[eccr] Call for Contributions - Sarai 4

>Subject: Call for Contributions
>
>
>Call from New Delhi for Contributions to Sarai Reader 04 :  Crisis/Media
>
>(apologies for cross posting to subscribers of Sarai Reader List, Nettime,
>Commons-Law and Spectre)
>
>I. Introducing the Sarai Reader
>
>Sarai, (www.sarai.net) an interdisciplinary research and practice programme
>on the city and the media, at the Centre for the Study of Developing
>Societies  invites contributions (texts and images)
>to Sarai Reader 04 : Crisis/Media
>
>We also invite proposals to initiate and moderate discussions on the themes
>of the Sarai Reader 04 on the Reader List
>(http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list) with a view to the
>moderator(s) editing the transcripts of these discussions for publication in
>the Sarai Reader 04.
>
>For an outline of the themes and concerns of Sarai Reader 04, see concept
>outline below. To know about the format of the articles that we invite, see
>'Guidelines for Submissions' below.
>
>The Sarai Reader is an annual publication produced by Sarai/CSDS(Delhi). The
>contents of the Sarai Readers are available for free download from the Sarai
>website (see urls below)
>
>   Previous Readers have included :
>
>'The Public Domain' : Sarai Reader 01, 2001
>(http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader1.html)
>
>'The Cities of Everyday Life' :  Sarai Reader 02, 2002,
>(http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader2.html ).
>
>And 'Shaping Technologies' : Sarai Reader 03, 2003
>(http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader3.html)
>
>The Sarai Reader series aims at bringing together original, thoughtful,
>critical, reflective, well researched and provocative texts and essays by
>theorists, practitioners and activists, grouped under a core theme that
>expresses the interests of the Sarai in
>issues that relate media, information  and society in the contemporary
>world.
>The Sarai Readers have a wide international readership.
>
>Sarai Reader 04 will be partly based on the presentations  made at a
>workshop
>jointly organized by  Sarai - CSDS and the Waag Society - "Crisis/Media :
>The
>Uncertain States of Reportage" . The workshop was held at Sarai-CSDS, Delhi
>in March 2003.
>For more details of the contents of this workshop, see
>http://www.sarai.net/events/crisis_media/crisis_media.htm
>
>Editorial Collective for Sarai Reader 04 : Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram,
>Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Sarai, Delhi) and
>Geert Lovink  (Media Theorist & Internet Critic, Brisbane)
>
>II. Crisis/Media : Concepts & Themes
>
>   From the very beginning of this century we have hurtled on as if from
>crisis
>to crisis. As if all the ghosts of the 19th and the 20th centuries, decades
>of war, colonial plunder, totalitarian repression and the hardening of
>secterian animosity had suddenly decided to come home to roost in a frenzied
>attempt at revisiting on the present all the accumulated tragedies of the
>past that we had thought we had left behind us as we gingerly made our way
>into our times.
>
>The images of planes crashing into skyscrapers, of entire cities being
>bombed
>into submission from the air, of occupying armies and fleeing civilians, of
>suicide bombers, ethnic cleansing  and riot police assaulting unarmed
>demonstrators have branded themselves on to our consciousness with mounting
>frequency. These are the substance of
>the meditations of all our mornings, as we pick up the day's newspaper,
>switch on the radio in the kitchen, or the television in the living room, or
>log on to the internet, We have witnessed flash floods, epidemics, economic
>collapse, mass migrations and an
>intensification of the regimes of surveillance and control on a near global
>scale. Our newspapers, our television sets, our radios, our websites  and
>our
>minds have become prisoners of war, and there seems to be no sign of a
>ceasefire in sight, at least as of now.
>
>The world we live in has also witnessed an enormous increase in the scale
>and
>complexity of communicative possibilities. An explosion of the means of
>delivering news, comment and images at rapid speed over diverse media has
>meant dispersal as well as amplification of the dynamics of any event or
>process, anywhere in the world. Satellite
>communications, a new telecom revolution, cheap electronic devices,
>computers
>and the internet ensure that no moment goes un reported. There is no moment
>that is not potentially global anymore.
>
>These are times for sober reflection, and that, precisely, is what we often
>find missing, as we open the newspaper, listen to the radio, or television.
