Radical Intimacies

Description

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.

INTRO

Radical Intimacies: Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities

   OLIVER VODEB

 

TxTS/

ONE

The Onto-epistemic Politics of Participatory Design

   OLIVER VODEB AND ARTURO ESCOBAR

Dialogue, Intimacy, and Memefest

   GEORGE PETELIN

How to Participate in the Public Sphere

   KYLE MAGEE AND OLIVER VODEB

 

TWO

Designing Facts: Assembling Survivors, Satellite Data, and Interfaces in the Case Against NATO in the Mediterranean Sea

   PATRICIO DÁVILA

The Emancipatory Design of Suffering: Design, Work, and Radical Intimacy in the Experience of Suff ering

   MARIANO MUSSI

Capitalism’s Addictions: Design and the Displacement of Intimacy

   DANIEL MARCUS AND OLIVER VODEB

 

THREE

Black Land and Food Sovereignty Praxis: Humanizing and Restoring Intimacies between Land, Food, Culture, and Black People

   ERIC JACKSON

Seeing Country: Decolonization, Timeless Intimacies, and an Escape from the Tyranny of the Dead Man’s Vision

   SAM BURCH

Seed Balls as Method

   ILARIA VANNI AND ALExANDRA CROSBY

 

FOUR

Design Research as Radical Social Practice

   OLIVER VODEB

Intimacy as Infrastructure: Anecdotes on graphic Design and Friendship

   KEVIN YUEN KIT LO

Viral Love

   KEELY MACAROW

What’s in a Name? SnackArt and The Ekphrastic Agency

   JANE NAYLOR

Design is Not Enough

   TONY CREDLAND, SANDY KALTENBORN, AND BRIAN HOLMES

 

FIVE

Curated Visual Works from the Memefest Radical Intimacies Friendly Competition

   CURATED BY OLIVER VODEB

      I have NOT Read and Agreed to the Terms of Use

         CLEBER RAFAEL DE CAMPOS   

      Chain of Poverty

         SHEHAB UDDIN

      Playing Nice in the Workplace

         THERESA MOSO

      Don’t Let Them Bring You Down

         ELA ALISPAHIC

     Memeorial Browser Extension

         ADAM SULZDORF-LISZKIEWICZ, LUCAS MILLER, AND LIEUTENANT JOHN PIKE

      Seed Broadcast

         JEANETTE HART-MANN AND CHRISSIE ORR

      QUEST

         NOULA DIAMANTOPOULOS

      In the Hammock

         KATHARINAJEJ

      Sponsor a Wealthy Child

         JULIEN BOISVERT

      Sit-In

         TUCKER MCLACHLAN

Memefest Radical Intimacies Extradisciplinary Action Research Results

   CURATED BY OLIVER VODEB

 

Notes on Contributors

Index

Acknowlegments

Sujets

• Political Ideologies
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Communication studies
• Interdisciplinarity
• Graphic design
• Capitalism
• Advertising
• Activism
• Design
• Dialogue

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 23 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789386578
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

RADICAL INTIMACIES
First published in the UK in 2023 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2023 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Signed texts, their authors
Rest of the book, the editor and curator
Copyright 2023 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copy editor: MPS Limited
Cover and layout designer: Rok Klemen i
Creative direction and photography: Oliver Vodeb
Production manager: Sophia Munyengeterwa
Typesetter: Aleksandra Szumlas
Print ISBN 978-1-78938-655-4
ePDF ISBN 978-1-78938-656-1
ePUB ISBN 978-1-78938-657-8
Printed and bound by Short Run
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This is a peer-reviewed publication.
RADICAL INTIMACIES
Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities
Edited, Curated and Written by
OLIVER VODEB
Designed by
ROK KLEMEN I
INTRO
OLIVER VODEB
Radical Intimacies: Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities
TXTS/
ONE
OLIVER VODEB AND ARTURO ESCOBAR
The Onto-epistemic Politics of Participatory Design
GEORGE PETELIN
Dialogue, Intimacy, and Memefest
KYLE MAGEE AND OLIVER VODEB
How to Participate in the Public Sphere
TWO
PATRICIO D VILA
Designing Facts: Assembling Survivors, Satellite Data, and Interfaces in the Case Against NATO in the Mediterranean Sea
MARIANO MUSSI
The Emancipatory Design of Suffering: Design, Work, and Radical Intimacy in the Experience of Suffering
DANIEL MARCUS AND OLIVER VODEB
Capitalism s Addictions: Design and the Displacement of Intimacy
THREE
ERIC JACKSON
Black Land and Food Sovereignty Praxis: Humanizing and Restoring Intimacies between Land, Food, Culture, and Black People
SAM BURCH
Seeing Country: Decolonization, Timeless Intimacies, and an Escape from the Tyranny of the Dead Man s Vision
ILARIA VANNI AND ALEXANDRA CROSBY
Seed Balls as Method
FOUR
OLIVER VODEB
Design Research as Radical Social Practice
KEVIN YUEN KIT LO
Intimacy as Infrastructure: Anecdotes on Graphic Design and Friendship
KEELY MACAROW
Viral Love
JANE NAYLOR
What s in a Name? SnackArt and The Ekphrastic Agency
TONY CREDLAND, SANDY KALTENBORN, AND BRIAN HOLMES
Design is Not Enough
FIVE
CURATED BY OLIVER VODEB
Curated Visual Works from the Memefest Radical Intimacies Friendly Competition
CLEBER RAFAEL DE CAMPOS
I have NOT Read and Agreed to the Terms of Use
SHEHAB UDDIN
Chain of Poverty
THERESA MOSO
Playing Nice in the Workplace
ELA ALISPAHIC
Don t Let Them Bring You Down
ADAM SULZDORF-LISZKIEWICZ, LUCAS MILLER, AND LIEUTENANT JOHN PIKE
Memeorial Browser Extension
JEANETTE HART-MANN AND CHRISSIE ORR
Seed Broadcast
NOULA DIAMANTOPOULOS
QUEST
KATHARINAJEJ
In the Hammock
JULIEN BOISVERT
Sponsor a Wealthy Child
TUCKER MCLACHLAN
Sit-In
CURATED BY OLIVER VODEB
Memefest Radical Intimacies Extradisciplinary Action Research Results

