[Reader-list] [Announcements] Invitation to DOC-SHOP, 19-23 May 2003

[PUKAR Monsoon]

Dear Friends:

Please circulate this announcement as widely as possible to 
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS in Mumbai.

To register for the PUKAR Monsoon Doc-Shop, or for more information, 
contact Sanjay Bhangar at 3105 0246 (mobile), 2494 5046 (residence), 
Shonali Sarda at 3259 5974 (mobile), or Rahul Srivastava or Shekhar 
Krishnan PUKAR at 2207 7779 or <mailto:monsoon at pukar.org.in>.

Regards,


Rahul Srivastava, Shekhar Krishnan, Shonali Sarda and Sanjay Bhangar
_______

PUKAR Monsoon 2003
DOC-SHOP, 19-23 May 2003


WHAT IS A DOC-SHOP?

"Doc-Shop" is a shorthand term for "documentation workshop". In a 
Doc-Shop, undergraduate students will discuss acts of documentation 
as a creative and critical exercise, and simultaneously gain hands-on 
experience with various old and new media technologies.


WHY DOCUMENTATION?

Today all of us deal with information in great abundance. The 
Internet is a huge archive of information with massive streams of 
ideas, discussions and stories flowing through its networks. This 
makes special demands on us as creative and critical people. Any 
creative and critical engagement today means also learning to deal 
with such enormous archives, and understanding how they are made. 
Participating in a Doc-Shop is one such form of engagement.

Doc-Shops help us to develop our conceptual skills and make sense of 
archives shaped through new media and digital technologies. They 
equip us to document the world on our own terms. The world around us 
is mediated by new technologies that shape our perceptions acutely. 
Yet most of us do not have access to these technologies, nor are we 
encouraged to shape the mediated reality around us. PUKAR views 
documentation not simply as a passive act of recording reality, but 
an active, creative process that allows us to participate in the 
construction of reality around us.


PUKAR MONSOON DOC-SHOP in MAY 2003

Between 19 and 23 May 2003, PUKAR shall be conducting the Doc-Shop, 
as part of PUKAR Monsoon 2003. The Doc-Shop will be a week-long 
series of workshops that encourage hands-on learning of technical 
skills and equipment, and foster a critical and intellectual 
engagement with the terms and practices of documentation. The 
Doc-Shop will be facilitated by a group of resource persons: artists, 
media producers, documentalists and activists. The PUKAR Monsoon 2003 
theme, "On Cities, On Water" will be the main content of the Doc-Shop.

The Doc-Shop is open to all undergraduate students in Mumbai, and 
will be held for about 20 students. The Doc-Shop will culminate in 
the production of a small archive of images and words and other 
productions which can be used in further phases of the PUKAR Monsoon 
2003 from June to August 2003 (see below).

Each day will consist of a morning "reading-cum-discussion" session. 
These will be followed by afternoon "practicals" that will enable the 
hands-on use of different technologies. After five days, we hope that 
small groups of students will form who work on specific projects -- a 
short video, photo-essay, radio or sound story, a piece of fiction or 
an essay, or any other creative form -- on the PUKAR Monsoon theme of 
"On Cities, On Water" (see below). The small documentary projects 
will be exhibited publicly in the week following the Doc-Shop, and 
will form the basis of future events with local and international 
audiences in the PUKAR Monsoon 2003.

DAY 1: The Moving Image

Documentary films have a complex story of relating to the modern 
world, and we begin our Doc-Shop by reflecting on this story. Does 
the movie camera capture reality as a given? Or does it shape it 
through the selective eye of the movie-maker? What sense do we make 
of the huge archive of documentaries that exist today, and how do we 
evaluate their contribution to our understanding of the contemporary 
world? Handling a digital video camera and making some samples of 
moving images will be an important part of the session.

DAY 2: The Photograph

The still photograph has its own language and potency to shape our 
world and photographic images reach out to us through posters, 
advertisements and personal photo-albums. How do they shape our 
relationship to knowledge, with their particular method of recording 
reality? How does digital technology change the story of the 
photograph? The use of digital cameras and actually taking 
photographs will enhance reflection on these issues.

