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Why the world fears refugees
Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman's words about why people in the EU, and elsewhere, are scared of refugees.

Memefest/Swinburne International Symposium/ Workshops Intervention 21-28 November, 2016 Swinburne University
We are highly excited to announce that from November 21st to November 28th , Memefest will again hol...

Occupy Wall Street:
Where Are They Now?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/17/opinion/Occupy-Wall-Street.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Every advert in a London Underground station has been replaced with cat photos


Why?

a) it would look amazing

b) it’s exhausting being asked to buy stuff all the time

‘Wouldn’t it be great not to worry about the holiday we can’t afford, the car we don’t need, or the body we don’t have? Imagine a world where public spaces made you feel good.


Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2016/09/12/every-advert-in-a-london-underground-station-has-been-replaced-with-cat-photos-6123655/#ixzz4K5pIg6wa

Memefest PLEASURE: The Pleasure of Drugs

Just saw this fantastic news. Police caught a man who they thought was smuggling amphetamines - but now, he was trafficking another (dangerous and highly pleasurable) substance.

Swedish police arrest man in 'drugs bust' after finding huge stash of sugar in car

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/swedish-police-arrest-man-in-drugs-bust-after-finding-huge-stash-of-sugar-in-car-a7225156.html

Check Memefest outlines and more about out take on the Pleasure of drugs here: http://memefest.org/en/competition/intro/

Here something very relevant to our PLEASURE outlines:

"Cartels and mafia are not about ideology, they are about business and this makes them so much more dangerous. As Islamic State is losing its ground it is worth remembering that its power and now the evening of it have been strongly tied to the oil business. As long as it was able to control oil fields in Iraq and Syria and have Turkey turning the blind eye for it to export the oil, it was powerful. In comparison to oil, cocaine fields ain’t going nowhere, the white petroleum of our time will always find and build its pipelines. Whether it is the underground tunnels bellow the Mexico-US border, submarines in the gulf of Mexico, containers on the transatlantic ships, the stomach of a human mule, planes, helicopters, cars, trucks… Where there is a movement, there can be a cocaine movement."

Check more on Roberto Savianos new book @ Anej Korsika here: http://www.versopolis.com/review/194/narco-capitalism

Memefest 2016 - The Pleasure of Drugs
Check here: http://memefest.org/…/competi…/criticalwriting_2016outlines/

#flowerbombs Abu Ward ran the last garden centre in Aleppo, Syria. He believed that "Flowers help the world and that there is no greater beauty than flowers. Those who see the flowers enjoy the beauty of the world created by God. And when you smell them they nourish the heart and the soul. The essence of the world is a flower."
Please plant or dedicate a flower to the memory of Abu Ward and to all people everywhere trying to create something beautiful in the face of war, oppression and tragedy.
Plant thoughtfully using plants that can thrive in the places that you plant them. Plant them publicly or privately and mark the planting with the words Abu Ward #flowerbombs. It's my hope that we can get word to Abu's son Ibrahim and the rest of his family that he is not forgotten but is blooming all over the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJGp3g93h6M

Here a post in Ricochet Media about Memefest and especially about our new MOBILIZATION category:

https://ricochet.media/en/1339/memefest-change-the-conversation-change-the-world

"Designers have played an active role in creating digital and physical borders to prevent refugees entering Europe". But can and should the refugee crisis be treated as a design problem?

Memefest PLEASURE: The Pleasure of Hospitality (and being human)
Read the outlines here: http://memefest.org/…/visualcommunicationpractice_2016outl…/

Read more about the relation between design and refugees here:
http://www.dezeen.com/…/ruben-pater-opinion-what-design-ca…/

"Also here's link https://www.diggers.com.au/garden-advice/articles-and-more/blog/?utm_source=Diggers..."

"I like this from the same article "our critical spirit arises precisely from our positive political,..."

"I just read this text:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-hangman-of-critique/#!

On the L..."

"This is wonderful. I miss gardening so much, something I always did before I came to Australia. We a..."

The Pleasure of Radical Gardening

The Pleasure of Radical Gardening
“Certain gardens are described as retreats when they are really attacks.”
Ian Hamilton Finlay cited...

“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 gardening does lie in its radical ‘roots’. Whether it’s planting indigenous Australian plants, growing organic fruit and vegetables, raising chickens and sharing the bounty with neighbours and friends or saving heritage seeds that can be used again and again, my politics underpins and is underpinned by my gardening.

Being able to cultivate a patch of land, as an individual or as part of community, should be a basic human right. And for millennia it was taken for granted. Once the commons began to be foreclosed and the world colonized, people have had to fight for their right to plant and nurture gardens. As large agribusinesses swallow up the land and patent our seeds, the need has grown for a concerted “horticountercultural” [1] politics – what Peter Lamborn Wilson calls “avant gardening” [2]. As he notes:

Voltaire’s cynical advice in Candide – “Cultivate your own garden” – can no longer be considered simply an amoral bon mot. The world has changed considerably since the Enlightenment. Meanings have shifted. “Cultivate your own garden” sounds today like hot radical rhetoric. Growing a garden has become – at least potentially – an act of resistance. But it’s not just a gesture of refusal. It’s a positive act. It’s praxis. (Lamborn Wilson, 1999, 9-10)

I know that I am privileged. I live in a house with a garden. I can afford to water our plants, feed our chickens and buy seeds. My house stands on the lands of the traditional owners, the Wurundjeri people, and it is through their dispossession that I have come to be here. It is important to acknowledge this.

Gardening is never far away from politics. George McKay’s wonderful book, Radical Gardening: Politics, Idealism and Rebellion in the Garden, traces this relationship, in a mainly British context, by examining the urban allotment movement, the politics of the Garden City, organics, the fascist origins of biodynamics, flower power, peace and memorial gardens, land cooperatives, community gardens and guerrilla gardening.

Gardens don’t just support plant and animal life. They ground our ethics and values. Tending a garden teaches patience. Plants and animals have their own time and we have to adjust to them. Being in the garden helps us to acknowledge the interconnectedness of our lives and changes in the climate, to think about what will and won’t go together and to remember that what ever is taken out must in some way be restored or returned. Our successes and failures are actually life and death issues for the inhabitants of our gardens so we need to be mindful and attentive to their needs before we can meet our own.

As I’m writing this, a Red Wattlebird has landed on the flowering Grevillea outside my window. Before I can take a photo it notices my movement and moves away. It’s a fleeting glimpse but one that recurs each day as the birds come to suckle on the sweet nectar in the winter flowering native bushes. I’m reminded again that our imposed European ‘seasons’ don’t align with those as described by Aboriginal people for tens of thousands of years. In southern Australia, the plants that are indigenous to the area flower in what we have come to call ‘winter’ but was known to the Wurundjeri people as Berrertak Darr – Karr (Cold West Wind), a time for artefact making. [https://vimeo.com/133830628] Another lesson from the garden.
What has gardening taught you? What pleasures does it bring?
Share your transformative gardening story.


[1] McKay, George, Radical Gardening: Politics, Idealism and Rebellion in the Garden London: Francis Lincoln, 2011, p.7.
[2] Lamborn Wilson, Peter, “Avantgardening” in Wilson & Weinberg (eds) Avantgardening: Ecological Struggle in the City and the World, New York: Autonomedia, 1999, pp. 7-34.

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