Each year From 2001-02 to 2006-07, we supported a number of independent and often interdisciplinary projects. This has been key to Sarai’s design of a distributed research network. We see this as a foundation for a network of socially available, publicly accessible knowledge in contemporary cultural, intellectual and technological practice. Broadly, the fellowships supported work on the interface between popular culture, urban space and technological creativity. They engage with the creativity of the Indian street, its visual and sensory dynamism, its spirit of experimentation, improvisation and enterprise.
During 2001-08, every year we hosted a small number of residencies at Sarai. Residents were mainly new media artists from South Asia as well as from Australia, Europe and the US. Below is a list of the artists-in-residence over these years.
For the last almost eight years [2000-08], Sarai, as part of its commitment towards the enrichment of the public life of intellectual activity in India, has consistently supported independent research projects and inter-disciplinary practice initiatives all over the country. These projects, undertaken by a diverse body of researchers and practitioners in English and Hindi, constitute a growing body of work that has emerged under the aegis of the Sarai-CSDS programme of fellowships for independent researchers and practitioners. Till date, this has translated into more than three hundred foundational grants to independent research and practice projects located in more than twenty cities across India. These projects are best seen, not as a set of finished undertakings, but as an array of working questions…
The Associate Fellowship Programme was undertaken in 2007 to develop a level of interaction between independent practitioners, researchers and scholars that is deeper and more extensive than that afforded by the Independent Fellowship process.
The Sarai-CSDS Independent FLOSS Fellowship Programme enabled programmers to research and develop different kinds of open source software-based applications. Typically, these are projects that would not usually find support in formal, institutional or market-driven settings, either because of the intent/ nature of the goal or because of the ‘open’ nature of the knowledge thus produced/created.
The Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowships allow the time for individuals from diverse backgrounds to either begin or continue research into specific aspects of media and urban culture and society, broadly and creatively defined, and to also think carefully and rigorously about the various public forms in which their research might be rendered. We are also interested in using the materials generated through the research to continue to build up our thematic archive of research on the city. Thus, we see the fellowship as an important source for this archive.
Compilation of selected abstracts from the 2004-2005 round of Independent Fellowship Programme.