MEMEFEST 2010-11 Friendly competition

FRIENDLY COMPETITION 2010-11

4 DEMONSTRATING RELEVANCE: MEMEFEST

by Nikola Janovič

6 LOVE:CONFLICT:IMAGINATION

by Oliver Vodeb

VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE

14 PAPER TXT FROM KASHMIR Author Alana Hunt (Australia) Subcategory static

16 EUROVISION 3000. DESIGN AS A RESEARCH TOOL Authors Anja Groten, Janneke de Rooij (Netherland) Subcategory static

18 THE US IN VIRUS. VIRAL STICKER INERVENTION

Author Darija Medić (Serbia)

Subcategory static

20 SEDUCED BY LOVE

Author Monika Klobčar (Slovenia) Subcategory static

22 DON’T FLY HIGH!

Author Karin Grigoryan (Armenia)

Subcategory static

24 TAG CLOUDS

Author Mathieu Tremblin (France)

Subcategory static

26 CYCLE

Author Angela Frangyan (Canada)

Subcategory static

28 WELCOME TO PINE POINT

Authors Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons (Canada) Subcategory interactive

30 LOVE+CONFLICT+POWER

Authors Arwa Ramadan, Manal Al-Mahmood (United Arab Emirates) Subcategory interactive

32 POLICE KIDNAPPING IN TORONTO

Author Olivier D. Asselin (Canada)

Subcategory moving

CRITICAL WRITING

36 A USER’S GUIDE TO DEMANDING THE IMPOSSIBLE Author Darja Medić (Serbia)

37 BIO DOLL

Author Franca Formenti (Italy)

38 BELGRADE 2020 – THE CITY OF WONDERS

Authors Vida Knežević; Marko Miletić (Serbia)

39 LOVE:CONFLICT:IMAGINATION Author Robi Kroflič (Slovenia)

40 NOT AT HOME

Authors Niloufar Tajeri, Gal Kirn (Germany)

41 WHY IS NEO NEW? HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AND MATRIX TRILOGY

Author Predrag Milidrag

BEYOND...

44 JOURNAL OF JOURNAL PERFORMANCE STUDIES Author Nicholoas Knouf (United States of America)

46 SMSLINGSHOT

Authors Patrick Tobias Fischer, Christian Zoellner, Thilo Hoffmann, Sebastian

Piatza (Germany)

48 RADICAL ATM SERVICE

Author Ivan Kozenitzky, Federico Lazcano (Argentina)

50 SQUATTING SUPERMARKETS

Author Salvatore Iaconesi; Oriana Persico; Luca Simeone; Federico Ruberti;

Cary Hendrickson (Italy)

52 PANOPTICONS

Authors Bas van Oerle, Thomas voor ‘t Hekke (Netherlands)

54 DAMNATIO MEMORIALE

57 58 59 60

Authors Rafael Polo (Brasil)

MEMEFEST 2010-11 PROJECT PARTNERS PINA - Association for culture and education PINK SWEATER Productions LOESJE PROJECT ETAPES IN IMAGES

62 ODDSTREAM: COMMUNICATION AND MULTIMEDIA FESTIVAL (NL) 64 WORKS OF MEMEFEST 2010-2011 FRIENDLY COMPETITION - list

DEMONSTRATING TEXT BY: NIKOLA JANOVIC RELEVANCE: MEMEFEST From the very beginning, Memefest has been operating on a voluntary basis and as an intermediary informal organization and platform, connecting people from EU states and various parts of the world. Our purpose is to create, re-think, explore, educate and work at the intersection of communication professions, human science and theory, art, design, and activism through the use of media and communication theory and practice.

In 2002, we started Memefest after realizing that a fundamental change to communication practices in public space was needed. We believed that a different logic of communication could be established - directed toward democratic dialogue – while working towards higher quality interactions, broader socio-cultural diversity and the promotion of a new communication paradigm. In following years, from 2002 to 2010, as experts, we used our research work and annual competition festivals to address broader questions of freedom of speech, civil rights and active political participation. This was performed with a particular emphasis on articulating valid and workable principles of social responsibility.

Armed with these principles - which

happen to be common questions within the EU – we studied specific forms of communication such as democratic tools, social visibility tactics for disenfranchised groups and the use of alternative communication practices for social change.

Today, most serious theoretical and political discussions have not only been concerned with the pivotal question of a multicultural society’s potential, but also about building community and identity through different modes of cooperation and communication. Our work emphasizes the importance of cooperation for opening up dialogue and establishing new social and communication oriented approaches: learning through alternative, innovative and creative communication tools, and by that, ultimately, stimulating active citizen participation. We believe that only such a cooperative communicative approach can trigger the emergence of proper tools for understanding social and cultural complexity, diversity and future development.

Communication is a crucial element in these processes. Defining a culture of communication and upholding dia-

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logue have become so essential that in their absence, it’s not possible to imagine a common EU space, or intertwined identities for that matter.

Communication is therefore shown as a key component for establishing social cohesion and organizing the EU’s internal complexities. This is why Memefest addresses these issues and pays special attention to the development of critical and socially responsive communication in the public space. On the other hand, within our critical and reflexive approach, we want to show how important it is to preserve a public European space, not only for political democracy and political emancipation.

Public space should also be protected from commercial communication, which is too often framing our sense of understanding of common matters.

With our work and achievements, we demonstrate that this is possible.

In our theoretical, practical and pedagogical approach, we are searching for the alternative models, concepts and theoretical solutions that will drive new communication practice in the public space. Within this alternative social and communication context, we use a particular theoretical model of socially responsive communication to address the broader issues of our common living space. Our socially responsive perspective consisting of research, lectures, workshops, debates, performances and exhibitions, emphasizes the active role of communication practitioners within social movements and processes. Our communication platform – Memefest.org - should be understood as an active and respon-

sive platform in which a wide range of citizens connect and cooperate in the process of researching and creating knowledge.

The result of the last eight (8) years of cooperation has not only produced communication knowledge for understanding transformations in society, but also shaped a flexible network of numerous participants and collaborators. The main focus of Memefest is to provide an independent platform for all those creative minds that are making fresh and progressive changes in our society. On that same note, we believe that we are a good example of how European cooperation should look like. By involving artists, experts, academics, activists from different European countries in Memefest’s networking, cooperation and knowledge production, we are not only demonstrating good practice. We’re at the same time putting the emphasis on the importance of participative democracy and political emancipation in the process of building an integrated but plural Europe.

Our aim is clear: we are trying to open new horizons of thinking and acting!

We are trying to demonstrate the relevance of citizen-driven communication and that critical practices contribute to social change and a better world!

LOVE:CONFLICT: BY: OLIVER VODEB IMAGINATION

What Memefest created and is creating is a new scene. A network of people interested in radical communication, a culture of collaboration. This is unique from both perspectives. The radicalism of communication that Memefest is interested in and that we are researching, developing, nurturing and rewarding, is about going beyond the all pervasive marketing ideology of communication. I can tell you this is quite hard to do. You don‘t think so? Ok, imagine this: you have a communication problem that needs to be solved. You are working for an organization that is trying to do social good.

Fine. You look around and you want to find someone, a company that will be able to communicate your interests to the public sphere. Who do you go to?

If you take a closer look at the market, at the communication scene, you will find hundreds of advertising agencies. And then you will stumble upon a great number of design studios. And behind the scenes, you‘ll end up seeing a hundred times larger number of precarious creative workers.

Advertising agencies have one clear agenda. They are working with all they have to strengthen the power of the predatory market ideology. Through their actions, they are producing a consumer society. They are powerful institutions. The agenda of design studios is very much the same. The difference is that they usually employ more sophisticated aesthetic strategies in their as advertising agencies and design studios. They are not powerful as individual actors on the market, but all-together they contribute immensely to the overall communications culture.

Marketing based communication is harmful. Marketing based communication is everywhere. This we know and it‘s certainly not news to a wider public. But what‘s more is that it‘s so deeply embedded in our culture that it is not recognized as what it actually is: a highly aestherisized lie.

The naturalization of this lie makes it very hard to imagine a different culture of communication, different institu-

tions for communication and different approaches to communication. How many university courses offer real alternatives? How many professional companies offer different communication approaches? A nice example: have a look at the now world renowned »subversive« street artist that got famous with his work on his Obey Giant campaign. That‘s before he became a star designer/artist for designing the Obama »Hope« poster: Shepard Fairey.

Here is an excerpt from his company »Studio One« web site: “Shepard Fairey is the artist behind OBEY GIANT, the graphics that have changed the way people see art and the urban landscape. What started with an absurd sticker he created in 1989 while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design has since evolved into a worldwide street art campaign, an acclaimed body of fine art, and a model of alternative marketing for a new generation of consumers.” 1 Alternative marketing for a new generation of consumers2? Marketing? Consumers? Right. No, actually, wrong! So let us imagine again: an organization or initiative that wants 1 http://studionumberone.com/about/

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2 It is fascinating that people who seem to be activly involved in to critical initiatives can’t work outside the ideology of marketing communication.

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to work towards the common good.

That wants to work towards social change. That wants to treat people as human beings and not as consumers.

Is it possible to do so with the same communication approaches, namely marketing approaches that are crucial in changing the public sphere into a private billboard? No. Is it possible to do so while working with the standard service providers - who happen to be the same institutions that have been established to make as much financial profit as possible, while destroying our mental environment? No. But why then all those NGOs, cultural institutions as for example museums, educational institutions like universities and commercial companies that want to practice social responsibility go to those »communication experts«, pay them a lot of money and use their services? Well, there are practically no other services, companies, institutions they can go to. That’s a fact.

4 What is than out there if the market, the institutions that historically gained legitimacy for »solving communication problems« in the public sphere are only about marketing?

On the one hand there are many creative workers who would like to practice different communication, but don’t have the power to do so. They lack theoretical knowledge and they have a hard time to find potential clients who would want to change their own communication practice. A small number of conceptualists, designers, writers, artists, strategists on the other hand are successfully developing an alternative, radical, socially responsive practice. Some of them are connected around and with Memefest.

Then there are the artists. Many of them are doing fantastic projects. The only problem is that most of them remain stuck in the institutionalized arts market. Some notable exceptions exist, of course. Some of them are connected to Memefest.

Then there are the academics. Their research as well as their theoretical and artistic practice in both fields of science and arts is immensely important to the development of socially responsive communication. Many of them are aware of the limitations of Academia. Some of them are working with Memefest.

And then there are a handful of communication companies, who successfully fight to change the logic of the market and are implementing a different communication practice. Some of them, again, connected to Memefest3.

As you can see, there is a conflicting situation here. On the one hand the overwhelming presence of marketing communication. A presence so pervasive it makes it very difficult to imagine a different communication practice and culture. On the other hand a different practice in conflict with the situation, with the ideology, culture, institutions, education and the market. A practice imagined. A practice practiced.

It takes a relationship of love in order to work for years and years on a subject that is completely at the margin of the design and communication professions, academia, artistic fields, the market and the media. It takes a relationship of love to be able to imagine a 3 Check out www.poper.si, www.inkahoots.com.au, www.image-shift.net

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4 Images taken from the video »Yeah, Yeah, Yeah song« from The Flaming Lips. Video was part of this years festival outlines.

5 Images taken from the video »I can be a frog« from The Flaming Lips. Song was part of this years festival outlines.

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radical change in the practice of public communication and a paradigmatic shift within academia.

Memefest grew within a wider social movement. From the start it was heavily influenced by the culture of media activism using tactical media within the new possibilities of networking technologies. It grew out of collaboration among friends. It is still working mostly within a gift economy.

