The Sarai Programme Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) Delhi

www.sarai.net

sarai सरायồỂỔ% سرای

an enclosed space in a cityor, beside a highway

where travellers and caravans can find shelter, sustenance and companionship

a tavern - a meeting place - a public house

a place to rest in the middle of a journey

a destination and a point of departure

sarai caravan seraiseraglio

sarajevo katwaria sarai

mor saraikalu sarai

sarai julena - sarai rohilla - sarai kale khan

neb saraiber sarai

arab ki saraisheikh saraijea sarai lado sarai

yusuf sarai

Sarai-CSDS : Distributed Public Creativity

InterdisciplinaryResearch

Experimental Media PracticeContemporary Art

Architecture for Public Knowledge Generation

Discussion Lists & Web Content

Archive

PresentationsTalks

Screenings Publications

Exhibitions WorkshopsSeminars

ART is RESEARCHRESEARCH is ART

THEORISTS are PRACTITIONERSPRACTITIONERS are THEORISTS

KNOWLEDGE is CREATIVITYCREATIVITY is KNOWLEDGE

nothing is certainthere is nothing ‘new’ in new media

Sarai : Activities, Nodes and Processes

Cybermohallacollaboration with ngo

critical pedagogylocality media labs

free & ‘social’ software working class spaces

young peopleinterpreting and imagining

urban experience

Continuing Research

Information SocietySurveillance/Censorship/

Information Politics

Intellectual PropertyPiracy/Commons/Open Source

Urban EnvironmentsArchitecture/Zoning/Ecology/

Health/Labour

Publics and PracticesCinema/Video/Music/Cable

Viewership/Circulation/DistributionProduction/Re-Production/Piracy

LanguageHindi Language Resources

Localization of FLOSS SoftwareHindi Lists and Publications

Translation

Art & Media Projects Sarai Media Lab

Raqs Media CollectiveInstallations/VideoRadio/Print/Web

ResidenciesPublications

Sarai Readers (English)Sarai.txt (English)

Deewan-e-Sarai (Hindi)Media Nagar (Hindi)

Cybermohalla Publications(Hindi and English)

Archivedvd/vcd/cd/books/pamphletsdocuments/images/posterspopular cultural materials

Online Presence : Websites/Lists/Blogs/Online Archive/E BooksEvents : Conferences/Seminars/Workshops/Talks/Screenings

Outreach : University & City Events/Informal MeetingsCollaborations : Local/Regional/International

Distributed Research Network : Fellowships and Stipends

www.sarai.net

Events at Sarai

ConferencesSeminars

Workshops

Sarai Publications

The Sarai Reader SeriesCopyleft Publishing

'The Public Domain' : Sarai Reader 01, 2001(http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader1.html)

'The Cities of Everyday Life' : Sarai Reader 02, 2002,(http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader2.html ).

'Shaping Technologies' : Sarai Reader 03, 2003(http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader3.html)

'Crisis/Media' : Sarai Reader 04, 2004(http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader4.html)

'Bare Act' : Sarai Reader 05, 2005(http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader_05.html)

<http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader4.htm>

There’s been a delicious debate in the Indian press of late. A prominent English dailyannounced that it would sell space on Page Three (its gossip section) to anyone whowas willing to pay to be featured. (The inference is that the rest of the news in the

paper is in some way unsponsored, unsullied, ‘pure news’.) The announcement provoked aseries of responses – most of them outraged – that the proud tradition of impartial journalism could sink to such depths. Personally, I was delighted. For a major mainstreamnewspaper to introduce the notion of ‘paid for’ news (Noam Chomsky, Ed Herman and a fewothers have been going on about it for some years now) is a giant step forward in the project of educating a largely credulous public about how the mass media operates. Oncethe idea of ‘paid for’ news has been mooted, once it’s been ushered through the portals of popular imagination, it won’t be hard for people to work out that if gossip columns innewspapers can be auctioned, why not the rest of the column space? After all, in this ageof the ‘Market’, when everything’s up for sale – rivers, forests, freedom, democracy and justice – what’s special about news? Sponsored News – what a delectable idea! “This reportis brought to you by”. There could be a State regulated sliding scale for rates (headlines,pg. 1, pg. 2, sports section etc.) Or on second thought we could leave that to be regula-ted by the ‘Free Market’ – as it is now. Why change a winning formula?

The debate about whether mass circulation newspapers and commercial TV channels are finely plotted ideological conspiracies or apolitical, benign anarchies that bumble along as best they can, is an old one and needs no elaboration. After the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre, the US mainstream media’s blatant performance as the government’smouthpiece was the butt of some pretty black humour in the rest of the world. It brought the myth of the ‘Free Press’ in America crashing down. But before we gloat – the Indian mass media behaved no differently during the Pokhran nuclear tests and the Kargil war. There was no bumbling and very little that was benign in the shameful coverage of the December 13th attack on the Indian Parliament and the trial of S.A.R. Geelani who has been sentenced to death by a sessions court – after having been the subject of a media trial fuelled by a campaign of nationalist hysteria and outright lies. On a more everyday basis, would anybody who depends on the Indian mass media for information know that 80,000 people have been killed in Kashmir since 1989, most of them Muslim, most of them by Indian security forces? Most Indians would be outraged if it were suggested to them that the killings and ‘disappearances’ in the Kashmir Valley put India on par with any Banana Republic.

10 / Sarai Reader 2004: Crisis/Media

Peace is WarThe Collateral Damage of Breaking News

A R U N D H A T I R O Y

The Cyber

MohallaProject

Text

"...Listening to the Softest and the Loudest of Sounds ..."

