media, information, the contemporary

Author: Sarai


  • On Public Secrets, Forensics, and the Sting Fearing Virus

    Corruption as many have pointed out, is a classic template for the ‘public secret’: that which insists on being commonly coded but cannot be enframed within official public narratives. The video sting short-circuits this logic – by hyper-playing the secretive act/gesture in loop ad nauseum across media platforms. The mundane act of corruption, otherwise part of one’s everyday, gets immediately recharged into an active moment of desecration. Institutions that aren’t routinely sacred suddenly get charged and re-sacralized when faced with the crisis of defacement. It is this ‘drama of revelation” that activates outrage (and subsequently the media event)…

  • Toward a History of Consumption and Circulation of Media Content – Part One

    …I want to highlight (right at the beginning) the importance of services and repair shops and the figure of ‘technician’ in such shops as a connecting thread to weave together different experiential accounts into a coherent story. From the days of radio and sound systems, technicians played a key role in facilitating media consumption. From public transmission of information to setting up of required apparatus to reach out to a large gathering during political speeches, staging of plays and other cultural events, technician and his support team were instrumental in producing any media experience in those days…

  • sarai - lives of information - workshop - poster

    Lives of Information Workshop – Recordings

    The Sarai Programme organised the Lives of Information workshop to gather an inter‐disciplinary group of researchers to discuss information practices, cultures, infrastructures, and histories with a specific focus on post-colonial contexts. The workshop examined topics of colonial and post-colonial strategies of archiving identification, storage and informatic governance; bureaucratic cultures and politics of document and media forms; information infrastructures and networked politics; user-created content cultures and anxieties of mediated lives; and more. Here are the audio recordings of the presentations at the workshop…

  • Ross Lovegrove - Bottle

    The Function of the Interface

    There are however, two interesting differences between the Interface and other mediums like cinema and comic. Interface is neither produced, nor consumed linearly. It may use techniques from storytelling but it behaves very similar to Architecture. It has a structure and structure is more often hierarchical. A user navigates this structure based on their motivation towards visiting the site… This brings me to the Second point, which is the power equation between the media and its consumer.

  • hillhacks

    HillHacks Pre-Event, Saturday, September 13

    The Sarai Programme is very excited to co-organise and host the Delhi pre-event of hillhacks on Saturday, September 13, 2014. The event will begin at 3 pm, and will take place in Sarai basement area. ‘DesiSec,’ a documentary on cybersecurity and civil society in India made by the Centre for Internet and Society, will be screened along with the event, at the CSDS conference room… To RSVP, please send an email to dak@sarai.net.

  • Kashmir - Wall Writing 01

    Revolution YouTube

    Azaan Javaid, now a journalist, was a student in 2008. With a handicam at home, Azaan began recording videos of protests along with his cousin, who had recently come from the US. It was his cousin’s idea that these videos be uploaded on YouTube. The duo started one of the earliest YouTube channels from Kashmir regarding the protests. And, as these videos spread, the confidence of the protesters grew. At the same time, a few ‘communities’ had sprung up in the Google-owned Orkut. Facebook was still not very popular…

  • ‘Lahore is a lot like Delhi’: Digital Discourse on Histories and Places across the Border

    I am interested in seeking answers for the following questions: Why does it matter for these younger generations to document and, in so doing, relate to memories of Partition? What is the impact of this desire to understand Partition on modern Indian/Pakistani/’South Asian’ identity? What is the impact of the digital space and new media technologies on our relationship with history? How do we imagine the ‘lost’ spaces and times of our ancestors?

  • CSDS Doctoral Fellowships 2014-2015

    The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi invites applications for Doctoral Fellowships for the year 2014-15. Up to six fellowships (of which one fellowship is earmarked for a teacher-fellow) will be awarded for a period of two years with possible extension of one year. Successful candidates will work on a doctoral dissertation in an Indian university under the supervision/co-supervision of a faculty member of CSDS. Students from Universities which do not allow for co-supervision need not apply.

  • Hinglish Workshop, 18-19 August 2014 – Readings

    The Hinglish workshop is being organised by The Sarai Programme, CSDS, and SOAS, University of London. This workshop seeks to explore and understand the new porousness of Hindi and English in everyday and cultural practices and the relationship between language use and social and cultural imaginaries, along lines of inclusion, stratification, and exclusion. Read the…

  • Decoding the Big Indian Sting

    I revisit the inaugural moment of Tehelka’s Operation Westend. Journalists Mathew Samuels and Anirudh Bahal, posing as arms dealers from a fictitious London-based company called West End International hawked a non-existent Defense product called ‘hand-held thermal cameras’ to the Indian government by bribing several ministers and top-level bureaucrats… This post also contains excerpts of interviews conducted with … [technicians] to outline common technical practices the ‘industry’ follows in carefully constructing and packaging sting operations.