Through the years we have developed our theoretical framework, our international network and our communication practice.

We have always felt that responsibility comes from our own position of power.

Our knowledge, talents, networks and the possibility to imagine. This power

is connected to love through conflict.

This productive conflict is key. It manifests itself on the intimate, inter personal and social level. It is many times frustrating, but most of the times liberating.

We can imagine Memefest growing in its tactical nature, out of its own institutionalized culture. We imagine continuous work in many fields: social movements, academia, and professional industry. We can foresee Memefest finding the cracks in the relational existence of these fields and creating new relations based on response-ability. We know, these are usually excluding and exclusive worlds, spaces which work within the logic of cooptation.

Nevertheless, the conflicting nature that is embedded in our productive cri-

tique and self reflexive theoretical and communication practice enables us to always create our own autonomous operational space. This we draw from our experience.

Love, Conflict and Imagination was the theme for Memefest 2010/2011.

After two-and-a-half years of festival break, we did it again. This Memefest was one of the strongest and we feel that after nine years of radical communication practice, we are at a new beginning. This is a very good feeling and a promise too.

ABOUT THE MEMEFEST FRIENDLY COMPETITION Each year, Memefest singles out a text and/or image that serves as a focal point for a crit ical take on the current media and communication environment. As a participant, you are then invited to submit your work in different categories, all rooted in a creative approach and based on interdisciplinary.

The friendly competition is divided in three categories: Visual communication practice, Critical writing and Beyond. It is open to anyone who wants to participate. Any artist, activist, writer, designer, malcontent, educator or media manipulator can enter. There is no age restriction. The only limit is your creativity and imagination.

In order to get the best possible indepth understanding of your work, we sort all submissions by field: Student/ Academic and Non-academic.

The Visual communication practice category is open to static, moving and web/interactive works. We are looking for visual approaches that are conceptualized so as to go beyond the visuals.

Emancipatory approaches that create social relations in tune with the social and political reality.

The Critical writing category is inviting written reflections in different formats. Theory that can be highly academic is appreciated as well as thoughtful essays. This category is of utmost importance to us. Written articulation and theory are in our opinion key for developing a paradigm shift in the culture of communication.

Beyond... is a special category. This category has been added to encourage those radical communicators who like to think „outside the box“. While a lot of subversive writing and design has emerged which challenges the status quo using its own conventions, very few of these initiatives have employed a mode of communication that is not rooted in commercial culture itself.

We are looking for participatory processes that engage the audience in a meaningful way, communications which raise questions but do not provide or infer a single answer or point of view.

ABOUT CURATORS AND EDITORS Hand-picked, Memefest's curators and editors are the best of the best... but not necessarily stars. They are better. They have soul, integrity, in depth understanding, extensive knowledge, pedagogical eros, extremely sharp eye for things that matter and theoretical and practical experience.

Composed of distinguished educators, artists, media activists, researchers, educators, theoreticians and professionals from the spheres of social theory and humanities, design, arts and social communication, the editorial and curatorial board is selecting and giving

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feedback on submitted work. Authors of chosen works get written feedback from Memefest‘s curators and editors.

This feedback is our special contribution to your work and a gift to participants. It is also a public contribution to the field of socially responsible communication and helps to reflect on qualities of good communication in a interdisciplinary and contextualized manner.

VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE

Category Visual communication practice is open for static, moving and web/interactive works. We are looking for visual approaches that are conceptualized to go beyond the image of the visual and create social relations which CURATORS AND EDITORS respond to the socio political Jason Grant reality in a emancipatory André Vallias manner.

Antonio Rollo Katarína Lukić Balážiková Shoaib Nabi Dr Zoë Sadokierski Sandy Kaltenborn Tony Credland Roderick Grant Kevin Yuen Kit Lo

All published works are selected works from 2010/11 friendly competition with selected curators comments. To see all received works and curators comments please visit our web page www.memefest.org

PAPER TXT MSGS AUTHOR: ALANA HUNT FROM KASHMIR COUNTRY: AUSTRALIA VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE / STATIC

DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHOR Living under the military occupation of what is recognised as the world’s largest democracy, Kashmir’s people have been waiting more than 60 years for the right to self-determination. In the last 20 years more than 70,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict. The landscape, though beautiful, is embedded with trauma. In November 2009, the Indian government cited reasons of security as they imposed a blanket ban on all pre-paid mobile phone connections across the Kashmir region. Virtually overnight, more than 400,000 mobile phone users were left without means of telecommunication and the event passed with little more than a murmur across the Indian media. Remembering Kashmir from my home in Delhi, I thought of a friend who I lay next to sleeping while she spoke to her boyfriend each night on her mobile; LOVE. I thought of how another friend’s father had called and told us not to come home today because the army had begun firing at stone throwing youth outside their home; CONFLICT. I thought of the feelings of alienation the pre-paid ban would generate, and the way that it made out like all the people in Kashmir using pre-paid mobiles were suspected terrorists and I wondered what could be done: IMAGINATION. In December 2009 almost 1000 “paper txt msgs” were distributed throughout Kashmir.

Through the tongue-in-cheek distribution of an “alternative communicative tool” dejected pre-paid subscribers were invited to write a “paper-txt-msg” to anyone real or imagined, about anything they would like to write in a txt msg but were suddenly unable to do so. The paper txt msgs moved between people’s hands in different ways and different places, with almost 150 eventually finding their way back to me in New Delhi. The project generated media coverage and discussion about the pre-paid ban and the paper txt msgs that had been returned from Kashmir have since been included in exhibitions at Sarai in New Delhi and Fraser Studios in Sydney.

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CURATOR’S COMMENT This is a powerfully simple project that works on many levels. First and foremost, I appreciate how it is born out of a specific context and brings to light the important issues surrounding it. Though the simplicity of the core idea belies the complexity of the issues, it uses/appropriates a specific media channel to create a personal connection within a community, and allows for an openness of expression (and interpretation) in direct opposition to the censorship the original ban sought to enforce. As a design solution, it is very effective. Identifying a specific problem, and using the simplest means to address it, but with just enough of a metaphoric hook to make it engaging and relevant. An economy of means is employed to create a much larger effect. If I have one very small criticism, it would be the design of the paper text msgs. I would have liked to see them mimic the cell phone interface a little bit more. But this probably comes from my design “snobbism” more than out of any real need. I would also like to see how the project could be evolved. A website which documents and communicates the messages would be great to see, and perhaps very useful for the people involved. Furthermore, a reinterpretation of the content could be very relevant in order to further expand the reach of the messages and information about the situation generally.

Kevin Yuen Kit Lo

EUROVISION AUTHORS: ANJA GROTEN; JANNEKE DE ROOIJ 3000 COUNTRY: NETHERLANDS VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE / STATIC

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DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHORS As designers and creators of visual culture we are aware of the great responsibility we have. Using the visual power to create needs, demands and products is not of our interest.

Instead we are exploring our design skills towards alternative working methodologies and therefore like to initiate projects ourselves. eurovision3000 is a self-initiated research project that questions our own and other people´s design practices.

We went on the streets, discussed European identity in public space and explored graphic design as a research tool. eurovision3000 stands for a design process which does not exclude the question whether there is an actual need for one designed European identity. Does creating an identity for Europe mean creating a constructed surface for something that should develop naturally? Should we look only at the past, the history and the heritage when we talk about a definition of European identity? What is the difference between an inside- and an outside view on Europe? Initiating for example a logo competition or a writing competition for a preamble seems inadequate. It appears hard to reach one authentic and true image on Europe or the European Union.

With eurovision3000 we, Anja Groten and Janneke de Rooij, are initiating interactive moments instead. These moments enable discussions about European identity and the exchange of personal experience.

The final outcome of those discussions is a report that is designed as a process book. It reflects in chronological order on the process and development of the project eurovision3000.

CURATOR’S COMMENT Ok. We like this project. We like that it uses design as a toolkit for communication, that it includes the audience in order to shape dialogs and show multiple perspectives on the self given question/s and also your questions around the need for EU logo/corporate one can easily relate too. As we should not forget that the history of graphic designed logos emerges from capitalist marked culture and branding in the first place. A logo is always problematic, unless you are a friend of products and simplifications - a logo and “radical communication” (the way we understand it) is a contradiction.

And: is identity not always creating “the other”? Isn’t identity always about exclusion? (“I/we am/are this - but not this…”). Why do we in times of globalization witness the recourse/fallback on so called cultural traditions, local and national ones (specially in Europe) - Rather than the search for a more transglobal identity of inclusion? So some further questions for eurovision3000 could be: does the integration of the critique on a potential “solid-one-identity” really help to escape the traps of the question on one (EU) identity? Can multiple perspectives and understandings under the label of eurovision3000, escape the problematic side of exclusive identities?

Is the question which you portray as open (if “we” actually need a logo…) really open? Cynically one could say this democratic project could be seen as an EU image campaign: creative, young and fresh, open minded, participatory, integrative and non-dominant: “(we) let the people speak!” (“We are not china!”). Identity is always a field of conflict and struggle, a field of in- and exclusions. The question is how to create identifications and relations without exclusions. worldvision4000?

Sandy Kaltenborn

DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHOR This work looks at the fruitful symbiosis of viruses and networks, on the example of the H1N1 epidemic of 2010. The basic foundation for a social network is its infrastructure, a decentralized system, a promise of equality and participation.

But what happens when the clean idea becomes reality, in all its actualities? I used stickers with the opening line from Facebook’s homepage “Facebook helps you share and connect with the people in your life”, and substituted H1N1 with Facebook. These stickers were placed on places where people are in direct contact with objects in public space, therefore with other people, therefore subjected to infection, how it was commonly referred to in media. The more the virus were spread, present, mutating, and becoming the virus per se, the more different reactions were born– turning the virus into a media monster, mimetically infected with conspiracy theories and irrational behavior. Changed perception turns the virtual into true reality, and changes our experience of everyday life. The virus becomes an unusual grotesque network boosted by the existence of social networks. Therefore this work is also an intervention in public space and a public intervention in private space. Small interventions in space are made for the careful passerby, and documentation is what keeps them actually public. The intention behind this project was to underlie, that decentralized networks should not be observed as horizontal structures, and that participatory media are a carrier of power relations. Social networks behave as walled gardens, in a way, making quarantine for a specific social group that gets stronger and more isolated as its homogeneity grows. On the other hand, something called social network can be observed in a more ethereal sense, not as an online platform, but as an existing language between social groups.

CURATOR’S COMMENT Dear Darija, let me comment your submitted project with few words. I appreciate your project because of its direct visual message, general objective complexity and ideological background. I see a strong connection with the topic and festival outlines because it presents the conflict, the power and conflict of power on the base of real situation that we experienced through media and networks. Project is on one hand interpreting problem of the conflict that was caused by the power of media in case of H1N1 hysteria spread by media and networks. On other hand you are presenting power of information in virtual social networks and power that the same information can have in real life because of its real consequences. Symbiosis of viruses and networks and conflicts between virtual and real is topic, that is very actual in these days network society.

You implemented research on bases of „The reality of the virtual“ by Zizek in your own original way and found good visualization method how to show such conflict and such power. Explaining processes on example of spreading information about viruses through media with critic of „viral marketing“ was very good communication strategy.

Placing the paper labels with message “Facebook helps you share and connect with the people in your life” on latent infected objects, was very smart, communicative and direct although simple in formal way. The planned implementation by spreading such information as „paper virus“ everywhere you travel is also great vision of spreading your project and your message.

