HCMC – “Encounter” Presents Lectures by Ravi Sundaram

Culture, infrastructure and the Digital: Thu 17 Dec 2015, 6.30 pm
Memory, Circulation and the Digital Archive: Fri 18 Dec 2015, 6.30 pm
Room Marie Curie, 6th floor
Hoa Sen University

From the organizer:

‘Encounter’ presents Ravi Sundaram with two lectures, 6:30PM Thursday, 17th and Friday 18th December 2015.

Culture, infrastructure and the Digital

This lecture will explore infrastructures as material forms that connect populations, regions, and economies. Infrastructures of transport and communication for instance are crucial for the circulation of both economies and cultures. Infrastructures are at the center of media circulation by way of entangling people, objects, ideas and technologies. Digital infrastructures are dynamic environments; they break down, collapse and suddenly multiply in new ways through circulation and collaboration. In non-Western environments like Asia, infrastructures have a distinct ‘poetics’, with aesthetic and radical possibilities. This poetics is a significant part of Asia’s move to the digital, with emerging cultural practices, and new cultural institutions.

Memory, Circulation and the Digital Archive

This lecture will discuss how more images, sounds, and videos are being produced in contemporary Asia than ever in the past. People with smart phones and low cost gadgets take millions of images, sounds and videos and share them with friends on networks. Our memories seem expanded exponentially, as we are now aided by digital storage on our media devices. New, digitally enabled archives of the past have burst into prominence, giving them a new life, and opening access to many.

What are the consequences of enhancing our memories with artificial, digital aids? Is memory more enhanced or fragile, a fading glow as we rush to capture everything that exists with digital cameras?

Entrance is free. Translation will be provided.

Ravi Sundaram is a Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. In 2000 he founded the Sarai programme along with Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi, Ravi Vasudevan and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. Sundaram has co-edited the Sarai Reader series, The Public Domain (2001), The Cities of Everyday Life(2002), Shaping Technologies (2003), Crisis Media(2004), and Frontiers (2007). He is the author of Pirate Modernity: Media Urbanism in Delhi (Routledge, London 2009) and the edited collection No Limits: Media Studies fromIndia (Oxford University Press, 2013). His writings have been translated into many languages. Sundaram’s current work is on contemporary fear after media modernity.