An extradisciplinary investigation into the radical potentials of design by the global Memefest network.

This book is an investigation of the key aspects of capitalist domination and resistance to it through design; its five sections explore dialogue, power, land, interventions, and radical praxis. Vodeb's curated chapters engage radical intimacies with design and connects it with media, communication, and art. Radical intimacies imply a closeness to the world created through our relations, which work towards the decolonization of knowledge and the public sphere. The closeness is political as it involves qualities that constitute and enable an alternative and opposition to extractive relationalities imposed by capitalism.

Radical Intimacies connects frameworks on (de)colonization with the work of Memefest, a global network of people interested in social change through radical design. Bringing together original written and visual contributions from around the world, the collection connects universities, practitioners, and social movements. This book explores design as a central domain of thought and action concerned with the meaning and production of sociocultural life. Contributors are interested in design that operates outside the dominant social orders, narrow disciplines and extractive paradigms and imagines and builds new worlds and social relations.

An inter/ extradisciplinary collection of original works, the audience will be academics, artists, designers and activists and adventurous professionals who are interested in the crossovers between design, arts, and social change. Students of design, art, media, and communication interested in social change. Higher level undergraduate and graduate students.

Content warning: Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders are advised that the following publication contains the words & images of deceased persons.

About the Author

Dr. Oliver Vodeb is an academic in the School of Design at RMIT University in Melbourne. He is
the founder and principal curator of Memefest and Lipstick +Bread.

Reviews

'A diverse collection of chapters ranging from the descriptive and matter-of-fact to the personal and anecdotal, thought-provoking interviews to captivating scholarly writings, Radical Intimacies is essential reading for academics, artists and activists interested in the crossover between design, arts and social change.'

-- Stephen Duncombe, New York University

'Maybe we can think about power, and 'designing with' as opposed to 'designing for,' and designing with in contexts of power, and designing with in terms of maintaining and healing and mending and repairing the web of relations that make up the bodies, places, landscapes, and communities in which we live, that we are and inhabit, that we are destroying right and left.'

-- Arturo Escobar, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

'So particularly, with the onslaught of climate change coming it does surprise me. I'm just like, why are we not more openly dissenting to what's happening? Because it's going to destroy everything, and we should be defending it with everything we have.'

-- Kyle Magee, anti-advertising activist, Melbourne



Book Information
ISBN 9781789386554
Author Oliver Vodeb
Format Paperback
Page Count 368
Imprint Intellect Books
Publisher Intellect Books