Katarína Lukić Balážiková

VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE / STATIC

THE US IN VIRUS AUTHOR: DARIJA MEDIC 20

COUNTRY: SERBIA 21

SEDUCED BY AUTHOR: MONIKA KLOBCAR LOVE COUNTRY: SLOVENIA

VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE / STATIC

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DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHOR My opinion is that if love gives you strength and strength leads to conflict, it is not love at all. If, however, those who have the power take advantage of love in order to achieve their goals, they cause the conflict. Therefore the conflict is not in love itself, but in its misuse. In this way, for example, we are exploited by the consumption, resting on the commercialism. It gives us comfort, fame, profit, and more, which indirectly promises us love. In many cases we are not even aware of this process nor are we aware of our responsibility in it. Therefore I do not blame the corporations; the responsibility is in us. It is us who have to resist mass commercialism. This awareness is what I wanted to stress with my work. My idea was to make the steps in the form of hearts which, if followed, lead to a certain point (outflows on the road, the pile of trash, holes ...). The end of this trace is disappointment, since we are of course expecting more. In this way I literally wanted to show how the misuse of love brings conflict. I wanted them to experience the blank tracking of love and the frustration. It is likely that I would made them angry because they won’t understand the message, but after all I just wanted to see if they could be lead or not and to force them to think about it. By putting things like that, I caused the interaction, not passive observation. People are unintentionally included in the process - public art installation, which “works” only when it is placed in the appropriate environment and acts in cooperation with people.

CURATOR’S COMMENT An interaction piece that provoke your attention — I believe this work has tremendous potential not because that it is just very clever or simple, but it is also economical and easy to disseminate. We as consumers are trained like cattle to follow what is asked of us and we do the same here yet we feel that we have discovered something that is on a more personal level challenging us. The game ends with disappointment, we should be trained to know that but yet we are puzzled because this symbol represent a positive synergy, yet our heart metaphorically speaking is broken when we come to the end of the line and we are facing the gutter. The project has international appeal and can adapt to any cause and engage its audience to act on a message or action that could produce results and critical mass. I can argue that if we are prepared to be treated like cattle then it is not unlikely that we are also provided with social awareness issues that are advocacy based in the same manner. I would have liked to see the sequence of the images better arranged and a hierarchy that leads me through the transition on the monitor as I would on the street. A short video footage would have added a new dimension to this project - perhaps something the author could think of doing as he further plans to implement this exciting installation. I am encouraged. Great!

Shoaib Nabi

DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHOR Describe your idea and concept of your work in relation to the festival outlines: This picture is about impossibility of social communication between Armenia and Azerbaijan, because of war conflict we had in early 90’s. Love and respect to family deceased relatives is the same in our countries. We share almost the same mode of life. But we aren’t able to talk, to discuss, to overcome Karabakh war. Мilitary conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan could erupt again. Because of no communication, there is a Hugh Negative Imaginary in between, people imagine worst to each other. What we need is a visual communication practice.

What kind of communication approach do you use?

My communication approach is based on visual and lingual translation.

What are in your opinion concrete benefits to the society because of your communication? in societies that are so full of nationalism, my approaches seem to be marginal and uncomfortable. The greatest benefit is this unnecessarity.

What did you personally learn from creating your submitted work?

In this traditional and peaceful village where one can always feel the war, I was unwanted so to make this shot. Because I saw the weakness of an old woman and the awesome power of TV. Why is your work, GOOD communication WORK? Maybe because it is a simple picture.

Where and how do you intent to implement your work?

It has already been completed.

CURATOR’S COMMENT Although your image depicts the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan it could almost be any place torn and divided by war. The so call pretense of what you delicately state as “... societies that are so full of nationalism” can keep old wounds open. The relationship between love and power, power and conflict and love and conflict is captured in this single shot without pretense, informal yet poignant.

It seemed as if you just walked into this room and took a photograph (you might have) yet each object shown in this room is an artifact in itself to the testament of the live of its occupant(s).

They have been transformed in context to the subject of love, conflict and imagination as icons representing the essence of what needs to be said — simply. This image truly transcends boundaries and as long as the world as love, power, conflict it will always be current and have a story to tell.

Technically you could have improved on the quality of the image light and the composition without sacrificing the amateur, impromptu look and feel of this photograph. On the whole I felt that your idea and the questions asked of you were very well thought out and answered. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Antonio Rollo

VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE / STATIC

DON’T FLY AUTHOR: KARIN GRIGORYAN HIGH! COUNTRY: ARMENIA 24

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TAG CLOUDS AUTHOR: MATHIEU TREMBLIN COUNTRY: FRANCE VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE / STATIC

DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHOR Describe your idea and concept of your work in relation to the festival outlines: The principle of Tag Clouds is to replace the all-over graffiti calligraphy by readable translations like the clouds of keywords which can be found on the Internet. It shows the analogy between the physical tag and the virtual tag, both in form (tagged wall compositions look the same as tag clouds), and in substance (like keywords which are markers of net surfing, graffiti are markers of urban drifting). With Tag Clouds I didn't want to be focused on the decorative part of graffiti, but to create a project that will turn what people see as ugly tags into something meaningfull but also subversive.

What kind of communication approach do you use?

This is viral / mimetic communication inspired by graffiti practice. It's related to theidea of leaving traces of passage from the graffiti writers community into something poetic and understandable by everyone.

What are in your opinion concrete benefits to the society because of your communication?

Tag Clouds also give access to the content of graffiti nicknames, sometimes meaningless, sometimes poetic. The benefits concern future appreciation of graffiti writing.

Recognition of so called "Street Art" seems to be a way for authorities to condemn all none artistically recognisable forms of expression in the city. Spontaneous graffiti writing became the ugly duck of art in the city. Tag Clouds offers a tribute to spontaneous writing, in order that the inhabitants accept its visual presence.

What did you personally learn from creating your submitted work?

People generally do not take time to really look at this calligraphy because they are influenced by the vision of mass media or city councils against graffiti writing. During the translation they were curious that someone different from a graffiti writer could read it, pay attention and make them appreciate this urban phenomenon and they realised that they could find interest in reading graffiti.

The most interesting reaction is the one from the writers themselves. Some of them liked the idea that after covering the whole hall of fame, people could still read and easily understand their names, and some of them wrote over translations, and didn't respect the basic rules of graffiti practice : don't write over another writer's name.

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Why is your work, GOOD communication WORK? Because it make citizens think about and question a practice which is condemned by society.

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Where and how do you intend to implement your work?

Tag Clouds only means something in context. I just have to find a wall covered with graffiti writing. Them sometimes I ask the owner for permission to use this wall, sometimes not.

CURATOR’S COMMENT An interesting piece of work that challenges our understanding of tags in our everyday environment. As the short film slowly reveals, the actual words written on the shutters are only names and self promotion, not as subversive as graffiti is often portrayed, now portrayed in such a way that these voices are not removed from the streets, but reinterpreted for new audience.

Graffiti has been recuperated into the mainstream discourse, by artists and advertising, where as tagging remains opaque, in a way that it is either ignored or condemned.

I am interested in the formal nature of the final typography, basic and clean, using the same process and texture of the original, also retaining the initial colours used.

It is remarks on the authority of a typeface in the environment, and who might have been responsible for the random words that remain.

This work draws our attention to the actual words written, something that is usually hidden in the complex typography of a subculture.The end work raises as many questions as it answers, as we are now forced to think about the way these tags work in a commercial environment, as they now look like they might be part of the surrounding advertising / shop front.

Tony Credland

Detail

SPACES AUTHOR: JESSICA LEONG

DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHOR Describe your idea and concept of your work in relation to the festival outlines: My submission responds to the issues of power, love, and conflict in the context of home. A highly emotional and psychological notion, the home is conventionally understood as a place of refuge and recluse. The definition is not limited to a physical space, but has much to do with lived experiences. To be entitled to privacy and to feel secure are related to a sense of control over one’s environment. The ideal shelter, in both its interior and exterior, provides the love and comfort.

However, variations in this description do exist. Home can be transient, broken, and/or distressing. Our relationships to the location, the structure, the possessions and the experiences, shape our perception of home.

Inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, I developed a cultural probe to collect information about the different attachments people have of “home”. Borrowing from the practices of word association, six individuals

COUNTRY: CANADA VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE / STATIC

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from various demographics and living situations were given a set of instructions. Participants were asked to (1) conduct the test in their self-defined homes, (2) take a photograph in response to a list of provided stimulus words, (3) work with their initial responses, and that (4) photographing repeated spaces are acceptable.

Consequently they represent diversity in the idea of “home”.

What kind of communication approach do you use?

My submission and recent body of work have developed largely through the methodologies I have applied. Working with anthropologic and ethnographic interests, my methodologies rely heavily on participation and collaboration.

My involvement as a designer/ethnographer/facilitator is to instruct, to gather and to present the harvested data.

What are in your opinion concrete benefits to the society because of your communication?

My submission draws attention to the overlooked and underappreciated domestic environment while examining the rapport between space and identification. It reintroduces the home as a rich environment to learn about interactions and attachments.

What did you personally learn from creating your submitted work?

The issues of love, conflict and power are ingrained not only in the notion of home but also in the role of the designer.

Preoccupied with aesthetics and style, the concept and message may be neglected. It is easy to forget that design is about communication and not about self-indulgence. This project was an important reminder of the humanity in communication design.

Why is your work, GOOD communication WORK? It celebrates the design as a collaborative process from facilitators, participants, to receivers. It presents the home as an umbrella of interpretations with multiple meanings and no incorrect answers.

CURATOR’S COMMENT: This is potentially an interesting project as a deconstruction of the concept of “home”, an exploration of its different components and an attempt to go away from a classical “definition to a physical space”.

We feel at end there is a little gap between the claim (description of the project) and the outcome. This gap might come from the process itself (collaborative/curatoring) and from the fact the this project is/might be in is early development phase?

The first impression of the outcome feels quite sad. Most likely this is related to the fact that no-body is to see on the photos (is it a decision you made?) but also that the objects or the spaces shown on the photos have a low social representation character (maybe some of them like kitchen situation, family photos, … but just few).

All together at this step of the project it give a bit the feeling of flipping through a random selection of flickr after typing “home, inside, without people”. Somehow the photos dont really show this diversity form of “home”, you were looking for; especially because they more or less all represent a “classical” inside view of flats and houses.

We dont know if this is coming from a misunderstanding/miscommunication between you and the “collaborators” but a representation of what you are saying a “home” “not limited to a physical space, but has much to do with lived experiences” is not really to see here.

The idea of a wall poster for the visualization of the project can be interesting by is physical component and a felling from general overview to closer “relationship” but it seems like that the photos get lost maybe another visualization can also be interesting, but also maybe combinations of word/image, …

As said all together a interesting idea which could be pushed further, with more diversity of photos, words and maybe a rework of the medium. The Idea is strong.

Sandy Kaltenborn

CURATOR’S COMMENT This work leaves a twofold mark; a formal/visceral mark, and a cognitive/ critical mark. As a narrative experience, I’m engaged and absorbed by the depth and detail in the content, and by the rawness of the same – time hasn’t dulled the impact of the images, nor the sentiments captured within their frames, these are not images (and sound, footage, reportage) that fall prey to being kitsch or vintage or vernacular, they hold a knowledge, an epistemology that is no longer with us in figurative and literal terms. While this investigation and documentation serves as a passage for new viewers to come to know an object, we can only know through the document, as knowledge is no longer possible through a phenomenal experience of the place itself. It is this realization that makes it more than a keepsake, more than a time-capsule – we cannot know Pine Point as the result of our own lived experience, and thus must trust, delve and digress through the experience of a digital sp(l)ace that serves on the one hand to offer up a kind of truth, but on the other a kind of necessary simulation.

