------------------------------------------- infos from January 20, 2006 to January 26, 2006 (included) ------------------------------------------------------------------- (mostly in french) ------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 Various : new ))))) radiolist.org ((((( visual arts nose platform ((((( http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=2707 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 Call : Design and realization of an artistic work to the title of the artistic 1% on the operation of construction of the Arts centre, Saint-Palais-sur-Mer, France. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2706 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 Call : Occupied territories, call to project, Corbigny, France. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2705 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 Call : Order realization with the title of the 1%, Lycée Augustin Thierry, Blois, France. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2704 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 Call : 312 seeks artist videos to exhibit online, Corner Brook, Canada. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2703 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 Residences : artist's studio, Drac et région Centre, Issoudun, France. http://pourinfos.org/residences/item.php?id=2702 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 Residences : visuel arts at Point Éphémère, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/residences/item.php?id=2701 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 Meetings : Masochism, known as female, by Sadi Lakhdari, Tuesday January 31, 2006, Which force to think seminars, Maison populaire, Montreuil, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2700 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 09 Meetings : Happy end Party, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2699 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Various : Opening a documentation center, documentsdartistes.org, à la Friche la Belle de mai à Marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=2698 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 Various : Future of the social security system of the artists authors: to include/understand the crisis of the Artists House, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=2697 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 Various : Report of "Prova aperta" , Incroci Derive, d’Eugène Durif, Sylvie Fedensieu, Roma, Italiy. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=2696 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Publication : painting of a naked Man, on Richard Lindner, by Sylvie Camet, éditions Complicités, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2695 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 Publication : The new age of the museums. Cultural institutions with the challenge of management, Jean-Michel Tobelem, Ed. Armand Colin, Collection Sociétales, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2693 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 Publication : new issue transversal: "do you remember institutional critique?", Vienna, Austria. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2694 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 Job : management assistant, interprofessional Congress of the contemporary art, Cipac, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=2692 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 Screening : NOMAD’s video compilation and presentation at CeC & CaC 2006, New Delhi, India. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2691 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 18 Exhibition : Green diffusion, Francesco Finizio, RLBQ gallery, Marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2684 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Performances : women, "3 days, 3 forms, 3 women", Sunday January 29, 2006, atelier du jardin des fleurs, Sète, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2690 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 Performance : "do not break my computer", February 19 at Instants Chavirés, Montreuil, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2689 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 Exhibition : zéro G_information except gravity, Edouard Boyer, la box_bourges, Bourges, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2688 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 Exhibition : virtual, Les Riches Douaniers, le Palais de Tokyo 2, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2687 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Exhibition : Phantom territories, Friday January 27, 2006, Maison du Geste et de l'Image, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2686 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 Exhibition : "scientific Postures", Eve K. Tremblay, Espace International du CEAAC, Strasbourg, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2685 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 Exhibition : Exposition Titi Parant, Centre international de poésie Marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2683 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 26 Workshop : symbiotica tissue engineering and arts workshop, Barcelona, Spain. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=2680 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 Meetings : DÍAS DE BIOARTE'06, Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona, Spain. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2679 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 Call : The Prix Ars Electronica 2006, prixars, International Competition for Cyberarts, Linz, Austria. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2677 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 Call : experimental media art, video, animation, shorts, LA Freewaves, Los Angeles, USA http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=2676 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 Call : Images to rente, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2675 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 31 Call : Traces of Vi(ll)es - the gentrification in question, association 68Septante, Brussels, Belgium. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2674 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 32 Call : TRAMPOLINE, Nottingham and Berlin, United Kingdom and Germany. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=2673 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 33 Workshop : “Max / Msp / Jitter and numerical scenography", Groupe Dunes, Marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=2672 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 34 Workshop : formations numériques, Ateliers de l'Image, Marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=2671 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 35 Publication : The elite artist, Excellence and singularity in democratic mode, Nathalie Heinich, éditions Gallimard, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2670 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 36 Publication : Workshop "To live the Internet", écoles supérieures d'arts de Bretagne, Rennes, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2669 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 Publication : 'softbodies-extra' of Simone Stoll, éditions la fabrique sensible, marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2668 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 38 Publication : Issue 04, A R T - e - F A C T , Glocalogue, and call for contribution 05, Zagreb, Croatia. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=2667 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 39 Meetings : JHON, Portfolio bimestriel & artbook, Bookshop of Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2666 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 40 Meetings : Jaanis Garancs, artiste, paralele Landscapes, Ecole supérieure des beaux-arts de Tours, Tours, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2665 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 Meetings : “To resist, it is to perceive" philosophical Screens 2006, Wednesday February 1, 2005, movie theater Georges-Méliès, Montreuil, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2663 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 42 Meetings : VANSA , national visual arts conference from 8 to 11 February 2006 at the UCT Hiddingh Campus, Cape Town, Afrique du Sud. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2662 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 43 Meetings : Seminar "Something you should know: Artists and experts today ", Wednesday, January 25, EHESS/CESTA, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2661 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 44 Meetings : Presentation of the new publications, editions MIX, Gallery Éric Dupont, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=2660 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 45 Exhibition : Strangers in the night, Triangle, Galerie Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2659 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 46 Exhibition : opening of a new space: Espace A VENDRE, Nice, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2658 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 47 Screening : "5 women, 5 films", the short film evening, Wednesday January 25 , Péniche K-Lounge, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2657 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 48 Performance : Eun Young Park, Ismaïl Bahri, Lena Circus, Galerie Itinerrance, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2656 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 49 Exhibition : Break and Take, David Ter-Oganyan, Prometeogallery, Milano, Italy. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=2655 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 50 Apostils : The Net: towards a semantics and social cartography. | Rémi Sussan | 12/14/2005 | http://pourinfos.org/encours/item.php?id=2427 From bhatt_rudra at yahoo.com Sat Jan 28 00:44:21 2006 From: bhatt_rudra at yahoo.com (Rudradep Bhattacharjee) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 11:14:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] POSTING NO. 1 Message-ID: <20060127191421.13809.qmail@web32903.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Greetings, fellow Fellows (and everyone else who’s listening in) A brief personal intro: The name is Rudradeep Bhattacharjee. I was born in Shillong (hi, Janice!) and spent most of my short life there till the film-bug got me and I decided to move to Mumbai. I have been in this city for about five years now trying to eke out a living while hoping to go independent. The guys at Sarai have finally given me an opportunity. Thanks, you guys rock!!! Now, about the project. Well, this is actually a documentary film on the theme ‘Cyberspace and Freedom in the context of India.’ I have included the proposal below. The blog will soon be up. Will keep everyone posted. I’m also looking for further funding to make this documentary. Any ideas about potential sponsors, anyone? Also, I think this project will be like writing open-source code; it requires the participation and collaboration of others to build the final edifice that will be the film. So, comments, reactions, ideas, opinions, criticism, all are welcome. Virtually yours, Deep. PS: Mumbai Fellows, we should try to set up a meeting, what say you? ABOUT THE FILM: 'In cyberspace, borders and national sovereignty lose meaning, and the individual reigns'. This represents the core statement of what has been termed as 'cyberspace libertarianism'. To understand this point of view it is imperative we look at the architecture of the Internet. At the heart of the Internet's design is an architectural principle termed as 'end-to-end' (or e2e). This essentially means that intelligence is located at the ends and not in the network itself. The core of the network merely provides a data transfer facility. While this greatly enhances efficiency, it also means that the network will be open and neutral with respect to the content it transfers. This e2e design principle implicitly embodies certain values, such as freedom and equality. This, coupled with the fact that there is no central server that can be easily contained and the Net's vast global reach which transcends the jurisdiction of national governments, makes cyberspace apparently impossible to regulate. Thus, to the cyberspace libertarian the essence of cyberspace is liberty itself. It is a place without boundaries, unencumbered by the regulations that typify the real world; a medium that is empowering and democratizing as it revolutionizes the opportunities for ordinary individuals to speak freely (sometimes without having to identify themselves), to be producers of culture, to share in communicative power that was once reserved only for the elite. In other words, the ultimate 'technology of freedom'. On the other hand, this notion of cyberspace being 'unregulable' as The Economist once put it is the 'founding myth' of the Internet. In fact, others like Lawrence Lessig have noted that it is the very openness and neutrality of the system that makes it more 'regulable' than the libertarian movement realizes or cares to admit : The nature of the Net is set apart by its architecture, and this architecture can be changed to make the Net more regulable. The Internet was built for research and communication, not commerce. Its protocols were open and unsecured; it was not designed to hide. Data transmitted could easily be intercepted and stolen but this did not seem to really matter in this libertarian utopia, the domain of academics and researchers. But the commercialization of the Internet changed all that. >From the start, commerce has pushed for changes in the architecture of the Net to enable more secure and safer commerce. But commerce does not act alone; it needs help constituting this 'architecture of trust'. And this comes from the state which has increasingly begun to understand the value of an architecture of trust for its own regulatory objective. Historically, Indian IT policy has vacillated over the years. The liberalization process began in 1991 but India logged on to the Internet only in 1994. Even then, the government resisted the global trend toward privatizing telecommunication and introducing competition. It