News / Conversations

Dear friends, dear comrades,

our community has lost a dear friend and one of our first and most important members. Shoaib Ahmad Nabi passed away few days ago. Shoaib established contact with Memefest already in 2003 in an effort to provide his students at the American University in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates with the opportunity to work on socially critical and engaged design work, to…

oliver

community FESTIVAL

Three more weeks to go. Our deadline to submit to the Friendly competition is May 20th. (Ps: Deadline is extended to May 31!) As it goes with competitions - the question of awards arises. Memefest is here pretty special. In the past twelve years, since we started we have developed a unique approach to the competition. On that is participatory, public, collaborative, dialogic and research driven. …

oliver

education community FESTIVAL

Food is a social medium. Michael Rakowitz explores in this beautiful project exactly this dimension. As a medium food can carry a story and it can raise questions. Food has symbolic meaning and it creates meaning in situations. It can serve as a tool for intervention and it can have explicit political connotations. It does create new relations and it can question established ones.

My friend A…

oliver

art communication community FESTIVAL

Hey all! For the Memefest2013 theme of Food Democrazy, I just wanted to share some really promising recent initiatives from Copenhagen, Denmark:

First of all there is FRESH (subtitled: The most awesome supermarket in the world)

FRESH presents itself as "a holistic concept that goes beyond the boundaries", offering the citizens of Copenhagen a living supermarket in the city. Instead of simp…

rosenbak

society education community architecture

This report is worth to read! How rapidly growing extreme wealth and inequality are harmful to human progress.
We know a lot about the subject, but there are some number which makes you really really sad and angry...

For example this:
"The top 100 billionaires added $240 billion to their wealth in 2012- enough to
end world poverty four times over."

Or this:
Over the last thirty years i…

rok

society activism community

DEBT was our theme of interest for almost a year. The importance of critically researching DEBT can hardly be exaggerated. DEBT has become a major instrument of social control. Millions are victims of DEBT, and indebted life has become naturalised. DEBT has become the primary mechanism that takes power from the people and gives it on to the hands of the rich and powerful. But DEBT is rarely quest…

oliver

communication activism education community

First Memefest/Queensland College of Art extradisciplinary workshop/seminar/intervention, here in Brisbane, happened in late November. We invited a diverse international group to research DEBT further, to learn about it's relation to Brisbane and to intervene.

The collaborators, participants, mentors and conspirators were Ashlea Gleeson, Jack Loel, Darcy Mangan, Belinda Li, John Nicholson, E…

oliver

communication activism education community

Brisbane has provided a temporary (if tempestuous) home for our community of students, professionals, artists, researchers, educators, and activists to assemble and discuss how we can combat alienation and reclaim the public sphere for dialogue on issues of debt.

A great but exhausting few days so far starting with presentations of work by the Memefest "Imaginative Critical Intervention" awa…

Imp

art activism design community

Dear all Memefest/QCA DEBT Workshop/Seminar participants- two more days and we start. See you soon.

DAY one 15 November 15th:

9 am- @ Queensland College of Art
Welcome and Introduction to the Workshop/Seminar (Oliver Vodeb), introduction of participants.

Presentation of Memefest/QCA Awardees:

10.00 Vladimir Turner: Wonderland series
10.40 Soren Rosenbak: Surplus Debt
11.20 Ivan …

oliver

communication activism education community

Dear all, a bit more than two weeks and we will all meet in beautiful Brisbane!
We will have enough time to collaboratively reflect on the many issues of DEBT at the workshop. However as announced we will collaboratively investigate some sources that will be of help for our work before the actual meeting.

Here are three documentaries, necessary to watch, as they relate directly to our work a…

oliver

communication activism education community