I find Michel de Certeau’s ruminations on the relationship between organized strategies and everyday tactics to be of particular import here – Pine Point came to be for reasons of capital accumulation and resource extraction...but the resulting community rises above the struggles between provisional settlement, employment and the human drive towards significance in the practices and tactics of everyday life.

This work succeeds in bringing the everyday forward in a manner that is masterfully handled between the edges of linearity and interactivity.

DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHORS Welcome to Pine Point – an interactive documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada, is about a community that was erased from the map. The story is about memory, but it also addresses the theme of this competition as follows. It’s about Love, in the sense that the people who lived there truly loved the place.

There is Conflict in the fact that they no longer have a place to call home.

Imagination is where their memories are projected onto.

Roderick Grant

VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE / WEB-INTERACTIVE

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WELCOME AUTHORS: PAUL SHOEBRIDGE AND MICHAEL SIMONS TO PINE POINT COUNTRY: CANADA 31

LOVE+CONFLICT AUTHORS: ARWA RAMADAN, MANAL AL-MAHMOOD +POWER COUNTRY: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE / WEB-INTERACTIVE

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DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHORS: Love is an amazing power that could be used to do good or to do bad. Growing powers cause conflicts, as each power tries to overcast the others. This means that love is conflict.

Understanding this relationship between love, conflict, and power, Arwa & Manal decided to collect stories from the literature of different countries all over the world - stories of love, stories of conflict, and stories of power - and connect them in a way that they have harmonious closure so that the love is used to share the power and the conflict is used to practice love. Here comes the roll of imagination. The choice of stories from the literature comes from a believe that everyone relates to stories in some way or another; to us it is a global connection. We tried to connect stories from very different cultures to prove that even thought these countries have different borders, different traditions, different languages, and even different weather, they could be connected in a way or another.

CURATOR’S COMMENT: You have obviously put a lot of time and thought into this project, and managed to address the brief in an intelligent and complex manner. It is an engaging idea – linking three stories, each about power, conflict and love from around the world, and combing morals and values from each to create resolutions. The main icons on the site – the heart, the arrows and the raised fist – are well designed: they are graphically interesting marks, they clearly signify the meaning of each topic, and they work well together as a set. The colours you have chosen are bold and engaging. However, the fist does not scale down as well as the other symbols, as the fine lines in between the fingers and the crease of the palm become too fine and the shape become difficult to read when it is small (on the main map). Your typography is simple but strong, although I find the black type on the orange background (on the ‘connection’ pages) slightly difficult to read – the contrast between these colours makes my eyes ‘swim’. The font could either be slightly heavier or the orange lighter – the orange of the work ‘connection’ also swims against the blue background. This may seem a small matter, but it is very important for us to want to read what you have written, and this contrast is interfering with my desire to do so. Overall, I think this is a lovely idea, and you have done an excellent job of summarising the stories and making connections. Well done. To progress this further, it would be great to see you think about incorporating more imagery – finding ways to make visual links between the themes in the stories, and a visual metaphor to show the resolution.

Dr Zoë Sadokierski

CURATOR’S COMMENT This is great. Basic, angry, and absolutely essential citizen journalism.

Don’t wait for established media to give you their truth, get your own.

Although the spectre of fascism is evoked, the power of this video and others like it, makes anti-democratic regimes seem less viable.

The success of the piece is that it would be hard to watch without sharing the author’s outrage.

My suggestions for improvement are to provide context and a direction for subsequent action.

Regarding context, what specifically was I watching? Background information could even have been provided at the end of the film to maintain a sense of disorientation while it unfolds.

Regarding providing an avenue for action, now that I’m pissed off at the government, police and media, what do I do with my anger? Maybe some relevant activist contacts, politicians emails or links to other material online?

Jason Grant

DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHOR Almost like a soap opera, the repression of human rights prepared and conducted with a scary effeciency. A cinema studio turned into a political prison to pack more than 1000 peacefull people for days without any charges against them.

The worst goup arrestation of canada’s history.

Imagine a fascist regime.

What kind of communication approach do you use?

Culture Jamming.

What are in your opinion concrete benefits to the society because of your communication?

The denonciation of human rights abuses.

What did you personally learn from creating your submitted work?

That independant medias are more and more essentials to public right of information.

Why is your work, GOOD communication WORK? Because I did it for free and I’ve been doing it for many years.

Where and how do you intent to implement your work?

In Internet and any independant festival. I’d be glad to give a copy to anyone willing to screen it at a public event also.

VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE / MOVING

POLICE KIDNAPPING AUTHOR: OLIVIER D. ASSELIN IN TORONTO COUNTRY: CANADA

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CRITICAL WRITING

Category Critical writing is inviting written reflectionws in different formats. Theory, that can be highly academic is appreciated as well as thoughtful essays. This category is highly important to us. Written articulation and theory are in our opinion key for development of a curators and editors paradigmatic shift in the culture Polona Tratnik of communication.

Bojana Kunst Richard Barbrook Nikola Janović Nikolai Jeffs

All published works are selected works from 2010/11 friendly competition. To see all received works and curators comments please visit our web page www.memefest.org

A USER’S GUIDE TO AUTHOR: DARJA MEDIC DEMANDING THE IMPOSSIBLE COUNTRY: SERBIA ABSTRACT

This is a short theoretical, strategic critical essay written in December 2010 during the student protests in London, and distributed at several occupied art schools in the city, reflecting on and trying to encourage new forms of political/symbolic action amongst art students and others in the current struggles against auesterity in the UK. The authors are theorist, art historian and activist Gavin Grindon, whose research focuses on the history of art-activism, and the artist-activist John Jordan, a founder of the Laboratory of KEYWORDS Insurrectionary Imagination. Gavin would be Art, available to visit and speak at Memefest.

Activism, Student protests

CRITICAL WRITING

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ABSTRACT

In 2002 I imagined a future where human beings have lost their erotic tendencies and children are no longer conceived through sexual intercourse but merely through artificial insemination techniques.

I created the Bio Doll, a prostitute without a uterus and without a belly-button, as a metaphor for the absence of any maternal relationship. To imagine being human without a bellybutton is to go back to Baudrillard’s philosophy, who thought of human beings reproducing like the scions of a rose. The Bio Doll lives an unsatisfied life with great emptiness because her search for maternity is always experienced with the awareness of never being able to be satisfied; this reality causes her great anxiety and makes her perform frenetic sexual activity.

In such a context the Bio Doll begins to find her way around the internet, discovering that the fluidity of the Net is an extension of our senses and that this environment, with its many facets, gives her a sort of gratification, a sense of wholeness.

She begins to relate to various characters from the cultural world and she stops to interact with Derrick de Kerckhove.

From this pulsating exchange, in a sort of Big Bang of primordial liquid, the Bio Doll feels the sensation of pregnancy; she becomes pregnant through the conception of information that has been inserted into her body, which lives halfway between reality and the virtuality. This exchange of information starts to have a life of its own and evolves into a virtual creature, the bloki, or rather, a hybrid between a blog and a wiki.

The bloki initially had a confrontational dimension because it put de kerckhove at the users’ disposal. This transforms the intellectual into a global object at everyone’s disposal - the attempt to do so is the soul behind the bloki project.

After this, the Bio Doll begins to invade other blogs, inserting herself with provocative comments. By manipulating the visitors’ perception, she conducts them to read the issues that the guests discuss.

BIO DOLL

AUTHOR: FRANCA FORMENTI COUNTRY: ITALY

KEYWORDS

sex, love, manipulation, clone, escort, academic news, body maternity

BELGRADE 2020 – THE CITY OF WONDERS COUNTRY: SERBIA AUTHORS: VIDA KNEZEVIC; MARKO MILETIC

ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS

critique, cultural politics, collective symbolic capital, urban machines, EU, cultural production, repoliticization, creative class, immaterial labor

CRITICAL WRITING

Our concern in this essay is critical analysis of the concept New cultural policy, currently implemented in Serbia. This cultural policy belongs to a wider framework of developments taking place in Europe since the early 1990s. Additionally, it is part of the policy of European integrations and introduction of the neo-liberal capitalism in Serbia (i.e. entire Eastern Europe), facilitating establishment of new colonial relations. Analyzing the program document Nove kulturne politike, the project Beograd 2020 and ‘Parobrod’’s initiatives in terms of such developments, we may clearly perceive the measure of their dependence on the neo-liberal logic, which apprehends culture merely as a realm of profit. We start from the political-economic concept of monopoly rent applied by David Harvey on the logic of contemporary cultural production, and his analysis of cities as urban machines. Subsequently, we resume Matteo Pasquinelli’s claim according to which relations between collective symbolic capital and the post-Fordist economy are indeed parasitic exploitation of the immaterial sector by the material: we use this claim to assess the current relations of production within the cultural sphere in Serbia. We suggest that existing potential for re-politization of the contemporary cultural production takes place within the system, and is based on challenging the urban machine.

ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS

love as transformative power, engagement, phantasm, imagination, Levinas, recognition, pedagogy of listening, inductive educational approach, critical public communication

In this essay I would like to investigate the relation between love as transformative power and it’s conflict nature, which is most visible in the idea, that we can’t build our self outside engaged relationships (like love), but specially love relationship can turn into a form of submission and therefore loss of our self. That’s why the concept of love as engaged relationship needs an ethical limitation which can be built best on the Levinas’ ethical concept of respect toward the face of the other and political concept of proper recognition. Because in the relationship of mutual respectful recognition we can never totally understand the other person; and because we should accept the other person in her unlimited formation and passage from two separate self ’s to the instance of “us”, imagination is the necessary part of love. To separate productive forms of imagination from a selfish phantasm, I propose two mechanisms: a demand to give a voice to the other, and to accept respect as a precondition of fruitful human relationship. First demand was materialized in the pedagogy of listening, and second in the inductive educational approach. Both demands can be used also in the theory and practice of engaged critical public communication, so at the end of this essay I show two examples of good practices of public communication, where proposed demands were considered.

LOVE: CONFLICT: AUTHOR: ROBI KROFLIC IMAGINATION COUNTRY: SLOVENIA 40

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NOT AT AUTHORS: NILOUFAR TAJERI, GAL KIRN HOME COUNTRY: GERMANY ABSTRACT

What does a change of location cause in a relationship? What happens between a couple if social distress and economic urgencies enter their lives? The story shows how a immigrant couple gets gradually instrumentalized by various political agencies and cultural poliKEYWORDS cies. Social conflicts threaten to dissolve their immigration, relationship. social conflict, dialectical reshaping of love, script

CRITICAL WRITING

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ABSTRACT

KEY WORDS

Plato, Hegel, Descartes, Marx, free will, Platonism, philosophy of history, tragedy

The article analyzes Matrix film trilogy of Wachowski brothers from the aspect of the history of philosophy and presence of ideas of Plato, Descartes and Hegel in it. In the first part, it is analyzed the platonic framework of the first film and it is argued that there is no Cartesian hyperbolic doubt in it, but there is a cartesian theme in physical exercises in very world of Matrix as a way of freeing the mind. In the second part, using Hegel’s The Philosophy of History and The Phenomenology of Spirit, author gives an answer from the title of the article: sixth Neo is new because he started to determines himself, he is free. The final part of the article is concerned with clash of Neo and Agent Smith in third part of Matrix. Neo’s death is tragic in Hegelian sense of tragedy. Finally, the author interprets the dialog between Architect and Oracle using the Marx’s idea that whole previous history of mankind is only prehistory.

