[Sarai Newsletter]June 2002
dak at sarai.net
dak at sarai.net
Mon Jun 3 21:23:39 IST 2002
Contents
I Seed Grant Fellowship Presentations
II Launch of Online Labour Archive
III New Initiatives @ SARAI
IV Website Updates
V Hindi Website
VI Films @ SARAI: "A Cinema of Anxiety Series: The Living Dead"
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I Seed Grant Fellowship Presentations
Last year we had provided support to independent researchers studying
forms and practices in contemporary media and urban experiences. The
projects delved into and critically probed varied urban environments
and experiences, issues of law and justice, cultural practices and
representational strategies.
Much of the material and the insights generated from these fellowships
will feed into ongoing projects at Sarai and form part of the urban
archive that is simultaneously being put together at Sarai. The
effort, we also hope, will stimulate public interest and activity in
these areas.
The researchers have been visiting Sarai and presenting the work done
so far. Below is a brief outline of some of the projects.
1. Shahar ke Nishan: Politics of Visual Spaces in Delhi
Reading everyday signs of the city to decipher urban micro-politics.
Sadan Jha & Prabhas Ranjan
Sadan and Prabhas have been studying hoardings, posters and
wall-writings in Delhi, Patna and Jammu. They have tried to capture
the complexities in these local forms of advertisement which are both
products as well as producers of a relationship between agencies of
globalization and traditional culture. These advertisements lead them
to those processes in and through which local symbolic spaces work
hand in hand with standard symbolic spaces.
2. Bangla Urban Folk Songs
Exploration of the Bangla urban folk/rock/pop music in contemporary
Calcutta.
Avishek Ganguly
Avishek traces the recent upsurge of Urban Music in Calcutta to
'Moheener Ghoraguli', a little-known band formed in 1977. Their music,
the first successful articulation of a globalized late-modernity in
Bangla urban songs, dissipated quietly. The last decade saw a revival
of experimental Bangla modern songs with Suman Chattopadhyay.
While the success of Suman's experiments emboldened veterans like
Pratul Mukhopadhyay and Ranjan Prasad to take up their guitars once
again, it also set the stage for a host of new performers: bands like
Poroshpathor, Chondrobindoo, Cactus, Abhilasha, Bhoomi and soloists
like Anjan Dutta and Nachiketa. This music, says Avishek, is the
cultural expression of the contemporary metropolitan.
3. Sahibabad Sounds
A media project concerned with youth mandali [performative gang
cultures]
Hansa Thapliyal & Vipin Bhatti
Hansa and Vipin have been a building a soundscape based on the
experiences of a group of boys growing up in Sahibabad - a suburb of
Delhi which also borders a village. The complex set of identities
borne out of this "village-city difference" find expression in comic
storytelling that is a form of group entertainment.
4. Local Hero: David Dhawan's Govinda
Concerned with the mofussil aesthetic and ideology of Bollywood's
enduring popular cast.
Achal Prabhala
While studying 'Govinda', the character created by David Dhawan in his
films Achal finds that it conforms largely to patterns of the
outsider-insider battle, and the patriarchal hirearchy of the Hindi
film in general even while seemingly departing from Hindi film norms.
He also finds the treatment of Govinda by the english language media
remains that accorded to a subaltern, assuming an audience of similar
class inclinations. He draws a parallel in the treatment of Laloo
Prasad Yadav, the Bihar politician.
5. Project MilJul: Alternative Interfaces for Mobile Phones
Interface design concerned with vernacular visual idiom for mobile
phone interfaces.
Priya Prakash
Priya has been looking at the possibility of designing mobile phones
for ordinary citizens. She conducted a detailed survey in spaces
inhabited by the working class in Mumbai eg. market places, local
trains etc. Her study looked at existing forms of tele-communication,
need for mobile phone usage and threw up interesting possibilities and
situations where wireless communication technology could be used.
6. Graphic Novel (Comic-Manga) on a City
A proposal to create a graphic novel on city life in Delhi.
