media, information, the contemporary

Author: Sarai


  • Afterlife of the Nineties Romantic Film Song in the Virtual Public Sphere

    In this post, Abhija Ghosh, one of the researchers who received the Social Media Research grant for 2015, introduces her proposed work.

    In this project, I am interested in observing the popularity of nineties romantic cinema and music across several internet media streams such as video sharing platforms, online radio music channels, nineties fan sites and lists in order to map the registers of popular memory, affect and pleasure that mark an emerging cultural afterlife of this decade of Hindi cinema. Social media fan pages like All About 90s evoke cultural associations with the decade by regularly alluding to nineties media forms such as cassettes, video tapes and their object lives, or television broadcasts and their aesthetic convention, however it is the nineties romantic film song that seems to occupy a special space of nostalgia in the collective memory of such internet communities.

  • Short Term Research Projects in Social Media: Selected Proposals 2015

    The Sarai Programme is committed to developing a public architecture for creating knowledge and creative communities. In keeping with this commitment, we seek to develop a community of scholars, writers and practitioners who are motivated to make the materials and outcome of research available for public access and circulation, with the understanding that an imaginative engagement with social experience will be best fostered by a sharing of information, ideas, research materials and resources. We see our system of Short Term Research Projects as a resource that will be built on by many people working whether individually or in groups, but with a sense of collective endeavour and public purpose.

  • Call for Proposals: Short Term Research Projects in Social and Digital Media

    The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, invites proposals from individuals for research projects on contemporary social and digital media, its ecologies and histories. Selected research proposals will be supported with a short-term grant for six months, and the researchers will present their studies in a workshop at Sarai-CSDS at the…

  • Call for Applications: ‘Researching the Contemporary’ 2015

    The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) invites applications for its two-month Course on ‘Researching the Contemporary’. This cross-disciplinary Course will critically examine the formation of the contemporary and its multiple histories, ideologies, forms and affects. The three courses offered will enable participants to familiarize themselves with concepts, theories and methods that help…

  • Video Workshop, February 21-22, 2015

    The Sarai Programme is organising the Video Workshop, which will be held at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies on February 21-22, 2015. Registrations Please pre-register here if you are interested in taking part in the workshop. Do note that we have a limited number of seats for participants (who are not presenting…

  • BioScope Volume 5 Number 2, July 2014, Special Issue: Pakistani Cinema

    The July 2014 issue of BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies is now available both in print and online. The special issue is available for free online. The access will be free for the whole month of April Guest Editors Ali Nobil Ahmad and Ali Khan Contents Introduction to Special Issue Film and Cinephilia in Pakistan:…

  • Call for Abstracts – Video Workshop

    The arrival of video ushered in a new logistics of access, circulation and production of audio-visual forms. Analog video introduced new infrastructures and legal contests for film circulation and viewing cultures, set new terms for amateur and professional practices in home videos, documentary and commercial works, pedagogical practices and civil society activism, and has been a key dimension of the history of surveillance. This workshop seeks to track this history and also to consider the shifts engendered with the arrival of digital video.

  • Contemporary Marginalities: History, Knowledge, Theory – Research Scholars’ Workshop

    This is an intensive two-week workshop for research scholars, aimed at the honing of research skills and creation of theoretical and methodological awareness. The workshop is oriented towards elaborating the general problematic of ‘margins and marginalities.’ The margins, for our purposes, constitute the vantage point from which to view and analyze a diverse set of historical and contemporary issues. Tentatively, we are planning to discuss the themes of knowledge, language, economy, democracy, religion, body, city, media and art.

  • Positions Vacant: Sarai Research Associates

    The Sarai Programme at CSDS invites applications for three positions centered around media research.
    The research agenda is historical and contemporary, archive based and ethnographic, and will traverse a variety of media, including radio, gramophone, cassette, photography, film, television, video, and digital forms…

  • Tahrir Square

    Cell Phone Videos, Mobilizing Shame and the Image collisions

    More cell phone videos have been shot, edited and uploaded online in the last 16 hours then the total number of films and TV shows produced in India in the year 1989. Cell phone videos in particular have had definitive impact in shaping much of recent history. From the ‘Arab Spring’, to Abu Ghraib to the Kajieme Powell killing to innumerable videos capturing mundane violence or corruption worldwide, cell phone videos are the dominant visible template of the real today… In this post I look at some recent ‘citizen videos’ and try and nudge towards changing relationship between the (sting) video document and issues of ‘truth’, ‘shame’ and transparency.