WHY IS NEO NEW? AUTHOR: PREDRAG MILIDRAG HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AND MATRIX TRILOGY COUNTRY: SERBIA

BEYOND...

Beyond... is a special category.

This category has been added to encourage those radical communicators who like to think “outside the box”. While a lot of subversive writing and design has emerged which challenges the status quo using its own conventions, very few of these initiatives have employed Curators and editors a mode of communication that Alen Ožbolt is not rooted in commercial John Calvelli culture itself.

Sandra Rengifo Alain Bieber Frédéric Dubois Kevin Yuen-Kit Lo

All published works are selected works from 2010/11 friendly competition with selected curators comments. To see all received works and curators comments please visit our web page www.memefest.org

JOURNAL OF JOURNAL AUTHOR: NICHOLOAS KNOUF PERFORMANCE STUDIES COUNTRY: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BEYOND...

DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHOR Describe your idea and concept of your work in relation to the festival outlines: Journal of Journal Performance Studies (JJPS) is appropriate for the Beyond category as a result of its integrated approach to the question of academic communication.

Consisting of satire, in the form of a Firefox extension, new forms of distribution and artistic representation, in the form of an internet-based radio station, and an active attempt to perform new forms of scholarly communication, JJPS involves people in the work by incorporating the extension into their daily activities, by enabling them to experience new forms of academic communication distribution by listening to the online radio, and by reading and potentially submitting works to the future issues of the journal.

What kind of communication approach do you use?

Journal of Journal Performance Studies (JJPS) is a series of three interrelated works that engage with academic publishing. The project consists of a Firefox extension, an online radio, and a journal. The JJPS Firefox Extension overlays bibliometric data, graphs of journal ownership, and journal cost onto publisher websites. The extension also replaces advertisements on scholarly sites to provide a glimpse into the future of scholarly distribution. JJPS Radio is designed as a fully-automated internet radio station, presenting recitations of articles in our database of hundreds, translations of texts into sound, and news and views important for the study of journal performance. JJPS Radio suggests not only new methods for the dispersion of academic work, but also re-purposes academic texts as its source material. The Journal is an experiment in the propagation of scholarly work. The hope is that the journal will develop into an ongoing project on the limits of contemporary intellectual representation.

What are in your opinion concrete benefits to the society because of your communication?

See http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/ index.php/jjps/article/view/6/6 and http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/index.php/jjps/article/ view/4/4 .

What did you personally learn from creating your submitted work?

See http://journalofjournalperformancestudies.org/journal/ index.php/jjps/article/view/5/5> Why is your work, GOOD communication WORK? JJPS works across a multitude of levels to consider academic communication as artistic material, and to suggest other alternatives of distribution and the performance of scholarly texts.

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CURATOR’S COMMENT An interesting, complex, provocative, useful project. It’s good to see the power tentacles of academic publishing revealed through a convenient Firefox extension. I’m also glad that in your article you brought Academic Search Engine Optimization to light. As a general consumer of Google search results, I don’t think much about the perniciousness of page ranking optimization, but as someone working in academia it gives me serious pause. It isn’t surprising given the well-known privatization of education we’ve been witnessing in recent decades, but it is eerie seeing it pursued on the micro-logical level.

What will it take for universities and other tenure-granting post-secondary institutions to change their reliance on traditional peer-review scholarly journals towards a more open source model? If this were to happen, would it change anything? It seems the academic world is no more and no less a reflection of the society that authorizes it and the power distribution network within which both exist. Perhaps it isn’t a question of traditional journal vs. open source, but rather the University vs. the Internet. I’m not a techno-optimist by any means, but I think disseminated and distributed intelligence has more potential to counter the forces of defuturing that the consolidated knowledge of our largely centralized universities. So any efforts to reveal and shift, as JJPS seems to be attempting, it to be applauded.

John Calvelli

SMSLINGSHOT AUTHORS: PATRICK TOBIAS FISCHER, CHRISTIAN

ZOELLNER, THILO HOFFMANN, SEBASTIAN PIATZA COUNTRY: GERMANY BEYOND...

CURATOR’S COMMENT I believe this proposal one of the most interesting that we can find in the Beyond category. Its intention to think about media interventions, extends beyond overflow as a reflection on architecture in an expanded field. The public space becomes a kind of surface to be intervened plastiDESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHORS cally. Each of the projections As a follow-up of the spreadgun performance in 2008, SMSlingshot is becomes a joint work, with mulan extension of VR/Urban’s digital intervention activism. The installatiple readings that may give us an tion features a handheld digital slingshot device for spreading inforextensive input from the context mation on public screens. and the users who approach it.

We say and experienced that the SMSlingshot really changes the way The visual proposal then becomes of how people deal with images in urban space. Going back to our a posterior heir of demonstrations 2008 installation spread.gun (a canon to shoot messages o public in public space as graffiti or the walls), we felt, th at the “behind-the-pc-screen” communication lacks arising of mass marches where of truth. One can type insulting and strange stuff from this position, student movements threw paint hiding behind avatars and nicknames. This can be ok sometimes; in bombs at the large institutions general its results are a bit scary. So we took the way of communicatagainst the witch they marched ing with 140 signs, known from twitter and brought it back on the for several hours against. It is streets. what we got then was a different way of communication. so as the tours engaged by their The people were able to link shooting person with shot message. So participants can be tracked in the the whole communication process was real. No censor bots running contents of the texts. As an innothrough the program, because the multitude in front of the screen and cent child’s game of the after pop interacting with the installation were regulating everything. No adera, with a slingshot made of thouvertising, no stupid jokes or paroles. Everything was just playfully seri- sands of citizens whom demand ous. Bringing the sender back in person is changing a lot! Another imfor their space, their identity and portant point is that the mediated way of communication is too slow. citizenship. Behind were left intenTalking face to face is much more efficient and personal. So we made tions of hunting any bird: now the people talk to each other, standing in front of a screen following a shot event was apparently resulted in a discussion and discussing it. This is always the best part. For example set of immense digital spots that in Eindhoven we projected the face of racist asshole Geert Wilders in can mutate in different parts of the background and people were telling him their thoughts on politics. the world… starting in Europe and But even more people and passive bystanders were discussing it too! extending even to Latin America. It Our concept of VR/Urban aims for claiming back urban space and give seems that with this proposal we the inhabitants a tool for occupying urban screens. People shall not are even reviving past moments only remain as a passive audience, they must obtain the privilege and directly to the masses, just as it beside that the right tools to create their own multimedia content in done by the artistic “avant-garde” the streets. in the twentieth century, where a promise is based again in a new manifesto: “Hybrid estates”.

Sandra Rengifo

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DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHORS Introducing the new Radical ATM Service Radical ATM Service is the first global ATM network specially esigned for developing a critical point of view where it’s most needed. By means of simple alterations, we adapt ATMs to become the driving force of positive changes in their users and the environment, instead of being another link in the chain of destruction of the Earth and people.

How it works Regular ATMs are designed to withdraw cash. In contrast, Radical ATM is technically prepared to retain users’ cards while invites them to interact with alternative contents. ***WARNING*** DO NOT ENTER YOUR PIN. This ATM belongs to Radical ATM Service.

Your debit card has been hijacked.

You will get it back safe and sound.We won’t take any money or information from you. Please, do not panic.We’re not recording you, so you can behave naturally.

Then, the user will be able to select among multiple options—quite different indeed from ordinary ATMs—such as playing cool “radical games”, watching documentaries, listening to music, reading articles, etc. Each one features such topics as environmental protection, struggle against multinational corporations, community organizations that develop new types of social networks based on innovative models, among others.

After this educational program, the user will be invited to pick his/her card, and, instead of getting money, he/she will receive a set of stickers with cool anticapitalist statements.

Expect the Future with Radical ATM Radical ATM is an innovation leader in the industry of social uprising technology. With its flexible configuration, it’s easy to be recycled and adapted by activists across the breadth and width of the world. Radical ATM is a worldwide leader social brand that has installed machines in the best-known banks and malls. Our company’s present successes will shape the future of technology—globally. Radical ATM Service is synonymous with best cost-efficieny profitability—the highest community awareness at the lowest market value.

Radical ATM Service Technology to Victory Forever.

BEYOND...

CURATOR’S COMMENT I decided to include the radical ATM to the works I curate because it possesses a few subversive qualities which I find irresistible.

Radical it is. The project gets full marks on the aspect of being a fundamental critique of capitalism, and of one of capitalism’s most recognizable objects: the teller machine.

The radical ATM distinguishes itself from other works because of its consequent approach and application. The machine as such is radical in all its dimensions. Combining open hardware and open software, the authors of this work have had the good idea to force the user into becoming a victim. By snatching one’s bank card, the radical ATM captivates one’s attention. It uses capitalist tactics (capitalism tends to want to force you into performing certain behaviours, including using a teller machine instead of a human teller) to direct the user out of his/her comfort zone.

Then, the contents (video games, documentaries, flyers, etc) - which unfortunately the description does not explain in great detail - show how creative the project can become.

It makes me think of old cigarette dispenser machines that are used in Montreal by artists to distribute their art (zines, DVDs of spoken work, small stitched creations, etc). À propos, I was wondering whether one of the goals of this project was to distribute alternative art.

It seems the intent is there, but I was thinking that instead of flyers, the machine could dispense all kinds of creative prints.

I would argue that the radical ATM has benefited from high technical knowledge and resolve, as well as strong conceptual effort. On the “people effort” index, I must admit that I have a few questions. One of the main criticisms of corporate communication is its “oneway-ness”.

That can be said of teller machines in general.

Therefore, wouldn’t it be of interest to render this limitation inoperative? Wouldn’t it make sense for the radical ATM to become a node in a larger radical network of communication?

You already have a machine in Argentina and in Germany. Isn’t that the beginning of an international network of radical ATMs that could communicate with each other? Create radical stuff together? Whatever way one looks at this, I find the radical ATM would gain from inverting not only the message in the

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ATM, but also ways in which this message is shared and negotiated. I find that the users of the ATM are ready to graduate from their role of victim of a machine, of a system. They are ready to express their views through the radical ATM, to add their voice to the political conversation. An encounter with a radical ATM could become an invitation to step out of the rank, to move beyond propaganda communication and into a dialogue (ie. about banking, money, alternative currencies, the economic crisis, capitalism, etc). Another idea could be to transform the ATM into an action centre. As soon as you have recuperated your bank card, you’re invited to sign a petition, to take a stand on something related to banking, etc... Congratulations to the radical ATM team!

Frédéric Dubois

RADICAL ATM AUTHOR: IVAN KOZENITZKY, FEDERICO LAZCANO SERVICE COUNTRY: ARGENTINA

SOUATTING AUTHORS: SALVATORE IACONESI, ORIANA PERSICO,

LUCA SIMEONE, FEDERICO RUBERTI, CARY HENDRICKSON

SUPERMARKETS COUNTRY: ITALY BEYOND...

DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHORS Products have incredible and complex stories, made of transportation, production, people, places. Yet products (and supermarkets) fail in showing the enormous richness that characterizes their production and distribution.

Products’ labels and supermarket communication are the vehicle for a very limited set of points of views and voices. Squatting Supermarkets addresses this situation by creating a free, autonomous layer of information on products and supermarkets using augmented reality.