Sarnath Banerjee
Sarnath has tried to draw on his experiences in Delhi to create
characters and plots for his comic novel. The "narrative" is centered
around a roadside bookstall located in Connaught Place. Characters
come and go, interact with the eccentric owner and draw from their
experiences in other locations. There is an attempt to capture the
dispersed character of Delhi, and experiment with new forms in the
graphic novel.
The novel is under production.
II. Launch of Online Labour Archive
May 1st, 2002 saw the launch of the first public domain digital
archive on labour in India. Sarai provided technical consultancy to
V.V.Giri National Labour Institute, Noida, to set-up the online
version of the archive. The archive's user database is customised from
Greenstone, a software under General Public License. To check out the
archive log on to http://www.indialabourarchives.org or click on
http://www.sarai.net/archive/archive.net
III. New Initiatives @ SARAI
i. IPR and the Knowledge/ Culture Commons
Towards a cultural interrogation of law
New media and its movements like the open source movement is
challenging traditional notions of property, authorship, originality
and ownership. The project, initiated by Lawrence Liang & Sudhir
Krishnaswamy, looks at ways in which these challenges affect our
understanding of Intellectual Property Rights and explores alternate
accounts of IPR that may be required to argue for a larger notion of
the public domain or commons. The project also looks at expanding this
study to similar social movements in the form of open technologies,
open art and open law.
http://www.sarai.net/mediacity/newmedia/essays/ipr.htm
ii.New Discussion Lists
Sarai has been hosting several online discussion lists in the past few
months. There are two new additions:
a. The Digi Archive mailing list is a platform to discuss
procedures, problems and possibilities of digital archives. This a
collaboration with Ashish Rajadhyaksha, CSCS (Bangalore), NLI (Noida)
& Sarai. To subscribe click on
http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/digi-archive
b. The Commons Law mailing list is an extension of the IPR &
Knowledge/Culture Commons Project. This list seeks to build a
community interested in the Public Domain/Commons and law. For more
information click on
http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law
IV. Website Updates
The website has undergone many changes in content and design. New
sections have been added and much of the content has been updated.
1. The Language/Popular Culture segment is a space for engagement with
the public domain, constituted by creative production and critical
reflection in and on languages in India and elsewhere. New essays have
been added to this section:
Language in the Prison-House of Nationalism
Ravikant reviews 'Hindi Nationalism' written by Alok Rai
http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/ravikant_alok.htm
Hindi's Unhappy Consciousness
Aditya Nigam's review article takes off from Alok Rai's 'Hindi
Nationalism' to talk of larger issues facing contemporary Hindi
http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/adiyta.htm
"I'm trying to counter the Babhani takeover of the Hindi belt"
A discussion between Alok Rai, Shahid Amin & Palash Krishna Mehrotra
http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/interview_tahelk
a.htm
The Writer of Middles
A collection of previously published middles by Anuradha Roy
http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/anuradha.htm
Contests Around Obscenity in Late Colonial North India [pdf]
The article by Charu Gupta explores the idea of obscenity in the
Hindi print domain of the 1920's and 30's
http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/dirty_hindi.pdf
Loneliness of a Long Distance Bihari
A reflection on the idea of 'Bihariness' by Tarun Bhartiya
http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/lonely_tarun.htm
Dilli Mein Uneende (Sleepless in Delhi)
A translation of Gagan Gill's journey with a Delhi autodriver
http://www.sarai.net/language/popularculture/essays/gagan_sleepless.
htm
2.Free Software Kit
We introduce the 'Free Software Kit' on our website. The Kit is an
attempt at building a user manual for free software. It will carry
technical reviews, usage guidance, user comments and information on
new softwares. We invite contributions and comments from you to build
on the exisiting material and make this a comprehensive manual. For
more details log onto
http://www.sarai.net/freesoftware/software_kit/intro.htm
3. Ibarat
'Ibarat' is a wall magazine taken out by the eight members of the
CyberMohalla Project. The participants, between 14 to 20 years of age,
plan to print it once every two months. This month the 'Ibarat' was
pasted on almost 25 walls in their neighbourhood - LNJP Colony, near
Ajmeri Gate in New Delhi.
