13 May 2012

Memefest Festival Theme: DEBT. Deadline May 30th

Memefest Festival of Socially responsive Communication and Art 2012

Memefest, an international organization dedicated to promoting new, productive and relevant forms of cultural activism, together with the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane, this year introduces the Memefest/Griffith-QCA award for 'Imaginative Critical Intervention'.

This award invites cultural activists, creatives and thinkers from the productive margins of professions, radical theorists, imaginative intellectuals and anyone who is uncomfortable with the status quo and dreams of alternative futures that are more satisfying, just, and sustainable, to submit projects for peer feedback, broader dissemination, and a chance to work collaboratively with other imaginative activists, artists, researchers and intellectuals.

Memefest FESTIVAL 2012 theme: DEBT (debt, la dette, χρέος, dolg, задолженность, долг, debito, дълг, ŝuldo, חוב, schuld, deuda, borç …)

You can't evict an idea whose time has come!

These words express the nature of the current global movement against the rule of money over life. They belong to the people, the 99%, who are bringing the fundamental urgent issues to the streets, into the media, into the realm of public consciousness, into the schools, universities, jobs, homes and intimate discussions and relationships.

These words also express something else. They speak about a state of mind, a focus and a concise articulation of the problem. The idea whose time has come is mainly about three things. First: interventions that create a rupture in the order of things with the goal to redefine our fields of experience and the relationship between being, doing and saying. Second: dialogue. Third: creating new emancipatory social institutions.

If communication and art are to play a relevant role in shaping a future worth having, we need to further redirect, reinvent and reimagine our own understanding and the way we think, theorise and practice them both. Debt is not only an opportunity to do so, but also an urgent responsibility.

The Friendly Competition

Participants are invited to submit works three categories: critical writing, visual communication practice and the participatory art/communication category Beyond...

This year's theme for Visual communication practice and Critical writing is: DEBT. Participants will respond with their work to three carefully chosen texts:

I. First written text is taken from the book Debt, the first 5000 years by American social anthropologist David Greaber in which he explains the function of debt in human history, showing that the current situation is not as natural at all as it seems to be.

II. Second visual text is taken from the documentary Debtocracy by Katerina Kitidi and Aris Hatzistefanou, who together with economist Samir Amin, philosopher Alain Badiou, sociologist and geographer David Harvey and other guests research the reasons for the crisis in Greece, while also showing how Latino American Ecuador stood up to the IMF and refused to acknowledge legitimacy to their enforced slavery.

III. Third is the song No Banker Left Behind by American slide guitar virtuoso, taken from his politically engaged and critically acclaimed album Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down (2011).


Category Beyond…:

While a lot of subversive writing, communication and art 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.

The 'Beyond…' category hopes to bring out new visual and conceptual forms of communication and art which catalyse social change while engaging people as something more than mere consumers.

This category draws on the traditions of independent artistic practice in that the entries will have no brief other than to identity and radically address important issues on a deeply felt personal level. However, we expect that, unlike most 'museum' art, it will generate genuine participatory relations with its audience and be able to work outside institutional sites and conventions. Participatory art and communication is the core principle of what we are looking for at Beyond…

More about Beyond… here:
www.memefest.org/en/competition/beyond_intro/


Awards:

The international editorial and curatorial board will select the most convincing works. Among strong traditional awards, which you can see on www.memefest.org, two new awards are introduced this year.

1) The first Griffith-QCA/ Memefest Award for Critical Imaginative Critical Intervention.
Best authors of all three categories (critical writing, visual communication practice and Beyond…) will be invited to Brisbane to take part in a special extradisciplinary workshop resulting in a public intervention in the city of Brisbane.

2) Authors of best works in the category: critical writing will be invited to publish their work in the academic peer reviewed journal Zoontechnica zoontechnica.com.


Deadline for your submissions is May 30th.

Participation is free of charge and there is no age limit or any other restriction. Your work can be submitted online.

See more about our Awards here:
www.memefest.org/en/competition/awards_2012/

More information on the whole Friendly competition:
www.memefest.org/en/competition/intro/

More information on the Festival of Socially responsive communication and Art:
www.memefest.org

Contact Patricia Laboca: memefest@memefest.org