was only in 1998 that the market was thrown open for private ISPs. Committed to elevate India to the level of an IT superpower, the government set up a high level IT task force to formulate an Action Plan. The recommendations of the task force also formed the basis of the IT Act 2000. When I was first trying to cull out a proposal, certain events were already showing signs that the days of the IT Act of 2000 were numbered. The first is the arrest of a CEO of an extremely popular auctioning site who has been charged with abetting in the sale of pornographic material. This has raised important questions about the extent to which ISPs/system operators can be held responsible for the actions of their users. Narayan Murthy, among many others, advocated his support for the arrested CEO and called for a change in cyber laws. While this case managed to attract front-page attention, a more significant change was brewing elsewhere. The National Association of Software & Service Companies (NASSCOM) finalised a draft on amendments to the IT Act to ensure cyber security in India. ("We would like India to be a safe deposit vault for the IT segment.") This is hardly surprising considering the latest survey conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers for CII which revealed that the number of security breaches in the country has shown a rise of 83 per cent from last year, prompting Indian corporates to put secure information systems high on their priority, Now consider this: In July 2003, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) was established. The government said one of the jobs of that body would be to ensure a "balanced flow of information". Two months later, the team following an order by the central government blocked access to the "Kyunhun" discussion forum, which was reportedly linked to a banned separatist group in Meghalaya. An unintended consequence of the ban was that Indian Internet users lost access to all Yahoo! websites, thereby highlighting the danger of Internet censorship and the complex technical problems involved. If issues of censorship and cyber crime were not complicated enough, we also have to deal with a whole gamut of related issues: privacy issues, intellectual property and copyright, encryption technologies, closed-source code versus open-source code, digital signatures, spamming, blogging (!!!) It is inevitable that as we become a more 'digital nation', as we try to come to terms with this revolutionary new technology, we will have to answer one absolutely fundamental question about the nature of cyberspace we want for ourselves : How do we preserve the Net's core values and open architecture without encouraging anarchy yet at the same time not allow cyberspace to be smothered by superfluous and numbing regulations? The proposed documentary, the first attempt of its kind to understand the issues related to freedom in cyberspace in the context of a developing country like India, asks this critical question and tries to seek answers to it. The documentary will also be a reminder that while we debate these issues, we cannot lose sight of the fact that a huge digital divide exists in our country and all notions of technological freedom and individual empowerment are superfluous while it does. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From karunakar at randomink.org Fri Jan 27 19:33:10 2006 From: karunakar at randomink.org (Guntupalli Karunakar) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 19:33:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fw: [Asiasource-l] Announcement of creative-commons licensed book on wireless Message-ID: <20060127193310.291d6f10.karunakar@randomink.org> Begin forwarded message: Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 10:05:10 +0100 From: Tomas Krag To: africasource2-l at lists.tacticaltech.org, africasource-l at lists.tacticaltech.org, Asia Source , Summer Source Subject: [Asiasource-l] Announcement of creative-commons licensed book on wireless Hi all, (first of, apologies for cross-posting, to those of you on multiple source event lists.) Together with a group of my friends and colleagues, I have been working on a book specifically about wireless networking for the developing world. After 4 months of work, we are proud to announce the completion of a 250-page free book, jam-packed with information about building wirelss networks in the developing world. The book is available from the website here: http://wndw.net/ and the press release for the announcement is here: http://wndw.net/news.html It's available as a free download in pdf format, and there's the option of ordering printed copies from a print-on-demand site in the US. We are currently negotiating with publishers and others to try and get the book printed and published, so keep an eye open for news on the website. cheers and happy end-of-january /tomas _______________________________________________ Asiasource-l mailing list Asiasource-l at lists.tacticaltech.org http://lists.tacticaltech.org/mailman/listinfo/asiasource-l Event info: http://www.tacticaltech.org/asiasource/ Wiki: http://wiki.asiasource.tacticaltech.org/ -- ************************************* * Work: http://www.indlinux.org * * Blog: http://cartoonsoft.com/blog * ************************************* From turbulence at turbulence.org Fri Jan 27 22:11:50 2006 From: turbulence at turbulence.org (Turbulence) Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 11:41:50 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Turbulence Winter/Spring News Message-ID: <000001c62360$9e2ba1d0$6601a8c0@t5x1c0> |<| FLOATING POINTS 3: UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING [02.08.06 + 03.15.06] |>| |<<| RELATIONALITY VS AUTONOMY IN MEDIA ART [02.23.06] |>>| |<<<| UPGRADE! BOSTON: MARISA S. OLSON [02.24.06] |>>>| |<<<<| NET ART AND NETWORKED HYBRID ART COMPETITION [NOW UNTIL 02.28.06] |>>>>| |<<<<<| UPGRADE! BOSTON: BROOKE A. KNIGHT [03.02.06] |>>>>>| |<<<<<<| TURBULENCE FUNDRAISER [NOW] |>>>>>>| |<| FLOATING POINTS 3: UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING |>| In partnership with Emerson College http://institute.emerson.edu/floatingpoints/ February 8 and March 15, 7:00 p.m. Floating Points 3 will address the subject of "Ubiquitous Computing" or "Ubicomp," where computing and wireless capabilities are so integrated into the fabric of everyday life (clothing, cars, homes, and offices) that the technologies recede into the background and become indistinguishable from everyday activities. Panel 1 will focus on responsive environments and systems, and Panel 2 will concentrate on networked devices such as barcodes and RFID tags and creative strategies to subvert the ever-enlarging practice of surveillance and data mining. |<<| FROM DATABASE AND PLACE TO BIO-TECH AND BOTS: RELATIONALITY VS AUTONOMY IN MEDIA ART |>>| Turbulence's Helen Thorington, Panelist College Arts Association, Boston http://conference.collegeart.org/2006/sessions/thu/ February 23, 2006, 12:30-2:00 p.m. Moderator: Marisa Olson Panelists: Tad Hirsch, Warren Sack, Brett Stalbaum, and Helen Thorington |<<<| UPGRADE! BOSTON: MARISA S. OLSON |>>>| In partnership with Art Interactive http://www.turbulence.org/upgrade/archives/02_06MSO.html February 24, 7:00 p.m. Marisa S. Olson is a San Francisco-based artist and is also Editor & Curator at Large of Rhizome. She has most recently performed or exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, New Langton Arts, Southern Exposure, Pond, Foxy Productions, Debs & Co, and the international Futuresonic, Electrofringe, Machinista, and VIPER festivals. While Wired has called her both funny and humorous, the New York Times has called her "anything but stupid." |<<<<| TURBULENCE NEW ENGLAND INITIATIVE II: NET ART AND NETWORKED HYBRID ART COMPETITION |>>>>| In partnership with Art Interactive; funded by the LEF Foundation http://www.turbulence.org/ne2/guidelines.html Deadline: February 28 |<<<<<| UPGRADE! BOSTON: BROOKE A. KNIGHT |>>>>>| In partnership with Art Interactive http://www.turbulence.org/upgrade/archives/03_06BK.html March 2, 7:00 p.m. Brooke A. Knight is an artist and educator who has been working with digital media for over a dozen years. His current areas of interest include webcams, the landscape, and text in all forms. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches classes in interactive media. He received his MFA in photography from CalArts in 1995. |<<<<<<| TURBULENCE FUNDRAISER |>>>>>>| http://www.turbulence.org/fundraiser_05/index.html It's not too late to contribute! Thanks for your Support. Jo and Helen _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From zarinehabeeb at yahoo.com Sat Jan 28 18:40:55 2006 From: zarinehabeeb at yahoo.com (zarine habeeb) Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 05:10:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Query regarding a phrase/proverb Message-ID: <20060128131055.7510.qmail@web51412.mail.yahoo.com> Hi all, I thought reader-list may be a forum to ask this. "The more knowledge you have, the more humble you should become" is a phrase I have heard a lot growing up in India. I am curious where it is from. Is it from Bhgavad Gita or Gandhi, or is it a saying in one of the Indian languages? Does anyone here know? and.. while I am out of lurkdom:-), can I also say a public thank you to the folks at Sarai (particularly) for the indpendent fellowship project. Boy, I get to read about issues and topics I would not even have thought about before. peace, Zarine Because of who we are...destinations are nothing without journeys. - From the South African Airways ad __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From jumpshark at gmail.com Sat Jan 28 19:16:06 2006 From: jumpshark at gmail.com (Prashant Pandey) Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 19:16:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Query regarding a phrase/proverb In-Reply-To: <20060128131055.7510.qmail@web51412.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20060128131055.7510.qmail@web51412.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: "The more knowledge you have, the more humble you should become".... well it is the tagline of a New York based pro-Bush law firm Humble&Humble.... it is also a dialogue by the actor A.K Humble from the film Sholey... Prashant On 1/28/06, zarine habeeb wrote: > Hi all, > > I thought reader-list may be a forum to ask this. > "The more knowledge you have, the more humble you > should become" is a phrase I have heard a lot growing > up in India. I am curious where it is from. Is it from > Bhgavad Gita or Gandhi, or is it a saying in one of > the Indian languages? Does anyone here know? > > and.. while I am out of lurkdom:-), can I also say a > public thank you to the folks at Sarai (particularly) > for the indpendent fellowship project. Boy, I get to > read about issues and topics I would not even have > thought about before. > > peace, > Zarine > > Because of who we are...destinations are nothing without journeys. > - From the South African Airways ad > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > From punam.zutshi at gmail.com Sat Jan 28 21:18:31 2006 From: punam.zutshi at gmail.com (punam zutshi) Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 21:18:31 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Query regarding a phrase/proverb In-Reply-To: References: <20060128131055.7510.qmail@web51412.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3b7bed850601280748u40dd5ff6o5437999c0b338002@mail.gmail.com> Verily, one hears the sound of a shark jumping! Punam On 1/28/06, Prashant Pandey wrote: > "The more knowledge you have, the more humble you > should become".... well it is the tagline of a New York based > pro-Bush law firm Humble&Humble.... > it is also a dialogue by the actor A.K Humble from the film Sholey... > > Prashant > > On 1/28/06, zarine habeeb wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > I thought reader-list may be a forum to ask this. > > "The more knowledge you have, the more humble you > > should become" is a phrase I have heard a lot growing > > up in India. I am curious where it is from. Is it from > > Bhgavad Gita or Gandhi, or is it a saying in one of > > the Indian languages? Does anyone here know? > > > > and.. while I am out of lurkdom:-), can I also say a > > public thank you to the folks at Sarai (particularly) > > for the indpendent fellowship project. Boy, I get to > > read about issues and topics I would not even have > > thought about before. > > > > peace, > > Zarine > > > > Because of who we are...destinations are nothing without journeys. > > - From the South African Airways ad > > > > __________________________________________________ > > Do You Yahoo!? > > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > > http://mail.yahoo.com > > _________________________________________ > > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > > Critiques & Collaborations > > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > > List archive: > > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > From nirupama.sekhar at gmail.com Sat Jan 28 21:53:10 2006 From: nirupama.sekhar at gmail.com (Nirupama Sekhar) Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 21:53:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] First Post: Urban Stories Message-ID: <87927e9c0601280823w2df4f133hf464a48768c51019@mail.gmail.com> URBAN STORIES: A collection of graphic essays on the city of Mumbai By Sanjay R. and Nirupama Sekhar I'm Nirupama and I work in television production in Mumbai, as does my co-fellow Sanjay. We are both graduates in Mass Communication and are collaborating on Urban Stories. I believe there are more dimensions to Mumbai city than I will ever know of or experience. And it may safely be stated that there are as many valid stories of the city as there are Mumbaikars. Urban Stories is an attempt to visually capture some of these unique urban narratives. Urban Stories seeks to explore the myriad hues of the culture of the city through a collection of stylized visual essays. Woven around Mumbai, the graphic essays will address a host of urban issues from the aesthetics of colonial architecture to the politics of postmodern identities. A visual experiment of sorts, Urban Stories will employ such diverse genres as collage and typography, illustration and photography. The resulting collection will emerge as a unique visual narrative of Mumbai, its pasts and presents. While a few essays will view the city through the lens of the past, the majority of the essays will present vignettes of the postmodern city by