[Reader-list] [Announcements] Tramjatra: Imagining Melbourne and Kolkata by tramways

[Monica Mody]

Book Announcement
 
Tramjatra
imagining Melbourne and Kolkata by tramways
Mick Douglas (editor)
  
An unprecedented inter-cultural arts project called Tramjatra has
since 1996 brought together artists and the tramways communities of
Melbourne (Australia) and Kolkata (or Calcutta, India) to explore
their cities through the medium of tramways. In the context of
increasing debates about sustainability and the impact and processes
of globalisation, Tramjatra has demonstrated how new linkages made
through a public arts practice of inter-cultural collaboration can
enliven approaches to identifying and building upon attributes of
value in a city. Through a time when Kolkata's struggling tramways
have faced a persistent threat of closure and the operation of
Melbourne's tramways has been privatised and automated, the Tramjatra
project has provoked a broader, globally oriented engagement in what
it is to move and be moved in contemporary urban life. The book
explores this relationship between the movement afforded by tramways
as a mode of public transport, and the contemporary social, political,
economic and creative forces of movement that are manifested in the
relation between these two contemporary cultures of tramways.

Written in English, with a small proportion in Bengali, the book
includes essays by emerging as well as internationally renowned
writers and scholars (such as Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, Soumitra Das) which discuss historical links between Melbourne
and Kolkata; that examine the relation between memory and tram travel,
ticketing and travelling; that revisit past events of the Tramjatra
project; that locate Tramjatra in the context of western notions of
public art, and in the context of debates on transculturalism and
international education; and which unravel issues of translation in
inter-cultural arts practice. The volume also includes short writings
by a diverse range of participants and 'passengers' responding to and
building upon the Tramjatra project. Supplemented with stunning
visuals, this unique volume published simultaneously in India and
Australia offers a journey through two cities and a contemporary
relation between them via the medium of tramways.
 
 
Mick Douglas is an artist and senior lecturer in the School of
Architecture + Design at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
 
Book details:

Extent: 304pp.
Size: 120mmX160mm
Binding: Paperback
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 81-902272-4-6
Co-published by YODA PRESS, New Delhi, India and RMIT UNIVERSITY 
PRESS, Melbourne, Australia

Contact details of Yoda Press:
Arpita Das, Parul Nayyar (Partners)
G 93 Connaught Circus
New Delhi 110 001
Tel.: 91-11-23324096/30960306
e-mail: arpita at yodapress.com
            parul at yodapress.com
website: www.yodapress.com


The book is distributed by Foundation Books. 
www.foundationbooksindia.com


Also from YODA PRESS: 
Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan (editors), Because I Have a Voice:
Queer Politics in India
(288pp.; demy octavo; Rs 295; pb; isbn: 81-902272-2-X)

Boria Majumdar, Once Upon a Furore: Lost Pages of Indian Cricket
(186pp.+xii pages of illustrations; demy octavo; Rs 395; available in
hardback; isbn: 81-902272-0-3)
                                                          
Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans in British India (Paperback edition
(294pp.; Royal' Rs 225; pb; isbn: 81-902272-1-1)
 
Judith E. Walsh, How to be the Goddess of your home: An Anthology of
Bengali Domestic Manuals
(280pp.; Demy Octavo;' Rs 325; pb; isbn: 81-902272-3-8)
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