[Sarai Newsletter] OCTOBER 2005

[The Sarai Programme]

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***************************************** SARAI NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 2005 
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Dear All,

This September saw the launch of three new publications - Sarai Reader 
05: Bare Acts, Deewan-e-Sarai 02: Shehernama and Medianagar 02: Ubharta 
Manjar. As always, they are available for free download on the web. We 
also include short reflections on This Year This City, Sarai's ongoing 
conversations in the university, and a listing of events for the month 
of October.

We hope to see you at the film screenings, at Sarai and/or at Khoj.

Warmly,

Aarti Sethi
[Outreach]

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[[CONTENTS]]

EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS

1. Presentation @ Sarai: Adrian Caon

2. Seminars @ CSDS: Shakespeare's Henry V and the Many Faces of War, 
Douglas Lumis + Okinawa - Japan's Internal Colony, chinin ushii

3. Masterclass @ Sarai: Creative Writing Masterclass, Sharmistha Mohanty

4. Sarai Reader 05 Discussion (in collaboration with Alternative Law 
Forum, Bangalore): CED Bnagalore


FILM

5. Film @ Sarai: The Worm of the Word in the Belly of the Picture, The 
Germ of the Picture in the Blood of the Word, curated by Ruchir Joshi


RESOURCES


6. Publications @ Sarai: Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts + Medianagar 02: 
Ubharta Manjar + Deewan-e-Sarai 02: Shehernama


CONVERSATIONS

7. 5 Years of Sarai: This Year This City - A public conversation on the 
year that was in Delhi

8. An Invitation

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[[EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS]]

====================
Presentation @ Sarai
====================

Adrian Caon
3 pm, Wednesday 26 October 2005
Seminar room, Sara-CSDS

Adrian Caon is an artist based in Adelaide, Australia. His work 
encompasses photography, drawing, installation and performance. He is 
currently an artist in residency at the Sanskriti Kendra, Delhi and is 
working on a project on street signage in Delhi. Adrian has done a 
similar project in his own city of Adelaide and will be showing images 
from, and speaking of his work. We invite all interested to be part of a 
conversation on ways of thinking about and representing the city.

==============
Seminar @ CSDS
==============

Shakespeare's Henry V and the Many Faces of War

Talk by Douglas Lumis
3 pm, Monday 3 October 2005
Seminar Hall, CSDS

Henry V, Shakespeare’s only war play, is not only a powerful drama, it 
also contains a wealth of information concerning the nature of war, the 
politics of war, the psychology of war, the laws and customs of war, and 
the limits of those laws and customs. We will be watching the film clips 
of the classic Lawrence Olivier version of the play, followed by the 
very shocking scene that was omitted (censored?) out of that version, 
but included in the later Kenneth Branagh version. Prof. Lummis will 
give a short introduction to the sections; followed by discussion.


[Douglas Lumis, a distinguished political theorist, is the first Chair 
Professor of Rajni Kothari Chair in Democracy. His engagement with the 
theory and practice of democracy runs across several distinct 
civilizational-cultural and political boundaries. Among his books are: 
English Conversation as Ideology, A New Look at the Chrysanthemum and 
the Sword, Japan's Radical Constitution and Radical Democracy]

*****

Okinawa – Japan's Internal Colony

Talk by chinin ushii
3 pm, Thursday, 6 October 2005
Seminar Hall, CSDS

"I am supposed to be from ‘Japan’. But it is not so easy for me to use 
the word ‘Japan’ to describe myself. I will tell you why.
I will explain the history and the present situation of Okinawa where I 
was born, raised, and live."


[Ms. chinin ushii, is an essayist based in Okinawa (Japan). Also a 
journalist, she writes on Neo-Colonialism, Okinawa-Japan relations, the 
United States military base issue in Okinawa and the other cultural 
subjects]


===================
Masterclass @ Sarai
===================

CREATIVE WRITING MASTERCLASS
Tutor: Sharmistha Mohanty

This workshop is open to those who wish to have a serious engagement 
with imaginative prose writing, fiction or non-fiction. There are two 
fundamental aspects that the workshop will focus on.

Because we are born into language, writing cannot be taught as a craft, 
like the other arts. We already know the codes, the grammar, how to make 
sentences, paragraphs, pages. In writing we work at the opposite end 
from a musician or a dancer who must first learn the basics, we need to 
refuse the ease with which words come. A first task then is to make a 
/relationship/ with language, different from the everyday one.

