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Manuel Beltrán - Institute of Human Obsolescence - Cartographies of Dispossession
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/manuel-beltran-ioho-cartographies-of-dispossession
<b>Join us at the Delhi office of CIS on Thursday, April 4, at 5 pm for a talk by Manuel Beltrán, founder of the Institute of Human Obsolescence (IoHO), which explores the future of labour and the changing relationship between humans and machine. Cartographies of Dispossession (CoD), their current project at IoHO, explores the forms of systematic data dispossession that different humans are subject to, and investigates how data becomes both the means of production as much as the means of governance. </b>
<p> </p>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/ManuelBeltran_IoHO.jpg/image_large" alt="Manuel Beltrán - IoHO" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Manuel Beltrán - IoHO" /></p>
<h6>Image credit: Manuel Beltrán</h6>
<h3>Institute of Human Obsolescence - Cartographies of Dispossession</h3>
<p>The Institute of Human Obsolescence (IoHO) explores the future of labour and the changing relationship between humans and machine. Our work develops from a scenario in which forms of manual and intellectual labour traditionally performed by humans are increasingly automated by new technologies. In this context we investigate and challenge the socio-political and economic implications of new forms of labour, such as the production of data. The IoHO developed several projects exploring the production of data as a form of labour, as a different paradigm through which to interrogate and challenge dynamics of ownership over the production of data and the economic and governance objects emerging through it. Previous lines of inquiry around the framework of Data Labour Rights include Data Basic Income, Data Cooperative, Data Production Labour series, Investigative Discussion Sessions and Data Workers Union.</p>
<p>In this talk founder of the IoHO Manuel Beltrán, will introduce the work of the IoHO and discuss their current project Cartographies of Dispossession (CoD). CoD explores the forms of systematic data dispossession that different humans are subject to, and investigates how data becomes both the means of production as much as the means of governance. The project looks at the implications of how the dispossession of data unequally occurs in different contexts, through different means and for different purposes.</p>
<p>Instruments such as the Right Of Access provided by GDPR emerge from a European context but the flows of data operate in a transnational scale. We are exploring the potential and limits of this instrument in combination with others such as the Right To Information in India as tools to investigate and repossess our production of data across borders. We are particularly interested in feedback and discussing in how to think further about this last part.</p>
<h3>Manuel Beltrán</h3>
<p>Manuel is an artist and activist. He researches and lectures on contemporary art, activism, contemporary social movements, post-digital culture and new media. As an activist, he was involved in the Indignados movement in Spain, the Gezi Park protests in Turkey and several forms of independent activism and cyber-activism in Europe and beyond. In 2012 he co-founded the art collective Plastic Crowds and since 2013 he is head and co-founder of the nomadic school and artistic organization Alternative Learning Tank. In 2015 he founded the Institute of Human Obsolescence, through which he explores the future of labour, the social and political implications regarding our relationship with technology and the economic and governance systems surrounding the production of data.</p>
<h4><a href="http://speculative.capital">http://speculative.capital</a></h4>
<h4><a href="https://dataworkers.org">https://dataworkers.org</a></h4>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/manuel-beltran-ioho-cartographies-of-dispossession'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/manuel-beltran-ioho-cartographies-of-dispossession</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroPracticeArtRAW EventsDigital LabourResearchers at WorkEvent2019-04-01T08:00:05ZEventArt, Science and Open Electromagnetic Spectrum Culture [ENG]
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/news/art-science-and-open-electromagnetic-spectrum-culture-eng
<b>Sharath Chandra's practice based research in the area of Open Spectrum, in a conversation with Dr Roger Malina, Executive Director of the MIT Leonardo Press was published on the Creative Disturbance Platform. Sharath talks about his research, teaching and community activities across various institutions that he is involved with.</b>
<h3><a class="external-link" href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/createdisturb/Sharath_Chandram_Podcast.mp3">Podcast</a></h3>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sharath Chandra Ram describes his work in art, design and open science, and information culture. He maintains the Signal Lab at the Srishti Institute of Art Design and Technology in Bangalore, India. He describes his workshop in open radio astronomy that he held at the International Astronomical Union Commission C2, at the Parque Explora in Medellin, Colombia and his work in telecom policy and with the indian fishing communities embroiled in ownership of the electromagnetic spectrum debates – In dialogue with Roger Malina.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span class="no_translate">Sample of Sharath’s Work: <a class="external-link" href="http://goo.gl/X9hvx6">http://goo.gl/X9hvx6</a></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span class="no_translate">More info on <a class="external-link" href="http://creativedisturbance.org/podcast/art-science-and-open-electromagnetic-spectrum-culture-eng/">Creative Disturbance</a><br /></span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/news/art-science-and-open-electromagnetic-spectrum-culture-eng'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/news/art-science-and-open-electromagnetic-spectrum-culture-eng</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen SpectrumOpen ScienceArtSpectrum2016-08-01T01:31:10ZNews ItemCreativity, Politics, and Internet Censorship
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/creativity-politics-and-internet-censorship-20160525
<b>In collaboration with Karnataka for Kashmir, we organised a discussion on 'Creativity, Politics and Internet Censorship' on May 25, 2016. Mahum Shabir, a legal activist and artist, Mir Suhail, political cartoonist with Kashmir Reader and Rising Kashmir, and Habeel Iqbal, a lawyer who has worked with several justice groups in Kashmir, shared some of their work and experiences. This discussion was organised as part of Port of Kashmir 2016, a series of events bringing together a small collective of people using different modes of art and activism to address crucial challenges to free speech and democracy in the state. </b>
<p> </p>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cis-india/website/master/img/MahumShabirHandwara.jpg" alt="null" />
<h6>Mahum Shabir talking about the Handwara case. Source: Swar Thounaojam.</h6>
<p> </p>
<p>The discussion began with Mahum Shabir giving an overview of the work at the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, specifically on the Handwara case. She spoke of the role of the internet, and social media in particular, in perpetuating the gaze of the state, while also bringing up the larger question of how media propagates a certain way of looking at Kashmir, particularly women, marginalised groups and victims of violence. Internet blockades and media censorship pose several obstacles for the circulation of information, resulting in the need for surreptitious ways of communication as a necessary way to counter predominant narratives in the discourse around occupation. The implications of these for the rights of women in particular, the curbs on freedom at different levels, and the undercurrent of violence that is prevalent in everyday life, came up as significant questions.</p>
<p>Mir Suhail presented some of his cartoons, and shared some poignant personal experiences of growing up in a state under military occupation. His works reflect his concerns about a changing society, from understanding strife as an almost normalised state of existence, to now a phase of industrialization and control of resources. He spoke on the politics of exercising creative freedom in the present, and his attempt to encourage conversations on contemporary issues through his art. The role of technology in facilitating these conversations is as crucial as it is contentious, for it also brings up questions of surveillance and privacy;his art tries to navigate through some of these questions in different ways.</p>
<p>Habeel Iqbal, a lawyer who has worked on the Shopian and Handwara cases, spoke on some of the legal aspects of censorship and surveillance related issues in Kashmir, particularly in instances involving social media. He discussed some of the challenges faced by activists, social workers and political groups in working on certain cases, particularly in gathering and circulating information or in writing about sensitive issues. Self-censorship is often the only option for people working on these issues, as he elaborated through some personal experiences.</p>
<p>The discussion included questions on the possibilities opened up by privacy tools, such the use of encryption and to the extent to which they affect communication. Access to these technologies is a factor here; besides, transparency is also a goal for most human rights organisations working in the state. Social media, and social messaging apps in particular often function as an alternative to mainstream media as a means of communication, and it is interesting to see the questions it opens up for censorship. Examples of activism using not just the internet, but the network (through USBs and hard drives) were also discussed. The responses to such forms of activism, from across the world were interesting to engage with, as it tries to tackle predominant perceptions about the state. The economic aspects of different strategies of censorship and surveillance, through curfews and blockades and its broader implications for socio-economic development in the state were also discussed. The talk provided several insights into the problems and challenges to freedom of speech, the censorship of ideas, and its repercussions for creative freedom and politics in Kashmir.</p>
<p> </p>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cis-india/website/master/img/MirSuhailPostcards.jpg" alt="null" />
<h6>Postcards of cartoons by Mir Suhail. Source: Swar Thounaojam.</h6>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/creativity-politics-and-internet-censorship-20160525'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/creativity-politics-and-internet-censorship-20160525</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppResearchers at WorkPracticeArtCensorship2016-06-17T07:07:40ZBlog EntryA.I. Hype Cycles and Artistic Subversions
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/ai-hype-cycles-and-artistic-subversions
<b>Gene Kogan will give a talk on "A.I. hype cycles and artistic subversions" on Friday, January 22, 2016 at the Centre for Internet and Society office, 6 pm - 8 pm.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><img src="http://www.genekogan.com/images/style-transfer/ml_egypt_crab_maps.jpg" alt="Gene Kogan - Style Transfer - Mona Lisa" width="800" /></p>
<h6>Mona Lisa restyled by Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Crab Nebula, and Google Maps. <a href="http://www.genekogan.com/works/style-transfer.html">Style Transfer</a>. Gene Kogan.</h6>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Recent years have seen a resurgence of popular interest in machine learning and artificial intelligence, as emerging methods have set new scientific benchmarks and introduced classes of neural networks capable of imitating human behavior, among other impressive feats. More importantly, the study of these algorithms is rapidly crossing over into mainstream culture and industry as AI applications begin to inhabit more of our daily lives. Numerous initiatives have appeared, attempting to demystify and make these previously obscure research tracks more accessible to the public. Open source software like Torch, Theano, and TensorFlow have equipped amateurs with the same software which is achieving state-of-the-art results in industry and academia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This talk will examine the most recent wave of artistic projects applying these methods in various cultural contexts, producing troves of machine-hallucinated text, images, sounds, and videos, demonstrating a previously unseen capacity for imitating human style and sensibility. These experimental works attempt to show the capacity of these machines for producing aesthetically meaningful media, yet challenging and subverting them to illuminate their most obscure and counterintuitive properties.</p>
<p>A recent article by the speaker about this: <a href="http://bit.ly/1OhFcQr">From Pixels to Paragraphs: How artistic experiments with deep learning guard us from hype</a>.</p>