touching a wide range of urban issues: globalisation, migration, the changing notion of family, digital interfaces, power of the media, work culture, urban sexuality, popular culture etc. This exploration of the city and urban culture in the proposed graphic essays is essentially through a kind of visual kaleidoscope of people and places. This method has specifically been chosen in order to consider how subjective narratives have become central to a holistic understanding of contemporary Mumbai. Research to this end includes extensive photography and literary/ media research about the city and its history. To gain insights into personal impressions of the city, we are also interviewing a wide cross section of Mumbaikars. Thats it for now! Regards, Nirupama 98207 28943 From rahul_capri at yahoo.com Sat Jan 28 23:52:56 2006 From: rahul_capri at yahoo.com (Rahul Asthana) Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 10:22:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Query regarding a phrase/proverb In-Reply-To: <3b7bed850601280748u40dd5ff6o5437999c0b338002@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20060128182256.53439.qmail@web53608.mail.yahoo.com> Google tells me the whole shloka is -"Vidya dadati vinayam / Vinayat yati patratam / Patra dhanamapnoti / yatra dhanam tatah sukham." (Learning brings modesty; from modesty comes good character; a person with goodness and politeness earns wealth and where there is wealth, there is happiness.) It also tells me its from panchtantra. --- punam zutshi wrote: > Verily, one hears the sound of a shark jumping! > > Punam > > On 1/28/06, Prashant Pandey > wrote: > > "The more knowledge you have, the more humble you > > should become".... well it is the tagline of a > New York based > > pro-Bush law firm Humble&Humble.... > > it is also a dialogue by the actor A.K Humble > from the film Sholey... > > > > Prashant > > > > On 1/28/06, zarine habeeb > wrote: > > > Hi all, > > > > > > I thought reader-list may be a forum to ask > this. > > > "The more knowledge you have, the more humble > you > > > should become" is a phrase I have heard a lot > growing > > > up in India. I am curious where it is from. Is > it from > > > Bhgavad Gita or Gandhi, or is it a saying in one > of > > > the Indian languages? Does anyone here know? > > > > > > and.. while I am out of lurkdom:-), can I also > say a > > > public thank you to the folks at Sarai > (particularly) > > > for the indpendent fellowship project. Boy, I > get to > > > read about issues and topics I would not even > have > > > thought about before. > > > > > > peace, > > > Zarine > > > > > > Because of who we are...destinations are nothing > without journeys. > > > - From the > South African Airways ad > > > > > > > __________________________________________________ > > > Do You Yahoo!? > > > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam > protection around > > > http://mail.yahoo.com > > > _________________________________________ > > > reader-list: an open discussion list on media > and the city. > > > Critiques & Collaborations > > > To subscribe: send an email to > reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the > subject header. > > > List archive: > > > > > > _________________________________________ > > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and > the city. > > Critiques & Collaborations > > To subscribe: send an email to > reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the > subject header. > > List archive: > > > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and > the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to > reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the > subject header. > List archive: > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From ojpatrick at yahoo.com Sun Jan 29 02:54:54 2006 From: ojpatrick at yahoo.com (Ojwando JP) Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 13:24:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] First Posting -Sarai/CSDS Independent Fellowship Prog -06 ( OJ Patrick) Message-ID: <20060128212454.75153.qmail@web50108.mail.yahoo.com> Greetings to Sarai/ CSDS fellowship holders and team Sarai/CSDS! For someone like me who takes pride in making a living by writing about people and happenings in the society, it is becomes a tad difficult to turn the spotlight on myself. I will make an attempt though. The Persona: I am a Kenyan national who can also claim a little of Indianess. I did my schooling in Kenya then left the entire higher education in the hands of lecturers in India. I have pursued a BA course (Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur). Then followed it with an MS in Communication course (Bangalore University). Currently, I am in the final stages of my doctoral research program (Department of Studies in Communication and Journalism, University of Mysore) as a self financing research scholar under the guidance of Dr. N Usha Rani, Professor and Chairperson of the same Department. The working title of my study is “Treatment of Development News in the Print Media and its Correlation with the Non Governmental Organization’s Perception of Development News: A Comparative Study of India and Kenya.” The study is an attempt to explore the linkages between Print Media and Non Governmental Organizations. The study documents the experiences of the actors in these sectors in both India and Kenya. I have also been involved in a couple of activities the most significant being the leadership roles in international students associations, and voluntary activities with organizations such as Seva Mandir (Udaipur) and Samvada (Bangalore). Aside, I have regularly written articles for The New Indian Express, The Hindu and Deccan Herald and delivered a guests lectures in a couple of colleges, including Garden City College, Bangalore. The Study: An Exploration of the Experiences of Afro Students in the South Asian Sub Continent A life hinged on uncertainties and overwhelming expectations, the world of students especially those on foreign shores present fascinating as well as bewildering prospects. Surviving separation from loved ones, battling cultural shock and keeping afloat the larger goal, of building a career are some of the regularly documented facets. Intriguingly, underlying the same, there are other subtle difficulties that if not rebuffed- getting in place appropriate structures or calling upon the students’ survival skills and loads of enthusiasm- could be a recipe for disaster. The South Asian Sub continent, has been host to a slew of youngsters in pursuit of their academic goals many of them drawn from far flung continents, Africa, the Middle and far East, Asia and in the recent past, a sizeable number from Europe. Most of them seem to have been taken by the county’s rich traditions, diverse customs and professed hospitality. All seemed to be going well in the past but there is a growing disenchant slowly creeping in that could have far reaching consequences. Though not entirely out in the open, a sizeable number of these students are becoming increasingly frustrated with a society they believe is insensitive to their concerns and the result is there for all to see. Many students of Afro descent are now over flying the South Asian Sub Continent that not in the distant past was a favorite educational haunt for hitherto not so popular destinations. Others who have stayed back feel an entrenched distrust between them and their local hosts, remaining strangers despite spending years living and studying in the country. Some Concerns: Is this the result of growing insensitivity or absence of suitable support systems? Is this the outpouring of a malaise that has been prevalent in the society but so far swept under the carpet? Or perhaps a bias ingrained in the society? This study will draw upon the experiences of students of African descent, and look at the unique educational convergence in the South Asian Sub Continent that seems to be under severe strain. The study will document their experiences, lifestyles, ways in which they have managed to keep afloat their aspirations in the face of great odds, and some of the novel ways they have added or taken during their sojourn. Further, it will make attempts to cast a glance at some of the institutions that have made their existence possible, if any. Background to the Study: The study draws its inspiration from an article I wrote and got published in the Deccan Herald, a leading English publication in Karnataka State, Here, I reproduce the article for the benefit of readers. The Hostile Dark Side of Hospitality Outgoing, talkative and confident, their faces suggest they are quite comfortable far away from home and building their career seems to have taken a prominent space in their lives. But this confidence, if you may term it so, is betrayed by a lurking sense of insecurity with what goes on around them. For Said Mohammed, a computer software student from Sudan, the lure of ‘foreign’ credentials was too hard to resist. Considering the educational prospects and cost of living, India turned out to be his best option. That was then. Having come to Bangalore, he has come to believe that amidst the hospitality of the local communities, there is an underlying bias directed against the dark skinned foreigners, something he never anticipated in a culturally diverse country like India. Mohammed is not alone. He and the numerous other African students in the city have come to discover that apart from the demands of academic erudition, there is the added burden of dealing with highly prejudiced local communities attitudes and pressures. The co-existence between these students and their host is one fraught with a host of contradictions and hard feelings. In most cases, it is extremely difficult for the students to get decent accommodation. ‘Vacant-To Let’ boards often vanish mysteriously when they seek rental houses. Promises of getting a rental room by real Estate agents more often than not end up with the ubiquitous ‘do not feel bad, we are like this only.’ Only if and when one can cough the sometimes highly inflated advances or is a married person would he be considered worthy to stay in the same environment with their hosts. Also, in colleges, many Indian students, males and females alike, find it hard to digest that some of their colleagues go out with their boyfriends of African descent or take them to their homes. They do not understand how their parents allow ‘such’ things to happen. The girls are more happy talking to these ‘friends’ within the safe confines of the college walls, preferably with a text book on their laps. Some would be glad to exhibit their supposed ‘foreign’ friends at home but are worried what their neighbors will think of them. Invariably, some of these students have come to discover to that invitations extended to visits some of their hosts homes is usually out of curiousity and seen as a great favour to make them ‘feel at home’. “Even after staying with my Indian friends for such along period of time, they still have their own prejudices,” regrets Thadayo Okatch Okunda, a graduate of law. I have always felt the need to associate more closely with the local people but the questions they ask often leave me baffled. I feel I should stay aloof,’ he adds referring to the common questions the students of African origin face regarding their sexuality. No matter how swift the denial may be, it is clear different yardsticks exist for the ‘fair’ and ‘dark’ skinned foreigners in the Indian society. An African going out with an Indian girl is frowned upon and some find it unacceptable. At the same time, no objections are raised if it is a ‘fair skinned’ foreigner. Does this mean a ‘black man’ is seen as someone evil? Some of the Indian girls who have ventured out with students of African origins often find themselves on the receiving end. They are branded ‘loose’ or ‘of low moral character’. They become objects of ridicule and attract all kinds of glances and passing remarks whenever they accompany their friends to social gatherings or public places. “It is something I have leant to live with,” confides Vidya, a hotel management student. “To me, I am not really bothered because it is our friendship that counts and as long as we have common interests skin color does not count,” she adds. One wonders why even normal friendship is also taken to mean ‘something more’. But does this mean Indians are racists? While many Indians would like others to believe racism is a western phenomenon, the Indian society is racist as well though this is often downplayed. The tendency is more pronounced in public places, transport systems of social functions where the sight of persons of African descent attracts unwarranted glances. Many would dismiss this as matter of curiosity but not the victims. It is really embarrassing to travel in public buses,” says Kevin, a graduate of Law. Commuters look at you and pass racial remarks amidst boisterous laughter,” he hastens to add. Racism in the Indian context finds expression in different forms although one may find it subtle in nature. Whether it is in the day to day interactions, learning institutions or homes, there is a stigma attached to being dark skinned and this is ingrained into the psyche that no one ponders to think what it means to an individual, particularly an African. In India, fairness of the skin is rated along side personal qualities such as ‘pleasant’, homely’, and even worse ‘domestically trained’, which are considered virtues in an Indian woman. A cursory glance at the matrimonial pages of the local newspapers which lay emphasis on fair skinned brides and grooms, and the aggressive marketing of the so- called fairness creams makes it clear that being ‘dark’ or ‘dusky’ is not ‘in’. The tendency to demean other races because of their colour flows through the social structure of the Indian society. Often, you will find parents in the safe confines of their homes drawing attention of their children to a ‘kaalia’ passing by. The bottom line is that ‘kaalia’ is bad and should be avoided at all cost. To them, Africans are not only ‘bad elements’ but ‘a barbaric lot’. Taunts of ‘koothi’ (Monkey) are all too familiar insults. Occasionally, while some of the African students retort back, others find it easier to ignore these insults than engage in verbal exchange of words, which could lead to physical confrontations. What then is the way out of all these divisions? Ms. Anita Ganesh of Samvada, a voluntary organization working with college students in the city feels that all societies have institutionalized racism. Children from an early age imbibe racial tendencies since their parents rarely look at its repercussions ad herein lies the problem. Citing her own experiences in Britain recently, she overheard a small child point at her and say, “There goes the vampire!” as she was passing by their house. It is therefore surprising that most of the Indians who look down on ‘blacks’ also look up to ‘whites’. This could be taken to mean that they categorise the world into three segments – whites, browns and blacks. It is a fact that Indians face racist attitudes abroad but they do not want to fight back or relate such incidences when they return back home. Their reasons? They do not want to be looked down upon as victims. On their part, the students have made attempts to be closer to their hosts. Charles Kagiri, a student of University Law College, and the current Chairman of the Kenya African Student Associations in Bangalore feels that the prejudices and misconceptions between the students and their hosts can be bridged if one understands the local language. As of now, he finds the Indian society ‘an exclusive club’ where anything not Indian is considered retrograde. Meanwhile, efforts aimed at making living pleasurable for the foreign students (Africans included) by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) in Bangalore, and a host of Indian families need to be lauded. However, the approach has to shift from helping the African students cope with animosity and racial provocations to sensitizing the general public towards other races. After all, racism is not only about specific incidences but an evil deeply entrenched in our social institutions. #End# John Patrick Ojwando, Research Scholar, Dept. of Studies in Communication & Journalism, University of Mysore, Manasagangothri Campus, Mysore -570 006 Mobile: 98454 00477 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From zainab at xtdnet.nl Sun Jan 29 11:46:38 2006 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 10:16:38 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Eliza Message-ID: <4561.219.65.10.135.1138515398.