For myself, as a prose fiction writer, I see speech as close to thought, 
writing as close to consciousness. That is why it is often possible in 
writing to express something unknown even to oneself. More than finding 
a way to /make/ this relationship with language, we can look at how it 
can be/ allowed/. This may mean expanding the space of language, not 
shrinking it by taking on given structures, or having too defined a 
purpose, or using things one already knows.

A second task is to ask the question, what is form? In writing, form 
arises not from an external, not from mere wishes or ideals. Form arises 
from a real need. This is what must be identified, by everyone, 
individually, for themselves. Arising from a need and arriving at its 
shape through a struggle, each found form will have its own rigour and 
can never be whimsical or random.

By letting oneself be with these explorations, once can move towards a 
writing which is able to evoke what is not already known.

The basic principle I will work with in conducting the workshop is that 
writing, because it cannot be “taught,” can only be guided, by a 
practitioner, and the best form of guidance is to work on the actual 
writing and take it forward through criticism and dialogue.

Each participant will present their writing on a regular basis during 
the workshop. The writing will be discussed at the workshop by myself 
and all the other participants. I will also hold one on one sessions 
with every participant at least once during the course.

We will also be doing some reading in parallel. The reading will span 
vastly different kinds of prose, perhaps the autobiographical pieces of 
James Baldwin, the novels of W.G. Sebald, the prose of Claudio Magris, 
the short fictions of Bruno Schulz, the essays of Joseph Brodsky, and 
Indian myths and folktales which have their own special ways of 
approaching narrative.


[Sharmistha Mohanty received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing 
(Fiction) from the Iowa Writer's Workshop. She is the author of the 
screenplay for the film Nazar (1989) by Mani Kaul, and two novels-- Book 
One (1995) and the just published New Life (India Ink/Roli Books, 2005). 
Her fiction has also appeared in the journals, Ploughshares (Boston), 
Siecle 21 (Paris) and Gender and History (London), and Inertia Magazine 
(New York, online).]


The duration of the workshop is nine sessions from 26 November 2005 to 
24 December 2005. The participants will meet every Wednesday and 
Saturday, from 4 pm to 7 pm.

The class will have a limited number of participants. Applicants should 
send in a writing sample of imaginative prose, of not more than five 
pages (it can be an excerpt from a longer work), and a page on why they 
would like to attend the workshop.


Masterclass fee: Rs. 1500/-, payable on confirmation of selection.
Last date for applications: 25 October, 2005
Selected participants will be informed on email by November 10, 2005.


Applications and queries can be sent to dak at sarai.net, with the subject 
line "Creative Writing Workshop". Paper applications should be posted to:

"Application for Creative Writing Workshop"
Sarai / CSDS
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi - 110054

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Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts Discussion
=====================================

Center for Education and Documentation
3 October 2005, Monday, 6 pm.

Following the launch of Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts in Delhi, ALF and Sarai would like to invite you for a launch and discussion of 
Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts 
in Bangalore.

The discussants for the evening are:

Eshah Shah, Fellow, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development

Sitharamam Kakarala, Senior Fellow, Center for Study of Culture and Society

Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Faculty, National Law School


Center for Education and Documentation (Domlur)
Take the left turn on the Shanti Sagar intersection on Airport road, and follow the road till you reach a prominent red brick building.  For further details  see www.doccentre.org

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[[FILM]]

We are happy to announce that film screenings curated by the Sarai 
programme will also be screened at the Khoj artists collective. This 
marks a collaborative initiative between Sarai and Khoj. This new series 
of screenings will run on Thursdays at Khoj at 6:00 pm and on Fridays at 
Sarai-CSDS at the usual time, 4:30 pm.

These screenings have been an integral part of Sarai's programming and 
public profile for five years. The screenings have been a space for 
people from diverse backgrounds - academics and students, practitioners, 
artists and researchers – to converse with each other about the way in 
which films speak to the times that they were made in, and to the times 
we live in.

We hope that with this initiative a new public will find the Sarai 
screenings, and that Sarai will find a new public, bringing new energies 
and approaches into talking and thinking about films. Hoping to see many 
of you, and many good films.

films @ khoj – Thursdays, 6.00 pm
Khoj Studios
S-17 . Khirki Extension.
(Near Sai Baba Temple)
New Delhi-17
Call:91-11-55655874\73
www.khojworkshop.org khojinteract at gmail.com


films @ Sarai – Fridays, 4.30 pm


=====================================
Film @ Sarai: October – November 2005
=====================================

In what is hopefully the first of a series of critical engagements with 
filmmakers/media practitioners, Ruchir Joshi has curated a month long 
series this October , in which he reflects on the linkages and 
disunities between Image and Words.