>Yet, a variety of different, dissident, passionate and sane voices are also
>making themselves heard, through combinations of new and old media, as never
>before. The 'Paid For' news of the mainstream media is often exposed for
>what
>it is, even before it appears, by an increasingly vigilant network of
>independent local-global media initiatives. The numbers that turn out on the
>streets of the world's major capitals to protest against war seem to suggest
>that despite huge propaganda efforts, 'the spin' isn't working, at least not
>all of the time. We live, as the Chinese curse has it, in 'interesting
>times'.
>
>This accumulation of situations of crisis in the first three years of our
>century, and their rapid, almost real time dissemination in the media, have
>no doubt precipitated new opportunities for communicative action and global
>reflection, just as they have signaled an onset of a severe crisis within
>the
>media - a crisis of over-stimulation and under-statement, of exaggeration
>and
>exhaustion, of censorship and spin-doctoring, of fear and favour. More than
>at any other time before, the power and reach of the media, the potential of
>the usage of technologies of information and communication for control or
>for
>freedom, and the several intertwined professional, cognitive and ethical
>dilemmas that media practitioners face on a daily basis. All these  require
>us to pause and take stock of the fact that the crises reported in the media
>have a bearing on the crisis of reporting in the media - That the media and
>the crisis that media require to be themselves today can no longer be seen
>as
>distinct categories, hence - CRISIS/MEDIA.
>
>We are interested in recognizing the fact that media today are located
>precisely along the intersections and fault lines that connect and divide
>representations (media events and processes) and structural problems. The
>Reader aims to excavate the relationships
>between these structures and the representations that accompany them. Crisis
>Media respond as much to wars and ongoing ethnic conflicts as they do to
>environmental crises or the AIDS epidemic and the SARS panic. Given this
>situation, how can Crisis/Media go beyond their historically framed task of
>'correcting' mainstream opinions and actually experiment with other
>narratives? How can the global rise of mobile devices be utilized to
>'receive, transmit and broadcast' peoples' stories as they occur, and by
>doing so, break the separation between reporters and the reported?
>
>Further, is it possible for us to begin to  debate and  problematize the
>whole notion of 'representation' itself, positing more immediate forms of
>testimony that resist  mediatization? These are open questions, with no
>satisfactory and coherent answers, but Sarai Reader 04 would like to take
>them on, so as to map new territories of thought about media practice.
>
>A Preliminary List of Themes (these are not chapter or section
>headings, but point to areas of interest) could include :
>
>The Political Economy of Contemporary Media Forms
>Media Wars and Media in times of War : Weapons of Mass Distraction?
>Taking Sides and Speaking Truth : The Reportage of Ethnic Conflict
>and Civil Unrest
>Surveillance, Intelligence, Reportage : The Journalist and the Informer
>Brand Disloyalty : Critiques and Analyses of Immaterial Capital in
>the Information Age
>Aliens and Others : Media and Migration
>Reporting the Crises of Everyday Life
>Re imagining Tactical Media
>Evaluating Independent Media Strategies in the time of Globalization
>Mobile Maverick Media : the Technology and Politics of Dispersed and
>Mobile Media Forms
>Viral Media
>Communicable Diseases : Epidemics as Information
>The Body as Data
>Crises of Representation : Ethics, Epistemics, Aesthetics
>The Space for Free Speech
>
>Sarai Reader 04 - Crisis/Media, seeks to engage with this situation by
>inviting a series of reflections by media practitioners (journalists,
>independent media activists, filmmakers,photographers, artists, commentators
>and editors) and  thinkers, writers, scholars, activists and critics.
>
>We are looking for incisive analysis, as well as passionate writing, for
>scholarly and theoretical rigour as well as for critical and imaginative
>depth. We invite essays, reportage, diaries and memoirs, entries from
>weblogs, edited compilations of online discussions, photo essays, image-text
>collages and interpretations of found visual material.
>
>We are interested in testimonies from all theatres of global conflict - be
>they New York, London, Baghdad or Kabul, in reports from continuing crisis
>situations - in Kinshasa, Ahmedabad, Ramallah, and in essays and reflections
>that address the world from Delhi, Belgrade, Karachi, Beijing, Buenos Aires
>and Tehran.