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> 28th January, 2006 Staying away from the ‘field’ of my research or ‘sites’ of my research has made it difficult for me to go back now, persistently. I feel lost with respect to the questions I want to ask. I feel lost with respect to the conversations I want to have. I just try to make an attempt to listen and make sense. I feel I am floating, no sense of purpose! Life is full of contradictions. These days, I have been reading Masanobu Fukoka’s ‘One Straw Revolution’ where he talks about discriminating knowledge and non-discriminating knowledge. He says that when we start to see the world through our mind rather than through experiences, when we start to organize knowledge in analysis, compartments, frameworks, etc. and that knowledge is limiting. I think about what Fukouka is saying and I question my own work which I believe now needs to take on a more serious turn. Am I analyzing for the sake of analyzing? Is there purpose? I must admit I am lost And there are feelings of depression, somewhat like the depression a mother faces after she has given birth to her child. Feelings of depression which kind of gnaw at me, but I can’t label them as destructive. I felt today that it might be instructive to write. Perhaps when one is full of oneself, it makes sense to get out and check out the world. My world is the railway station these days. I stand by his candy stall and listen to Mishraji, the candy-man at Byculla railway station. Yesterday, I reconnected with my women home guard group. Among Sushanti, Suparna and all of them, I like Eliza the most. There is something about her. At CST Railway Station, the group told me that Eliza will be found at Byculla station. I traveled bravely and boldly, without a ticket, on chance and luck, to Byculla railway station. Eliza was sitting in the chowkie, a shaky little structure with a yellow coloured concrete bench inside. The yellow coloured concrete bench is shielded with a shaky rectangular kind of structure with two large square windows on the front and back and open ended on the left and right. This structure is ‘markedly’ different from others at the station and it is a clear indication that this is a ‘place’ where you can get ‘assistance’. I found that the maximum assistance which Eliza could give to the commuters was to help them determine whether the arriving or passing train will take them to their destination. And once in a while, amidst our conversation, Eliza would turn around to ‘watch’, as if out of anxiety and a sense of duty and responsibility. I guess Eliza is about thirty years old. She might be my age or perhaps a bit older than me. Eliza is plump, dark, wears glasses and looks like Queen Latifah, the Afro-American actress. I have a strange liking for Eliza, for reasons entirely unknown to me. My attractions and affinities for people work on first vibes that I get from them. And sometimes, I make conscious efforts to approach people I dislike, questioning whether my first impressions are wrong and whether I am shutting myself from people just because of some ‘assumptions’. Where were you all these days? I lied that I was in Bangalore, refusing to acknowledge that I was keeping away from my field and feeling miserable. Also, the last time I had spoken to Eliza on the phone was when I was in Bangalore when she had accidentally called me. Did you learn Kannada language in Bangalore? No. How long were you there? Two months. Two months!!! And you did not learn the language? If I were in your place, I would have learnt. I am Kannada actually. So you teach me the language since you are Kannada. I don’t know it myself, she said, breaking into a burst of laughter. What? You don’t know the language? I know Telugu instead. And I can also speak Marathi, English and Hindi. Tell me, you being local (that is Maharashtrian), can you speak the language here? Yes, I can! Eliza is South Indian Christian. In my mind, she is cosmopolitan in the Bombay sense of the term. Most of her friends are Maharashtrian and there is no doubt that she can speak the language very well. She is fluent to the core. Absolutely! Have you finished your studies? What are you doing now? I finished studying. Loafed around here and there with jobs, but decided that I want to write a book. I am trying to She laughed again. What do you want to write about? I want to write stories. For example, I want to write about the life of this railway station. I like railway stations. I want to write stories of you people, of the railway station. She laughed once more. I will suggest one place where you can get lots of stories. Try talking to women who make papads, Lijjat papads. They will tell you stories of their hardships, of their struggles. You will find lots of stories there. I felt amused. And I also wondered whether I should feel offended by her advice. Actually not! What stories you will get of our people? So tell me, is your daily life about patrolling and guarding? What do you feel about it? Feel? It’s a habit! Every evening we are patrolling. Eliza and her colleagues patrol from 4 PM to 11 PM daily. They have two holidays in a week – one on a Sunday and the other on a weekday. Eliza is like a leader of the gang which patrols at CST Station – Eliza and Sushanti. I often think about their lives and what their parents think of their jobs. Most of the women home guards I have encountered are lower middle class or middle class Maharashtrian girls, about eighteen years and above. I wonder what kind of marital prospects they will have. What kind of wives they will make? What kind of feminine desires and dreams they have? What feminism means to them, if at all? Eliza spoke of the fights they have been having with their supervisors about returns at night. She says that when the girls see some of their colleagues returning before 11 PM, they also want to get back, but the supervisors hold them back for various reasons including punishment, harassment, wanting to inculcate discipline and sense of duty. Eliza says that before she came to Byculla and CST Stations, she was patrolling at Currey Road, Chinchpokli and Matunga stations. Life is tough on those stations. Girls are posted individually at different points’ (a common term used by home guards to suggest locations at the three different ladies’ coaches). Here, at CST and stations till Byculla, the girls are in groups. They have company of each other. They can eat together. But at Currey Road, Chinchpokli and Matunga stations, we have to eat all alone. We have to spread out our tiffins before the public and eat in front of them to demonstrate that we are doing our duty. It feels very embarrassing, awkward. Next time, you must tell our CST girls how lucky they are. Lie to them that you have eaten with the girls at Currey Road, Chinchpokli and Matunga stations so that they know that I am not lying to them when I lecture them about duty and responsibility. Something suddenly happened. Maybe it was the little girl and her mother sitting in the chowkie who evoked Eliza to speak about herself. Maybe she wanted to present me with a story. She started off: I fell very sick, just like you did recently, when I was in class 8. Fever and persistent loose motions caught on me. It was difficult to attend school at this rate because class teachers would not give permission to go to toilet frequently and if they did allow, as soon as I would come back to class, I would need to run again. So I would attend school for four days a week and then bunk four days. Consequently, I failed class 8. I did not go to school thereafter. Was sitting at home for the next three years. I would watch parades on television and would often tell my mom that I want to be in the parade some day and even if I cannot be in the parade, at least I want to go close and watch it. My mother heard about the home guard system where girls are admitted and they must go for parades and duty. She asked me if I was interested. I did not even know then what it meant to be a home guard. I used to be part of the Road Side Patrols (RSP) in school. Hence this suggestion that mom put forward struck me and I decided to join. I used to wear frocks at that time – frocks and middies and maxis. People who recruited me asked me to wear salwaar kameez. I somehow managed to continue with middies and maxis. I would wear stockings and socks up to thigh length. After six months of training, I persuaded my mother to buy me one salwaar kameez. She agreed and till date, I wear only salwaar kameez. Recently, I bought jeans and trousers. About four years ago, my wedding was fixed with my maternal uncle. Fourteen days were to go for our wedding. He disappeared. He appeared on the tenth day with another woman he had married. My family gave up hopes of my marriage. I did lau (love) with another guy from my area. Our affair went on for long. But his mother did not like me and accept me. We were in lau (love) with each other. If you are in lau (love) with someone, how can you do lau (love) with someone else then? But he did and then informed at home that he laued (loved) another girl. The other girl was acceptable to his mother. Now, on February 26, they will get married. And look at my nasseb (destiny/fate), that girl lives diagonally opposite to my house. Imagine, what will be my condition on the day of the wedding? I have decided to hold my younger brother’s engagement ceremony and party on 26th Feb. Now I have given up all hopes of love. I don’t think I am destined to get married. This is my fate. I am not one to be loved. All through the conversation, Eliza spoke detachedly. Even when she spoke of her pain about her lover, she seemed detached, yet, the pain was inside. And I wonder whether the framework of regularity i.e. her patrolling duty, her set of home guard friends, etc. help her to minimize or repress the pain. And that is my question these days: what is regularity in the city? And does regularity allow us to go about our everyday business without letting conditions surrounding us to affect us? Does regularity insulate us from the world around us? What is this framework of regularity in a city? Eliza continued to talk a little bit here and there. We have a function tomorrow in Dharavi. My colleague, that girl, has gone to another station to get one of our other colleagues to apply heena on her hands. I told her to escape quietly and in case seniors come, I will give her two missed call rings (on her cell phone) and she should come back. Later at night, I will go to that girl and have heena applied on my hands. We continued talking for sometime. Then it was time for me to leave. I said goodbye and as I walked home, I remembered glass dreams! I remembered feminine desires, desires which grow in our hearts and somehow, the city plays a part in their fulfillment – everyday desires, little desires, little dreams, hands, palms, heena Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From jeebesh at sarai.net Mon Jan 30 10:48:21 2006 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 10:48:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Michael Aram Exports workers' struggle: good news Message-ID: <743D18A9-5486-4312-8F92-7B63A80092D0@sarai.net> Dear friends, I am very happy to inform you that the twenty Michael Aram Exports workers along with Ramdev's widow, Shibu Devi, were appointed this week as permanent employees of Michael Aram's new, operational company, MA Design India Private Limited, Okhla Industrial Area Phase I. They received appointment letters in hand, along with back wages, bonuses, dearness allowance arrears, and other due payments, on January 25, 2006. Michael Aram is seeking to put these workers back to work ideally within a revitalized version of their former unit, B156, or else at a proximate and as yet undetermined factory site. Please check www.justiceforworkers.org for updates on this transition process. May I express my deep thanks to all of you for your advice, empathy, support, and encouragement throughout this struggle. Sincerely, Shankar Ramaswami Ph.D. Candidate University of Chicago Justice for Workers www.justiceforworkers.org From shebatejani at gmail.com Mon Jan 30 12:01:15 2006 From: shebatejani at gmail.com (sheba tejani) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:01:15 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] First Posting- Queer Cityscapes In-Reply-To: <20060127112859.57094.qmail@web30702.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <5f6114430601270150v3d070ce2tf8441f38ff146b11@mail.gmail.com> <20060127112859.57094.qmail@web30702.