The Worm of the Word in the Belly of the Picture
The Germ of Picture in the Blood of the Word



As we know, the relationship between image and words precedes even the 
central binary of picture and sound in cinema. What I would like to do 
with these October screenings is to put forward some of my own films 
along with a few video works by a close friend and colleague Tony Cokes, 
works which try and mess up and re-jig the usually straight and deadly 
yoking/cleaving of spoken/written text and image.

Tony Cokes is now widely recognised in his native USA and elsewhere as 
one of the most radical artists to have emerged over the last twenty-odd 
years in the area of what is loosely termed `video art'. Across his 
career, Tony has moved through a series of sparse, rigorous and yet 
often deeply humorous engagements with picture, sound, politics and 
contemporary music. As a black artist working in a society and 
environment that ever keeps finding new ways to marginalise 
African-Americans both in society and in the arena of art production, 
Tony has consciously and consistently managed to avoid and get way 
beyond the `identity' trap; as a person of huge erudition and fantastic 
articulation, both in terms of words and pix, he has managed to navigate 
around the pitfalls of the overly cerebral; in an international art 
`world' too easily seduced by the twee, the pretty and the 
surface-clever, Tony has managed to keep vibrant his interventions in 
debates/issues of race, class, gender and representation.

In my own film work there has always been an ongoing struggle between 
image, sound, word and text. It's a struggle that quarrels equally from 
my old, basic, allegiances to the Western modernism and post-modernism I 
stumbled across in my teens and twenties and my need, since then, to 
find some meaningful purchase in the shifting cultural sands of this 
Indian society I've lived and worked in.

What is interesting for me is that Tony and I first met at the art 
school in America which gave each of us the space to find his initial 
voice. While we've been close since then, often bouncing things off of 
each other, occasionally even working for each other, our works have 
diverged wildly in form and content. Looking at Tony's work and mine 
together, many questions, parallels and contradictions come up, of which 
the first one is, oddly enough, the ongoing, dichotomous, fighting 
marriage between picture and word which was pretty entertaining and 
troubling even when we were in college a quarter century ago. Which to 
me seems a good place to start from.

- Ruchir Joshi


|| Eleven Miles||
52 minutes
Directed by Ruchir Joshi

6 October 2005 - Khoj
7 October 2005 - Sarai

****

|| Black September ||
Directed by Tony Cokes

|| Shrink 2 ||
|| Shrink 2B ||
Directed by Tony Cokes

|| Love, Labour, Language ||
Directed by Tony Cokes

13 October 2005 - Khoj
14 October 2005 - Sarai

****

|| Dream Before Wicket ||
Directed by Ruchir Joshi

|| Pop Manifestos ||
Directed by Tony Cokes


20 October 2005 –Khoj
21 October 2005 – Sarai

****

|| Black Celebration ||
Directed by Tony Coke

|| Another Mercedes For Ashish ||
Directed by Ruchir Joshi

27 October 2005 – Khoj
28 October 2005 – Sarai

****

All screenings at Khoj at 5.30 pm, Thursdays
All screenings at Sarai at 4.30 pm, Fridays

The programme is subject to last minute changes.

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[[RESOURCES]]


====================
Publications @ Sarai
====================

http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader_05.html
Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts

The Sarai Reader is a unique product, even in terms of form: neither 
book nor journal, it is a purely experimental enterprise that combines 
contributions that range from the academic to the literary, from the 
purely textual to the visual, from detailed ethnographic reports to 
fairly dense theoretical writings. In fact, it will not be an 
exaggeration to say that the Sarai Reader embodies in every sense, the 
collapse of all boundaries of form, style and genre. Sarai has made 
available to us a whole new language for apprehending the enormous 
changes taking place over the last decade, which have radically 
transformed our existence.

Aditya Nigam,Seminar September 2005
(for full text of review visit: 
http://www.india-seminar.com/2005/553/553%20books.htm)



http://hindi.sarai.net/deewan/deewan01.html
Deewan-e-Sarai 02: Shaharnama

The second Sarai Hindi Reader focuses on cities past and present, 
especially Delhi, by enabling dialogue between social science and 
literary imaginations in Hindi and Urdu. Traditionally, the city seems 
not to have emerged as the site of reflection in the Hindi litrary 
imagination. Deewan-e-Sarai attempts to fill this aporia. The collection 
brings together writings by young and emerging writers, revisits older 
histories and inscribes the contemporary in a fresh register. The book 
also contains an annotated bibliography of Hindi prose writing on the city.



http://www.sarai.net/mediacity/filmcity/medianagar02.htm
Medianagar 02

Medianagar is the annual Hindi publication of the Publics and Practices 
in the History of the Present [PPHP] project in Sarai. Medianagar 02 
explores the dynamic, flexible networks involved in the production, 
distribution and circulation of diverse media forms. It attempts a 
creative analysis and rendering of the modes, trends and representations 
of old and new media in the contemporary city.