Squatting Supermarkets uses the logos and packaging graphics of products as AR fiducial markers. A content management system allows attaching information and interactive experiences to logos, instantly transforming them into open, accessible, emergent spaces for communication. A mobile application allows consumers to use their smartphones to take pictures of the logos on the products’ labels and to use them to access the augmented reality layers of information.

Presented for the first time at the Piemonte Share Festival in 2009, at the Museum of Science in Turin, Squatting Supermarkets has been shown multiple times internationally transforming products into a tool for ubiquitous storytelling, narrating the stories of the people, places and events that characterize their lives. Squatting Supermarkets has been used as an innovative publishing system, as an art performance, as a tool for scientific research and as an instrument for social entrepreneurship.

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CURATOR’S COMMENT Feels like eating one’s words, or, put this way, it’s very hard for me to say anything and even more hard to comment your extensive explanation on “Squatting Supermarkets”.

On one hand it is fascinated on the other is frightening. It is a project which is for you a platform for a investigation and research. As you believe “that arts and social innovation go well together hand in hand in exploring new practices for a more sustainable world”, you are propose a project with bold text, showing complexity, different ways of considering and approaching to subject, with diverse meanings in relation to the context. It is very innovative, elaborate, prepared, organised, detailed, and highly structured used transdisciplinary research approach (applying perspectives from design, economics, art, communication, and information technology) and using sophisticated new technology. Since I am in this perspective old fashioned (artists), can’t remark something in the harmony to the original.

Anyway I will note some my small observations. After Duchamp things can be changed or transformed or appropriated by naming. An artist can be the author of the definitions.

Here is famous urinal. “This urinal is a work of art”. “This is art”. Readymade, it’s a language operation, very real. Signifier/signified. Baptism. A work reduced to the statement. It’s given and taken at the same time. It’s translation and transposition. “This is not a pipe” is written on the Rene Magritte’s painting. “This is not a work of art”, Marchel Broodthaers specifies that these labels illustrate an idea, art is to be thought. Word definitions can go to the absurd world.

Duchamp’s Fountain is also at once a deconstruction of sculpture and a sculpture. Francis Picabia’s The Cacodylic Eye is at once a deconstruction of painting and a painting.

Picabia had large canvas placed in his salon, with some pots of paints beside it. Everyone who visited was asked to sign it or ad something; it was eventually covered with over fifty signatures, puns, dodles. One critic describing it as the “wall of public urinal” – what can be less like art than graffiti in year 1921. Picabia protested: “Art is everywhere, except with the dealers of Art, in the temples of Art, like God is everywhere except in the churches”. Rene Magritte in Words and Images shows that an object never perform the same function as its name or its image. Words are open source and the interpretation is endless.

Alen Ožbolt

DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHORS “For the panoptICONS project a large swarm of camerabirds, citybirds with cameras as heads, has been placed in public space around our hometown of Utrecht, in the same types of spots as real surveillance cameras (and real birds). There are also smaller flocks of birds in The Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels and Berlin. Apart from these streetart objects we also made a version of the camerabird in captivity. This bird is in a cage and follows visitors with its’ camera, feeding her young with images of visitors. We made this version to more clearly show our idea that surveillance cameras feed on our privacy in the way citybirds feed on our scraps.

The goal in making our panoptICONS project was to create more awareness about the presence of surveillance cameras in public space. We feel people accept camerasurveillance too easily, because while they may ‘know’ in an abstract way that there are cameras, they don’t actually ‘feel’ the fact that they are constantly being watched. We feel that there would be a lot more resistance to surveillance cameras if people would be actively aware of their presence and their gaze. We tried to accomplish this with the panoptICONS. The main reasons that people don’t notice surveillance cameras are that they blend in very well with their surroundings and so are ignored like all other streetfurniture, and that they are situated above streetlevel. By making camerabirds with blinking LEDs, moving heads and sound we drew people’s attention and to get them to look up. Once they’d seen one of the camerabirds our hope was that people would look above street level for the rest of the day to see if they could spot more camerabirds, causing them to see the enormous amount of real surveillance cameras in the city.

By making people aware of their surroundings again, they can make informed decisions when it’s time too vote and try to resist this trend of increasing surveillance.”

CURATOR’S COMMENT This year’s Memefest Beyond! category had quite a few submissions addressing issues of surveillance and CCTV. I believe this project stands out among them because it requires very little engagement from the audience/ participants (in comparison to some of the more complex game/mapping projects) and achieves its effect/ communicates its message, on a very visceral level.

The birds are aesthetically very striking as creatures/objects, and the notion of the “gaze” was a very well-observed starting point. They not only address the question of pervasive surveillance in our cities, but really “(birdo)anthropomorphize” the technology—evidenced even more with your ideas of feeding on privacy.

I don’t have much criticism to add, but perhaps some questions can be raised.

Did these birds actually record? and what was done with that footage?

Could that be incorporated somehow in to the project?

Kevin Yuen-Kit Lo

BEYOND...

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PANOPTICONS AUTHORS: BAS VAN OERLE, THOMAS VOOR‘T HEKKE SERVICE COUNTRY: NETHERLANDS

DAMNATIO AUTHOR: RAFAEL POLO MEMORIALE COUNTRY: BRASIL BEYOND...

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DESCRIPTION OF IDEA BY THE AUTHOR Describe your idea and concept of your work in relation to the festival outlines: Beyound critical writing and visual practise, this work is a software that analyzes images by itself and changes it based on face recognition patterns. This conceptual-virus, once opened, appends a black stripe on the mouth or eyes of every face found on each .jpeg of user’s computer memory.

It doesn’t spread itself on other computers, only infects peoples memory - their photos - with the censorship symbol.

What kind of communication approach do you use?

This new communication approach, beyond Good and Evil, makes a surprise to the user. The infected user open some photos (maybe days after running the virus without knowing about that) and see all censored faces. Wow! Who did it?

When? Why? People are not used to intelligent viruses which changes images. It gives more questions than answers and let them thinking. Radical communication thought cyberspace memories.

What are in your opinion concrete benefits to the society because of your communication?

In our age, government censorship is becoming more and more used to control information and power maintanance.

People can’t read this or talk about that. This censorshipinfection shows the user familiar people virtually censored by something that they even don’t know what is. Stimulate this debate is the main focus of the Damnatio Memoriae Virus, bringing power back to the people.

What did you personally learn from creating your submitted work?

People are not used to read, or listen, with full attention, until we talk about them or what they are thinking. Use familiar faces from user’s memory to express propositions is far away better than horny models. Questions are better than answers and imagination is more powerful than knowledge.

Why is your work, GOOD communication WORK? It is not about show something to people, it is about show familiar people with something. People on their computer are usually confortable on their homes or work, in front of theis personal stuff and memories, such as photos and documents. This work get’s there, on their face, changing his memories, impacting his thoughts.

Where and how do you intent to implement your work?

This work was implemented with processing.org in two days, after I first visit the memefest website, told by a friend.

The work, as a trigger, is a program file with a nice icon, an .exe for windows, .bin for linux and .app for mac, but the process as consequences is the work at all.

CURATOR’S COMMENT This conceptual virus is small but mighty! I love artistic virus in general (see also e.g. http:// www.0100101110101101.org/ home/biennale_py) because it´s a bit like “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution!” - hacking the system but with fun and art, please... This software deals with important issues like identity, censorship, private data, manipulation and reality. And I really like the idea that my computer helps me to stay anonymous...

Only problem: As an .exe it´s quite difficult that people will really download and open it and I think another twist that could also be really interesting is, not infect the pictures on my computer, but infect pictures on social networks like Facebook etc. (see e.g. http://www.faceto-facebook.net/) For me this concept is really charming and has a lot of beauty in its destructive side...

Alain Bieber

MEMEFEST 2010/11 PROJECT PARTNERS Beside its international Memefest network with nodes in Colombia, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and Serbia, in 2010 Memefest kickstarted new partnerships with international organizations pursuing active citizenship and social change. The Memefest 2010 theme was LOVE:CONFLICT:IMAGINATION. It was entirely designed in collaboration with KID Pina and Memefest of Slovenia, Pink Sweater of The Netherlands and, Loesje International of Germany.

The Memefest 2010 project consists of several sub-projects, which together create a synergy effect. The interactive web portal mirrors the project as a whole, beside being a platform for reflection and active participation. Memefest‘s friendly competition is brushed over a canvas from which emerge important questions about democracy, freedom of speech, civil rights, cultural diversity, common European identity and values and, active citizenship. A curated selection of the most promising friendly competition works compose the moving exhibition that will travel from Ljubljana to Berlin, and from Nijmegen to Koper. Public discussions and round-tables accompanying the moving exhibition focus on the position of the human being in modern democracy and questions the building of a common European identity.

This publication is handed out to the visitors of the exhibition and includes a presentation of all works that were submitted to the friendly competition. It also offers detailed descriptions of the twenty selected works. The final destination of the Memefest project is Nijmegen, in The Netherlands. There, it will bloom once again at the multimedia Oddstream event, a combination of numerous workshops, exhibitions, performances, round-tables and lectures.

Europe -which unites diverse individuals with numerous ideas and opinions - can only be successful in solving the challenges with the active awareness and ntribution of its citizens. The Memefest project - based on good practice in the use of visual and communication tools – raises awareness and education on one side and, opens-up spaces for individual and collective critical reflection and action on the other.

PINA - ASSOCIATION FOR CULTURE AND EDUCATION is a voluntary, nonpolitical, independent and non-profit association for cultural, artistic, educational, research, communication, information and sustainable development activities. Pina was founded in 1997 following the initiative of the Open Society Institute of Slovenia. Pina is resting on the platform idea of an open society, which means that we work towards developing and maintaining an open society by promoting civil society and through the implementation of projects. The basic concept of Pina is the idea of “open house”, which allows a continuous flow and gathering of people and ideas, and guidance in the implementation of projects.

Fields of PiNAs activity: Cultural field – production and promotion of independent art and culture, organization and implementation of innovative, technology- based intermedia artistic projects, installations, exhibitions ...

Education - research area and integration in the field of education and training, cooperation with higher education institutions, research institutes, organization of instruction, implementation of informal education and counselling Social field - organization and involvement in campaigns in the area of prevention of drug abuse, violence, intolerance, racism, promoting ecology, sustainable development, civil society initiatives, civil dialogue in orter to obtain a wider social impact for social changes.

The purpose and goals of PiNA include: • the pluralisation and popularization of cultural, educational, research and intermedia science activities among citizens; • the promotion of active and constructive use of leisure time through Association’s activities;

• promotion of the development of those values and properties of each individual that contribute to personal growth, such as activity, independence, originality, creativity, effectiveness, fresh ideas, positive thinking, good spirit, tolerant communication, cooperation, working in the community, discipline, self-criticism, loyalty, modesty, and culture of tolerance and peace; PiNA has implemented several projects where we combined art and multimedia to address the social themes.

This approach has proved to be successful as it delivers a significant effect in disseminating the message trough the activities and is also consistent with one of the goals of the association - to popularize multimedia communication tools to address social issues for a social progress. We also organize training courses, exchanges and multimedia production and postproduction workshops.

All the activities have a positive impact on target populations and their orientation in the modern consumer world.

Our aim is promote tolerant civic dialogue and critical thinking, in particular, to promote and encourage active participation in the local community. Our service activities (creative multimedia studio, a virtual meeting point for NGOs and individuals, advice on projects,...) allow target audiences to realize their ideas and projects. PiNA gives common ground to various people, who are active in different fields and brings to a concentration of knowledge and ideas, which often produce concrete projects.

