[Reader-list] Call for Proposals: City as Studio, Edition 2

[Monica Narula]

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

City as Studio, Edition 2 
The Sarai-CSDS Associate Fellowship for Contemporary Art and Cultural Practice
 
The Sarai Programme at CSDS, Delhi is an interdisciplinary platform for the investigation and interpretation of contemporary urban life. Sarai produces events and processes, publishes offline and online content and generates contexts for research and creative practice. 

The Sarai Programme, in keeping with its history of support to independent thinking and creativity, invites applications from artists and practitioners in diverse media for  the second edition of the "City as Studio" project. The "City as Studio" seeks to bring contemporary artistic and cultural practice into the contentious, active space of today’s urbanity.

By studio we mean both a space, and a cluster of activities and interactions. The Sarai-CSDS "City as Studio" initiative will create contexts for high intensity inter-disciplinary processes in locations in Delhi and at the Sarai exhibition space at CSDS. The studio process proposes to bring together artists, urbanists, educationists, cultural workers, neighborhood initiatives and diverse audiences to create art works, participatory performances, media works, salons, transmissions of different kinds of signals and imaginative festive events. The process may be rendered as an exhibition, as also a gathering, as a library, as a temporary archive, a salon. It will also take the form of a workshop, a temporary atelier, a media studio and a reading group. 

We invite the applicants to imagine that the city itself is their studio, and that urban realities are their materials. 

The City as Studio (Edition 1) book is available for free download as a PDF at the Sarai website. (www.sarai.net)

The applicants are invited to write a short note (no more than two pages) sketching an idea that they would like to see realized, participate in, or circulated if they were selected to participate in the "City as Studio". 

The artists and practitioners who are selected will work in dialogue with Sarai to develop artistic projects and interventions in a range of forms that could be anything from free standing art works to proposals for mini-exhibitions, installations, performances and happenings, publications, sound works, video, internet and mobile phone based works, graphic novels, public art works, graffiti and signage and speculative architectural proposals. 

The applicants who are selected will receive a fellowship amount of Rs. 85,000, and a modest material and logistical support for the realization of project ideas that are developed during the duration of the City as Studio process. 

The fellowship period will be for the duration of nine months, during which time the fellows will be expected to pursue their practice in consonance with their stated intentions while applying for the "City as Studio" Fellowship. The fellows will have access to a group of mentors who will act as sounding boards for their ideas. The Raqs Media Collective will be available as interlocutors, and the fellows will interact with each other and with their mentors through this period, and will be expected to send regular updates of their work, visual materials, notes, etc. on to a designated discussion group. They will also be expected to submit a final report of their work at the end of the nine month period, in fulfillment of the terms of the fellowship.

The "City as Studio" Fellows will be required to spend six weeks (January-February 2012) 'in residence' as guests of Sarai in Delhi. Costs for travel to Delhi and accommodation will be borne by Sarai CSDS for candidates from outside Delhi. During this period, they will be expected to work intensively in dialogue with mentors from the Sarai network of artists and scholars. 

Who Can Apply: 

Anyone above the age of 21 with a bank account and a PAN number in India can apply for this fellowship. The residency period will be located in Delhi and is a compulsory part of the City as Studio process. 

What Should Applicant's Send:

1. A two page sketch of an idea that the applicant would like to pursue within the framework of the city studio initiative.
2. A one page note about their practice.
2. CV listing recent works and projects.
3. Samples of recent work - preferably in digital versions.
4. Contact details

Last Date for Sending Applications: 30th August, 2011

Where to Send Applications: 

Send the application by post to City as Studio, Sarai-CSDS, 29, Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India.

When can you expect to hear from us: 

The selected candidates will be informed by email and the list will be posted on the Sarai website <www.sarai.net> by 15th September, 2011. 




Monica Narula
Raqs Media Collective
Sarai-CSDS
www.raqsmediacollective.net
www.sarai.net