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In Memoriam: Tilak Jayaratne
Tilak’s journey in search of people’s media, from the Sunday Times Tilak Jayaratne, veteran broadcaster and media advocate, passed away on September 6, after a long illness bravely borne. All those...
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Video on Mediated: Hard data on Sri Lanka, through art
Mediated is an art project that essentially seeks to create greater awareness around and engagement with aspects of post-war Sri Lanka’s ideational, constitutional, economic, social and religious...
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“Inventors are like artists – we must celebrate and nurture them!”
Nalaka Gunawardene in conversation with Deepal Sooriyaarachchi, Commissioner, Sri Lanka Inventors Commission For over two decades, Deepal Sooriyaarachchi made a name for himself as an innovative...
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Religious sensitivities, the Islamic world and the communication revolution
Much hue and cry has been raised the world over the US made video titled “The Innocence of Islam”. In Sri Lanka too we have seen protests and numerous articles on the issue, most lambasting the USA....
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In conversation with Shashi Tharoor: India, literature, politics and South Asia
Having moderated a session with Shashi Tharoor earlier this year at the Galle Literary Festival, we met up again in Colombo last week to talk about the writer-politician’s new book, and his views on...
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Unearthed: Architecture, text, theatre and dance
Unearthed is a new production by Floating Space in collaboration with Sally E. Dean, and in concept and design promises a rather unusual and unique performance. Planned for the 1st and 2nd of December...
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Ini Avan: Hauntingly beautiful but…
Ini Avan, Asoka Handagama’s latest film, in Tamil, has won international cinematic acclaim. And it is easy to see why. The film has interesting characters who within their confined destinies take some...
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Memes and the Art of Majority Placation in Sri Lanka
The thing about Social Media is that it gives people a shot at engineering their identities without much effort. A simple ‘like’ or ‘share’ of a particular picture can easily give the impression of an...
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‘Women’s Issues’: Shooting the messenger
Image courtesy ICRW ‘Are we not raped every day when we walk down the street and are leered at ? Are we not raped when we are treated as sex objects, denied our rights, oppressed in so many ways ?’...
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In conversation with Michael Mendis: Winner of 2013 Commonwealth Short Story...
Michael Mendis is the winner of the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Asia. ‘The Sarong-Man in the Old House, and an Incubus for a Rainy Night’ can be read in full on Granta. Upon winning the...
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Prince Salie: A story of sapphires and steamships
Mohammed Usuff Mohammed Salie was born in 1877. He was the grandson of Mohamed Usuff, the Alim of the Kandawatte mosque in Galle, who was responsible for handwriting a Quran he knew by memory for his...
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‘Flying Fish’ and the Constriction of the Arts in Sri Lanka
I met Sanjeeva Pushpakumara last year in a little art cinema off the Champs Elysees at the showing of Ashoka Handagama’s Ini Avan. It seemed he knew me from his days as a student or a journalist. A...
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Madras Cafe: A timely interrogation
“There are events, facts from history” and according to the director Shoojit Sircar his film Madras Cafe (2013) is “fiction inspired from fact”.[1] And while the director claims that his film is not...
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30 Years Ago: Audio recordings of panel discussions
Photograph by Tehani Ariyaratne, from 30 Years Ago To complement the launch of 30 Years Ago and focus on some of the issues the project is anchored to and inspired by, four panel discussions were on...
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Innovating Under Duress: Implications of the Global Innovation Index for Sri...
Science writer Nalaka Gunawardene in conversation with Dr Ajith de Alwis, engineer and public intellectual Sri Lanka was ranked at No 98 among 142 countries worldwide in the Global Innovation Index...
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Is sex work, work?
Photo by AP, via Occupy.com Two weeks ago we found ourselves sitting in a room full of three wheeler drivers working in the Colombo Fort area on what seemed like an all or nothing mission. Of all...
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Meetings across acrylic, canvas and dance: India-Sri Lanka Artists Week
I spent some time with 12 visual artists and 1 dancer, from Sri Lanka and India, at the Taj Samudra Hotel in Colombo today, who are part of an interesting and pioneering artistic collaboration between...
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Complexities of Sinhalese Ethnicity and Community: Caste, Kinship and Religion
Image courtesy Karava of Sri Lanka Due to the war with Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam for over three decades in Sri Lanka, the attention of many including academics, journalists, foreign observers...
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Cultural Domination and Subordination among the Sinhalese: Colonialism,...
Image from Rough Guides In my previous two articles I discussed Caste and Class domination and subordination. In this article, I am looking closely at cultural domination in the context of...
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Sri Lankan gastronomy: In conversation with Koluu
Koluu is arguably Sri Lanka’s best known and most loved chef, and an actor to boot. We begin our conversation by going back to his childhood and looking at what prompted him to take up cooking, and at...
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