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5f6114430601292231j1d2059a3g5625839862aa7d3c@mail.gmail.com> Hi Ashok, Thanks for your response. You are right, defining queer is necessary as well as tricky. In my mind I am thinking of "queer" as women who love other women, they may identify as lesbian, bisexual, transgender or may in fact not attach a label to themselves at all. I am using queer more as a marker and symbol for myself rather than as a fixed or self conscious category. During the course of one of the interviews I conducted I also felt it was necessary to leave the term fluid or to let people define themselves. What I am trying to explore is the dialogue that takes place between "queer" women (who also tend to fall outside of the seemingly ubiquitous heterosexual nuclear family paradigm) and the city. Hope that clarifies things a bit more. I would also be intrigued to find out what the outcome of your explorations with sms' in public spaces would be. Thanks for your offer to help......actually it would be nice to meet all the sarai fellows who are located in Bombay. If people are interested maybe we could set a date. Regards sheba On 1/27/06, Mr Ashok Hegde wrote: > Sheba > > Your project sounds very interesting. But one thing I > have not understood was the reference to 'queer > women'. Your mail does not seem to highlight your > definition of these women, or I might have missed it > completely. > > On a different note I have this concept I am working > on how conversations over the mobiles somehow seem to > diffuse into each other in crowded public transport > systems. > > I live in Mumbai too...and if you need any help in > your project will gladly volunteer. Let me know. > > Cheers and all the best. > > Ashok Hegde > > --- sheba tejani wrote: > > > Hi everyone, > > > > My name is Sheba, I work for a social science > > journal and I live in > > Bombay. This is my first posting about my project. I > > moved to Bombay > > only a couple of years ago and since then I've had > > some interesting > > experiences and insights about living in this city > > as a queer person, > > and with another queer person. My project was/ is > > being born out of > > this dailiness of living in what many people call, > > somewhat > > ironically, the 'queer capital of India'. > > > > The project will involving creating an audio-visual > > of conversations > > between two women that centre around the experience > > of living and > > "translating" Bombay, as well being seen and being > > translated. Of > > course, the work will be pure fiction and I plan to > > script four > > different conversations and shoot appropriate still > > or moving images > > for each. For instance, the conversations could be > > about a particular > > media event, such as an advertisement, a television > > show, a movie or > > poster/s; about public transport, street fights, or > > social divisions; > > about finding/ creating/ imagining homes and > > families, coping with > > prejudice, or interacting with the gay community. > > Each of the > > conversations might have disjointed and individual > > trajectories but > > they would be united together in a larger narrative > > framework. > > > > I am interested in the 'queer encounter' with the > > city and would like > > to tap into the continuous processes of dialogue > > that enable a > > multi-layered connection to the urban space, or even > > produce it in the > > first place. So it is not only the city 'seeing' the > > queer, but the > > queer seeing the city, by cognising, assimilating, > > rejecting but all > > the while engaging with the space. > > > > As a part of my background work I plan to interview > > other queer women > > living in the city about their experiences and hope > > that somewhere > > these will inform my work. This will also form part > > of my archival > > material for Sarai. > > > > I'm excited about the work and look forward to any > > comments, > > suggestions, feedback, questions etc through the > > entire process. > > > > Cheers > > Sheba > > _________________________________________ > > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and > > the city. > > Critiques & Collaborations > > To subscribe: send an email to > > reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the > > subject header. > > List archive: > > > > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > From gnj_chanka at rediffmail.com Sun Jan 29 21:00:27 2006 From: gnj_chanka at rediffmail.com (girindranath jha) Date: 29 Jan 2006 15:30:27 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] posting Message-ID: <20060129153027.3158.qmail@webmail52.rediffmail.com>     It takes 27 kilometre drive through bad roads.This is the only way to to reach Chanka, in North Bihar. A small Police station which uses Mahindra Jeep and Tractor as its official vehicle, but this Police station is also 5 km. from this village ! School is without teacher..and there is no doctor to to attend any medical emergency. But even though the benifit of modern times may be missing, there are occassional signs of urban modernism in this village.The villagers watch the latest mavies with generator powered systems, elder occassionally replace their traditional country liquor with english.. and the young wear Jeans.This village is connected to Urban India through its increasing number of migrant labour and WLL Telephone Booth. 2001 census report says that 12 lakh people are estimated to have left Bihar ! "at least 50 per cent of all people of my age have migrated ,more than desperation,it is search for better economic opportunities....." says Manoj kumar .a 22year old , who runs a WLL public telephone booth in Chanka village. When the agricultural season peaks in Punjab , there are days in in North Bihar's Kathiar Railway station. when a lot of tickets are sold for Ludhiana ....the daily Amarapalee Express's general bogy tells the migration story of this district. Moneyorders are the other way to know migration story.In 2001-2002 moneyorder remittance from Bihari migrants to their homes was Rs518 crore! in 2002-2003 it is Rs682 crore up by 32 per cent.Delhi is among the original destinations of migrating Biharis.In 2001 ,the NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION PLANNING BOARD estimated that nearly 11 per cent of Delhi population was from Bihar . A study conducted by the INSTITUTE OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT,New Delhi,in six villages of Gopalganj, Madshubani an PURNEA districs shows migration nearly doubled in the last two decades.In 2000, 49 per cent families had a migrant, compared to 28 per cent in 1983.The same study finds that only 6.56 per cent of the migrants hsd a government job at their destinations. But that has not stopped the Biharis from abandoning Bihar.. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060129/27e2776c/attachment.html From kamal_bhu at rediffmail.com Sat Jan 28 14:15:59 2006 From: kamal_bhu at rediffmail.com (Kamal Kumar Mishra) Date: 28 Jan 2006 08:45:59 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] first posting independet fellow... Message-ID: <20060128084559.15962.qmail@webmail33.rediffmail.com>   Hi friends, I am Kamal.I am a student of history,doing M.Phil. from Delhi University.I like sharing ideas and meeting new people.The topic i am working on is "HINDI HRIDYASTHALI MEN JASUSI UPANYASON V INKE PATHKON KA EK SAMAJIK ITIHAS"{A Social history of detective novels and their readership in the Hindi Heartland}. The term for Detective fiction in Hindi is Jasusi Upanyas.Like novel,detective novel too, came from the west in the late 19th century and was first translated into Bangla and then into other Indian languages.still,one can see a marked difference between the established western conception of "detective fiction" and Hindi "jasusi upanyas".For these jasusi fictions their engajement with the issues like identity,crime ,law n order is crucial.Thus, situating them in their proper context these detective fictions{jasusi upanyas},through their narrative techniques and environment ,could help us understand various issues related to identity,family,n society I would try to look at publishing ,writing n reading,the three aspects,of these jasusi fictions.In 1890's the professionalization of the writer-publishers and fiction monthlies not only created a more regular demand but ensured the supply as well.Thus distribution of these fictions demands a systematic study ,the area to which first section of my study would be focused at.The Second section of my proposed study would be based on the analysis of these "texts".Here I would try to locate the works of well known authors like Devaki Nandan Khatri,Gopal Ram Gahmari,Ramkrishna Varma and other less known or unknown writers like Sashdhar Dubey of Mohan Series or Col.Ranjeet in their proper context.Third section would be centred around the readership of these jasusi fictions in 1920's n 1930's.Here i 'll be using the issue registers of Bharati Bhawan Library,Allahabad as my primary source. Looking for valuable information and comments... Regards!!! kamal. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060128/28f8d796/attachment.html From vichaarak at gmail.com Sun Jan 29 19:31:57 2006 From: vichaarak at gmail.com (Vichaarak t) Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 19:31:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] THOUGHTS ON BEGGING Message-ID: 26/01/06 Today in the morning I was returning from my office, when I stopped at a red light, I saw a beggar knocking at the window of my car asking for 'something'. At the same time she was trying to show a glimpse of her malnourished baby, may be to stir up my emotional nerves so that I may 'help' her. On the next red light I saw an old man doing the same. On these moments many thoughts pass through my mind. Will it be justified to pay in kind or cash? Why these people have chosen to beg? Who is responsible for their state? If a person is physically fit to work why is he or she is not doing any job or they don't get it? On what basis to differentiate who is fit to receive 'charity' and who is not? What is the responsibility of the state and society towards them ? By paying them are we not trying to make to continue in the same state or if we don't pay than will they be able to survive? Most of the ladies are carrying small babies, are these their own babies or available on rent? Are these women married then what there husbands are doing? Do they have a notion of a family as a unit. How they find a match for marriage? How their kinship network operates? Is paying to 'them' a charity on 'our' part? 29/01/06 On the other day I received a letter from UNICEF saying that it will take just a stroke of pen to save a life. I wondered whether this is not another form of begging. If I can pay to UNICEF then why not to the road side beggar? Or is it that in this 'sector'' of begging there is a division of privileged and unprivileged or organized and unorganized. From ayeshasc at gmail.com Sat Jan 28 18:33:17 2006 From: ayeshasc at gmail.com (Ayesha Sen Choudhury) Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 18:33:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] First Post Message-ID: Hi! Greetings to all! I'm Ayesha and this is my introductory post. Before I introduce myself and my research topic, I'd like apologise for this huge delay in posting caused due to certain unavoidable circumstances arising out of my work schedules. Hope I'm forgiven by the coordinators at Sarai this once! I'll try to keep to the allotted dates henceforth. I'll start with a slight clarification… While I was born and brought up in Kolkata, I'm currently a resident of Delhi and will thus conduct the research in this very city (for those who might wonder why I chose to conduct my research in Delhi, while being based in Kolkata). I am a lawyer by profession, with a BSL.LLB degree from ILS Law College, Pune under the Pune University. My special interests lie in human rights and humanitarian law and am at present working with a paralegal NGO where my profile requires me to provide legal assistance to women and conduct researches relating to legal reforms addressing gender related issues. The topic I will be working on is titled "*Locating Sexuality through the Eyes of Afghan and Burmese Refugee Women in Delhi*". The main objective of this study is to collect narratives of Afghan and Burmese refugee women trying to negotiate feminine spaces in conditions of displacement and migration and hostile environments. This study will be exploratory in nature and will seek to draw understandings of renegotiated spaces from these women, e.g. how they define violence, pain, pleasure, humiliation, and empowerment. I intend to use photography as a complementary method of depicting their lives and livelihood. Since my research topic is based on certain observations and presumptions arising out of present legal scenario in India, I'll try and map out a brief background of legal mechanisms afforded to refugees here. India seems to be one of those countries where lack of specific refugee or asylum oriented legal mechanism escalates human rights abuse of refugees and asylum seekers. One would need to look beyond India's successful façade of "refugee friendly' country to the real life problems of asylum seekers here in order to understand the high level of political and bureaucratic maneuvering by the government. By not being a signatory to the Refugee Convention, India has successfully warded off all international interference into it's handling of asylum seekers. On the other hand it dooms the asylum seekers within its borders to flagrant violation of their basic human rights with impunity. The Foreigners Act of 1946 is the only legislation that deals with all non-citizens within the Indian borders, making no differentiation between tourists, economic migrants, and asylum seekers or refugees. This legislation is the core of all refugee related problems in India. Being archaic in nature it bestows unlimited powers on the government to identify, arrest and prosecute any foreigner they "suspect" to have violated any laws within the territory, making them vulnerable to attacks of political discretion. The UNHCR popularly believed to be an effective forum for refugee redressal is also often rendered toothless due to political maneuverings and sanctions on its existence in India by the government. I believe that the only way the situation can be bettered is to campaign for a separate asylum law that will recognize the conditions under which a refugee