<p>Relevant projects by the speaker that will be presented include: <a href="http://bit.ly/1RyUH76">Style Transfer</a>, <a href="http://bit.ly/1QDNxOI">A Book from the Sky 天书</a>, <a href="http://bit.ly/1QDNClo">Learning to Generate Text and Audio</a>, and <a href="http://bit.ly/1QDNG4D">Deepdream Prototypes</a>.</p>
<h2>Gene Kogan</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Gene Kogan is an artist and programmer who is interested in generative systems and applications of emerging technology in artistic and expressive contexts. He writes code for live music, performance, and visual art. He contributes to numerous open-source software projects and frequently gives workshops and demonstrations on topics related to code and art.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">He is a contributor to openFrameworks, Processing, and p5.js, an adjunct professor at Bennington College and NYU, a former resident at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, and a former Fulbright scholar in Bangalore, India, 2012-2013.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/ai-hype-cycles-and-artistic-subversions'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/ai-hype-cycles-and-artistic-subversions</a>
</p>
No publishersharathGenerative ArtArtPracticeMachine LearningResearchers at WorkEventArtificial Intelligence2016-01-01T07:52:20ZEventSilicon Plateau Vol-1
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/silicon-plateau-vol-1
<b>This book marks the beginning of an interdisciplinary artistic project, Silicon Plateau, the scope of which is to observe how
the arts, technology and society intersect in the city of Bangalore. Silicon Plateau is a collaboration between T.A.J. Residency & SKE Projects and the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India. Volume 1 has been developed in collaboration with or-bits.com.</b>
<p> </p>
<iframe src="//e.issuu.com/embed.html#21775460/31640028" frameborder="0" height="400" width="600"></iframe>
<p> </p>
<h4>For us this series has a two-fold core. One the one side, there is the city of Bangalore, the trigger for various reflections about the way in which technology (old or emerging, as a service or as infrastructure) informs
the socio-cultural and political environment; a city that is fascinating to us not just because we are located here but also for its characteristic fast-paced development shaped by the IT-boom and related industries. On the other side, there are the arts and creative thinking, for us the languages, lenses and methods to be used for interpreting
technological developments and discussing their role and impact in the present time.</h4>
<p> </p>
<h4>Our hope is that of building a series based on tangible accounts revolving around the unresolved complexities inherent to the intermingling of the arts, technology and society, and in the context of local histories and occurrences rather than of global narratives and mass media constructs. Stories that for our audience, we hope, will be those of the encounters—fortuitous, anticipated or even inconvenient—that a wide variety of contributors will have had with this fascinating city.</h4>
<p> </p>
<h4>— <em>Marialaura Ghidini</em> and <em>Tara Kelton</em></h4>
<p> </p>
<h4>High-resolution PDF: <a href="https://archive.org/download/SiliconPlateau-Vol1/SiliconPlateauVol1_highres.pdf" target="_blank">Download</a> (31.8 MB)</h4>
<h4>Low-resolution PDF: <a href="https://archive.org/download/SiliconPlateau-Vol1/SiliconPlateauVol1_lowres.pdf" target="_blank">Download</a> (4.7 MB)</h4>
<p> </p>
<h4>T.A.J. Residency & SKE Projects: <a href="http://t-a-j.in/" target="_blank">Website</a></h4>
<h4>or-bits.com: <a href="http://www.or-bits.com/" target="_blank">Website</a></h4>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/silicon-plateau-vol-1'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/silicon-plateau-vol-1</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroSilicon PlateauArtWeb CulturesResearchPublicationsResearchers at Work2019-03-13T00:56:36ZBlog EntryMy First Wikipedia Training Workshop – Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop
<b>On March 8, 2013, a day-long Telugu Wikipedia training workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team at the Golden Threshold, Nampally, Hyderabad in collaboration with Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad. This blog post gives a concise account of the event.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b><a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge">CIS-A2K</a></b> had planned a day long <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org">Telugu Wikipedia</a> training workshop in collaboration with Telugu Wikipedians at the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.efluniversity.ac.in/">English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU)</a>, Hyderabad on March 8, 2013. The intention was to target research students at EFLU who are using Telugu material or working on topics related to Telugu and Andhra Pradesh. This event was also to be part of the Wiki Women’s month events across India. However, this event had to be cancelled in the last minute as a Research Student of EFLU committed suicide on the campus and there was major unrest. The faculty from EFLU though had informed of the possible cancellation of the event earlier, had only confirmed it on March 7, 2013. <b><a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%95%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%BF:%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%B9%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%AE%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%A6%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A6%E0%B1%80%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%8D">Rahmanuddin Shaik</a></b> (Telugu SIG, <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India_chapter">Wikimedia India Chapter</a>) and <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%95%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%BF:Rajasekhar1961"><b>Dr. Rajasekhar</b> </a>(Telugu Wikipedia Administrator) had already blocked an entire day for this training workshop. In fact a lot of background work was already done for the EFLU event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When I got the news of cancellation of the workshop, initially I was very dejected at the thought of informing the two active Telugu Wikipedians about it, which I had to do. As my tickets were anyhow booked to Hyderabad and there was no point cancelling them, as I was already on my way to catch the flight, I decided to go ahead with my journey. I made some couple of quick calls and with some effort managed to organize a Wikipedia Training Workshop in collaboration with the <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%A5%E0%B0%BF%E0%B0%AF%E0%B1%87%E0%B0%9F%E0%B0%B0%E0%B1%8D_%E0%B0%94%E0%B0%9F%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%B0%E0%B1%80%E0%B0%9A%E0%B1%8D_%E0%B0%AF%E0%B1%82%E0%B0%A8%E0%B0%BF%E0%B0%9F%E0%B1%8D_%28%E0%B0%9F%E0%B0%BF.%E0%B0%93.%E0%B0%AF%E0%B1%81%29">Theatre Outreach Unit (TOU)</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.uohyd.ac.in/">University of Hyderabad (UoH)</a>. I was anyhow planning on visiting them to explore an institutional collaboration. The Project Director of TOU Dr. Peddi Ramarao, though agreed to spread the word about the workshop, yet was not sure how many would turn up at such a short notice of one night.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/TOUphoto2forCIS.png" title="TOU Training photo 2" height="364" width="486" alt="null" class="image-inline" /></th> <th>
<p>Rahmanuddin and Dr. Rajasekhar giving hands-on training to edit Telugu Wikipedia at Golden Threshold, Hyderabad</p>
</th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So on March 8, 2013 Rahmanuddin, Dr. Rajasekhar and I landed at the <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%97%E0%B1%8B%E0%B0%B2%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%86%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%8D_%E0%B0%A4%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%B0%E0%B1%86%E0%B0%B7%E0%B1%8B%E0%B0%B2%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%8D">Golden Threshold</a> hoping against hope to see at least 3 or 4 participants. But alas there were only 2 people when we reached the venue by 10 a.m.. By 10.25 a.m. we had 9 participants, which excited us all. The training workshop began with an introduction of all the participants. Following this a presentation was made on the significance of Wikipedia in the digital era and how Indian language-Wikipedias are pivotal in preserving the vernacular language and culture. This session was interactive with participants asking many questions. Dr. Peddi Ramarao, later, spoke about his experience of using Wikipedia as a reference tool and how he got introduced to contributing Wikipedia. Further, the discussion went on to the poor quality of articles on Telugu Wikipedia and how the participants can take part in improving the existing articles and contribute new articles. Rahmanuddin and Rajasekhar practically demonstrated the process of editing on <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org">Telugu Wikipedia</a>. This was followed by a hands-on session where the participants actively participated in creating their Wikipedia User name on Telugu Wikipedia and did editing of few articles. The training programme was to officially end at Lunch time but even post lunch some of the participants were enthusiastic about learning more nuances of contributing on Telugu Wikipedia. The hands-on session thus continued until 4 p.m.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Post the Wikipedia training programme, I have had interactions with the Project Director of TOU to explore possible future collaborations. TOU, UoH agreed to offer space to host all Telugu Wikipedia meet-ups. As the Golden Threshold space was in the central part of the city, having this infrastructure accessible was a major boost for the Telugu Wikipedia community in Hyderabad. Further, in the discussions we have agreed to collaborate with TOU, UoH in hosting the first mega Telugu Wikipedia community event <i>Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013</i>.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/TOUphoto3forCIS.png" title="TOU Training photo 3" height="261" width="348" alt="null" class="image-inline" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>Telugu Wikipedia Orientation in progress</b></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3><b>Outcomes and Impact:</b></h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Out of the 9 new Users, who were trained during this workshop, 5 people have done more than 5 edits.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">One person has become a very active editor on Telugu Wikipedia with more than 1000 edits in 3 months. A detailed account of this event was put up by this user on Telugu Wikipedia here <a href="#fn*" name="fr*">[*]</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Because of CIS-A2K’s efforts, Telugu Wikipedians in Hyderabad now have a good meeting space.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The availability of this space has also encouraged the Telugu Wikipedians to meet more often than before. Since March 8, 2013 Telugu Wikipedians had a total of 6 meet-ups, and all these were held at Golden Threshold.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Golden Threshold also became a venue for hosting <i>Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013</i>.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">This visit to Hyderabad triggered a discussion about organizing <i>Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam</i>, which was successfully organized in a month’s time.</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Looking back, though this event was done as a last minute measure without many expectations, yet it turned out to be a lucky break! Especially, because this was my first ever event as the CIS-A2K Programme Director. It will remain a very memorable one. More so because it was done in collaboration with two of the active Telugu Wikipedians. Even more so because it has created some positive energy for the Telugu Wikipedia community, which has since then become a home turf.</p>
<hr />
<p>[<a href="#fr*" name="fn*">*</a>]. <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/17WYq7X">http://bit.ly/17WYq7X</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop</a>
</p>
No publishervishnuDigital ActivismArtAccess to KnowledgeDigital AccessWikimediaWikipediaCyberculturesTelugu WikipediaOpen ContentCommunitiesOpennessMeetingEvent2013-08-19T06:51:16ZBlog EntryCritical Point of View: Videos
http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpovvid
<b>The Second event for the Critical Point of View reader on Wikipedia was held in Amsterdam, by the Institute of Network Cultures and the Centre for Internet and Society. A wide range of scholars, academics, researchers, practitioners, artists and users came together to discuss questions on design, analytics, access, education, theory, art, history and processes of knowledge production. The videos for the full event are now available for free viewing and dissemination.</b>
<pre>These are the links to the videos of all the talks for the CPoV Conference
in Amsterdam - Enjoy!
