Preface
If there were ever to be a ‘weather report’ for our times, an audit of the climate in which we have grown accustomed to live, it would use the word ‘turbulence’ often. We inhabit the vortex of storms, and smell sunshine. We are always prepared for rain. Our cities are sites of flood and fire. We live between tremors, power cuts and voltage surges. Agitations emerge and abate on our streets and on the airwaves, as if by accident. Books are burned, blogs are blocked, bourses dance mad tarantulas. We fly with seat belts fastened. Predictions are pronounced and dissembled in seconds. Bets are placed and lost, wagers made and found wanting. Insurance companies invoke acts of God. The more things change, the more they change…
Production
Editorial Collective: Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Ravi Sundaram, Awadhendra Sharan, Jeebesh Bagchi (Sarai), and Geert Lovink.
Design: Mrityunjay Chatterjee and Mrinalini Aggarwal.
Read
The entire book can be accessed and downloaded from the Sarai archive.
Contents
In Turbulence – Editorial Collective
TRANSFORMATIONS: REFLECTIONS ON UNCERTAINTY
The Time of Turbulence – R. Krishna
The Father of Long/Fat Tails: Interview with Benoît Mandelbrot – Hans Ulrich Obrist
Place – Renée Green
Notes from New York, July 2005 – Molly Nesbit
Cement and Speed – Michael Taussig
Mapping the Invisible: Notes on the Reason of Conspiracy Theories – Cédric Vincent
Turbulent Spaces of Fragments and Flows – Felix Stalder
The Terror of Having a Body – Baijayanta Mukhopadhyay
WEATHER REPORT: FORCES OF NATURE
Disaster Signs – Pradeep Saha
An Aesthetic of Turbulence: The Works of Ned Kahn – David Mather
After the Deluge – Gyan Prakash
Waterline – Legier Biederman
Waves of Wrath – R.V. Ramani
Zalzala (Earthquake)! – Kavita Pai
TROUBLESHOOTING: TECHNOLOGIES OF COMMUNICATION IN TURBULENT TIMES
A Candle in My Window – Peter Griffin
Support Iraqi Bloggers: Interview with Cecile Landman – Geert Lovink
Locative Dissent – Jeremy Hight
Once upon a Flash – Nishant Shah
ALTERED STATES: EXPERIENCING CHANGES
Pixels of Memory on the Hypertextualised ‘I’ – Deb Kamal Ganguly
Playing Wild! – Andreas Broeckmann
Download Downtime – Trebor Scholz
A Science of Liberalisation and the Markets It Produces – Siva Arumugam
The Visibility of the Revolutionary Project and New Technologies – Raoul Victor
Light from the Box – Franco La Cecla, Stefano Savona and Piero Zanini
The Neurobiopolitics of Global Consciousness – Warren Neidich
In Search of the Centre – Vlado Stjepic
Like Cleopatra – Parismita Singh
STRANGE DAYS: THE HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF TURBULENCE
“Jahan se Dekhiye Yak Shor-e Shor-angez Nikle Hain (A Riot of Turbulence, Wherever You Look)”: The Dehlvi Ghadar – Mahmood Farooqui
The Silent Memorial: Life of the Mutiny in Orchha’s Lakshmi Temple – Rahaab Allana
Buccaneers, Pirates and Privateers – Vijayalakshmi Balakrishnan
A City Feeding on Itself: Testimonies and Histories of ‘Direct Action’ Day – Debjani Sengupta
“Kothai Aj Shei Shiraj Sikder (Where Today Is that Shiraj Sikder)?”: Terrorists or Guerrillas in the Mist – Naeem Mohaiemen
Remembering Communism: The Experience of Political Defeat – Philip Bounds
The Dynamic Balkans: A Working Model for the EU? – Interview with Kyong Park and Marjetica Potrc – Nataša Petrešin
GuateMex: No-Man’s-Water – Marcos Lutyens
Paisajes – Sergio De La Torre
Ceuta and Melilla Fences: A Defensive System? – Guido Cimadomo and Pilar Martínez Ponce
Shifting Sediments – Dane Mitchell
SIGNAL DISTURBANCEL: QUESTIONS – MEDIA / ART / IDENTITY
What Hit the News-Stand?! Introduction to a Dialogue – Nasrin Tabatabai, Babak Afrassiabi and Kianoosh Vahabi
The Sand of the Coliseum, the Glare of Television, and the Hope of Emancipation – Nancy Adajania
Be Offended, Be Very Offended – Linda Carroli
The Khushboo Case File: Reverse Culture Jamming – Tushar Dhara
Seeking Chaos: The Birth and Intentions of Queer Politics – Gautam Bhan
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS: WITNESSING TURBULENCE
Family/Families – Ashim Purkayastha
Liberal Nightmares: A Manual of Northeastern Dreams – Tarun Bhartiya
Poetry in a Time of Terror – Robin S. Ngangom
Turbulent Indigo and the Act of Cautious Reassemblage – Sampurna Chattarji
The Man Who Could Walk through In-Between Positions – Sureyyya Evren
This Morning, This Evening: Beirut, 15 July 2006 – Walid Raad
Who Didn’t Start the Fire…? Reflections on Bombs over a Cup of Coffee – Simran Chadha
A Kashmiri’s ‘Encounter’ with Delhi – Bismillah Gilani
On Listening to Violence: Reflections of a Researcher of the Partition of India – Sadan Jha
UNSTABLE STRUCTURES: IMPROVISATIONS WITH INFRASTRUCTURE
Contingent – Emeka Okereke
Turbulence before Take-Off: Life Trajectories Spotted en Route to a Brazilian Runway – David Harris
Casting Village within City – Yushi Uehara
Tapping In: Leaky Sovereignties and Engineered (Dis)Order in an Urban Water System – Karen Coelho
A ‘Legitimate’ Business Activity: Unofficial Stock Exchanges of Vijayawada – S. Ananth
NOTES FROM BESEIGED NEIGHBOURHOODS
Nangla’s Delhi – Cybermohalla Practitioners
ALT/OPTION
Collaboration: The Dark Side of the Multitude – Florian Schneider
We Lost the War. Welcome to the World of Tomorrow – Frank Rieger