media, information, the contemporary

Tag: Infrastructure


  • City as Studio

    The City as Studio programme emerged in 2010 to intervene in the shaping of a responsive and engaged milieu of contemporary art and media practices through a cluster of dedicated art and media fellowships tied to a structure of studio situations and processes in Delhi. The fellowship brings together artists, media practitioners, intellectuals, writers, activists,…

  • Climate Change and Uncertainy: From Below and Above

    The research project hypothesizes that uncertainty in climate change has been narrowly conceptualized from ‘above’ (by scientists, experts and decision-makers). In doing so, the day-to-day experiences and practices of local people around uncertainty have been ignored, thus missing out on local-level detail. Thus, it is important to bridge the divide between uncertainty from ‘above’ and…

  • Objects, Media Technologies, Aesthetics and Politics: Material Histories and Cultural Imaginaries, India c. 1940-1960

    This project, supported by ICAS:MP, speaks to issues of archiving and memorialization by developing an engagement with a novel and underexplored terrain of historical experience. This is the world of objects as they bear testimony to major transformations in energy use, environment, travel, bodily health and cleanliness, registers of everyday life. We seek to attend to…

  • FLOSS – Free/Libre Open Source Software

    Ever since its inception the Sarai programme of CSDS, Delhi was excited about and engaged with the free software practices in local and global contexts. We invited Richard Stallman to deliver a lecture on and published several books explaining the concept and practice. Our English and Hindi print publications have always been available online for…

  • Ethnographies of Social Data

    Big Data and the Data Revolution have been pitched as a potential transformation of all modes of digital data collection, organization, storage, mining, analytics and visualization. The proliferation of digital infrastructures and information after the social media revolution called Web 2.0, has led to a global movement around leveraging the enormous potential of data to…

  • Publics and Practices in the History of the Present

    Publics and Practices in the History of the Present (PPHP) emerged in the early years of Sarai to explore rapidly changing mediated urban milieux through questions of production, distribution and delivery, circulation, information networks, legality, and the materiality of media forms. Practitioners, artists, activists, lawyers, and academics engaged with these themes through  ethnography, media practice, and…

  • Startup States | 2-9 February 2019 – Exhibition and Events

    Startup States Sarai Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054, India Opening Saturday 2nd of February, 2019 Open 11am – 6pm 2nd – 9th February Startup States investigates post-colonial legacies inherent in contemporary forms of power exercised through data-driven governance.

  • What Time Is It? | 14-16 December 2017 – Report

    What Time Is It? Technologies of Life in the Contemporary 14th, 15th and 16th December, 2017 Sarai-CSDS, Delhi and Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi #whattimeisit A detailed report of the conference is available on this LINK. Conference Programme: http://sarai.net/what-time-is-it-14-16-december-2017/ Concept Have we finally entered the End of the End of History? (E-flux, Journal #57 –…

  • Lives of Data v2.0: Computing, Money, Media Workshop, 05-06 January 2018

    The Sarai Programme is organising the Lives of Data v2.0: Computing, Money, Media Workshop on 05-06 January, 2018. The workshop examines the historical and emergent conditions of data-driven knowledge and value production and circulation in India and South Asia. It expands upon the cross-disciplinary conversations initiated by the first ‘Lives of Data’ Workshop, in January 2017. The…

  • What Time Is It? | 14-16 December 2017

    What Time Is It? Technologies of Life in the Contemporary 14th, 15th and 16th December, 2017 Sarai-CSDS, Delhi and Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi #whattimeisit Have we finally entered the End of the End of History? (E-flux, Journal #57 – Sept 2014). Recent media technological transformations have thrown into confusion many existing political and social…