SESSION 1
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10605801">http://vimeo.com/10605801</a> Ramon Reichert (AT)
Rethinking Wikipedia: Power, Knowledge and the Technologies of the Self
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10606220">http://vimeo.com/10606220</a> Jeanette Hofmann (DE)
Wikipedia between Emancipation and Self-Regulation
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10606547">http://vimeo.com/10606547</a> Mathieu O’Neil
(AU) The Critique of Law in Free Online Projects
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10696489">http://vimeo.com/10696489</a> Gerard Wormser(FR)
The Knowledge Bar
SESSION 2
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10607993">http://vimeo.com/10607993</a> Joseph Reagle (USA)
Wikipedia and Encyclopedic Anxiety
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10608291">http://vimeo.com/10608291</a> Charles van den Heuvel (NL)
Authoritative Annotations, Encyclopedia Universalis Mundaneum, Wikipedia
and the Stanford Encycloped
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10697853">http://vimeo.com/10697853</a> Dan O’Sullivan (UK)
An Encyclopedia for the Times: Thoughts on Wikipedia from a His- torical
Perspective
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10699949">http://vimeo.com/10699949</a> Alan Shapiro (USA/DE)
Gustave Flaubert Laughs at Wikipedia
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.vimeo.com/10607690">http://www.vimeo.com/10607690</a> Discussion session 2 Encyclopedia Histories
Moderaror: Nathaniel Tkacz
Speakers: Joseph Reagle, Charles van den Heuvel, Dan O'Sullivan, Alan Shapiro
SESSION 3
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.vimeo.com/10701587">http://www.vimeo.com/10701587</a> Hendrik-Jan Grievink (NL)
Wiki Loves Art
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.vimeo.com/10702729">http://www.vimeo.com/10702729</a> Scott Kildall (USA)
Wikipedia Art: Citation as Performative Act
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10741921">http://vimeo.com/10741921</a> Patrick Lichty (USA)
Social Media, Cultural Scaffolds, and Molecular Hegemonies. Musings on
Anarchic Media, WIKIs, and De-territorialized Art
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.vimeo.com/10607690">http://www.vimeo.com/10607690</a> Discussion session 3 Wiki Art
Moderator: Rachel Somers Miles
Speakers: Hendrik-Jan Grievink, Scott Kildall, Patrick Lichty
SESSION 4
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10747211">http://vimeo.com/10747211</a> Felipe Ortega (ES)
New Trends in the Evolution of Wikipedia
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10748335">http://vimeo.com/10748335</a> Stuart Geiger (USA)
Bot Politics: The Domination, Subversion, and Negotiation of Code in
Wikipedia
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10748727">http://vimeo.com/10748727</a> Hans Varghese Mathews (IN)
Clustering the Contributors to a Wikipedia Page
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10748888">http://vimeo.com/10748888</a> Esther Weltevrede (NL) and Erik Borra (BE/NL)
Controversy Analysis with Wikipedia
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.vimeo.com/10749027">http://www.vimeo.com/10749027</a> Discussion session 4 Wiki Analytics
Moderator: NIshant Shah
Speakers: Felipe Ortega, Stuart Geiger, Hans Varghese Mathews, Esther
Weltevrede & Erik Borra
SESSION 5
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10750350">http://vimeo.com/10750350</a> Lawrence Liang (IN)
Wikipedia and the authority of knowledge
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10750495">http://vimeo.com/10750495</a> Teemu Mikkonen (FI)
Kosovo War on Wikipedia, Tracing the Conflict and Concensus on the
Wikipedia Talk pages
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10799887">http://vimeo.com/10799887</a> Andrew Famiglietti (USA)
Negotiating the Neutral Point of View: Politics and the Moral Economy of
Wikipedia
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10772241">http://vimeo.com/10772241</a> Florian Cramer(DE/NL)
The German WikiWars and the limits of objectivism
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.vimeo.com/10799600">http://www.vimeo.com/10799600</a> Discussion session 5 Designing Debate
Moderator: Caroline Nevejan
Speakers: Lawrence Liang, Teemu Mikkonen, Andrew Famiglietti, Florian Cramer
SESSION 6
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10772313">http://vimeo.com/10772313</a> Mayo Fuster Morell (IT)
Wikimedia Governance: The Role of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Form
and Geopolitics of its Internationalization
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10800562">http://vimeo.com/10800562</a> Athina Karatzogianni (UK)
Wikipedia’s Impact on the Global Power-Knowledge Hierarchies
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10800100">http://vimeo.com/10800100</a> Maja van der Velden (NL/NO)
When Knowledges Meet: Database Design and the Performance of Knowledge
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/10800206">http://vimeo.com/10800206</a> Amit Basole (IN)
Knowledge Satyagraha: Towards a People’s Knowledge Movement
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.vimeo.com/10800354">http://www.vimeo.com/10800354</a> Discussion session 6 Global Issues and Outlooks
Moderator: Johanna Niesyto
Speakers: Mayo Fuster Morell, Athina Karatzogianni, Maja van der Velden,
Amit Basole
</pre>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpovvid'>http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpovvid</a>
</p>
No publishernishantConferenceArtFeaturedCyberculturesCommunitiesCPOV2010-04-20T20:04:31ZBlog EntryOpenness, Videos, Impressions
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OVSreport
<b>The one day Open Video Summit organised by the Centre for Internet & Society, iCommons, Open Video Alliance, and Magic Lantern, to bring together a range of stakeholders to discuss the possibilities, potentials, mechanics and politics of Open Video. Nishant Shah, who participated in the conversations, was invited to summarise the impressions and ideas that ensued in the day.</b>
<p></p>
<p>The notion of free and open is under great debate even under
that, and I think even when you side with a camp, there are going to be further
splinters. There are many ways of defining the free and open, and I think that the
tension, rather than being resolved, needs to be sustained and creatively
perpetrated to keep an internal checks and balances on not getting carried away
with it. All the groups did indeed circle around this in different,
often tangential ways – that there is need to define, variously and almost
endlessly, in defining the context of the free that we are dealing with.</p>
<p>Open video, in that matter, has gone through different
iterations, and I think it is nice that different stakeholders have defined it
variously, and also looked at the problems that it might lead to. However, for
the sake of synthesis, I am going to let you have your own idea of free and
open but instead look at five key words which have emerged, in my selective
hearing, through the day: <strong>Access, Archive,
Share, Remix, Repurpose</strong>. And it is these five that we need to now
imbricate these concepts across different thematic that emerged in the groups
today.</p>
<p><strong>Access</strong> has been one primary question that almost everybody
dealt with; Access has its legacies in the Open and Free culture movements,
where technological access, dealing with questions of open standards and
content, of bandwidth and infrastructure. More interestingly, in an emerging
information society like India, there are other concerns of language, access,
privilege, bandwidth, education etc. To
contextualise access and to put it into different perspectives is something
that different participants have voiced the need for.</p>
<p><strong>Archive</strong> is a preoccupation with most people because
archiving has close relationships with knowledge and subsequently retrieval and
usage. If knowledge is being digitised so that it is made accessible to
different people, there are older questions of representation, voice,
empowerment, participation, ethics, privacy, ownership etc. Crop up. In
education archiving has to do with the curricula building and knowledge
production. In networking, collaboration and film making, it is the kind of
issues that pad.ma is trying to tackle with. It also leads to notions of
access, distribution etc.</p>
<p><strong>Sharing </strong>is what is almost defining the spirit of the Open
and Free culture movements. There is a need to understand and explore what
sharing means. When does it infringe laws and what kind of regulation needs to
be advocated so that sharing becomes possible. How does one overcome questions
of piracy, stealing, IPR etc? More interestingly, what do we share and who do
we share it with? Tools by which sharing
leads to innovation? How does it lead to new participation and learning
practices and pedagogies? What kind of open distribution models and networks
can be built up?</p>
<p><strong>Remix</strong> has been of great value because it means that you are
being converted into some sort of a stakeholder or a contributor to the
process. Networking and nodes, network-actor, collaborator , peer 2 peer – the
possibility of looking at questions of internet and digital traces is
interesting. Or imagine that the act of sharing is also a remix. Sometimes just
putting it into new contexts, making it available to newer constituencies, etc.
