[Reader-list] [Announcements] The CITY as STUDIO- Call for Proposals

[Mitoo Das]

*Call for Proposals
*
*"The CITY as STUDIO"
The Sarai-CSDS Media Lab Associate Fellowship for Contemporary Art and 
Media Practices*

The Sarai Programme at the Center for Study of Developing Societies, 
Delhi is an interdisciplinary platform for the investigation and 
interpretation of contemporary urban experience. Sarai produces events 
and processes, publishes offline and online content and generates 
contexts for research and creative practice concerning contemporary 
urban conditions.

The Sarai Media Lab invites expressions of interest and intent from 
artists and practitioners in diverse media - textual, visual, aural, 
spatial and temporal - who could be - visual artists (photographers, 
sculptors, installation artists, graphic artists), writers and 
independent scholars, filmmakers, architects, experimental musicians and 
composers, sound recordists, performers and people whose practices 
straddle or transcend different areas of practice  - for participation 
in the 'City as Studio' Project.

The City as Studio initiative will create contexts for high intensity 
inter-disciplinary processes at different locations in Delhi and at the 
Sarai space at CSDS. Sometimes these process(es) may be rendered as an 
exhibition, at other times as a gathering, as a library, as a temporary 
archive or as an occasion for performances, conversations and debates. 
At still other times it may take the form of a workshop, a temporary 
atelier, a media studio, a publication or an online platform. The City 
as Studio is neither a one off event, nor a workshop or a residency, nor 
a festival or a simple cluster of public programmes - though it has 
elements of all of the above. It is primarily a method of generating a 
new public profile for creative work in the city, a scanning of the 
horizon of possibilities that can be opened up in urban spaces through 
the presence of art, experimental cultural activity and public exchanges.

The studio process plans to bring together artists, filmmakers, 
photographers, discursive interlocutors, architects, writers, urbanists, 
scientists, architects, social actors and cultural workers, 
neighbourhood initiatives and diverse audiences to create art works, 
participatory performances, media works, and transmissions of different 
kinds of signals.

*Possible areas of that will be reflected upon could include but need 
not be limited to -
*
-            the city as spectacle, as a site of consumption, as an 
arena of power

-            the growing intensity of surveillance,

-            the question of distance and anchorage: housing and 
transportation

-            access to resources, location and privilege

-            the local pursuits of pleasure

-            life, death, and rites of passage in the city

-            the everydayness and banality of terror

-            imagined histories and urban legends, the fantastical and 
uncanny city

-            the archived and remembered city

-            urban ecologies, the city as a zone of bio-diversity, urban 
forests, rivers

-            ways of life, sub-cultures, bodies of informal knowledge, 
local practices

-            migrants, margins and minorities


We invite applicants to imagine that the city itself is their studio, 
and that urban realities are their materials in order to create artistic 
work that acts as a body of public knowledge in and about the city.

Applicants are invited to write a short (no more than two pages) note 
sketching an idea or ideas that they would like to develop, participate 
in, or create. We will consider this note to be an expression of intent 
(not as a fully worked out proposal, but as a sketch of what the 
applicant would ideally like to do if presented with the possibility of 
responding to the city) and will evaluate it on how best, how 
imaginatively and resourcefully an applicant responds to urban 
situations, questions and processes of their own choice. We are looking 
for forms of intervention into city life that cannot easily be defined, 
appropriated or neutralized. Projects that straddle artistic expression 
with a research imperative, that intervene in, enlighten, and critique 
the city, will be especially welcome.

Based on our evaluation of these expressions of intent, we will invite 
10 artists and practitioners for the fellowships, and they will work in 
dialogue with the Sarai Media Lab. The range of the proposed artistic 
projects and media interventions could span free standing art works to 
proposals for mini-exhibitions, installations, performances and 
happenings, publications, sound works, video, mapping and GPS driven 
projects, internet and mobile phone based works, graphic novels, public 
art works, graffiti and signage and speculative architectural proposals.

*The fellows will receive a bursary of Rs 65,000 spread over a period of 
nine months.
*
*The Process*
i) The fellowship duration will be from 1st February 2010 till 31st 
October, 2010.

ii) From February to June (2010), the fellows are expected to develop 
their projects and share it on an online space that will be especially 
dedicated for the City as Studio process.  We plan to publicize this 
online space in various circuits.

iii) An intensive studio will take place in Delhi during the months of 
July and August (2010). All City as Studio fellows will have to attend 
in order to develop their works and ideas while being engaged in a 
dialogue with the location, with other fellows and the Sarai Media Lab. 
They will also interact with resource persons who will be invited to 
expose the fellows to a range of practices during this period. Costs for 
travel to Delhi and accomodation wil be borne (separate from the 
bursary) by Sarai-CSDS for candidates from outside Delhi.

iv) During September and October, the fellows will be expected to 
develop their ideas towards completion and begin to share, circulate and 
exhibit works through various media.

v) Sarai-CSDS will exhibit and publish some of the works coming out of 
the City Studios.

vi) All fellows are expected to submit a final report to Sarai-CSDS by 
15th November 2010.

*Who Can Apply:*
Anyone above the age of 21 with a bank account and a PAN number in India 
can apply for this fellowship. While the City as Studio initiative will 
be located in Delhi, there is no bar against people from outside Delhi 
applying to take part in this process. But, it is an imperative for the 
applicant to commit to participation for the 'on-location' process in 
Delhi during July and August.

*What Should Applicants Send:*
1. A two-page sketch of an idea that the applicant would like to pursue 
within the framework of the City as Studio initiative
2. CV listing recent works, projects and experiences
3. 2 Samples of recent work - as tifs, jpg, .mov files and as sound 
files and/or publications
4. Contact details

*Last Date for Sending Applications: 26th December, 2009
*
*Where to Send Applications:*
Send the application as an email, with attachments to <medialab at sarai.net>
OR a hard copy to City Studio, Sarai/CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054.

*When can you expect to hear from us:*
The list of selected candidates will be posted on the Sarai webstie 
<www.sarai.net> on 15th January, 2010.
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