CyberMohalla is part of the Outreach programme of Sarai to help shape
processes of reflection and expression in the local community. Along
with Ankur, an NGO which runs an experimental education project,
CyberMohalla has set up a tactical media lab on free software, which
is now dubbed "CompuGhar"(ComputerHouse).
The 'Ibarat' is available on our website in Hindi and is also
translated into English. For the Hindi link click
http://www.sarai.net/community/cybermohalla/iabrat01/page1.html
If you have problems reading the Hindi text then download the font -
'shusha' - from http://hindi.sarai.net/download.htm
To access the English version click on
http://www.sarai.net/community/cybermohalla/iabrat01/english.htm
V. Hindi Website
The Hindi site now gets its own URL. Simply type in
http://hindi.sarai.net to log on.
i. Websadhan updated
Many new links have been added to the Hindi site. Check them out at
http://hindi.sarai.net/websadhan/websadhan.htm
ii. Lok Sanskriti
This is a platform for concepts, ideas and writings on themes not
usually addressed by either mainstream academics or mainstream media.
This month's additions include essays by Aditya Nigam on political
culture, globalisation and identity politics, especially issues
related to dalit identity. Click on the following links to read
them.
http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/viswayan_aditya.pdf
http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/paschim_aditya.pdf
http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/marx_aditya.htm
http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/dalit1_aditya.pdf
http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/dalit_aditya.pdf
http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/jamana_aditya.htm
http://hindi.sarai.net/loksanskriti/adhunikta_aditya.htm
We welcome comments on the website. Do write in with ideas,
suggestions and material that you may wish to display on our site.
VI. Films @ SARAI: "A Cinema of Anxiety Series: The Living Dead"
Curated by Ravi Vasudevan
In its Cinema of Anxiety Series, Sarai celebrates the realm of the
undead, a zone of anxiety in human perception stalked by zombies,
ghosts and phantoms, characters who refuse to rest easily in their
graves. This spectral universe emerges from a variety of psychological
and soci-political motivations, from persistent feelings of guilt, a
lingering unease about the violence attending civilizational
processes, fears and anxieties erupting from human loss sustained in
warfare and ethnic cleansing, and the continued power exercised by old
societies over the new. This is an idiosyncratic assembly of films,
ranging from the exquisite work of Andrey Tarkovsky, through the
horror films of low budget American independent film maker George
Romero and the French auteur Georges Franju, and the atmospheric films
of Hindustani cinema's Kamal Amrohi in the reincarnation genre. Long
live the uncanny, let the ravaged souls of the undead stalk and cast
fear over this barbarous society!
Please note: All screenings are on Fridays, 4:30 pm, at the Seminar
Room, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road,
Delhi - 110054. The films are listed in the order of screening.
1. 7th June, 2002
Night of the Living Dead (1968), USA, B&W, 96 mins
Directed by George Romero
In 'Night of the Living Dead', a brother and sister, estranged and ill
at ease with each other, mourn the loss of their father in a rural
graveyard.
A figure, shuffling towards them from the edge of the frame suddenly
lurches forward murderously. The dead are coming back to life, their
purpose singular and relentless, to consume the living. In the long
night of unceasing terror which follows, several people barricade
themselves
inside a rural house in an attempt to survive the hordes of shambling
zombies.
George Romero re-invents the low budget horror film, casting superior
unknowns and gnawing away at anxieties and fears produced by an age of
large scale warfare and mass annihilation. He lights and photographs
the piece almost as if it were an avant-garde underground film. The
crisscrossing light beams, the shadows, the darkness set ablaze by
fires are sharp compliments to the mood and events in the film. Use of
8mm image, reminiscent of home videos, intensifies the uncanny
scenario, associating amateur family documentation with nightmare
imaginings.