can also be looked upon as remixing. Remix as a knowledge production aesthetic
and mechanics seems to have emerged.</p>
<p><strong>Repurpose </strong>is my additional reading of something that perhaps
needs no mention to this group, but nonetheless needs flagging. The fact
remains, that the technology is not a solution in itself. It is a tool that
enables the solutions which one is seeking for. The processes, paradigms,
protocols and practices are indeed shaped and mediated by technologies and
there are new solution possibilities which are produced. However, there still
seem to be anxieties, concerns, questions and problems which are cropping up
and need to be addressed outside of technology but within technology ecologies.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OVSreport'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OVSreport</a>
</p>
No publishernishantConferenceOpen StandardsArtWorkshopDigital AccessFLOSSOpen ContentArchivesOpennessOpen InnovationMeetingOpen Access2011-09-22T12:23:13ZBlog EntryNegative of porn
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/law-video-technology/looking-closer-at-porn-with-x-ray-spectacles-savita-bhabhi-mms-video-and-others
<b>The post deals with what has been written about Savita Bhabhi in an attempt to make sense of her peccadiloes and with the seeming futility of Porn studies located in America to our different reality. I take the liberty of exploring my own experiential account of pornography since I feel that in that account (mine and others) when done seriously, certain aspects of pornography emerge that address questions that are about cinema, images, sex, philosophy and how desire works. The title is mischeviously inspired from Dr. Pek Van Andel's recent video of MRI images of people having sex.</b>
<p>Jonathan James McCreadie Lillie in his article “Cyberporn,
Sexuality and the Net Apparatus” while talking about academic engagement with
pornography (by Kipnis, Hunt, Waugh, Kendrick) points to how they share “a
common concern with analysing pornography within the various cultural
constructs and social spaces in which it appears, and in which people encounter
it”. He says that a new agenda for cyberporn research has to acknowledge that
“people have produced pornography in many different forms for many different
purposes, and the reasons why people use it or do not use it, and what meanings
they make of it, are equally diverse”. (1)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lillie points towards cyberporn reception studies – the
home/office terminal as a site of cyberporn reception – as a possible starting
point of further work on cyberporn. My interest is located in how does one
understand your own consumption of internet porn, located as it is in the
context that is not the global North and more specifically not male and not heterosexual.
Attempting to do that through the readings in porn studies (Porn studies,
edited by Linda Williams) (2), or specifically net porn studies (C’lick me –
Net Porn Reader) (3), has not been entirely fruitful though what is talked
about is highly interesting. One of the problems perhaps lies in what Lillie
says about the need for analyzing pornography within the various cultural
constructs and social spaces in which it appears, rather than separate or
floating above them. The Internet does not entirely make protean beings
(cyborgs?) of us after all, and the relevance of porn studies elsewhere can
only be partially relevant to a study here.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[Curiously though the debates within feminism and the
women’s movement around pornography in the global North – the familiar rhetoric
of the causal links between pornography and violence, do have a resonance in
similar debates in the women’s movement here. At a roundtable discussion on the
role of media at the recent Courts of Women organized by Vimochana (4), many of
the sentiments expressed by activists and organizations see a causal link
between explicit sexual material, violence and its direct negative impact on
morals, attitudes and behaviour of people.]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Linda Williams begins the volume on Porn Studies by stating that
there has been a movement from the deadlock of pro-censorship and sex positive
feminist discourse on pornography, to a stage where there is a veritable
explosion of sexual material that is crying out for analysis, and that sexually
explicit imagery is a fixture in popular culture today (obviously referring to
America but to some extent true for other contexts as well). In some ways there
is an attempt amongst academics, intellectuals, journalists and other writers
here to make sense of the pornographic material that has crept into our media
saturated cities. Many recent articles spawned by the ban on Savita Bhabhi
attempt to understand the unleashing of desire around Savita Bhabhi (from a
rock song to unashamed fandom) and to analyse the reasons for the ban or rather
what makes Savita Bhabhi threatening.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Savita Bhabhi, the [porn] [toon] [star] </strong></p>
<p>Itty Abraham undertakes a fairly detailed analysis of what
is happening in twelve episodes of Savita Bhabhi and perhaps unconvincingly
places the crux of the story of Savita Bhabhi on her cuckolded husband, Ashok
(5). He says “Their family life is relentless modern, nuclear, bourgeois, if
also gendered in familiar ways. The couple eats together (and at the same
time), they watch TV together in the evenings, and sleep in the same bed.” For
Abraham, the comic is about “these new sexual possibilities.. that begin from a
new kind of freedom to which the modern urban woman has access”. The article
suggests that we seem to be faced with a choice between the free untrammeled
Savita and her easy occupation of urban spaces protected by an aura of class
and her husband Ashok who is the hard worker earning enough to keep alive
her/our illusion of abundant urban neoliberal existence. Interestingly the
article is not attempting to make a point about pornography in relation to
ideas of culture, tradition, vulgarity or other familiar motifs in the debate
on obscenity.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Shohini Ghosh’s article takes on the task to find out what
precisely is so transgressive about Savita Bhabhi (6). Savita Bhabhi is poised
between the family and husband and illegitimate desires (similar to themes in
Charulata, Hum aapke hain kaun). She points that the pleasure of the comic is
not just that there are hard core sexual scenes as much as that the husband or
a similar character cannot look at what you look at. The Indian erotica (or
pornographic text) scene too is replete with tales of incest and transgressions
with domestic workers or servants|maids as they are called in the stories.
