[artinfo] Call For Proposals :: Short Term Fellowships

[Waag Sarai Exchange]

Waag Society / for Old and New Media (Amsterdam) and the Sarai 
Programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (Delhi) 
have initiated a platform for collaboration on media culture.

This has come out of an on-going, long standing collaboration between the
Waag Society and Sarai since 2000. Waag Society / for Old and New Media
was founded in 1995 as a laboratory for research and development of
cultural applications of technology. Since then it has grown into a
knowledge institute in the field of new media with many national and
international work-relations. Its driving force is the interaction
between technology and culture.

Since its establishment in 2000 as a programme of CSDS, Sarai has grown
into one of South Asia's best known initiatives on media, urban culture and the
public domain. Composed of both scholars and practitioners, Sarai's work cuts
across various disciplines and networks, and exists in collaboration with
partners in India and around the world.

The Waag-Sarai collaboration since 2000 has focused on building links and
collaborations between programmers, designers, scholars and theorists
between Europe and Asia. From its inception, the exchange has been driven
by a vision for certain shared values. In elaborating the idea of the
exchange, we would like these values to be maintained, discussed and
disseminated in a wide arc of initiatives. In particular, we are
concerned to reiterate the following:

   - Importance of the public domain
   - Access to media tools and innovation in media practices
   - Interdisciplinary research (between research and practice, and 
across disciplines)
   - Setting up contexts for creativity and exploration of expressive means.
   - A critical reflection on the nature of collaboration between 
different cultures

We have been particularly concerned to address issues of inequality;
hierarchies of knowledge and of access, and a dialogue based cultural
practice. Here we particularly emphasize the importance of an engagement
with the immediacy and concreteness of local circumstances and possibilities.

We should reiterate that our understanding of 'new'-media derives from
the particular historical configurations: these include those of
innovation under conditions of large scale inequality, creative uses of
existing old media, and thriving informal networks in the societies of
Asia, Africa, the middle East and Latin America.

We would like to draw upon this experience of Waag-Sarai
collaboration, and the institutional knowledge gained during this process
to encourage other emerging initiatives in the South. As part of this the
Waag-Sarai platform is proposing two short term Fellowships to support
proposals for emerging initiatives in the South focusing on the themes
outlined above.

The short-term fellowships are intended as seed money during which
successful applicants are expected to produce a document, which 
includes the following:

   - A vision statement and long-term plan
   - A network architecture
   - A space design
   - Collaboration with other networks.

The fellowship is designed to help initiatives produce a coherent plan,
rather than set up the centre or network itself. The grant amount is a
total of 3,000 Euros and will run for six months.

The final document will be presented at a public workshop in Bangalore,
India in November 2004. The Waag-Sarai platform will cover the costs of
travel and board to Bangalore for the successful applicants. The workshop
in Bangalore will also enable the applicants to investigate possibilities
for future collaboration with the Waag Sarai Exchange Platform on the
basis of the presented plan.

The proposal should be mailed to exchange-platform at waag.org. Last date
31st March, 2004. The Fellowship will commence from 1st May,

-- 
waag sarai exchange platform | exchange-platform at waag.org |
http://sarai.waag.org

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