The organisation program is open to all, promotes equality of opportunity and encourages active participation by enabling active participation.

PINA

Pink Sweater Productions organises mediagenic culture and art project and wants to engage people actively inside society through these activities. We use the word mediagenic to emphasis that we find it essential that our activities are visible and that we value the usage of media and communication. Our activities has to have quality and should also inspire other people to participate in or to reflect on a topic addressed through the arts. By making our activities visible for a larger audience we can reach a larger impact with our project. To do so we collaborate with local TV and newspapers. We mainly create content ourselves that will be broadcasted or published and by that we ensure the correct information is being communicated. For our participants media attention is often seen as a kind of ‘reward’. We notice that participants feel proud when they see and read on the news about the project they are participating in and by that they feel even more engaged. You could say that we give them their 15 minutes of fame. Though in this case it is collective fame since our projects don’t focus on promoting the individual but on promoting collaborative social and cultural achievements.

The local activities we organize are mainly community-art projects taking place in the neighborhoods of our city Nijmegen and people between the age of 4 and 80 participate in them. An example of a community-art project was the making of the movie ‘de Waalsprong’ where we engaged hundreds of citizens in developing a movie from scrap.

There was no story only the idea that we would develop a movie inside that the ‘Waalsprong’ area. We invited people

PINK SWEATER

PROJECT PARTNERS

to come up with ideas for the movie, to brainstorm with us and many ideas for stories came to us. A professional scenario writer created a script out of the stories. We hired a director and organized auditions for several roles in the movies. Many people did audition.

The crew of the movie was a mixture between professionals (to ensure quality) and over 30 citizens. In 1,5 years time we created the movie from nothing to a movie people were proud of to watch in the cinema and on TV. The aim of the project was not just to create the movie but also improve social cohesion in that specific area by letting people collaborate. Many of our community art project have besides artistic also social aims.

Besides community-art project we mainly organize multimedia projects and give media-literacy and filmworkshops to young people at schools.

Through these workshops they learn about the arts and practical skills related to how to use a camera but also about the impact media can have related to privacy and how to use media in a sensible way.

The Oddstream festival was originally created by Pink Sweater Productions but Oddstream is now an organization on its own. In Oddstream you see clearly the influence of Pink Sweater Productions especially related to the educational programme of Oddstream and the importance of participation.

This year the production of Oddstream is mainly done by the Pink Sweater team with additional freelancers. The coming years we expect both organization to collaborate more with each other and to keep the focus on engaging people actively inside activities and society.

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LOESJE Loesje is both a worldwide collective of people who want to make the world a more positive creative place; and a girl from the Netherlands. Local Loesje groups create and spread posters signed by the girl Loesje, whose texts comment on everything taking place within society. Loesje texts are mostly positive and funny, yet at the same time critical, wanting to stimulate the viewers to see things from new perspectives, and take action in their own lives and surroundings – to solve problems and create change.

Loesje posters are created within a group workshop process, representing a central principle of collaboration. This means that all texts are written as a result of stimulation from others, formed as things that Loesje herself would say, and then spread on the streets, online, in cafés, libraries, schools, Universities and work places…

Loesje was founded in 1983 and since 1994 the foundation Loesje International exists to spread her ideas’ across the globe. Loesje International since 2005 has its seat in Berlin, Germany and there are active Loesje groups in around 30 countries in the world, from Serbia to Nepal. Loesje’s key values and characteristics are: Solidarity, Anti-authoritarian, Sexually free, Initiative, Decisive, A-religious and Independent. Apart from the posters Loesje every year arranges several international projects and numerous other activities, connected to Freedom of Speech and other human rights, always with a creative twist. Anyone with a humanistic value base is welcome to join Loesje.

Loesje and Memefest Loesje has for the first time in 2010 collaborated with Memefest to promote the Memefest Love:Conflict:Imagination friendly competition in the Loesje network and create synergies between the net-

works. Loesje International will together with a team from ‘Mašta - magazine for creative acts’ conduct the exhibition in Berlin with the selected works from the friendly competition in May 2011. Two of the trainers of the international Youth Critical Media Literacy Training at the Oddstream festival in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 29th of May-7th of June 2011, will come from Loesje International and Mašta. The idea of the international training is to train 24 already experienced participants in arts, media and communication, using workshops to create a common understanding of the festival concepts and create the group work atmosphere, and practical »field work«, with an accent on peer to peer education and communication work. The training and its participants will at the same time be the media team of the Oddstream festival, creating synergies with it, and report from it, partly in collaboration with local media.

At the festival Loesje will also have a part at the participation area where the visitors can engage in several interactive and creative activities, like expressing themselves through Loesje text writing or at the “Freedom of Expression wall”, photographed every hour and published online; or reading earlier Loesje and Mašta publications and maybe get inspired to take action. Daily festival posters will be produced and spread at the festival and beyond. Why not join us?

Websites: www.loesje.org www.mastazine.net

MEMEFEST EXPO, Round Table, Kino ŠIška (Ljubljana, SI).

Partners meeting, Pink Sweater headquarters (Nijmegen, NL). February 2011.

Outdoor place of the Oddstream Festival, THE VASIM. (Nijmegen, NL).

Memefest Stickers.

PROJECT ETAPES IN IMAGES

MEMEFEST EXPO, Ljubljana Kino ŠIška, March 2011.

PARTNERS MEETING, LOESJE HEADQUARTERS (Berlin, D) November, 2010.

LOVE:CONFLICT:IMAGINATION posters in Ljubljana (SI).

ODDSTREAM is a communication and multimedia festival where the participation of the visitor and the interaction with the location of the festival plays an important role.

It will take place between the 31st of May and 5th of June 2011 at the Vasim factory (industrial heritage) Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The city of Nijmegen is known for its progressive alternative character and has many social and cultural studies.

MUSIC PROGRAMME

Over 70 music artists, bands, sing and songwriters and vj’s will come to Oddstream. The focus is mainly on independent indie, rock and electronical music. Oddstream gives space to as well local talents from Nijmegen, upcoming Dutch bands but also more known international artists such as Alec Empire, founder of the anarchistic band Atari Teenage Riot, DIY band Chicks on Speed, Dissapears with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and the legendary postindustrial band ‘the Young Gods’ from Switzerland.

At Oddstream we use the word participation as opposite of passivity and indifference. Oddstream brings and shows inspirational examples of participation from the arts, culture, communication and media together, let the visitors participate in the festival and doesn’t avoid the debate. Oddstream has a musical programme, art and multimedia installation combining high-art, low-art and no-art, debates and lectures. The theme of the first Oddstream festival edition ’love and conflict’ is inspired on Memefest’s friendly competition. The Oddstream programme is divided in a day programme under the name 0f Oddstream festival and the night programme Club Oddstream.

ODDSTREAM COMMUNICATION AND

MULTIMEDIA FESTIVAL 2. - 5. JUNE 2011, NIJMEGEN (NL)

EXPOSITION OF THE RESULTS OF MEMEFEST 2010-2011

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMES

MEMEFEST WORKSHOP

INTERNATIONAL MEDIALITERACY TRAINING

EXHIBITION:

INSPIRATION DAY FOR ART AND COMMUNICATION

A professional exhibition of film, visual arts, multimedia and media art installations by local, national and international artists around the festival theme of ”love and conflict ’, among them Matthias Oostrik - Curtain vs Mirror / Tom Verbruggen (a.k.a.Toktek) / Raoul Matheron – Project Amygdala / Edwin van der Heide – Evolving Spark Network / Stephan van Gestel – Kunstlicht, presentation Gogbot, media art vehicle NIMK, selection videoart by Dziga, short film programme by Go Short and Upload Cinema and many more multimedia art installations.

• Communication, multimedia and art workshops that visitors can follow and participate in.

Young people from different countries will participate before and during Oddstream at an international media training. The training will take place between May 29th and June 7th, 2011. They will create an international pressagency at Oddstream and learn how to make news items for TV, radio and magazines and think critically about media. During the festival they will be guided by media experts to report and do the media-coverage on Oddstream. Each evening there will be an Oddstream news on the local tv station in Nijmegen and of course all items you can watch online.

At Oddstream we highly value non-formal educational programmes on different levels.

Beneath you can read more about our educational programmes.

Special days for pupils On the 31st of May and 1st of June around 1.000 young people in the age of 12-18 will visit the Oddstream exhibition as part of a collaboration with local educational partners. The young people will see all the selected works and will follow workshops given by mediaartists. With this programme we want to present the young people exciting works they would otherwise never see and show them non-mainstream culture and at the same time make them curious about art, culture and media.

The location of Oddstream the Vasim will become an inspiring art and multimedia playground interesting for visitors young and old to go to. People can visit the exhibition during the day inside until 17:00 and outside until 23:59. The exhibition exists out of: • Exposition of the results of Memefest 2010-2011 • A professional exhibition of film, visual arts, multimedia and media art installations by local, national and international artists around the festival theme of ”love and conflict ’, among them Matthias Oostrik - Curtain vs Mirror / Tom Verbruggen (a.k.a.Toktek) / Raoul Matheron – Project Amygdala / Edwin van der Heide – Evolving Spark Network / Stephan van Gestel – Kunstlicht, presentation Gogbot, media art vehicle NIMK, selection videoart

by Dziga, short film programme

by Go Short and Upload Cinema and many more multimedia art installations.

• Communication, multimedia and art workshops that visitors can follow and participate in.

As part of this years memefest award, twenty chosen authors of best memefest festival submissions will be invited to participate in a special memefest-socially responsive communication workshop in nijmegen, netherlands in june 2011, in collaboration with oddstream festival. The aim of this unique workshop experience will be to produce visual maps which will show the differences (and reasons for them) between Socially Responsive Communication and »social marketing«. Workshop will be mentored by Memefest curators- some of the best socially engaged communicators/designers in the world.

Memefest and Oddstream present the world radical communicators on the 3rd of June 2011 in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

The Inspiration Day for Art and Communication is for everyone interested in art, communication and media. We expect to present, without modesty, world experts from Australia, Brasil, Canada and of course Europe to come as guest speakers for the Inspiration Day for Art and Communication. The confirmed speakers are; Sandy Kaltenborn, Tony Credland, Alain Bieber, Jason Grant, Shoaib Nabi and Paulo Hartmann. The inspiration Day for Art and Communication gives an added value to the Oddstream festival.

WORKS OF MEMEFEST 2010-2011 FRIENDLY COMPETITION - LIST

VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE - STATIC • Noblogs.org platform posters Ilic Barocci (Italy) • Paper txt msgs from Kashmir Alana Hunt (Australia) • Eurovision3000 Anja Groten and Janneke de Rooij (Netherlands) • Women Bojana Stamenkovic (Serbia) • -Capital, flying subject not identified!!Gustavo Romero (Colombia) • "Divino deseo" Gustavo Romero (Colombia) • Maravilhar-se Carla Ferreira (Brazil) • Water in conflict Caroline Tagny and Nicolas Dieltiens (South Africa) • Transgress Simon Perčič (Slovenia) • Analogue Sajana Jayaraj and Seema Kurup (India) • Spaces Jessica Leong (Canada) • Steady State Jody Boehnert and Angella Morelli (Great Britain) • Don't fly high!

Kima Toromajyan (Armenia) • On salue les vrais!