Ghosh while acknowledging the harm-violence debate within feminism on
pornography, states that she is anti-censorship – that although it is obvious
that media, images have an impact (otherwise why would they be cause of study)
there is no neat causal link between porn and sexual violence. She ends by
saying that “pornography then is a phantasmatic arena. It does not reflect
people’s ‘real’ sex lives so much as it articulates the desires and aspirations
for imagined ones.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Both articles make important linkages to other and pre-existing
debates on neo-liberal agendas, occupation of urban spaces, feminism and
obscenity. Ghosh seems to also be referring to a broader category of Indian porn and the problems posed by it. She also gestures towards the problems that might be posed if Savita Bhabhi were a real person and not a comic, but by and large most journalistic writing/analysis of Savita Bhabhi flattens out the field – asking questions as if comic characters were real persons, and not taking into account aesthetics, technology (mode of delivery) or where and how it is viewed (reception) by people. There is a difference in the way I respond to a comic about sex than to an MMS or hidden camera porn where I am aware of
the ‘realness’ of atleast some aspects of the image I’m looking at.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The ‘realness’ raises certain dilemmas – the anxiety is not
as severe and troubled as in the case of Mysore Mallige which is haunted by
urban legends of the couples or only the woman committing suicide, forced
marriage at a police station etc. Nonetheless to encounter the MMS video, when
the woman is looking directly at the camera often so it does not seem like a
hidden camera or non-consensual video, is to acknowledge the taking of pleasure
at the expense of someone else which may or may not bother you, but does render
the activity far more illicit and scary. My feeling of
fear|anxiety|secrecy|aloneness when surfing pornography, whether in the office,
home or anywhere where I can be discovered, is an added layer to the experience
even if the various aspects of violation of privacy, vulnerability of the woman
in the video or the existence of a pornography industry are not uppermost in
the mind when actually viewing the clips. One of the few works done that do
address this complicated set of affects that circulate and attach themselves to
pornography is Bharath Murthy’s film on Mysore Mallige ( the next post will be
on this film and interview with Bharath Murthy). (7)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This is why I would insist that the comic is a different
space for a viewer – some things such as anxieties about who this person I’m
looking at is and what happened to her do disappear, while others such as a
comic is bright, colourful and highly visible on my computer screen (for
instance) become more important. It is harder to hide surfing Savita Bhabhi in
an office than reading erotica or even downloading and discreetly watching a
small video. The aspect of how
Savita Bhabhi being a comic/drawn character changes how a viewer relates to the
material is an area of study that needs to be looked at more closely, perhaps
with the help of existing work that looks at the manga, anime, hentaii
phenomenon in Japan and parts of South East Asia.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The makers of Savita Bhabhi were anonymous till the ban and
after what seemed like a rather brief struggle with authority (SaveSavita
campaign on twitter and a blog) they vacated the public scene. As a consequence
of no real contest, the ban persists. But perhaps what is admirable is that
many people have learnt to use tools that allow them to still view Savita (and
to expose them here would be just foolhardy). In an interview online the makers
of Savita Bhabhi state .. “For one, it (comic) is a unique medium in the
context of Indian porn. We’ve had MMS’s, videos, stories, etc, but no porn
comics. Also a comic allows us to explore the fantasy in a much more vivid way
than any other medium.” This fantasy life however cannot be dismissed, as it is
indeed very real, or as they say – “based on real life fantasies of our authors
and fans. They are all something that a normal full blooded Indian male or
female would be fantasizing about on their commute to work or a lazy evening at
home.” In a short interview with the makers of the comic more recently and
subsequent to the ban they said that probably it was Savita Bhabhi’s popularity
that led to her downfall and that they set out to explore Indian sexuality,
which “obviously is a big No”.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>To return to Lillie’s call for a cyberporn reception studies
perhaps it is time in relation to looking at such material that we step away,
even if briefly, from these debates on feminism, vulgarity and obscenity in
Indian culture and others. In an interview dated 5th September, 2009, Ratheesh
Radhakrishnan says that what needs to be looked at when studying pornography,
is not the questions of Indian culture, religion, roles of women and gender (as
for questions related to obscenity) but the aesthetics of pornography. In his
own work Radhakrishnan deals precisely with this question in relation to the
category of ‘soft porn’ and how Shakeela becomes a star through soft porn
cinema – a star not entirely governed by the narrative of the film but
seemingly existing beyond the limit of the film itself. (8) By doing this, his
work deals with the question of how desire works in such films, which perhaps
is one of the more important question to ask about pornography. In the same
interview, he states that there is “something that takes place between the text
and the person watching” and that is what he is interested in.</p>
<p> </p>
<h1>Anti-porn</h1>
<p>Radhakrishnan’s position is interesting in relation to this
project as it opens up questions that are beyond the feminist deadlock on
pornography and also goes beyond rhetoric of the liberating potential of the
explosion of the polymorphous perverse online. The latter is where a lot of
porn studies undertaken in the global North seems to get lost. The breathless
recounting of the pornographic in the everyday, does not help since it becomes
very obvious that any analysis would not be relevant to a vastly different
context in India. (9)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Walter Metz in his article on Open Water (10) challenges the
ethics of porn studies – though he acknowledges that pornography is more a
symptom rather than a cause of anti-social behaviours that it is often linked
to (violent rape, aggressive behaviour, sexism etc.), but still raises the
question as to whether there are significant reasons to put the brakes on a
rabid, radical celebration of the liberating potential of pornography. Metz
talks about the need, within porn studies, to look at the positive and negative
impact of pornography (possibly he would extend that to looking at violent
martial arts film and other strands of cinema/new media).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Metz’s paper as such deals with Open Water as an
anti-pornographic film (here referring to the generic practice of pornography
rather than political positions) and this might be an interesting productive
mode to understand the affect produced by pornography. Though Metz qualifies
that he’s not using pornography as a genre, but rather “as a reading frame. If
one keeps thinking about pornography while watching a non-pornographic film,
what is the resulting interpretation?” Since I haven’t seen the film Open Water
perhaps my interest in such an analysis is misfounded. Metz describes the
frustration depicted in the film Open Water between the audience expectations
for a reasonably good looking, tanned, blonde couple to get-it-on and what
happens to their bodies instead in the open water of the sea and prey to
sharks, is similar to the disjuncture that takes place in one of the films part
of the Destricted project. (11)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Destricted is an interesting artistic|intellectual|new
media|film experiments in the global North around pornography. It is a series
of short films that resulted from an invitation to seven well known artists and
filmmakers to try to respond to sex and especially the phenomenon of
pornography in the contemporary. One of the films Death Valley by Sam
Taylor-Wood borrows from the Biblical tale of Onan and places a man
masturbating in the heaving, throbbing landscape of the Death Valley (the
hottest place in the Western hemisphere where the earth’s crust is constantly
changing and shifting). For precisely 7 minutes and 58 seconds, the protagonist
of the film masturbates uncomfortably without reaching ejaculation and/or
release. The painful un-release of this film, perhaps is meant to be juxtaposed
with the assumed ease of pornography’s answer to desire. However peculiarly it actually
is probably an accurate description of the experiential account of pornography
– of looking, searching, finding, downloading on painfully low speeds, watching
short clips that are blurred, shot only from one angle, badly drawn comics or
looking at largely uninspiring material which is not acquired or found easily.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In some ways the experience of watching either of these
films sounds similar to watching certain kinds of MMS video porn. For instance,
one video was of a couple doing oral sex in a toilet cubicle. The angle of the
camera was from the top and perhaps the intention behind this was to obscure
the faces of the two persons, since only the top of their heads are visible. It
did not seem like the couple were unaware of the video camera, as much as
performing for it almost unwillingly and only if the anonymity was preserved.
The video was low quality and highly blurred, to the point of any features
being indistinct beyond blackness of hair (maybe) and generic skin tone which
could be Indian, Iranian or generic South Asian. The resemblance to the
Destricted video is because again of the time it takes to reach ejaculation –
there is a painfully long uninspiring blowjob sequence. The video remains scary
and leaves one with a feeling of claustrophobia, discomfort and peculiarly
boredom or distance from what is happening. Yet perhaps it is here that the
question of realness and the affect it produces enters again. The question that
intrigues me is whether the affect produced by the video is because
there are certain gestures of the woman that seem recognizable, because she
seems like you (ethnically, racially ofcourse but also in sexual spaces she
occupies and behaviour). After having accomplished the task of coaxing semen
out of the uninspiring penis she is faced with, she folds her legs and speaks
indistinctly. In that moment she seems uncomfortably familiar, like watching a
friend having sex or maybe an aspect of yourself.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> It is perhaps
interesting that it is amateur pornography these days that seems to inspire the
most complicated set of affects (unlike the schooled|disciplined and
predictable response to cinema) – shocked recognition of yourself and desire to
see it again, titillation, boredom but yet unwilling to look away, love for
celebrities, pleasure of viewing a body like yours and even sometimes a
recognition that this is what you look like during sex, fear about your own
privacy, disgust for what seems unacceptable and provokes the
moral|visual|auditory sensibilities and contempt for the material and the
people who possibly are genuinely engaged with it. The article on Pam and
Tommy’s video in Porn Studies infact displays these varied affects and
underlines William’s assertion that this bracket of material, behaviour and
practices that get termed pornography/pornographic does indeed deserve
analysis, otherwise a potentially unique and interesting way of understanding
the contemporary would be lost for squeamishness. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>There are many aspects of the Minette Hillyer’s
analysis (12) that are specifically relevant only to the American contexts –
the notoriety of both the stars, the pre-existence and glorification of home
videos in most families and the acknowledgement of amateur couple porn as even
a healthy practice, perhaps suggested for couples with dull sex lives. In
India, it was infact unknown people who were catapulted into the public eye with the circulation of their video, online and offline that was later titled Mysore Mallige ; not just
the private spaces, holidays and fucking habits of already-celebrities like Pam
and Tommy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>What might be relevant here from Hillyer’s analysis is the
pre occupation with the realness of amateur pornography. The article follows the travels of the Pam and Tommy home video
between different categories/genres, depending on different aspects of its
realness. The video as such, contains scenes from the normal domestic lives of
the stars and a eight minute sequence of sex in an almost fifty minute length
video. So the questions of realness are answered not by the sex in the video,
but the mundane recording of their lives, holidays, house and other details.
This question of what exactly it is – home video or pornography (domestic/private
or pornographic/public) is relevant to questions of legality (for damages upto
90 million dollars), how it circulates (a pornographic video of Pam and Tommy
without the domestic padding perhaps would not be considered real and saleable)
and genre which relates to some aspects of how people respond to the work. Ever since the advent of (cheap) video technology, pornography is rendered less
cinematic and more concerned with the presentational act (of sex) than its
representation (ibid). With MMS videos and hidden camera porn, though questions may no longer be about representation, they are still complicated questions about the aesthetics, reception of pornography and our relation to the technology that delivers it and for me viewing pornography today as only presentational does not help to understand the affects that surround and attach to it. Perhaps many strands of what is
explored in this article can be explored in relation to Mysore Mallige in the
next blog post.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Just as I finish this piece, after an interview with Nishant Shah at Center for Internet and Society, another question enters the frame in relation to pleasure, moving it beyond those raised above. Is pleasure now a question that
is less about finding the corporeal thrill through pornography online, as much as
pleasure that comes from simulation and the added rush of simulating cities,
lives, personalities online. And is that pleasure, pornographic?</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>End notes:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>1. Jonathan James McCreadie
Lillie, “Cyberporn, Sexuality, and the Net Apparatus”, <em>Convergence</em> 2004; 10; 43</p>
<p> </p>
<p>2. Williams Linda (ed), <strong>Porn Studies,</strong> Duke University Press, London and Durham, 2004.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>3. Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen, Matteo Pasquinelli (eds),
<strong>C’lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader</strong>,
Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2007.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>4. Courts of Women, Vimochana Bangalore, 27-29 July, 2009.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>5. Itty Abraham, Sex in the Neo-liberal City: On Savita
Bhabhi, Available at The Fish Pond at <a href="http://thefishpond.in/itty/2009/on-savita-bhabhi/#comments">http://thefishpond.in/itty/2009/on-savita-bhabhi/#comments</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>6. Shohini Ghosh, The politics of porn, Himal South Asian
Magazine, September 2009, Vol 22, No. 9.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>7. Bharath Murthy (director), Mysore Mallige, 2007.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>8. Ratheesh Radhakrishnan, “‘The
Mis-en-scene of desire’: Stardom and the case of soft porn cinema in Kerala!”