is forced to seek refuge in India effectively differentiating them from tourists or other forms of migrants. This research is a small step in pursuance of this goal. Delhi hosts a large community of both these groups of nationals for certain political reasons. In the past these have been two of the few recognized groups of people who were allowed entry into India due to the erstwhile government's political agendas and interests. These two groups of nationals had migrated to Delhi from the border areas in the hope of seeking refugee status with the UNHCR, since it is the only international body within Indian borders that has the powers to grant them identification cards and rehabilitation aid as refugees. In current times with the fall of Taliban and a change in India's stand with the Burmese junta, this population has been indirectly pressurized to leave the country and return to their countries of origin. In exact terms it would mean a withdrawal of protection from the Indian state forces. Thus the Burmese and Afghan Refugees thus live daily lives, fearing arrest, deportation and torture by state parties as well as abuse of their basic rights by non-state actors, with no forum to address their grievances to. My present engagement with gender specific issues of violence and abuse has inspired me to focus more specifically on the problems of women as refugees… the rationale behind it being that while men and women may share similar circumstances of persecution forcing them into flee borders and seek refuge, women probably face a larger risk of persecution solely on the basis of their gender and sexual orientation. Infact a woman may still be at risk of gender based violence and persecution even in a state of aylum e.g. a woman who flees a country for fear of honour killing, may still be at a risk of being sexually abused in the country of refuge by state or non state actors. Refugee situations may throw a whole array of challenges for a woman to negotiate with… a whole new set of events to grapple with, while probably fulfilling various roles of a mother, a daughter and a wife to name some. In such situations some refugee women have found themselves in a more empowered role e.g. the Sri Lankan refugee women while others find themselves disempowered and victimized. Women refugees form almost 80% of the total refugee population in the world and yet there has been no conclusive or effective solution to the variety of problems faced by them. I feel that no legislation for asylum seekers could be effective without first addressing the needs and problems of refugee women or considering their efforts of creating and negotiating "safe' spaces in situations of exodus and change. Refugee women in India face an enhanced risk of violence solely due to the fact that the government does not recognize "refugees" formally. Thus they are denied any redressal system to approach in cases of gender related violence. There also remains the fear of being deported if identified by the authorities to be an unwanted group of asylum seekers. In my opinion this leaves them with restricted spaces of freedom both sexually and politically. It will thus be my endeavour to identify the needs and requirements of these women through the study. I would also attempt to look into the issue of how the politics of aid provided to them has also contributed largely to the kinds of feminine spaces they have been forcefully restricted to, e.g. UNHCR in it's policy of providing vocational training to refugees, restricts the choice of training for these women to only that of a beautician. Or how the withdrawal of state protection to them has restricted their physical movement, freedom of expressing their sexuality, and freedom of speech. This study is intended to produce an analysis of needs and requirements specific to women refugees in order to provide for a sensitive method of redressal in future times. I'm looking forward to suggestions and comments from this hugely versatile group of researchers I on the list. Here's wishing everyone fruitful and exciting months to come. Regards Ayesha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060128/0eb190da/attachment.html From lindrasi at yahoo.com Sun Jan 29 11:44:31 2006 From: lindrasi at yahoo.com (L. Simhan) Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 22:14:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] [Reader List] : First Post Message-ID: <20060129061431.17293.qmail@web52207.mail.yahoo.com> We sent this yesterday but messed up in the posting. FIRST POST Lakshmi IndraSimhan and Jacob Weinstein My name is Lakshmi IndraSimhan. I’m originally from Kerala, but have lived in Kuwait, the Philippines, Japan and did my undergraduate work in political philosophy, and fine art, in the United States. I moved to Delhi on a whim and am now pursuing an embattled Masters in Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics. I’ve done some writing here and there too. Jacob M. Weinstein is co-fellow, flatmate and husband. He does comics, and used to be the Art Director/Comics Editor for the late Philadelphia Independent. Now he occasionally does design and illustration work. We are planning on making a comic/illustrated book wherein we reproduce in pictorial and textual form the life-work processes of street vendors. In this era of invisible producers, I like the ability to witness things coming together before your very eyes, at your doorstep even. We were really interested by people like the ear cleaners and street dentists of old Delhi and how they had inherited professions, particular uniforms, particular tools and technologies, trade secrets etc. Other vendors we are interested in include Inkjet Cartridge refillers, Umbrella repair men, and many more. In all we have about 25 people, but the final list will change as we begin research. The intention is to create a latter day Diderot’s Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry, wherein someone in the future could look back and repeat current tasks and jobs just as they appear today. We are interested in studying the informal body of practical and technical knowledge embodied in the daily methodologies of the vendors, in relation to the production, preparation and distribution of their goods and services. We want to document the skill sets and trades of these vendors, precisely because they were not acquired by or through standardized bodies of knowledge, but through informal trial and error, observation, or passed orally from generation to generation, leading to a variety of idiosyncratic practices and group knowledge. They are trade secrets so to speak and we will illustrate them. We plan to interview individuals regarding their income, the tools and rules of their trade, methodology, personal history, etc. The results of our research will be presented as a comic book that will include a profile of the vendor, and a detailed illustration of his tools and then, in step-by-step detail a visual description of the completion of a task. For example: A street dentist would be shown extracting a tooth from start to finish accompanied by a narration of this process etc. The final project will hopefully form a short black-and-white book of indeterminate length. Thanks. Lakshmi and Jacob --------------------------------- Yahoo! Autos. Looking for a sweet ride? Get pricing, reviews, & more on new and used cars. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060128/69b69bc2/attachment.html From lalitbatra at gmail.com Mon Jan 30 17:26:43 2006 From: lalitbatra at gmail.com (lalit batra) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 17:26:43 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] cultural festival Message-ID: <7e8688b30601300356t6d324b30s59922a1e439c1ca5@mail.gmail.com> Dear We at Hazards Centre warmly invite you for our cultural festival, * shehar.com *on *'lives in a changing city**'*. It would comprise street theatre, music performances and exhibitions by urban poor community groups across Delhi, along with student and independent groups. The festival would be inaugurated by celebrated artist and activist *Naseeruddin Shah.* Date*: Feb 4-5. 2006 * Venue: *Ampitheatre, India Habitat Centre* *Time: 11 AM to 6 PM* The assorted cultural expressions such as exhibitions and installations would be geared towards raising certain crucial questions of our contemporary cities : whether world-class city development is all about constructing sanitized, concretized, privatized and commercialized spaces? Or does it also embrace 'world-class' habitats, livelihoods and basic services for the majority *citi*zens, who in effect build and run these cities? What is their stake in the overall vision of urban tranformation? We feel it pertinent that the larger, non-priveleged 'citizenry' find an opportunity to voice in the public domain their ideas and imaginations on the social and physical transformations of their spaces. Attached here is the invite and the schedule! Warm Regards Lalit Batra -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060130/3334f892/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: invite.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 178415 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060130/3334f892/attachment.pdf -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From tressa at commongroundconferences.com Thu Jan 26 23:07:49 2006 From: tressa at commongroundconferences.com (Tressa Berman CG) Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 09:37:49 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE ARTS IN SOCIETY Message-ID: <6857E906-43BF-4BAE-AA84-A7A2A5979D04@commongroundconferences.com> Dear Colleague, I am writing to you on behalf of the Conference Organizing Committee to announce: THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE ARTS IN SOCIETY The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, 15-18 August 2006 http://www.Arts-Conference.com To be held in conjunction with the Edinburgh International Arts Festivals, the conference will include leading artists, arts practitioners and theorists through paper presentations, workshops and colloquia. The conference venue, the University of Edinburgh, is located near the heart of the various Edinburgh Festival activities. I would particularly like to invite you to respond to the conference call for papers and presentations. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication before or after the conference in the refereed International Journal of the Arts in Society, a new journal commencing publication in 2006. If you are unable to attend the Conference in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for review and possible publication in the journal, and provide you with access to the electronic version of the conference proceedings. Full details of the conference, including an online call for presentations form, are to be found at the conference website. We encourage innovative presentation formats as well as academic papers. The next call for proposals (a title and short abstract) closes on 28 February 2006. We look forward to receiving your proposals and hope you will be able to join us in Edinburgh in 2006! Yours Sincerely, Dr Tressa Berman BorderZone Arts, USA Director, International Conference on the Arts in Society COMMON GROUND ABN 66 074 822 629 SYDNEY PO Box K481, Haymarket Sydney 2000 Australia Ph: +61(0)2 9519 0303 Fax: +61 (0)2 9519 2203 Office: Level 2, 6A Nelson St, Annandale, 2038 SAN FRANCISCO 97 Miguel Street, San Francisco California, 94131 USA Tel. 415-273-5510 (USA) _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com Tue Jan 31 09:53:04 2006 From: mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com (mahmood farooqui) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 09:53:04 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Dagh Dehlavi Message-ID: Resurrecting Dagh from the Tawaifs- S R Faruqi will speak about Dagh as a classical poet and Gulzar Dehlavi, hailing from a family of Dagh's disciples will share anecdotes about Dagh. Today at Aiwan-e Ghalib, 11 am. From isast at leonardo.info Tue Jan 31 06:26:13 2006 From: isast at leonardo.info (Leonardo/ISAST) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 00:56:13 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Celebrating 40 Years of Leonardo: Archives now available on JSTOR Message-ID: Celebrating 40 Years of Leonardo Leonardo and Leonardo Music Journal Archives Now Available on JSTOR At the age of 40, Leonardo Da Vinci was living in Milan and just beginning to hit his stride. He was dreaming of creating “The Gran Cavallo” and the painting of “The Last Supper” was soon to be commissioned. On the eve of its 40th anniversary, Leonardo/ISAST, like its namesake, is hitting its stride. The new Leonardos in our network are busy creating the new art forms of our age. To promote and document the work of these artists who work at the intersection of art, science and technology, Leonardo/ISAST publishes several journals and a book series, co-sponsors conferences and events, sponsors an award program and collaborates with dozens of other like-minded organizations around the world. Forty years ago Roy Ascott was working on his text “The Cybernetic Stance,” David Bohm was writing “On Creativity,” L. Alcopley was preparing his interview with Edgar Varese, and C.H. Waddington was writing “New Visions of the World.” These texts, along with those written by Richard Land, Frank Malina and others established the first volume of the Leonardo library. We are happy to announce that these articles, along with thousands of other Leonardo and Leonardo Music Journal texts by artists and researchers around the world working at the intersection of the arts, sciences and technology, are now available through the JSTOR Arts & Sciences III Collection. Current Leonardo and Leonardo Music Journal subscribers can now search, browse, view, and print full-text PDF versions of the JSTOR collection for an additional $25 annual access fee. Contact MIT Press at journals-orders at mit.edu to set up your access today. The JSTOR Arts and Sciences III Collection is also available to users at participating institutions. To find out if the university or other institution you are affiliated with has access to Leonardo and Leonardo Music Journal through JSTOR visit: http://www.jstor.org. For a list of current Leonardo/ISAST events and activities, visit: http://www.leonardo.info -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060131/52e61316/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From jumpshark at gmail.com Tue Jan 31 12:27:52 2006 From: jumpshark at gmail.com (Prashant Pandey) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 12:27:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Article on Music e-tailing /Prashant Pandey Message-ID: Music e-tailing in India will kick off in a year Ashish K Tiwari / DNA Sunday, October 23, 2005 20:02 IST Leading players in the Indian music industry are getting serious about making their repertoire available for download in the domestic market, at a cost though. While companies like Saregama India, Universal, Sony-BMG Music, etc, have already made their music available in the international markets (through sites like www.itunes.com and www.napster.com) for download at a cost per download, the approach didn't gain momentum in the Indian market so far. Non-availability of Internet connections, at desired speed for fast download, across the length and breadth of the country was an issue which delayed the entire process. Besides, making available the entire music repertoire in a digitised format was another aspect which had to be dealt with to start the process. Kulmeet Makkar, chief executive - music, Saregama India Ltd, said, "The fraternity has been considering online distribution of music as an option to maximise reach and revenue for some time now. With the telecom boom, broadband services getting better and majority of the music being digitised, an online distribution model can be expected soon." The domestic music fraternity, along with the Indian Music Industry (IMI) - an association to protect the interests of the music industry in the country, is believed to have designed a tentative revenue model for online distribution of music that needs to be finetuned. In fact, according to a source, the music industry is expected to arrive at a business model in six to 12 months. Savio D'Souza, secretary general of IMI, said, "We have been discussing about this mode of music distribution in India and would come out with some concrete details after taking into account every aspect related with this." V J Lazarus, head of IMI which is based in Mumbai, was not available for comment. The total size of the Indian music industry is estimated to be about Rs 1,000 crore. Of which, piracy contributes to the tune of Rs 450 crore. The organised market of film music in India is Rs 400 crore while non-film music is around Rs 100 crore. Approximately 90% of the revenue for the music industry comes from the sale of CDs and cassettes. Over 9% is shared between ring-tone sales and royalties from Phonographic Performance Ltd while online retailing is under 1%. The primary reason behind this minuscule percentage of online sales is illegal download. According to industry observers, there are over 600 URLs that facilitate illegal download of Indian music and legalising music download at a cost is being viewed as a strategy to deal with it. "Illegal download of music is our biggest concern as of now and we are taking necessary steps to curb it. In fact, IMI is aggressively working towards making these websites dysfunctional, thereby boosting revenues for the industry," said D'Souza. Pioneering the e-tailing approach, Saregama India made its music available online through the company websites, www.saregama.com and www.humaracd.com, way back in 2000. The sites offer a selection of 25,000 songs. One could get a personal compilation of songs in the range of Rs 275 to Rs 375 for a CD (shipment cost extra) with the option to customise the look of the CD as well. "Though revenue from this initiative has been small as compared with CD and cassette sales, we see a great potential in this service in the prevalent market scenario. We are in the process of reviving this facility making available majority of our music repertoire in the digitised format which was not the case earlier," said Makkar. Starting October 1, Universal Music has begun selling its Indian music repertoire in the international markets through music retailing websites like 'itunes' and 'napster' at 99 cents per download. "We are in the process of working out a revenue model for the Indian market," said Rajat Kakar, managing director, Universal Music (India) Ltd. As an experiment, Rediff has recently started selling music online in India with the launch of singer Sanjay Maroo's album for online music download. All the 11 songs of this album are available for download for Rs 10 per song. Jasmeet Singh, vice-president of product marketing for Rediff, said, "Normally for any download, the process has to be routed through IMI. But in this case, the singer approached us for online distribution of his music and we decided to take it forward. We'll have to wait and watch for the response and if the figures look good we will look at regularising it provided the artiste holds online distribution rights of his/her songs." Singh has been in talks with IMI and feels that a single-window licence from the association would help to a great extent in e-tailing Indian music. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Forwarded by Prashant Pandey From jumpshark at gmail.com Tue Jan 31 12:30:52 2006 From: jumpshark at gmail.com (Prashant Pandey) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 12:30:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] iTunes goes desi/Article/Prashant Pandey Message-ID: iTunes goes desi Karishma Upadhyay DNA Monday, January 30, 2006 19:22 IST Hailed as one of the biggest consumer brands of the recent times, the iPod has changed how the world listens to music. The latest deal between Steven Job's Apple and Hungama.com means that Indipop as well as Bollywood soundtracks can be downloaded from iTunes across America, Europe and Asia. "Hungama.com is the first Indian company to formally enter a deal with iTunes. We should go up in another ten days. Our deal for now is exclusively with T-series and we expect to put close to 30,000 tracks from their catalogue in the next six months," says Hungama's CEO, Neeraj Roy. The first series of albums that will go onto the iTunes site include chartbusters like 'Main Hoon Na' and 'Chalte Chalte' along with more recent releases like 'Aashiq Banaya Aapne'. In an industry where sales of cassettes and CDs have been dwindling for a couple of years now, any additional form of revenue generation is more than welcome. "Like royalties from ring tones or radio channels, being on iTunes is definitely going to benefit the music industry," reiterates Bhushan Kumar, T-Series, adding, "piracy is a huge issue for us not just in India but also abroad. With more and more people using iPods, it just makes sense for a record label to make your music available on iTunes." While the Hungama-T-series deal might be the biggest with iTunes, it definitely isn't the first. Sa Re Ga Ma's repertoire has been on the iTunes' site since September 2004 but Atul Churamani, VP, ANR, doesn't think it's time to celebrate as yet. "In the last three years, physical sales have fallen by about 55 percent, while digital music sales are just around five percent as of now. At the end of the day, iTunes is like any other 'gora' shop where our music will be tucked away in a corner. After all, we are talking about a very niche content being available on a global platform," he explains. Having said that, Atul and the rest of the music industry believe that with iTunes having an 85 percent share in the digital market, being on the site is "very encouraging." ================================================================================================================================== From naresh.rhythm at gmail.com Tue Jan 31 13:05:55 2006 From: naresh.rhythm at gmail.com (Naresh Kumar) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 23:35:55 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] Request for support Message-ID: <9e53509a0601302335w72b5a564ne156b521185fa615@mail.gmail.com> Hi everybody, I am NareshKumar and as Sarai fellow I am working on "the festival of music in the city of sports-Harballabh Sangeet Mela of Jalandhar". Along with a paper I am planning to make an audio-documentary. For taking interviews and field-recordings I use tape-recorder. But it's a very difficult job to transfer the data on computer from cassette. So, I'm looking for a digital recorder with computer connectivity. Please, let me know about any such device, which is handy, reasonable and easy to operate. Let me tell you one thing more that I am visually challenged. So please see if any device is available with key-beeps as we have in mobile phones. Because the things which I've seen so far don't have this facility. Then selecting the mode, retrieval etc become slightly difficult. Moreover, beep assures you that recording has begun. I hope that I would definitely find some solutions to my problem. Kindly enrich me with whatever you have for sharing- any book or article on any music-festival, your own experiences about concerts as an audience, any theoretical insight on emerging public sphere and most important, your valuable comments. Bye and have a nice day From sidharth.srinivasan at gmail.com Tue Jan 31 13:32:40 2006 From: sidharth.srinivasan at gmail.com (sidharth srinivasan) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 00:02:40 -0800 Subject: [reader-list] first posting: sidharth srinivasan Message-ID: <83e991100601310002ve2afe13xc5e318fc6b86a709@mail.gmail.com> Hi fellow fellows! I am an independent filmmaker who shuttles between Mumbai and Dilli, or between head and heart respectively! I have been based in Mumbai on and off for the past 5 years but Delhi is the city I belong to. I graduated from St. Stephen's College having studied Economics and immediately jumped into a life of filmmaking and glorious uncertainty! After 2 years assisting various people I went independent and my initial foray into direction was a short film titled THE TIGHTROPE WALKER (35mm, 15mins, Hindi) which made it in competition to Venice in 2000. The film was an experimental short on the anonymous life and (imagined?) love of a young woman who lives in a suburban highrise in Bombay. I followed this up in 2001 with one of the country's first digital feature films titled DIVYA DRISHTI (DVC, 95mins, Hindi) which was banned by the then censor board owing to profanity/street lingo and the casual depiction of a gay love affair between two married men (the cesnors said that homosexuality was against Indian culture). However to my joy this small film has carved a niche of its own being screened at various festivals (Singapore, Commonwealth, Karachi etc) and museums (Walker Art Centre, Museum of Contemporary Art, Nova Cinema etc). Currently I have finished my debut "multiplex" film, if you will, a supernatural thriller titled AMAVAS starring Konkona Sensharma, Victor Banerjee and others. The film should be released by mid 2006. I also make documentaries and most recently have shot a film on the endangered world heritage site of Hampi for UNESCO. Living away from Delhi and returning there from time to time made me look at the city differently. Hanging out at Safdarjung, Aurobindo Place and Green Park I was struck by the rambling and dilapidated ruins of monuments lying amidst the urban space of markets and colonies. I realized that I had taken them for granted to such an extent that I didn't even know what these structures looked like from within. A few trips made were enough to get my juices flowing and soon the germ of an idea took place in my mind. Delhi unlike Bombay was an urban city with space for clandestine love. Mosques and mausoleums, tombs and temples dotted the city and in turn were dotted by names of anonymous lovers etched forever on stone and granite. Who were these secret lovers, what was there story, for surely they had a story to tell, and by extension, there must be countless such myths and folk tales surrounding these various heritage sites...I decided to weave a contemporary clandestine love story among the ruins of Delhi - a love story where the young man and girl in question become influenced by the past to such an extent that it starts overtaking their conscious waking life... As a filmmaker I also took a conscious decision to treat the proposed film differently. Some years ago I had the good fortune of seeing Chris Marker's legendary film "La Jetee" a sci-fi film comprised entirely of still images with voice-over narration and sound design - Marker called the film a photoroman. The film was so influential that not only did Hollywood make an ugly remake (12 monkeys) but a La Jetee Bar also exists in Tokyo! I came up with the decision to make my film in a similar fashion albeit do away with voice over narrative and in its stead have many voices of both the present and the past imbue the sound design. And that is where SARAI/CSDS thankfully came in. My research is ostensibly on "excavating" the various stories, myths, legends, folk tales and "sthalapuranas" surrounding the heritage spots of Delhi City which would find there way into the script for my proposed photoroman - in short my research is on all the stuff that never finds its way into the text books. So if any of you have any bizarre, grotesque, cute, strange and downright fascinating stories to tell about nooks and corners and gullies and gates in Delhi please inform me. Also, if you know any wise old men and women who love hearing the sound/s of their own voices and talk about Delhi as if it were a loved one please put me on to them. I look forward to hearing from you and wish all of you all the very best with ur proposed research... Best, SIDHARTH SRINIVASAN -- MR. SIDHARTH SRINIVASAN Reel Illusion Films New Delhi/Mumbai India -- MR. SIDHARTH SRINIVASAN Reel Illusion Films New Delhi/Mumbai India From mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com Tue Jan 31 14:56:52 2006 From: mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com (mahmood farooqui) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 14:56:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Michael Aram Exports workers' struggle: good news In-Reply-To: <743D18A9-5486-4312-8F92-7B63A80092D0@sarai.net> References: <743D18A9-5486-4312-8F92-7B63A80092D0@sarai.net> Message-ID: Dear Shankar and Jeebesh, There are many ways one could begin to respond to the happy ending of the workers' struggle. As a real life Swades, with Shankar arriving here as an academic, getting radicalised with and by the workers and fighting along side to win this settlement. As a post-historic comment on the unresolved dead-end in Aaghaat, Goving Nihalani's offering about how to lead a workers' struggle in a third world country where violence is a norm when inflicted upon the workers and an aberration when