News / Conversations

Comerades

08.06.2016

The Pleasure of Radical Gardening

“Certain gardens are described as retreats when they are really attacks.”
Ian Hamilton Finlay cited in George McKay’s Radical Gardening: Politics, Idealism and Rebellion in the Garden.

When I first saw the theme for this year’s Memefest Friendly Competition, my instant response to the word ‘Pleasure’ was gardening. Not very radical might be one’s first response but for me the pleasure of gard…

Memefest

30.05.2016

Pleasure: Submit Your Festival Work Here!

Dear Friends and Comrades, use this link to submit your work to the Festival's Friendly Competition:

http://memefest.org/en/competition/application_form/

PLEASURE is the theme of this year’s Memefest. We are interested in processes where pleasure meets with conflict and especially in ways we can experience pleasure in our everyday life, which can contribute to its radical transformation t…

Memefest

12.03.2016

Memefest 2016 Festival Outlines: PLEASURE

Pleasure is central to our lives and communication/design and art play a major role in our relationship to it.

While pleasure can be used to live life fully, as well as to render people into tools it seems we rarely think of it outside its immediate effects and certainly we think even less of pleasure as social practice and something we could relate to the world in transformative ways that ch…

Memefest

23.08.2015

Radical Intimacies: The Many Different Fruits From Our Dialogue

The inaugural international Memefest/Swinburne Extradisciplinary Symposium / Workshop / Intervention was held from November 18-25th and focused on Memefest's 2014 theme - Radical Intimacies: Dialogue in our Times, curated by Dr Oliver Vodeb and Alana Hunt. It was a continuation of the global Memefest festival Friendly competition on the same theme and was connected to the Memefest/Swinburne Award…

Comerades

11.07.2015

" the worst thing you did to us was to make politicians out of all of us"

A haunting piece that articulates the thematic concerns of Memefest 2014, as the author concludes - " the worst thing you did to us was to make politicians out of all of us": http://indianexpress.com/…/book-review-kashmir-the-vajp…/99/

Comerades

24.11.2014

MELBOURNE MOB - Radical Intimacies in Action

So... finally some snapshots from the amazing energy we are all experiencing here in Melbourne right now.

Three days of symposium with great speakers: critical thinkers, activists, academics, artists, designers, lovers and friends (and guitar players) from around the world who helped to open our horizons on the theme Radical Intimacies: Dialogue in out Times - especially the ones delivered fr…

Comerades

19.11.2014

Announcing the Lieutenant John Pike Memeorial Browser Extension

On November 18th, 2011, Lieutenant John Pike of the University of California, Davis police force casually pepper sprayed peaceful protesters at the UC Davis campus. By November 20th, Lt. Pike and his actions had become a meme. Today marks the third anniversary of both the UC Davis Pepper Spray Incident, and the Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop meme -- two events of profound cultural importanc…

Memefest

12.11.2014

Keep The Fire Burning! Memefest/Swinburne Extradisciplinary Symposium/Workshop/Direct Action and a Special Award

We are very excited to announce this years special Memefest/ Swinburne University Award for Imaginative Critical Intervention and the first Memefest/Swinburne extradisciplinary symposium/workshop/direct action upcoming event.

The award for Imaginative Critical Intervention is given to support critical thinking, as the ability to see situations as they are and imagine them differently in a way …

Memefest

05.11.2014

MEMEFEST 2014 FRIENDLY COMPETITION RESULTS

Dialogue is tirelessly presented as ‘the’ solution to the problems of ‘our’ times – in art, war, love, democracy and even in the workplace. In fact, dialogue has been central to the ethos of Memefest since its inception back in 2002. But what if dialogue is not working? We were convinced that an urgent fresh look, an updated reflection on the current states of dialogue in an increasingly anti- di…

Comerades

22.10.2014

Friendly Competition Results will be Announced November 5th!

Dear community, dear comrades and friends. We have initially announced that results of this years Memefest Friendly competition will be known last week in October. As much as we are working hard on the process, we will have to extend the date till November 5th.

Your response was overwhelming. We have received more than 250 submissions from 26 countries on the highly complex and difficult theme…