Unpublished work. Contact author for copy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>9. Bloomingdale's now sells Tom of Finland shirts and
trousers, housewives celebrate their birthdays by piercing their geni- tals,
college students dance naked instead of waiting tables to pay their tuition,
and middle-level managers schedule a session with a dominatrix in their
favorite dungeon after a game of racquetball at their regular health club. From
Joseph W. Slade, Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide,
Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>10. Walter Metz, “Shark
Porn: Film Genre, Reception Studies, and Chris Kentis' Open Water” Film
Criticism, March 22, 2007</p>
<p> </p>
<p>11 Destricted: explicit films, Marina Abramovic, Matthew
Barney, Marco Brambilla, Larry Clark, Gaspar Noé, Richard Prince, Sam Taylor
Wood (directors), 2006.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>12 Minnette Hillyer, “Sex in the suburban: Porn, Home movies
and the Live Action Perofmance of Love in Pam and Tommy: Hardcore and
uncensored”, <strong>Porn Studies</strong>, Duke
University Press, London and Durham, 2004, p.50.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/law-video-technology/looking-closer-at-porn-with-x-ray-spectacles-savita-bhabhi-mms-video-and-others'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/law-video-technology/looking-closer-at-porn-with-x-ray-spectacles-savita-bhabhi-mms-video-and-others</a>
</p>
No publishernamitaFeaturedArtCensorship2011-08-02T08:35:34ZBlog EntryChutnefying English - Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/hinglish
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, was an institutional partner to India's first Global Conference on Hinglish - Chutnefying English, organised by Dr. Rita Kothari at the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad. A photographic report for the event is now available here.</b>
<p></p>
<p>In January of 2009, Dr. Rita Kothari, at the Mudra Institute
of Communications, Ahmedabad, organised the first global conference called “<a class="external-link" href="http://conferences.mica-india.net/">Chutneyfying
English</a>”, calling in various stakeholders from different walks of life –
academics, scholars, researchers, actors, cultural producers, authors and
consumers to critically examine the growing phenomenon of Hinglish and how it
intersects with our globalised lives. The two day conference brought together a
series of presentations, ranging from academic papers to lively round table
discussions to panels that looked at the different manifestations of Hinglish
and the political and aesthetic potential of this particular form. Scholars
like <a class="external-link" href="http://www.mica-india.net/AcademicsandResearch/Profiles/Profiles%20new/Rita.htm">Rita Kothari</a>, Harish Trivedi, <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/about/people/staff/nishant-shah" class="internal-link" title="Nishant Shah">Nishant Shah</a>, Daya Thussu, Shanon Finch and
Rupert Snell were complemented by cultural producers like <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nandita_Das">Nandita Das</a>, R. Raj
Rao, and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/staff/index.cfm?S=STAFF_skot005">Shuchi Kothari</a>. Literary stakeholders like <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urvashi_Butalia">Urvashi
Bhutalia</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://pipl.com/directory/people/Bachi/Karkaria">Bachi Karkaria</a>, and Tej Bhatia rubbed shoulders with more mainstream
practitioners like Prasoon Joshi, <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahesh_Bhatt">Mahesh Bhatt</a> and Cyrus Broacha.</p>
<p>The Centre for Internet and Society was an<a class="external-link" href="http://conferences.mica-india.net/sponsors.html"> institutional
partner</a> for the event, and supported the panel on New Media, which saw four
paper presentations and a discussion moderated by Nishant Shah, Director
Research at the CIS. The panel explored diverse presentations from Mattangi
Krishnamurthy, Pramod Nair and Supriya Gokarn, who looked at the diverse ways
in which the rise of Internet and digital technologies is not only changing the
ways in which people express themselves, but they are also leading to complex
ways in which new conditions of identity, consumption and politics are
manifesting themselves. Nishant Shah responded to the panel by positing the
idea of Hinglish as a paradigm, rather than a set of characteristics, which
goes beyond the questions of language and actually resides in the aesthetic
conditions of the internet technologies.</p>
<p>A photographic documentation of the event with an
introduction by Dr. Rita Kothari, the chief organiser and curator for the
conference is now available for a free download <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/Hinglish/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/hinglish'>http://editors.cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/hinglish</a>
</p>
No publishernishantConferenceArtCyberculturesCommunitiesDigital subjectivitiesDigital Pluralism2009-08-27T06:03:23ZBlog EntryPleasure and Pornography: Pornography and the Blindfolded Gaze of the Law
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/law-video-technology/the-blindfolded-gaze-of-the-law-and-pornography
<b>In the legal discourse, pornography as a category is absent, except as an aggravated form of obscenity. Does this missing descriptive category assist in the rampant circulation of pornography, either online or offline? Rather than ask that question, Namita Malhotra, in this second post documenting her CIS-RAW project, explores certain judgments that indeed deal with pornographic texts and uncovers the squeamishness that ensures that pornography as an object keeps disappearing before the law.
</b>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>When Justicia, blindfolded, cannot see the profane …</strong><br /><br />In the legal discourse, pornography as a category is absent, except as an aggravated form of obscenity (1). Does this missing descriptive category assist in the rampant circulation of pornography, either online or offline? Rather than ask that question, I would like to explore certain judgments that indeed deal with pornographic texts and uncover the squeamishness that ensures that pornography as an object keeps disappearing before the law.</p>
<p>For instance, in the case of Fatima Riswana V. Chennai & Ors. (2) both the public prosecutor and counsel for the petitioners applied to the court for transfer to another (male) judge, to save the District Lady Judge from embarrassment. The order for transfer was passed, so that the District Lady Judge does not have to view certain CDs that are part of the evidence. The justification for this is that the 'said trial would be about the exploitation of women and their use in sexual escapades by the accused, and the evidence in the case is in the form of CDs, viewing of which would be necessary in the course of the trial; therefore, for a woman Presiding Officer it would cause embarrassment'.</p>
<p>This is a rather obvious case, where explicit and pornographic material is made to disappear before the eyes of the law, gesturing towards the larger complicity that allows society and law to create a ruckus about Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty’s kiss, HBO's English movie channel, dance bars and other such aspects of the sleazy modernity that we inhabit (3), but simultaneously is oblivious to circulation of pornography, both online and offline.</p>
<p>In a rather confrontational visual juxtaposition, I place Savita Bhabhi alongside Husain’s Mother India, to be able to ask several questions, including the question of which one’s existence has been more threatened by the law. There is almost no doubt about it; Savita Bhabhi’s chequered career as a slutty housewife has been marred only by two scandals (and several almost patriotic accounts of India having finally arrived (4)) – once when a child sent an MMS about his teacher and it made references to Savita Bhabi, which led to some mention of action that might be taken against the website (5), and another time when Karan Johar (Mid Day, Delhi – 31 March 2009) remarked that one of the characters, Jeet, has a look similar to that given to Amitabh Bachchan in 'Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna', and this might be a case of copyright infringement. Neither of these have resulted in any serious charge against the alleged anonymous producers, Indian Porn Empire, or what is more probable, the blocking of the website regardless of whether the producers/creators can be found and prosecuted. However Husain’s untitled painting, which surfaced on a website for an auction for victims of a Kashmir earthquake in 2006 (two years after it was first sold by the painter), was dragged to court on serious charges of obscenity, which fortunately led to a rather progressive judgment on obscenity by the Delhi High Court.</p>
<p>Returning to the two images of nude women, obscenity law in India has laid down that “nudity in art and literature is not per se evidence of obscenity”. As stated in the judgment that dealt with the circulation of Hussain’s untitled painting (later titled 'Bharat Mata') 'the work as a whole must be considered, the obscene matter must be considered by itself and separately to find out whether it is so gross and its obscenity so decided that it is likely to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to influences of this sort'. What renders an object obscene is the transaction rather than the text -- a transaction involving the depiction-consumption of the female body , and the sexualisation of the viewer who in turn sexualises the object. It is not just that the painting/image may already be sexualized but also that the public is in turn sexualised by looking at it (and sexualises it with its
gaze), thus making them vulnerable to the perversion that is modernity
itself and the pornographic gaze (Nitya Vasudevan and Namita A. Malhotra, State of Desire - Unpublished article). To put it simply, the anxiety of the state is not just about the object, but also about its circulation in the public, and the meanings it acquires through these series of transactions.</p>
<p>Legal and public discourse is often obsessed with the various meanings that become possible because of the placing of this naked body - or the transactions of this naked body with the context, background, narrative that it is placed in. Though seemingly sexualised already as a naked body (this can be refuted not only by the Indian court but various examples in art, religious architecture, etc.) the meanings it may carry are further complicated when it is placed in a pornographic comic online, bearing a crown and saying 'I will be Miss India', or as a faceless hazy outline in the foreground of the map of India. Hussain’s depiction of the naked woman on the map of India, embodying India (in pain or anger) carries many jostling, conflicting meanings. Inspite of the furore over the painting, the High Court finally held that the painting was not obscene, stating that the intention of the painter was to evoke sympathy for a woman – indeed a nation – in distress (6) . However what is intriguing, is that Savita Bhabi’s body, her markings of Indian-ness, her poses and postures are not examined to that extent either by the court or the public.</p>