Julie Chateauvert and Valérie Perron (Canada) • Capitalism Kills Love (redux) Kevin Yuen Kit Lo and Aram Tanis (Canada) • Love:Conflict:Imagination Marin Šantić (Croatia) • Tag Clouds Mathieu Tremblin (France)

• "Mirror, reflect, therefore I am" Michelle Sant Ana and Ângelo Caixeta (Brazil) • SEDUCED BY LOVE Monika Klobčar (Slovenia) • Big Psomm 2 Piotr Kopik (Poland) • A World Without Strangers Parker Mah (Canada) • The Love of Power / The Power of Love Woohee Lyu (Canada) • The us in virus Darija Medić and Maja Medić (Serbia) • Wet Of Life Marita Cosma (Italy) • Human consciousness Rea Vargović (Croatia) • Tree of life Sandra Kleinwechter (Germany) • Typographic version Sandra Kleinwechter and InDesign (Germany) • Tree of life 2 Sandra Kleinwechter (Germany) • Le temps, la routine tue! Sortir de la machine!(The time, the routine kills! Let's get out of the machine!)

Tournesol Plante (Canada) • Untitled Angela Silver (Canada) • Share Your Heart.

Artboydancing (Denmark) • Who's pressing down from the shadows Atman Victor (Spain) • What would you do?

Silva Kuha (Germany) • Love affaire

Daniel Roy (Canada) • Duality Daniel Roy (Canada) • Climate Camp Poster Exhibition Jody Boehnert, Amy Scaife, Mike Russell and Kristian Buus (Great Britain) • Ecological Literacy Tube Map Jody Joanna Boehnert (Great Britain) • One Degree Jody Boehnert, Kate Evans and Mark Lynas (Great Britain) • LET ME DREAM Vanja Jović (Croatia) • Erotic poster, triptych Anita Lozar, prof. Roman Kalarus, prof. Monika Starowicz (Slovenia) • Bichos - Beasts Anna Sobczak (Poland) • Caution Jure Markota (Slovenia) • World of love and trust Barbara Muraus (Slovenia) • O/\\|Felipe Gabrich and Marina de Holanda (Brazil) VISUAL COMMUNICATION PRACTICE - MOVING • SPAM the musical Boris Eldagsen (Germany) • SIDE-VISOR- ACTIVATION OF PERIPHERY VISION TEST 01 Darko Stojkov (Serbia) • Critical Encounter Kristofer Paetau (Brazil) • La Comune di Milano Lacomune (Italy) • Cycle Angela Frangyan (Armenia) • Atlantic

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André Hime and Huila Gomes (Brazil) • Asas (Wings) Sabrina Rodrigues and Thiago Augusto (Brazil) • PROJECTION MAIL Scott Shall (U.S.A.) • Police kidnapping in Toronto Olivier D. Asselin (Canada) • LesAmes en friche (Abandon souls) Olivier D. Asselin, Mathieu LeBlanc and Pierrette Poulin (Canada) • Jesus News!

Olivier D. Asselin, Mathieu LeBlanc and Xavier Leroux (Canada) • "WO-WO-WORK IT. WORK IT!!!

Gustavo Romero (Colombia) • A live Garden Gnome in Bad Ems! Ondrej Brody, Kristofer Paetau and Josef Zeman (Germany) • Sexy Motherfucker Tine Lugarič, Matija Kocbek and Žiga Zavrl (Slovenia)

• Google karaoke radio show Darija Medić (Serbia) • Imaginary Country Scott Townsend (U.S.A.) • Magnaughtiez vs. electroz Tayma Bittard, Haneen Al Shawish and Bissan Mustafa (United Arab Emirates) • Love-Conflict-Imagination Farah Jdid, Meria Faidi, Heen Sayli and Professor Seth Thompson (United Arab Emirates) • ChocoMallow Fatima Al Hajri and Mira Al Qaseer (United Arab Emirates) • Love Mila Gvardiol (Serbia) • LOVE Bojan Milosavljević (Serbia) • Monitulipare Tommasina Squadrito (Italy)

CRITICAL WRITING • Intelektualni otpad Vladislav Stojičić, Slobodan Stojičić and Predrag Radivojević (Serbia) VISUAL COMMUNICATION • Demokratija PRACTICE – WEB/INTERACTIVE Predrag Radivojević (Serbia) • Interpretation of Tawfiq Al • "Do you have a "Face"?": Hakim's War & Peace identity, imagination, Deema Al Mujadidi, Afra Bin and affection in online Dhaher and Ghaya Bin Mesmar communities (United Arab Emirates) Danica Radovanović (Serbia) • Love me, love me not • Am I ready to be a Deena Abu Zahra and Fatma grandmother, but I don`t have AlMulla (United Arab Emirates) a child yet • About Love Emilija Radibratović (Serbia) Emilija Radibratović (Serbia) • Bio doll • Love+conflict+power Franca Formenti (Italy) Arwa Ramadan and Manal • A Userr's Guide to Demanding Al-Mahmood (United Arab the Impossible Emirates) Gavin Grindon and John Jordan • Find the Love, End the Conflict (Great Britain) Mahya Soltani, Omnia ElAfifi • Love Abuse and Rand Almaeeni (United Joshua Gottdenker (Denmark) Arab Emirates) • Imagination of the Love • All we needed was love Jovana Cvetičanin (Serbia) Sasha Mackuljak (Italy) • Love or conflict? Yes, please!

• Paths Urban Jakša (Slovenia) Nour AbuHayeh, Maram • Playfulness Seems to be Ashour and Omar Aly (Jordan) Playillness • Welcome to Pine Point Lenka Klimesova (Czech Paul Shoebridge, Michael Republic) Simons and Drew Schorno • The Mystery of Love (Canada) Levon Galstyan (Armenia) • Karthyla Island • "Gaga E Os Monstros" ("Gaga Majida AlSafadi and Sarah Adel And The Monsters") (United Arab Emirates)

Lucas Ferraço and Nassif Ferreira dos Santos (Brazil) • Belgrade 2020 – the city of wonders Vida Knežević and Marko Miletić (Serbia) • Not at Home Niloufar Tajeri and Gal Kirn (Germany) • Déjà vu Nina Rašić (Serbia) • The Power of Choice Pavle Terzič (Slovenia) • Why is Neo new? History of Philosophy and Matrix trilogy Predrag Milidrag (Serbia) • LOVE: CONFLICT: IMAGINATION (Love is power, Power is conflict, Love is conflict - where is imagination?)

Robi Kroflič (Slovenia) • The universal idealist: liberty, love and sharing Romero Maia (Brazil) • Love is Conflict Sarah Dugan (Canada) • In sickness and in health Darija Medic (Serbia) • Derealization of media communication Tamara Đorđević (Serbia) • Report from Babylon Marita Cosma (Italy) • LOVE: CONFLICT: IMAGINATION Vladimir Boljanović (Serbia) • O/\\|Felipe Gabrich and Marina de Holanda (Brazil) BEYOND… • Sarkofree Mathias Rossignol and Martin Vidberg (France) • Sandberg Design Department Currency Anja Groten (Netherlands) • The Politics of the Divine“Thangka numérique Nu'a Bön (U.S.A.) • Cross-Border Communication Justin Langlois, Danielle Sabelli, Michelle Soulliere, Joshua Babcock, Cristina Naccarato and Rosina Riccardo (Canada) • Squatting Supermarkets Salvatore Iaconesi, Oriana

Persico, Luca Simeone, Federico Ruberti and Cary Hendrickson (Italy) • FOODPOWER http://www. foodpower.it Franca Formenti (Italy) • Art Operating Systems Kruno Jošt, Marian Potočar, Barbara Huber, Maria Karagianni, Pod Fyvolent and Pedro Zaz (Croatia) • Bordernetart_www.delfine.it Giada Totaro (Italy) • BodyConnFliCtingMinds Goldenberg Anne (Canada) • panoptICONS Bas van Oerle, Thomas voor 't Hekke (Netherlands) • Radical ATM Service Ivan Kozenitzky and Federico Lazcano (Argentina) • Speed Dating Jess Grosman (Canada) • Climate Camp • Jody Boehnert, Amy Scaife, Mike Mike Russell and Kristian Buss (Great Britain) • I Have No Perfect Sex Appeal Josianne Viens, Jean-Francois Paiement, Marc Abrahams and Arthur L. Gillom (U.S.A.) • IAN - International Academic Network Jelena Trkulja and Danijela Fisic (U.S.A.) • F.W.P. Helena Klakočar (Netherlands) • Liberate Tate: Collected Works 2010 Liberate Tate (Great Britain) • Orto diffuso Mariella Bussolati (Italy) • My little pocket terrorism Meu pequeno terrorismo de bolso Mary Fe (Brazil) • Journal of Journal Performance Studies Nicholoas Knouf (U.S.A.) • Global Invisible Theatre Donovan King and Jay Lemieux (Canada) • Drowning NYC Paolo Cirio (Italy) • P2P Gift Credit Cards - Gift Finance Paolo Cirio (Italy) • Damnatio Memoriae Rafael Polo (Brazil) • REFF - RomaEuropa

FakeFactory Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico (Italy) • UFF Vadimir Turner, Tarkan Begzads and Tadeas Trojanek (Czech Republic) • fencePOCKET Scott Shall, Skye Ruozzi, Steph DeJarnette, Susie Nathan, Aaron Fleury, Jon Reisinger, Sarah Koljonen and Caroline Wineburg (U.S.A.) • AMCV Jorge Benet Sánchez Noriega, Leonardo Aranda, Gabriel Velazquez and Jorge Benet (Mexico) • SMSlingshot Patrick Tobias Fischer, Christian Zoellner, Thilo Hoffmann and Sebastian Piatza (Germany) • Free Info Jakob Ohrt and Christian Halsted (Great Britain) • A Máquina Edem Ortegal (Brazil) • Love-Conflict-Imagination Farah Jdid, Meria Faidi, Heen Sayli and prof. Seth Thompson (United Arab Emirates) • EcoMag No.1 Jody Boehnert, Angela Morelli, Andrew Merritt, Airside, Jody Barton, Rod Hunt, Leona Clarke, Kate Evans, Jamie Slimmon, Si Yeun Kim, Herman Daly, David Holmgren and Mark Lynas (Great Britain) • Dr./Director John Antoine Labadie (U.S.A.) • Hearing Now Margie Labadie and John Antoine Labadie (U.S.A.) • Lecturer; Coordinator of the Digital Academy Margie Labadie (U.S.A.) • Tea at Tympani Lane Records Rebecca Anne Banks (Canada) • The Friday Night Girl Rebecca Anne Banks (Canada) • NoWaR Marita Cosma (Italy)

CHECK OUT ALL WORKS ON THE WEBSITE WWW.MEMEFEST.ORG

LOVE: CONFLICT: IMAGINATION MEMEFEST: FRIENDLY COMPETITION 2010/11 Publication edited and curated by Nikola Janović, Rok Klemenčič and Oliver Vodeb Texts Oliver Vodeb, Nikola Janovič, Pina, Loesje, Pink Sweather Text editing Frédéric Dubois (for “Demonstrating Relevance: Memefest (by Nikola Janović)”, “Love: Conflict:Imagination (by Oliver Vodeb)” and categories introduction texts) Layout Rok Klemenčič (based on graphics by Inkahoots and Oliver Vodeb) Printing Tiskarna Medium, d.o.o.

Printed in 1200 copies.

Copyright Memefest, International festival of radical communication Društvo Memefest, Slovenska cesta 55 b, 1000 Ljubljana Slovenia Europe www.memefest.org May, 2011

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This publication was created with support of the Europe for Citizens Programme

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CONSEIL DE L'EUROPE