Radical Intimacies
Radical Intimacies (Book)
Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities
The concept of radical intimacies is about a closeness to the world created through our relations, towards decolonization of knowledge and the public sphere. The political dimension involves qualities that enable alternatives to extractive relationalities imposed by capitalism. Engages design with media, communication and art. 50 col. illus.'
Edition
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.
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.
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
'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.'
'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.'
'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.'