<p>Pornography, as obscenity in its aggravated form or explicit depiction of sexual acts without a relevant or coherent narrative, has been dropped from both legal discourse and academic and cultural analysis--is it possible to surmise that this has happened because it can be read as a blank slate, a place where meanings cannot be read, felt or inferred? Pornographic movies are spliced into mainstream films, circulate
surreptitiously through video stores, piracy markets or though online
spaces that cannot be easily accessed because of regulations and
filters in most places –- colleges, homes, schools, offices, cybercafes
(7) etc. Can we surmise that the transaction of the sexualized gaze with the obscene object has been, in this way, so removed from public gaze that it does not merit discomfort and anxiety for the state or public, unless it nefariously slips into public discourse (DPS MMS, Noida MMS, Mysore Mallige)? As long as it is a secretive (even if mass) consumption, it does not disturb the heternormative familiar and familial in the manner that an object whose obscenity is not quite obvious or clear does – for example, HBO's English movie channel (8).</p>
<p>In this context, let us look at an excerpt from the progressive judgment on Hussain’s painting, which demonstrates the extent to which the court has to read the meanings of an image to determine whether it is obscene or not, but simultaneously, by not ever having to interact with a pornographic text, the court (or the public) does not have to see that there are many meanings embedded in such an image as well.</p>
<p><em>'One of the tests in relation to judging nude/semi nude pictures of women as obscene is also <strong>a particular posture or pose or the surrounding circumstances</strong> which may render it to be obscene, but in the present painting, apart from what is already stated above, the <strong>contours of the woman’s body represent nothing more than the boundaries/map of India.</strong><br /></em></p>
<p><em>Even if a different view had to be taken that if the painter wanted to depict India in human form, it may have been<strong> more appropriate to cloth the woman in some manner may be by draping a sari </strong>or by a flowing cloth etc., but that alone cannot be made a ground to prosecute the painter.</em> <em>There can be a numbers of postures or poses that one can think of which can really stimulate a man’s deepest hidden passions and desires. To my mind, art should not be seen in isolation without going into its onomatopoetic meaning and it is here I quote Mr. Justice Stewart of the US Supreme Court in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964) who defined ‘obscenity’ as, “I will know it when I see it”. The nude woman in the impugned painting is not shown in any peculiar kind of a pose or posture nor are her surroundings so painted which may arouse sexual feelings or that of lust in the minds of the deviants in order to call it obscene. The </em><em><strong>placement of the Ashoka Chakra</strong> or the States in the painting
is also not on any particular body part of the woman which may be
deemed to show disrespect to the Ashoka Chakra/States and the same was
conceded by the learned counsel for the respondent during the course of
the arguments advanced. </em></p>
<p><em>It is possible that some persons may hold a more orthodox or conservative view on the depiction of Bharat Mata as nude in the painting but that itself would not suffice to give rise to a criminal prosecution of a person like the petitioner who may have more liberal thoughts in respect of mode and manner of depiction of Bharat Mata.' </em>(9)</p>
<p>A body that doesn’t carry inscriptions of cities on different body parts, but is definitely inscribed as Indian is that of Savita Bhabi – from the mangalsutra that never comes off even during doggy-style sex, the sari that slips off rather easily, the bindi, the gestures and mannerisms, to the stories that place her in sexual encounters with familiar people – the bra salesman, the old boyfriend, the cousin, the doctor, the woman colleague, the boss, the aging star and many others.</p>
<p>Savita Bhabhi thus carries as many confusing, jostling meanings as a pornographic text. For instance, she refers to recession and aspirations to become Miss India. She ventures into the fantasy world of her fans, since many of her stories are drawn from their stories on the Savita Bhabi website and fansite –- whether these stories are make-believe or true is irrelevant. These resonances of the text beyond mere sexual arousal are obvious. Even if one were to ignore Linda Williams (10) and inferences from Foucault that pornography becomes one of the many forms in which knowledge of pleasure is organised, it is obvious that from varied perspectives within film studies and legal studies, pornography merits examination. Williams' point also seems to provide some insight into why pornographic circulation doesn't merit much anxiety from the state or in the law; if pornography is organised in consonance with the heteronormative familiar and familial and accessible primarily by men, then maybe it is not such a big surprise that the state or the law is not really invested in controlling pornography, since pornography itself is controlling modes of sexuality and/or sexual expression.</p>
<p>Returning to the comparison, Hussain's untitled nude body on the map of India is literally marked. She carries these inscriptions -- Gujarat on one breast, Bangalore between her thighs, Chennai on her calves, Goa on her hip. Savita Bhabi is marked by her sari, her bindi, her blouse, her aesthetic sense, her fantasies of film stars, her stories of encounters in dressing rooms and myriad other recognizable details -- that mark her as Indian, or at least as living in India, in an Indian (albeit a privileged fair North Indian) body. However, it is Husain's untitled painting -- not called Bharat Mata (and the painting doesn't seem to signify a maternal relation but that of a wounded woman or pained woman) -- that goes to court on charges of obscenity.</p>
<p>Before looking at the few judgments that deal with the actual pornographic text, I take a detour to look at another iconic female figure -- that of Justice. Though clothed, she is blindfolded, so as to be able to discern even a fraction of a slip in the scales of justice; visual cognition would not be sufficient for her to recognise such a slip. As explained by Costas Douzinas, ('The Legality of the Image, lecture – December, 1999), ‘Justice must be blindfolded to avoid the temptation of facing the concrete person and putting individual characteristics before the abstract logic of the institution'. Martin Jay traces the trajectory of how justice became blindfolded through the ages, in the article 'Must Justice Be Blind' (11). Justice was initially wide-eyed and alert; she was blindfolded by the Fool in a period when corruption of the rulers was rampant; she was immortalised by Vermeer as staring at empty scales; and in a transitory state before being completely blinded she had two heads, with a pair of eyes that could see, and a pair that was blindfolded -- shielded, maybe, from the profane and from embarrassment.</p>
<p>I look at this blindness of the judicial system that allows pornography to circulate, while pinning down the obscene and examining minutely its various meanings. The obscene ('Satyam Shivam Sundarmam', 'Prajapati' – a Bengali magazine which carries short stories, 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover', 'Bandit Queen') is examined firstly, for whether it is so gross, though grossness or vulgarity as such is not enough to establish obscenity. And secondly, for whether it has the tendency to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such influences and into whose hands -- or rather, vision -- such an object might fall (this is what allows for the circulation in limited publics -- adult audiences, time slots on television). <br /><br /><strong>Hard and Near Hard Pornography: Close Encounters of the Law with the Profane</strong></p>
<p>In the case of Anonymous vs. the Commissioner Of Police (12), yet another encounter takes place between the embarrassed law and the pornographic text. The excerpt below describes the encounter of two women advocates asked by the court to examine what movies are being exhibited at a specific theatre. In the peculiar clash of social mores, that ensure who has access to pornography, and the law, that ensures equal access to all legally sanctioned media to everyone, the movie theatre was held responsible for violating the fundamental right of women to have access to their premises -- and thus access to pornography. <br /><br /><em>'We approached the booking counter of Rs. 20/- and asked for tickets. The booking clerk first informed us that it is an English movie and it is not meant for ladies to view. When we insisted for tickets, he asked us to come inside the booking room from the main entrance of the theatre. When we were entering the theatre, the gate-man informed us that ladies are not permitted as it is a "SEX MOVIE".</em></p>
<p><em>However, we walked into the booking room. Booking clerk issued us Box-A tickets and further asked us to see the Manager before taking seats. We did not see the Manager but directly went to Box-A and took seats. Even the Box-A doorman asked us to leave the theatre advising us that we being ladies cannot see it as the movie is a "SEX MOVIE". When the movie began at 12.00 P.M. simultaneously the Manager along with two men switched on the lights in Box-A and asked us to leave the hall immediately. Since he repeatedly insisted us to leave, we both came out of Box-A. On coming out we enquired as to why we should not see the movie, to which the Manager replied that it is a "BF". On asking for further clarification of "BF", the Manager stated that it means "BLUE FILM". When we asked him to identify himself, he informed us that he is Mr. Prasad, Manager of the Theatre, as such he has every right to ask us to leave. When we asked as to how it was not advertised that the movie is meant for men only, he retorted that "It is understood that whenever English movies are played in this theatre, ladies are strictly not permitted." As such we were forced to leave the theatre immediately.'</em><br /><br />The question before the court was whether the films exhibited in this theatre were being exhibited in accordance with the censor certificate or whether there was any tampering; whether there was any other device or contrivance to interpolate or intermingle blue films with any otherwise innocent-looking film. Here, though the court had taken it upon itself to address the pornographic text, it ran into a series of complications when merely trying to access the text or the evidence itself, as two women advocates were sent to determine if there was an illegal film exhibition taking place. Pornography seems to be continuously disappearing even on the rare occasion when it is addressed directly by the court, especially in the court's attempt to precisely locate the moment of transaction of the gaze with the pornographic object.</p>