committed by the workers. As a glorious affirmation to the mail Jeebsh wrote, a mail which one can call admonitory if not chastising, on the occasion of the whole world and myself running to town about the police beating workers in Gurgaon, a few months ago. As a unique triumph of a strategy of protest and resistance, conceived and put into practice by a genuine collective in which the bourgeois organiser and the toiling worker merge their roles into each other. As one of the very few instances of justice being earned by the workers in this our belighted land. The workers's victory may consign them back to the hell that was their working condition, as Shankar had pointed out in his photographic essay in Tehelka, but it is not an end of their journey. I could say more but there is hardly any point in getting sentimental-perhaps it is time for us to hear what the victors have to say about it all... Chalte raho saathi, doobte suraj ko raah dikhaane ke liye, taaki use palatne ki raah mil sake... Mahmood On 30/01/06, Jeebesh Bagchi wrote: > Dear friends, > > I am very happy to inform you that the twenty Michael > Aram Exports workers along with Ramdev's widow, Shibu > Devi, were appointed this week as permanent employees > of Michael Aram's new, operational company, MA Design > India Private Limited, Okhla Industrial Area Phase I. > They received appointment letters in hand, along with > back wages, bonuses, dearness allowance arrears, and > other due payments, on January 25, 2006. > > Michael Aram is seeking to put these workers back to > work ideally within a revitalized version of their > former unit, B156, or else at a proximate and as yet > undetermined factory site. Please check > www.justiceforworkers.org for updates on this > transition process. > > May I express my deep thanks to all of you for your > advice, empathy, support, and encouragement throughout > this struggle. > > Sincerely, > > Shankar Ramaswami > Ph.D. Candidate > University of Chicago > > Justice for Workers > www.justiceforworkers.org > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > From jumpshark at gmail.com Tue Jan 31 15:02:13 2006 From: jumpshark at gmail.com (Prashant Pandey) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:02:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Michael Aram Exports workers' struggle: good news In-Reply-To: References: <743D18A9-5486-4312-8F92-7B63A80092D0@sarai.net> Message-ID: Great job On 1/31/06, mahmood farooqui wrote: > Dear Shankar and Jeebesh, > > > There are many ways one could begin to respond to the happy ending of > the workers' struggle. > > As a real life Swades, with Shankar arriving here as an academic, > getting radicalised with and by the workers and fighting along side to > win this settlement. > > As a post-historic comment on the unresolved dead-end in Aaghaat, > Goving Nihalani's offering about how to lead a workers' struggle in a > third world country where violence is a norm when inflicted upon the > workers and an aberration when committed by the workers. > > As a glorious affirmation to the mail Jeebsh wrote, a mail which one > can call admonitory if not chastising, on the occasion of the whole > world and myself running to town about the police beating workers in > Gurgaon, a few months ago. > > As a unique triumph of a strategy of protest and resistance, conceived > and put into practice by a genuine collective in which the bourgeois > organiser and the toiling worker merge their roles into each other. > > As one of the very few instances of justice being earned by the > workers in this our belighted land. > > The workers's victory may consign them back to the hell that was their > working condition, as Shankar had pointed out in his photographic > essay in Tehelka, but it is not an end of their journey. > > I could say more but there is hardly any point in getting > sentimental-perhaps it is time for us to hear what the victors have to > say about it all... > > Chalte raho saathi, doobte suraj ko raah dikhaane ke liye, taaki use > palatne ki raah mil sake... > > Mahmood > > > On 30/01/06, Jeebesh Bagchi wrote: > > Dear friends, > > > > I am very happy to inform you that the twenty Michael > > Aram Exports workers along with Ramdev's widow, Shibu > > Devi, were appointed this week as permanent employees > > of Michael Aram's new, operational company, MA Design > > India Private Limited, Okhla Industrial Area Phase I. > > They received appointment letters in hand, along with > > back wages, bonuses, dearness allowance arrears, and > > other due payments, on January 25, 2006. > > > > Michael Aram is seeking to put these workers back to > > work ideally within a revitalized version of their > > former unit, B156, or else at a proximate and as yet > > undetermined factory site. Please check > > www.justiceforworkers.org for updates on this > > transition process. > > > > May I express my deep thanks to all of you for your > > advice, empathy, support, and encouragement throughout > > this struggle. > > > > Sincerely, > > > > Shankar Ramaswami > > Ph.D. Candidate > > University of Chicago > > > > Justice for Workers > > www.justiceforworkers.org > > > > _________________________________________ > > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > > Critiques & Collaborations > > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > > List archive: > > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > From mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com Tue Jan 31 16:25:03 2006 From: mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com (mahmood farooqui) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 16:25:03 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Dagh Dehlavi In-Reply-To: <20060131063420.66480.qmail@web51410.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20060131063420.66480.qmail@web51410.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Bhai, is baar main pakka gunahgaar hoon...nikalte nikalte mujhe laga ki der to ho chuki hai magar baharhaal ise daal hi deta hoon, na sahi haazri, aagahi to hogi.. agli baar aisa na hoga, mere hamdam, mere dost... On 31/01/06, Yousuf wrote: > Mehmood > Why do you always inform about such interesting events > at the eleventh hour. > > Yousuf > --- mahmood farooqui > wrote: > > > Resurrecting Dagh from the Tawaifs- S R Faruqi will > > speak about Dagh > > as a classical poet and Gulzar Dehlavi, hailing from > > a family of > > Dagh's disciples will share anecdotes about Dagh. > > > > Today at Aiwan-e Ghalib, 11 am. > > _________________________________________ > > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and > > the city. > > Critiques & Collaborations > > To subscribe: send an email to > > reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the > > subject header. > > List archive: > > > > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > From bawree at yahoo.com Tue Jan 31 22:53:46 2006 From: bawree at yahoo.com (mamta mantri) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 09:23:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] =?iso-8859-1?q?Unexpected=2C_expected=2C_unexpecte?= =?iso-8859-1?q?d=85?= Message-ID: <20060131172346.70836.qmail@web33104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> This happened last week. I met Mr. Salim, the manager of Shalimar cinema, and was simply chatting with him. (He was really cold last time, but opened up this time). So apart from other things, the conversation boiled down to “why was I not getting married?”), very obviously. (of course, I could have stopped and run away, but wanted to see the fun). So he gave numerous ‘logical reasonings’ ---- So what if they want dowry, So what if you earn more and are more educated than him, you must get married.[ A woman is meant to serve only, according to the Quran---was his explanation]. Of course, he would not be interested in listening to my side of the story. Going, going, going, the monologue boiled down to Islam as a religion. His many reasoning--- simplest religion, ‘no one goes away once converted to Islam’, ‘Hindus worship the sun, but it does set down; some one does it and that’s Allah’, ‘of 4 people in the world, 2 are Muslims, because the procedures are simple’, ‘The French are scared that they will rename their nation as Islamic Republic of France’. (I am nodding my head in knowing silence). “You must read the Quran, it is available in translation, Be open to the idea (I was waiting for this to happen, but not so soon), Get married, there’s no happiness and belongingness like one’s own home and children.” Anyways, he asked me about my father’s occupation. “He is an accountant in a Marwari Pedi—the cloth market at Kalbadevi”, I replied. He assumingly said that he would not be earning more than 6-7000. (Oh my gawd!!!!, how could he say such a thing, we are definitely better off than what he thinks us to be). Well, all this time, I was thinking of the duality of two different systems and their values, one that ‘English education’ taught us- individualism, secularism, liberalism etc etc; as against his values- community, womanhood, kids, religion etc. But this comment about our financial statues was a real turner. I now wanted to find a chance to look down upon him, and I was lucky that day. He was about to leave for home, and I saw his very ‘purana’ scooter with the side guard (which was old and rotten iron patra, and full of holes). I was glad I could look down upon him, forgetting about the conversation and the larger issue (religion/fundamentalism). I guess that’s what happened to our freedom fighters. Guess that’s how we got our freedom? mamta __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From rammurthi at rediffmail.com Tue Jan 31 19:46:42 2006 From: rammurthi at rediffmail.com (ram murthi) Date: 31 Jan 2006 14:16:42 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Content analysis of magazine published in Brail Message-ID: <20060131141642.19338.qmail@webmail10.rediffmail.com> hello everyone, I am Ram a postgraduate in history from Punjab University Chandigarh. I am visually challenged by birth. After completing my Masters in History I worked with Eklavya, (an institute for innovative education and research) in Devas and Hoshangabad (Madya Pradesh). I was part of there social science programme. I was involved in training of teachers and preparation of study material for teacher and students. I conducted research about the conceptual understanding of children as they are evolved in the textbook prepared by Eklavya. Now I am doing my Bachelor in education from Government College of education, Jalandhar where I am being taught what I did for ten years. It is a matter of degree and employment. On my fellowship grant with Sarai I will try to explore certain crucial aspects related with content and subject matter carried by Brail (script that is dotted by owl on thick paper and it can be read by touch of finger.) magazines. Here is the brief of my proposed study. Like the most tradition-ridden societies, Indian society views visually impaired people as separate section of society. There are lots of illusions and misconceptions among people about visually challenged people. A myth goes that visually impaired persons are specifically created creatures on earth whom God has gifted extra senses (mind, concentration etc.). Such misleading beliefs result in believing that visually impaired people are essentially very talented. On the other hand lot of people believe that visually challenged person are great burden on society, as they can’t contribute in the growth and development of society. People upholding this belief also think that visually impaired people are least bothered about worldly affairs and are least concerned about general tendencies of society. Above kind of illusion can be found profoundly in more or less every society in India irrespective to nature of their social structure. The deeper ignorance in the societies about these people brought indifferent attitude in media to deal with problems and issues related to visually challenged people. This problem is further compounded by technological backwardness of audio aids available to assist the visually challenged people. Whatever little coverage is given by newspapers or general magazines is basically based on above mentioned misconceptions. These magazines are unable to construct the images of visually challenged people as an image of general persons who are regarded as integral part of society and who respond in a particular socialized manner. Innovation of the Brail script contributed in a radical manner to make visually impaired person independent up to certain extent in reading and writing. Some amount of literature is being published in Brail even in India, yet its readership and its coverage of contents is quiet limited. This literature includes textbooks, fiction and non-fiction, religious scriptures and periodicals. These magazines have government as well as private publishers and readers from all walks of society. Present study will try to explore about the construction of image/s of visually impaired person through these magazines. Are they able to expose visually impaired persons to concerns of different sections of society? How the content of these magazines reflect the social misconceptions about visually challenged people or question these misconceptions? Explosion of knowledge and advancement of technique has shifted the paradigm of academic and non-academic world in a drastic manner. It will be interesting to watch how these magazines are able to catch up with these phenomena. By and large most of the publications (Brail and others) have their target readership and they continuously cater the interest of that particular readership. Some of them do have ideological slant as well. This study will try to look at this factor as well. In other words it will be explored that what kind of readership these magazines have. Is their any particular attempt on the part of editorial board/editor to sustain the interest of its readership? Do they have particular ideological framework to socialize the visually impaired person, if so what kind of efforts are being made in their publications. Study will also seek to find out that what kind of socio-political, economic and cultural issues are being taken up by these magazines and in which manner they tend to analyze those issues. Are these magazines able to up keep the level of information as compared to other general information based magazines? comments and suggestions are welcome regards ram -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20060131/6ff71434/attachment.html