[Reader-list] FW: [Urbanstudy]

[Lawrence Liang]

Call for Contributions
World Information City Public Campaign Material

World Information City - Bangalore,(WIC-B) is a week long event
(14th-19th November 2005) jointly organized by Netbase (Vienna),
Alternative Law Forum (Bangalore), The Waag Society
(Amsterdam) and Sarai-CSDS (Delhi) in partnership with Mahiti.org
(Bangalore)

WIC - B is one of a series of events and processes titled World
Information.Org - initiated by the Netbase (Vienna) in partnership with
organizations and initiatives in different parts of the world to focus
attention on cultural, social and political aspects of information in
the contemporary world. Previous 'editions' of World Information.Org
have taken place in Vienna, Brussels, Amsterdam, Belgrade and Novi Sad

For more details, see http://world-information.org/wio

In November from 14th to 19th, an event called World Information City will
be taking place in Bangalore organized by Alternative Law Forum, Mahiti,
Public Netbase, Sarai and Waag. The event raises questions about the impact
of new technologies on our societies: on daily life, work, culture, and
politics. We encounter the myth of moving into the information era on an
everyday basis. How do we understand the politics of information in terms of
ownership, control and access and link it to the transformation of the urban
experience in India?

WIC consists of a dense program of events including conference, exhibition,
information displays, workshops and public campaign.

Wanted: Concepts for the design of posters, stickers, billboards supposed to
carry the issues of ³World-Information City¹ into the public sphere of the
urban space of Bangalore in November 2005.

Theme: 
The Other Information City
WIC is a look at the global information city that exists not only in the
shopping malls, technology parks and gated communities, but also in the
everyday electronic cultures that have changed equations of access through
piracy (software, culture) and tinkering (hardware, infrastructure). People
continue to hack into networks of power for electricity, entertainment,
information etc. and these tactile practices and imagination of the other
information city exists in the everyday practices of people

 
Submission
Submissions in Kannada, Hindi, English and to be sent to
worldinfoex at yahoo.com or  namita at altlawforum.org.  Please post or drop off
your concept and/or image(s) to the following address, or send by email to
worldinfoex at yahoo.com / namita at altlawforum.org

Alternative Law Forum
No. 4, 3rd Cross
Vasanthnagar
Bangalore - 560052

Call open to all. 

Deadline:
5th November, 2005

Jury:
    * Allan Stanley, Mahiti, Bangalore
    * Ayisha Abraham, artist, Bangalore
    * Kiran Subbaiah, artist, Bangalore
    * Lawrence Liang, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore
    * Namita Malhotra, Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore
   
The selected design will be presented between November 10-20, 2005, in the
public sphere of Bangalore, as billboards or posters.
 
Costs for the realisation of the draft, and a cash prize of 10,000 will be
covered. Travel expenses and stay for out-station applicants will not be
covered. A maximum of 2 designs will be selected.

Queries
Mailto: worldinfoex at yahoo.com, namita at altlawforum.org

Links
World Information City, Bangalore
http://world-information.org/wio/program/bangalore2005

Sarai CSDS
http://www.sarai.net

Waag Society
http://www.waag.org

The Alternative Law Forum
http://www.altlawforum.org

Mahiti
www.mahiti.org 

=======
World Information City


Information - by which we mean the gamut of practices and processes of
knowing and making known the world can also be seen as that
constellation of embodied intellectual labour, accumulated cultural
capital and evolving knowledge systems that plays a key part in the
maintenance of the fabric of contemporary existence.

Information seems to be implicated in everything - from piracy to
privacy, from commoning to control, from identification to identity,
from repression to resistance, from learning to labour, from border
patrols to border crossings, from urban planning to urban . Yet,
information, which acts as a 'glue' that adheres reality to
representation is a grossly under-theorized, hyped and mis-understood
category. Our work at at Netbase, Sarai-CSDS, Waag Society and Mahiti
has a great deal to do with information, though we all come at it from
different angles. WIC-B, and the 'conference' that is placed at its
culmination is an effort on our part to inaugurate a set of discussions
that we hope will animate our future work, as well as contribute to
debate within the public domain.

While currently prevailing notions of 'information-society' belabour
under the delusion that more efficient information management systems
(such as 'e-governance') are the panacea for all societal problems, the
term 'information' also seems to conjure for many, anxieties of loss of
agency in the face of excessive information control. A more nuanced view
suggests that the everyday life of information in contemporary societies
occupies a far more slippery terrain than can be listed by the
narratives of either 'progress', or 'paranoia', it consists of
surveillance regimes and counter-surveillance processes that work only
inconsistently, of a chain of intellectual property claims and
violations that bring a new level of constant attrition and strain to
bear on capitalism, of complex histories and conflicts about knowing




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