<p>The court, when allowed to examine the film exhibited, found that it was 'a hotch potch of short films, advertisement films, party propaganda films, Hindi and Telugu feature film bits'. (13) The court finally located the pornographic segments (squeezing breasts in a tub, cunnilingus, brutal murder scene) and the court’s comment was that 'normal scenes were replaced by sexy scenes'. The recommendation of those who examined the films that were ostensibly being spliced into <em>Secret Games 3</em> and <em>Dark Dancers</em> is that, 'The only course proper is not to permit entry into the country for such films which prima facie may be <strong>classified hard or near-hard</strong>'. Though the term near-hard is amusing and unique classification of pornography, maybe it's a Freudian slip by a judicial system caught between disgusted arousal and embarrassment.</p>
<p>Finally, in this judgment, the court had to acknowledge its own blindness -- that there is ‘some hole somewhere in the system so that even excised portions by the Censor Board of the films have found their way to the theatres’, including portions that were never passed through the censor certification process at all. <br /><strong><br />Whose Hard-On (or Near Hard-On) Are We Looking for: The Law in Its Search for the Profane</strong><br /><br />In 2005, two teenagers frolicking were captured on a mobile phone camera, and the clip circulated first through mobile phones and then subsequently on the internet. The clip sparked off a phenomenon of hidden camera and mobile phone clips -- a booming pornographic enterprise now on the internet. For a split second, it seemed as though any kind of desire could become pornographic, captured in an ubiquitous medium and transmitted throughout the country. That thrill and anxiety was possibly grasped at slightly in Anurag Kashyap’s <em>Dev.D</em>, where Chanda -- the prostitute, or the other of the good girl -- is the one depicted as the unknown girl who was part of the MMS clip. Very few films have been able to grasp the visceral embarrassment and immediacy of desire as <em>Dev.D</em> does, and it is possibly not the story of Chanda, but that of Paro that achieves this. Paro, who sends nude pictures of herself across continents; Paro, the cyber-sexer; Paro, the entirely relatable slut who cycles with a mattress across fields of mustard in small town Punjab because she desires sex.</p>
<p>After three and a half years (countless MMSs, one movie reference, and a few academic articles later) the court passes judgment in this case – of who possibly can be held liable for the circulation of the MMS clip online, and specifically its sale on Bazee.com (an eBay subsidiary) by an IIT student (Avnish Bajaj vs State on 29/5/2008 by Muralidhar J.). In this case, it is not the pornographic text that keeps slipping and eluding the grasp of the court; the problem is in the inability, especially in the age of the internet, to fix the transactions around such an object that is rapidly changing hands and circulating at an exponential speed through the internet.</p>
<p>The court is in a bind -- the wrong person is accused. Not the corporate body of Bazee but the CEO of Bazee himself (the boy is a juvenile so is facing lesser charges in the juvenile court). The court has the responsibility to fix the blame of the circulation of the obscene object on Avinash Bajaj, without being able to establish that there is any knowledge on his part about the existence of the clip. Though the court was able to establish that there was negligence on the part of Bazee in running the website (in spite of notification, the clip remained on sale for a whole working day after the complaint), and that the filters used by Bazee were obviously inadequate to control what is sold through the website, it was still not possible to find the CEO liable for obscenity charges. If the company had been charged, this would have been possible. Eventually, even though obscenity as a charge couldn’t stick, similar provisions in the IT Act (Section 67 read with Section 85) were used to charge Avinash Bajaj himself, as opposed to Bazee (the corporate body or the company itself). </p>
<p>Here again the court is forced to confront a pornographic text only in instances where there has been a public furore around it, and the eventual judgment is not likely to be able to even remotely address the phenomenon of MMS clips and hidden camera footage from cybercafes and hostels that has been spawned as a result of this incident. The slippery transaction of the gaze with the pornographic object is difficult to fix though in a different way from the earlier judgment – here the pornographic nature of the text is understood rather than examined, more for its violation of privacy than actual elements of obscenity. But it is still hard to determine for the law, especially with the internet, how and by whom has circulation of the pornographic object has taken place and to fix these transactions to ensure legal culpability.</p>
<p>*****<br />Curiously this tale of women advocates and judges as representatives of law and justice, who are averting their gaze from the pornographic text or find that the text is constantly eluding their legal stare, must deal in its closure with the figure of the male judge. Anne McClintock’s male judge in her article ‘Screwing the System’ (14) is a judge who gets a hard-on each time he sentences a prostitute -- a judge who otherwise pays to be beaten by the very same prostitutes. The Hidayatullah paradox of obscenity law is that the judge who decides on obscenity has to decide on the basis of whether he is affected, or rather aroused -- and if he is turned on, then how is he any longer the reasonable judge, or even the 'reasonable man' who can be expected to pass judgment with the dispassionate authority of law? The work of both Shrimoyee N. Ghosh (on the dance bar judgment) and Lawrence Liang (on cinema and the law) on the relation between law and affect, gestures towards an interesting puzzle for us to consider here: if we could look into the eyes of justice, if she were not blindfolded, what would we see? And is the purpose of the blindfold indeed to prevent us from observing the affective life of law itself – its arousal, disgust and embarrassment?</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Endnotes:</strong></p>
<p>1. Ranjit Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra. Only in the recent fairly progressive judgment on Hussain’s painting, that held eventually after examining it, that it was not obscene, was there an attempt at giving some distinction to the category of pornography apart from it being an aggravated form of obscenity and to say that it, as a class of objects, images, paintings, videos, is designed for sexual arousal, while other material which may or may not be obscene is meant to have other meanings. Such reading of the author’s intentions is a convoluted way of restating Justice Potter’s statement – 'I know it (hard core), when I see it'. <br />2. Fatima Riswana v. State Rep. By A.C.P., Chennai & Ors.Case No.: Appeal (crl.) 61-62 of 2005<br />3. -'…in a clear shift of subject matter, what we are now seeing is an explicitly politicized moral censor looking at all this—looking not so much at the sex industry as at society-in-general, at society itself now theatricalised into a morbid stage of sleaze'. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, in his essay ‘Is Realism Pornographic?,’ which deals with the writings of Pramod Navalkar, former Minister for Culture in Maharashtra, points to how explicit or hard-core pornography does not seem to be the concern as much as a whole range of practices attached to the phenomenon of modernity<br />4. Anastasia Guha, The Beatitudes Of A Bountiful Bhabhi, Tehelka, Vol 5, Issue 19, Dated May 17, 2008. Available online at http://www.tehelka.com/story_main39.asp?filename=hub170508the_beatitudes.asp <br />5. Savitha Bhabi threatened, http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/3476748.cms <br />6. For instance, the court held that in Bandit Queen, the nudity during the sequence of rape and torture of Phoolan Devi is necessary in the narrative and essential for the impact and the moral that the story is trying to convey – her anger with the upper caste feudal landlords and her quest for justice become identifiable for the viewer, and hence the nudity is in fact necessary in the story, and has no ‘tendency to deprave or corrupt’.<br />7. The regulation of cybercafes takes place in a manner reminiscent of how cinema spaces such as movie theatres were sought to be regulated by the colonial law. Current laws demand placing of computers so monitors face outward, use of identity cards for every visit, data retention for at least a month for most users, etc. <br />8. Though the latter might be a valid assumption (and certainly beneficial for us) it is an assumption whose presumptuous certainties are shaken in the age of the internet, especially that primarily men access pornography and cyber sex through these newly opening up online spaces.<br />9. Maqbool Fida Husain v. Raj Kumar Pandey CRL. REVISION PETITION No. 114/2007. Decided on 08-05-2008</p>
<p>10. Williams, Linda. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989<br />11. Costas Douzinas, Lynda Nead (Eds), Law and the Image: the Authority of Art and the Aesthetics of Law. University of Chicago Press, 1999<br />12. Anonymous Letter-Un-Signed vs The Commissioner Of Police And Others on 26 December, 1996<br />13. For a judicial system that is invested in narrative film or narrative structure for reasons of copyright law (see generally Anne Baron, The Legal Property of Film) or for aesthetic reasons, as is evident from the judgment in Bandit Queen (that held nudity when she was paraded naked in front of the villagers to not be obscene because those scenes are needed for a narrative impact – for people to feel moved and disgusted by Phoolan Devi’s plight) it must also be a different kind of horror to find films chopped up into twenty sundry pieces, the last piece thrown somewhere else.<br />14. Anne McClintock, Screwing the System: Sexwork, Race and the Law, Boundary 2, Vol. 19, No. 2, Feminism and Postmodernism (Summer, 1992), 70-95. <br /><br /></p>
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