DAY 3: Sound-Scapes

Radio and the Internet have transformed the experience of "hearing" 
into a specialised zone that makes sound an autonomous space to act 
upon, for all those interested in documentation. How does one relate 
to audio archives today? How do audio records produce their own 
version of visual culture? Learning the nuances of sound archives 
through digital audio recording technologies and producing audio 
stories will complete this session.

DAY 4: Words and Writing

Words and texts remain crucial components of documenting reality. A 
script for a film, or a caption for a photograph, is vital to 
structure even visual forms of archiving. How do we relate to words 
and writing as old and new modes of documentation? How do we use 
words creatively to innovate on classificatory systems and 
taxonomies? How do we simply become better writers and therefore 
better archivists, even when using new visual media? Creative writing 
and "naming" exercises will form part of these reflections.

DAY 5: Web Art

Visual and performing art forms can be seen as the most sophisticated 
modes of documenting the complexities and nuances of lived 
experience. That is why we understand the richness of past and the 
present by relating to all kinds of art forms. However, digital 
technologies have transformed many art practices in all kinds of 
ways. We focus on the newly emergent form of "web art" as a space 
that reflects on earlier artistic traditions, and links the themes of 
the four previous days as converging in virtual or cyber-space. If 
the Internet is the most obvious manifestation of the "excess" and 
"overload" of documentation practices, then perhaps "web art" is a 
competent way of taking charge -- through participation, creation and 
subversion of virtual space. Making your own virtual and web-based 
creations will be a vital part of the learning experience.



About the PUKAR MONSOON

Pedagogic interventions are important to a new generation of urban 
youth whose critical understanding of society is mainly formed in the 
space of undergraduate colleges, and through negotiating the world of 
the mass media. In a spirit of engagement with these unexplored 
spaces and voices, PUKAR organises the PUKAR Monsoon: a series of 
lectures presentations, interactive sessions and activities from May 
to August every year in which college students address a specific 
theme through a variety of creative pedagogic approaches.

The first annual PUKAR Monsoon, held in July and August 2002 in eight 
colleges in Mumbai was "The City at Work: Livelihoods and Ways of 
Belonging". Reflection on the history and economics of everyday life 
in the city helped students cultivate a critical sensibility about 
the market at a pre-professional stage of their lives. In the PUKAR 
Monsoon 2002, we used the idea of livelihood or work as an entry 
point for student participation in small activities or documentation 
projects to examine and understand how class and cultural identities 
are changing in the context of globalisation in Mumbai. Three short 
video-clips, installations, charts and small essays were some of the 
output which were then collectively shared and discussed in a 
subsequent discussion at The Bombay Paperie in August 2002.



PUKAR MONSOON 2003: "On Cities, On Water"

The theme for PUKAR Monsoon 2003 is "On Cities, On Water". Water as 
substance and as medium has been central to urban development 
throughout human history. In our city, as in many other world cities, 
modern urban experience and "structures of feeling" are definitively 
connected to the city's geographical form as island, and its location 
on the coastline.

In the context of globalisation, other dimensions of water, and of 
the relationship between cities and water are becoming increasingly 
visible and contested in the public arena -- notably, the 
privatisation of water resources and the infrastructural networks 
delivering water. One of the aims of PUKAR Monsoon 2003 is to enable 
young people to develop a critical understanding of these and other 
relationships between cities and water. We propose that these 
connections could be explored along four axial dimensions of water -- 
in relation to its role as conduit, in the promotion of concourse and 
commerce, and in its dimension as contaminant.

PUKAR Monsoon 2003 will work to create a better understanding of the 
political and cultural implications of these connections among the 
student participants, and will also attempt to extend the dialogue 
with other citizens. We expect that artists, intellectuals and 
activists from the student community as well as from the wider public 
in the city and beyond will participate in different ways. Our 
attempt will be to facilitate dialogue and debate, encourage 
artistic, intellectual and creative expression, and demonstrate 
civic-political concerns.
_____

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research)
P.O. Box 5627, Dadar, Mumbai 400014, INDIA

E-Mail <mailto:secretariat at pukar.org.in>
Phone +91 (022) 2207 7779, +91 98200 45529, +91 98204 04010
Web Site http://www.pukar.org.in
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