>
>We are interested in anything from anywhere at all that makes for
>intelligent, provocative and critical encounters with the world we all live
>in. Contributors can also consider the structural, technological, rhetorical
>and aesthetic dimensions of understanding, interpreting and expressing
>aspects of what they see as situations of crisis. They can reflect on
>ecological crises, crisis within social institutions and the many unreported
>and unexamined crises of everyday life that be-devil the contemporary
>moment.
>Hate speech and unreflective testimonies of victim-hood are however not
>welcome.
>
>The Sarai Reader 4, like the previous Sarai Readers, will be international
>in
>scope and content, while retaining a special emphasis on reflection about
>and
>from areas that normally lie outside the domain of mainstream discourses. We
>are particularly interested in cutting edge writing and contributions from
>South Asia, South and Central America, South East Asia, China, Tibet and
>Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Australia. This is not an
>expression of a 'regional' or 'third world' bias, rather it is an
>affirmation
>of the fact that some of the most exciting emergent voices are located in
>these regions. We of course welcome, innovative and critical contributions
>from Europe, North America and Japan. We are especially keen to shape the
>Reader in response to events such as the Next Five Minutes 4 Conference, and
>hope that some of the ideas that get generated in such events can find their
>way into the debates that the Reader hopes to embody.
>
>If you feel these issues and questions are of interest to you. If your
>practice, thought, curiosities, research or creative activity has impelled
>you to think about some of these issues, we invite you to contribute to
>Sarai
>Reader 04 : Crisis/Media.
>
>III. Guidelines for Submissions
>
>Word Limit : 1500 - 4000 words
>
>1.Submissions may be scholarly, journalistic, or literary - or a mix of
>these,  in the form of essays, papers, interviews, online discussions
>ordiary
>entries. All submission, unless specifically solicited, must be in English
>only.
>
>2.Submissions must be sent by email in as text, or as rtf, or as word
>document or star office/open office attatchments. Articles may be
>accompanied
>by black and white photographs or drawings submitted in the tif format.
>
>3.We urge all writers, to follow the Chicago Manual of Style, (CMS) in terms
>of footnotes, annotations and references. For more details about the CMS and
>an updated list of Frequently Asked Questions, see
>http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq/cmosfaq.html
>
>For a 'Quick Reference Guide to the Chicago Manual of Style' -
>especially relevant for citation style, see -
>http://www.library.wwu.edu/ref/Refhome/chicago.html
>
>4.All contributions should be accompanied by a three/four line text
>introducing the author.
>
>5.All submissions will be read by the editorial collective of the Sarai
>Reader 04 before the final selection is made. The editorial collective
>reserves the right not to publish any material sent to it for publication in
>the Sarai Reader on stylistic or editorial grounds. All contributors will be
>informed of the final decisions of the editorial collective vis a vis their
>contribution.
>
>6.Copyright for all accepted contributions will remain with the authors, but
>Sarai reserves indefinitely the right to place any of the material accepted
>for publication on the public domain in print or electronic forms, and on
>the
>internet.
>
>7.Accepted submissions will not be paid for, but authors are guaranteed a
>wide international readership. The Reader will be published in print,
>distributed in India and internationally, and will also be uploaded in a pdf
>form on to the Sarai website. All contributors whose work has been accepted
>for publication will receive two copies of the Reader.
>
>IV. Where and When to send your Contributions
>
>Last date for submission - December 1st 2003. (but please write as soon as
>possible to the editorial collective with a brief outline/abstract, not more
>than one page, of what you want to write about - this helps in designing the
>content of the reader). We expect to have the reader published by mid
>February 2003.
>
>Please send in your outlines and abstracts, and images/graphic material to -
>
>1. (for articles) to
>Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Co Ordinator, Sarai Reader 04 Editorial Collective
>((shuddha /at/ sarai.net))
>
>2. (for proposals to moderate online discussions on the Reader List) to
>Monica Narula, List Administrator,  the Reader List
>((monica /at/ sarai.net))
>
>3.(for images and/or graphic material) to
>Monica Narula, Co Ordinator, Media Lab
>((monica /at/ sarai.net))
>DIV

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Carpentier Nico (Phd)
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<http://www.kubrussel.ac.be/>Katholieke Universiteit Brussel - Catholic 
University of Brussels
Vrijheidslaan 17 - B-1081 Brussel - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-412.42.78
Office: 4/0/18
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Media Sociology (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.30
Office: C0.05
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ kubrussel.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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