Notes on Contributors
Index
Acknowlegments
INTRO
Radical Intimacies: Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities
OLIVER VODEB
T his book departs from the position that our very existence is the subject of relationalities as we are the relations, which constitute us. It engages radical intimacies with design, media, communication, and art. Radical intimacies imply a closeness to the world created through our relations, which work toward decolonization of knowledge and the public sphere, a crucial focus of Memefest. The closeness is political as it involves qualities that constitute and enable an alternative and opposition to extractive relationalities. Our interest is in a deeper understanding of relationalities, which contribute to what Eric Olin Wright would call the flourishing of human life ( Olin Wright 2010 ). More specifically our focus is on the relation between capitalism and the public sphere, as the latter is under severe attack by the former and a truly public sphere is crucial for a functioning democracy-a key condition for the flourishing of human life. Olin Wright has seen the following dimensions of life to be crucial for human flourishing: meaningful, fulfilling activities, typically linked to what is generally called work ; intimacy and social connection; autonomy in the sense of meaningful control over one s own life; and social respect, or what some philosophers call social recognition ( Olin Wright 2010 ). Capitalism colonizes all of them with strategies of extraction.
Extraction is a colonial concept and largely connotes to the exploitation of natural resources and humans but it also applies to a much larger set of relationalities. Extraction was made possible through an imposition of specific social orders and forms of knowledge through what Peruvian Sociologist Anibal Quijano calls the coloniality of power:

(1) the invention of race as a social category and the fundamental criterion for the social classification of the world population that self-positions Europeans as naturally (i.e., racially) superior to everyone else; (2) world capitalism as the new structure for the control of labor, its resources, and products; and (3) Eurocentrism as the hegemonic universal rationality that would help naturalize this whole fiction as a civilizing mission. ( Quijano 2000 : 218)
The coloniality of power today is directly related to the destruction of the publicness, which is directly related to the destruction of knowledge. Melbourne as a city for example was per British colonial order intentionally designed without public squares, as these could promote rebellion ( Magro 2017 ). Australia today has perhaps the most centralized media system of any democracy and at the time of this writing no other public university system in any democratic country is under such attack by a team of managers, consultants, compliant underlings, and a government known also for its blatant, corrupt, and environmentally damaging involvement in and promotion of industries extracting natural resources.
Publicness is crucial for democracy. I agree with Walter Mignolo when he describes democracy as a set of connectors: [a]s connectors they are the place of encounters of diverse epistemic principles for social organization and moral codes for collective behaviour ( Mignolo 2002 : 257). The political and theoretical project of the Zapatistas has connected Marxism with indigenous knowledge and has in time achieved a detachment of democracy from the original meaning of western civilization and modernity: [n]o longer does any community or civilization own the rights over its imposition or exportation; instead it is shared by all those people around the world who care for equity and social justice, and especially by those who have been or are victims of injustice and inequities ( Mignolo 2002 : 251, 261).
This book follows a specific methodology, which I would like to position and contextualize. Memefest is a worldwide network and a community of critical academics, curious students, adventurous professionals, radical activists, gifted amateurs, and close friends. Since 2002 we are engaged in design, media, and art for social and environmental change, decolonization of knowledge, and the public sphere. The term design signifies a broad, ontological understanding of design. As Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar described in his groundbreaking book Designs for the Pluriverse ( Escobar 2018 ), design needs to be understood in line with some key realizations of practitioners and theorists. I think that this new understanding has been emerging over the last twenty years. First, design is ubiquitous; it is present everywhere in our lives, from the most complex structures to the humblest aspects of everyday life; especially our modern lives are very much designed. Second, the key and most crucial aspect for successful design is its social context. It is more important than the function of an image, the form of an object, the effectiveness of a service. Third, the importance of design is being recognized in ecologically oriented fields; this importantly calls for design that is new, different, oppositional, and alternative. Design that is not reproducing extractive relationalities. The fourth shift in understanding design is the realization that everybody designs. For many this is the most radical aspect of our new orientation. Design is seen as collaborative, plural, participatory, and distributed, communal, and dialogic. Another important dimension needs to be added to this discussion. As much as everybody designs, design is also disciplined in institutional contexts as, for example, communication design, product design, service design, and architecture design. In this sense we are interested in the connection between design and other disciplines, like art, sociology, media, and communication. But as we will see in the chapter Design research as radical social practice , these connections are difficult to establish and to expand the disciplined disciplines, extradisciplinary methods are necessary to become part of our practice. Considering these new understandings, it is completely natural as well as necessary to include a range of disciplines under the word design used in the subtitle of our book.
Another important clarification is in relation to the term colonization. As already mentioned we see a direct relation between colonization and the destruction of publicness. We do speak about the colonization of the public sphere. When An bal Quijano speaks about coloniality and modernity/rationality and the