Keely Macarow and Oliver Vodeb: Viral Love
In this conversation Keely Macarow and Oliver Vodeb touch on intimacy during time of the pandemic. The exceptional events of global pandemics teach us a lot about the limits and the potentials of Intimacy. How can we think about intimacy and even radical intimacy through the lessons learned during Covid lock downs or through looking at the HIV pandemic?
Australian artist Keely Macarow has written a chapter titled Viral Love for the Radical Intimacies book. In her chapter she is interested in artistic practices, which reflect on human intimacy through an intense sensibility highlighting nuances, beautiful, empowering and perhaps also sometimes sad. There is a realisation that health and its regulation are an important part of capitalist governance. And while Covid highlighted different pathologies of different societies, Intimacy is where we should put our hopes, especially in the form of love and small things we encounter in life. Designing non-extractive relationalities through gentle touch was one of the many things we talk about in this episode.
Obviously you should be reading the original chapter titled Viral Love by Keely Macarow! If you want to read the whole chapter 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.
Photo: Rok Klemenčič
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.