2. 14th June, 2002
Mahal (1949), India, B&W, 162 mins
Directed by Kamaal Amrohi
'Mahal', Amrohi's first independent directorial venture and one of
Bombay Talkies' last and biggest hits, is a complicated ghost story
psychodrama. Shankar moves into an abandoned mansion with a tragic
history. He notices his resemblance to a portrait of the mansion's
former owner and sees the ghost of the man's mistress, Kamini.
As in his remarkable Meena Kumari films, 'Daera' (1953)and 'Pakeezah'
(1971), Amrohi shows his great skills in evoking a mysterious universe
peopled by figures who live in the shadows of previous lives and
decaying societies. Attentive to the slowing cadences of stillness,
circularity and repetition, his films are eerie, sombre testaments to
a dying world which will not let go, draining away the life of his
protagonists, transmuting them into somnambulists and wraiths who
restlessly wander the graveyard and the ghostly haveli. Ashok Kumar,
who headed Bombay Talkies in these fading years of the once powerful
studio, conjures up a fine performance as the obsessive, haunted
figure drawn by Lata's beckoning voice, presaging an important
tradition of protagonists, as with Dilip Kumar in 'Madhumati' (1958)
and Guru Dutt in 'Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam' (1962).
3. 21st June, 2002
Eyes Without a Face (1959), France, B&W , 87 mins
Directed by Georges Franju
"This is Franju's art to turn the camera's gaze on faces and objects
just long enough to brand them deeply." Godard
Parisian police puzzle over the bodies of young women found with their
faces mutilated. Behind these crimes is the renowned surgeon
Genessier, whose daughter Christiane's face was badly mutilated in an
accident. Genessier keeps her alive in his country home, seeking to
reattach the mutilated women's faces to his daughter through a
hetero-graft technique. However each attempt keeps ending in disaster
as her body rejects the grafts.
Georges Franju co-founded the Cinémathèque Francaise with Henri
Langlois in 1937, and in 1949 completed his first film, 'The Blood of
the Beast/Le Sang des Betes', a short unflinching documentary on the
Paris slaughterhouses. Franju's childhood love for intoxicating
stories of violence and savage villainy in pulp novels such as
Fantomas and Judex later inspired him to create mystical thrillers
like 'Eyes Without a Face', 'Judex' and 'Shadowman'.
The clear, dreamlike texture of his films puts him in the circle of
Cocteau, Buñuel and the other Surrealists. 'Eyes Without a Face', was
written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, the French thriller
writers whose work furnished films such as 'Les Diaboliques' (1955),
Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' (1958) and the disembodied limbs horror film
'Body Parts' (1991).
4. 28th June, 2002
Solaris (1972), USSR, Colour, 167 mins
Directed by Andrey Tarkovsky
Based on a novel by the noted Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, Tarkovsky's
'Solaris' is often described as the Soviet 2001 - "Star Trek as
written by Dostoevsky". The film concerns a troubled, guilt-ridden
scientist sent to investigate strange occurences on a space station
orbiting Solaris, a mysterious planet with an intelligent ocean
capable of penetrating the deepest recesses of the subconscious.
Confronted on his arrival by the
incarnation of a long-dead lover, the protagonist is forced to relive
the greatest moral failures of his past. The film is magnificently
mounted in widescreen and colour and offers a fascinating, felicitous
marriage between Tarkovsky's characteristic moral/metaphysical
concerns and the popular format of science fiction, a genre for which
the director expressed no particular affection, but to which he would
return again, more obliquely, just as cerebrally in 'Stalker' and 'The
Sacrifice'.
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That's all this month. We hope to see some of you at the screenings.
As always waiting to hear from you at dak at sarai.net
Cheers
Ranita
The Sarai Programme
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054.
Tel: 3960040, 3951190
Fax: 3928391, 3943450
www.sarai.net
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