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[[CONVERSATIONS]]

=================
5 Years of Sarai
=================

This Year This City
3 pm, 17 September 2005


For the last five years Sarai has played host to a public conversation 
on the year that was, in this our city. This year too people from 
different locations converged in the Interface zone to share 
experiences. The conversation was facilitated by Shuddhabrata Sengupta 
from the Sarai Media Lab in conversation with Jeet Thayil (poet), 
Chander Nigam (lawyer in Tees Hazari court), Anand Taneja (researcher at 
Sarai), air traffic controllers Debotosh Moitra and SC Badola, and 
Prabhat Jha (Prabhat is associated with Ankur and also coordinates the 
Cybermohalla Project, with practioners from Sarai).

The conversation was threaded around the figure of the 'stranger' - the 
figure who comes to the city, or in living in the city is nonetheless at 
the periphery of imagination. Prabhat read an extract from a text 
co-authored with Ravikant in the Deewan on the verses painted behind 
autorikshaws. The verses contain in themselves stories of 
transformationHis lead to an animated discussion around how the city is 
inscribed by the everyday perambulations of desires and dreams. Anand 
has recently been experimenting with the form of the ghazal and using 
newspaper headlines to compose short 'verse-stories' in English and 
Hindustani. His rendering of some of his ghazals was a nice companion 
text to Prabhat's - of how could find lyrical (?) registers to speak of 
this city be found.

Chander spoke of the messy, and sometimes hilarious, experiences of 
being an advocate in one of India's busiest courts and the many figures 
she encounters. Jeet Thayil, amongst other things, spoke of his 
encounter with the architecture of Delhi. Of the strange experience of 
being 'framed' by structures immense and grand, which seemed not to 
diminish, but extend the human figure.

Debotosh and Sc Badola gave a fascinating account of their work. The 
world when seen from that height must look very different - where 
coordinates must be mapped in three dimensions, keeping in mind the 
critical fourth i.e time.

The evening saw the official launch of the three new publications. Ravi 
Sundaram began the conversation by speaking of Sarai's in the past five 
years, this was folowed by Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta 
speaking of the making of the Sarai Reader Series. Ravikant and Sanjay 
Sharma introduced the Deewan-e-Sarai, followed by Rakesh Sharma who 
introduced Medianagar. Ashis Nandy, Brajeshwar Mishra and Anil Chamadia 
were invited to respond to the books, and the evening ended with them 
sharing their insights. Ravikant noted that while traditionally the 
'village' and not the city seemed to have captured Hindi litrary 
imaginations, the attempt in Deewan was to fill this aporia and claim 
the city as a site for thinking and writing. Ashis Nandy questioned the 
sharp divide between 'village' and 'city' and noted that the most 
interesting cities were those that carried within them the experiential 
life-world of the village. These were perhaps 'lost' cities, cities that 
we perhaps inhabited only in the mind.

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An Invitation
===============

This last month we have been having informal conversations in various 
colleges in the university. While the conversations take the 
broadsheets, Sarai.txt, as their initial provocation, they soon flow 
into general discussions on 'the state we are in'! We have had 
conversations in Lady Sriram College, JNU, Kirori Mal College. It is 
important for us to take our work and provocations to other sites, and 
we hope these discussions are interesting for those attending.

Here is an invitation from Sarai.txt 2.1:

"You are cordially invited to invite us,
the Broadsheet Collective,
To talk to you so that you can talk to us
and so that even if we are strangers now,
we will find a question or two to share for the road"

Call, write, e-mail and we can fix a time and place.
Write to us at broadsheet at sarai.net

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END OF NEWSLETTER

The Newsletter of the Sarai Programme,
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054, www.sarai.net
Info: dak at sarai.net
To subscribe: send a blank email to newsletter-request at sarai.net with 
subscribe in the subject header.
Directions to Sarai: We are ten minutes from Delhi University. Nearest 
bus stop: IP college or Exchange Stores. You can also take the Metro - 
get off at Civil Lines station.

See Calendar and Newsletter online: 
http://www.sarai.net/calendar/newsletter.htm