"...At the Compughar, technology is not a terror, neither is it expensive. We have computers here, but no computer course. Neither is their any vocational training. What there is, is an open environment. Here, we write that which we feel. Whatever we write, we type onto the computer. This is not a place where we young people and kids are under any kind of pressure". (Compughar - literally, 'computer house' - basti (neighbourhood) speak for the Ankur/Sarai digital lab at the LNJP basti, Delhi)

Collaboration between Sarai and Ankur

Ankur is an NGO working in the field of Alternative, Critical and Non Formal Education

3 Locality Media Labs Located in a Working Class Neighbourhood and in 2 Illegal

Settlements

Locality Labs networked with Cybermohalla R&D Lab & the Sarai Media Lab

60 Young Practitioners Meeting Thrice a WeekOldest Locality Lab is 4 Years Old

Collaborative Writing, Editing, ListeningStory Telling Performances / Radio

Discussion Lists / BlogsBroadsheets / Wall Magazines

“Fearless Speech Needs Fearless Listening”

http://nangla-maachi.freeflux.net

http://nangla.freeflux.net

Text

"A re-telling, a word taken to signify the simultaneous existence of different versions of a narrative within oral, and from now onwards, digital cultures...

A rescension cannot be an improvement, nor can it connote a diminishing of value.

A rescension is that version which does not act as a replacement for any other configuration of its constitutive materials.

The existence of multiple rescensions is a guarantor of an idea or a work's ubiquity. This ensures that the constellation of narrative, signs and images that a work embodies is present, and waiting for iteration at more than one site at any given time. Rescensions are portable, and taken together, constitute ensembles that may form an interconnected web of ideas, images and signs."

Rescension

Contemporary Art ProjectsProduced at the Sarai Media Lab

Temporary Autonomous Sarai

The Wherehouse

Lost New ShoesA Measure of

Anacoustic Reason

The Impostor in the Waiting Room

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LEXWIKI

Networked Creative Practice(s)

Intensive Face to Face Interaction Over Long PeriodsEmphasis on Process rather than Product

Flexibility & Multiplicity of FormsCollaborations and Conversations

Continuing (Non-Goal Oriented) Research

Locating Media and Art Practice at Sarai within the context of a

Distributed Research Network

Research

Practice

Undergraduate & Post Graduate Studentsin Universities and Institutes

MPhil and PhD Research ScholarsCollege and University Departments

Independent Researchers and ScholarsWorking Academics

Students

Artists and PerformersCritics and Curators

Free Software & Open Source ProgrammersArchivistsJournalists

ProfessionalsDesignersWritersActivists

Fans and Enthusiasts

apart from mid-career and youngartists, researchers, theorists

& practitioners, people involved with sarai

have also included :

a worker in a fast food chaina small town bank employeea nurse in a maternity ward

a comic book writera composer of electronic music

a sound recordista lawyer

a pensionera sports journalist

Vijayawada

Udaipur

Goa

Delhi

Srinagar

Chandigarh

KolkataAhmedabad

Udaipur Allahabad Shillong

Chennai

Madurai

Bangalore

Goa

Mumbai

SARAI

Creation of a Dense Network of Interactions Through Regular Postings on the Reader-List and Feedback from Peers & Sarai

RaipurHyderabad

Vijayawada

Pune

Jaipur

AligarhTezpur

Delhi

Srinagar

Chandigarh

KolkataAhmedabad

Udaipur Allahabad Shillong

Chennai

Madurai

Bangalore

Goa

Mumbai

SARAI

RaipurHyderabad

Vijayawada

Pune

Jaipur

AligarhShanghai

Sydney

Tokyo

Dhaka

Bandung

Singapore

Colombo

HelsinkiHamburg

AmsterdamLondon

New YorkChicago

Los Angeles

Mexico City

TehranBeirut

Lahore

Moscow

Istanbul

Vienna Taipei

Sao PauloLagos

Bangkok

Kuala Lampur

Melbourne

Karachi

Seoul

JohannesburgShanghai

Dakar

Exchanges on the Reader Listtransmit to a

Global Network through

Forwards, Replies,

Other Lists etc. Tezpur

Ponytails-Rings-Punches : Female Boxers in IndiaPankaj Rishi Kumar, Mumbai

Documenting the Making of a Hindi Film SongPrashant Pandey, Delhi

Blank Noise : Notes Towards a Sound Installation in Womens ToiletsBuilding Testimonies on Sexual Harrassment in Public Space

Jasmeen Patheja, Bangalore

Manuel in the City : A Semi-Fictionalized Illustrated Bookon the Arrival and Absorption of Goan Migrants in Mumbai

Rochelle Pinto, Mumbai

Media Coverage of the Execution of Dhananjoy Chatterjee and is Impact on Children in West Bengal

Biswajit Roy and Nilanjan Datta, Kolkata

Selected Independent Fellowship Research Topics

Taran Khan’s Project‘Socialist Wives’

Documentary Video, Archival Research, Interviews, Oral History, Text, Performance

Corridor : The First Indian Graphic Novel Sarnath Bannerjee

Nancy Adajania’s Project on Digital Manipulation

and Popular Photography

Shahid Datawala’s Photographic

Research Project on the Ambience of Cinema Spaces

in Delhi

The Contemporary City

Migration

Information and Society

Media Histories and Practices

Intellectual Property

Experimental Media Forms

Language Technology, Politics & Culture

Urban EnvironmentLabour

Architecture

Open Source & Free Software

Narratives of Everyday Life

Oral History

Suburbs, Small Towns, Streets, Neighbourhoods

Cinema, TV, Radio, Performance, Music, Print, Internet

Contemporary Art

Infrastructure

Conflict & Violence

Surveillance

Popular Culture

Sexuality

Tactical Media

Cultures of Piracy

EssaysDesignComics

PhotographyLaw and LegalityTypography

The ‘New’ Economy

Urban Childhood

LeisureSport