Memefest: An Innovative Model for Socially Responsive Design & Research

Abstract

Memefest: An Innovative Model for Socially Responsive Design & Research Dr George Petelin, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Dr Oliver Vodeb, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. ABSTRACT The majority of communication design as practiced in western democracies serves instrumental interests of the market and is reproducing predatory neoliberal capitalism. (van Toorn 1998, 2010) In his paper, Sustainability as a project of history, Clive Dilnot states: "Sustainability is that which most cruelly exposes design. Nothing reveals more sharply both the necessity and inconsequentiality of design: its (absolute) necessity as capacity, and its almost complete irrelevance as a value, or indeed as a profession." (Dilnot 2011). Design education mostly produces designers as service providers who do not have the capabilities to seriously confront the urgent issues of radical uncertainty and environmental degradation, which are defining conditions of today's societies. In order to address this problematic state of design, Memefest (www.memefest.org), an international collective and global network, is engaged in creating situations that have the potential to engage people in transformative social relations through communication/design and art, largely focusing on the problems of commercial colonisation of the public sphere (Habermas 1984, Habermas et al. 1992, van Toorn 1998, Vodeb 2009). Memefest is fostering fundamental change of communication/design in order to become relevant in times of radical uncertainty and environmental degradation. It approaches research inter/extra disciplinary and understands theory and practice as interrelated. Memefest holds an annual Festival of Socially Responsive Communication/Design and Art and a special extradisciplinary conference/workshop that result in radical visual communication intervention projects focused around a contemporary issue. Started in 2002 in Slovenia, Memefest conducted three events in Australia in 2012, 2013, and 2014. In 2012 the theme was 'Debt', in 2013 the theme was 'Food Democracy', and in 2014 the theme was 'Radical Intimacies: Dialogue in our Times'. The events were organised on the basis of three main principles: a) that interventions or visual communications be based on rigorous research, b) that the research and production were carried out collaboratively, c) that the outcomes are focused towards a sustainable society as well as a critical reflection on the discipline of Design.