George Petelin and Oliver Vodeb: Dialogue and its Potentials in a Pseudo-Intimate World
Oliver Vodeb talks to George Petelin, author of the chapter on Dialogue in Memfest’s book on Radical Intimacy. They discuss the importance of intimacy for true dialogue to take place and how conditions in contemporary society erode intimacy or substitute it with forms of pseudo-intimacy. Radical Art and Design face the difficult task of restoring intimate dialogue mediated through technology on a mass scale.
While we communicate more then ever before in human history, our capacity to engage in genuine dialogue has been eroded. Dialogue is the most sophisticated form of communication. It demands the deepest attention, it makes us human and enables us to "see the other" as eminent thinkers have been arguing since the antique Greece.
How can we think about dialogue, what is it and why is it so important? And why is there so little dialogue in our societies? George Petelin's chapter in the book Radical Intimacies deal with these and other question. This conversation looks into some of these ideas and aims to make a case for the incredible importantce for us to seriously engage in dialogue in practice and in theory.
How can we think of dialogue in relation to design and art? Memefest has been working on these questions for more then two decades. This conversation unveils some of the nuances and differnt dialogic concepts.
*This photo was taken in Havana in 2015 where George and Oliver led a Memefest workshop on dialogic design methods. Havana has close to no advertising, and little other forms of public communication so the works, which offered incentives for critical imagination made with the students earned a lot of attention from the locals.
*This artwork by Xiao Lu is on display at the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney as part of the Hooligans exhibition till May 2026.
The original chapter offeres more, of course, and If you want to read it in Radical Intimacies, Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities, find more about the book: here.
PODCAST CREDITS:
Hosted by: Oliver Vodeb/ Memefest. The podcast is a collaboration between Memefest and Intellect publishers.
Music: Thanks to Bait for their song Property Law. Two best friends meeting seasonally in bucolic surrounds to generate improvised music. Property Law recognises the Indigenous peoples of the world's relationship to land. As in, "we don't own the land. The land owns us." Each of us is only passing through. Empires, Epochs come & go, but the spirit of the land persists.