[spectre] Interview with Oliver Vodeb.Founder and president of the MEMEFEST

[Roberta Alvarenga]

The beginning of the MEMEFEST
Interview with Oliver Voded.Founder and president of the MEMEFEST
International Festival of Radical Comunnication  By Roberta Alvarenga

1.How did the idea of a festival come up? Why Memefest?

Oliver : Well, i worked on several projects before Memefest and i
started to study the different mechanisms of different festivals.
I was impressed by the power of a festival- what a festival is able to
achieve in peoples heads. I always looked at a festival more as a
communication tool, than a event. More as a tool for education and
real participation than a spectacle. A festival creates with specific
dynamics social reality.

So there were tons of lame advertising, design, art and media
festivals in the world, but not a lot serious attempts to make a
festival that would nurture democratic/interventionist/social
communications practices. The need that our world needs a radical
change in the way communication is practiced on every level of society
and human live brought me to the idea to fond and start Memefest.

My first goal was to use the festival mechanism for something good. To
use it as a tactical communication tool instead of a spectacle.

Instead of making stars we develop  new and nurture existing
communication knowledge and spread social responsible memes, educate
the participants and encourage others to start communicating in a more
productive and responsible manner than the big majority governments
and corporations do.

2.Please tell us about the importance of the internet as means in this
manifestation under the format of a festival.

The internet is very important for Memefest. Memefest was created and
shaped for the internet in the first place. Our web site is our main
communications tool. The medium which is not censored and the medium
that we can use in any possible way we want and we are able too.
The internet is the environment through we send most of our memes, the
environment in which we collaborate (the biggest part of the Memefest
team are people from very different countries like Germany, Serbia,
Canada, USA, Brasil, Colombia, Argentina, Australia, Japan…)
Also a big part of Memefest success is the participation of the
internet's gift economy, a economy where no money is involved but
gifts that constantly circulate, are.

People participate in the competition, but people also help with all
kinds of different things for the festival. So in a way the
environment gives back to Memefest what Memefest gives to the
environment.

3.Memefest happens and is developed through a non-physical space, the
internet. Please tell us a little about the physical space and the
materialization of the festival. Memefest is in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Europe,
and in other countries simultaneously. How does it happen?

In may, we have every year lectures in Ljubljana. Last three years we
had them at the modern art gallery.

Brian Holmes and Boris Buden, were guests in the past years. In End of
June, when the results are known, there is a award ceremony in
Ljubljana, with a party. In September we have a exhibition of selected
work in a Gallery in the old part of the City, which is highly
visited.

This year we plan to have also a award ceremony in Berlin in
collaboration with "the Abc" project (the-abc.org)

We also plan to make a exhibition of selected visual works on
Billboards around Slovenia, which is pretty funny if you think of it.

The festival materializes also in a way with all the printed materials
that the festival has, like catalogues, posters, media information
etc.

Also it inspires people to their own radical/social communications
campaigns, which is also good. In the past year one could literally
see that more and more people are making interventions in the existing
media space.

4.In 2004, MEMEFEST was news in all Colombian newspapers for taking
part of the 4 Festival de La Imagen, in Manizales (an important
festival, sponsored
by UN, related to arts and its new medium). How was the feedback?  How was
the experience of introducing Memefest as one of the largest festivals
related to capitalist counterculture to Colombian students ?

Colombia was a beautiful and very inspirations experience for me. A
beautiful country and beautiful people! Also the festival was very
good.

I was actually a bit surprised by the overwhelming positive feedback i
got after my speech at the Conference and my teaching at the design
department at University Caldas.

Students and people in general seem to have a big interest a need for
democratic communication practices. I have also met some very
impressive people, Like Fernando Cuevas,
(http://www.cuevas.aracniastudios.com/) a social communication expert
who works in the barrios of Cali and Bogota, some proffesors at the
design departments, designers and students.

Overall my impression was that the students there are much less
cynical than the students i am used to teach here in Slovenia-that was
really great to see. Students very hungry for knowledge and
enthusiastic about positive change and the future.

At the same time i could see that the direction Colombia is taking in
terms of communication and media is the American capitalist model,
which is everything else than democratic. Than advertising plays also
a big role, so in a way the problems there are similar to the problems
elsewhere. However the specifics of the local Colombian situation make
the problems there special. Colombia is in many ways a extreme
environment and democratic communications solutions in such
environments need special approaches.

A very beautiful thing also is that we established a local Colombian
Memefest team with my new friends in Manizales. Together with the
Brazilian team from Sao Paulo this is the core of Memefest Latino
America. A month ago we lunched memefest.org/la with two new web sites
in Spanish and Portuguese.

So as you can see the overall impression was more than positive and
productive. I am planning to go back there as soon as i can and I want
to visit Brasil.

5. Imagine this actual situation: if you had money, technology and
structure, how would be the festival(s)?

Depends on how much money are we talking about.
But ok: I would try to establish more local Memefest centers around
the world, with local teams. I would provide the best possible
conditions for them to work. I would get a really strong internet
/programmer team in order to develop our web site/s further- here i
think is still lot of potential, lot of open space left.

And i would establish a research institute for radical /social
communication with a academy where students would study the subject of
socially responsive communication.

6.What should we expect from the festival in 2005? Plans for 2006?

The big step of Memefest 2005 will probably be the integration of
Memefest Colombia and Brasil in to the existing Memefest worldwide
network also the building of local Latino American networks. Right now
we are working on Memefest Balkan located in Belgrade, so this will be
interesting too.

As for the competition, we expect to top the nr. of last year entries.
But that is not the most important thing.

The jury this year is very interesting and i think their feedback to
the participants will be strong and productive.

As for 2006, i don't know yet, but I'll try to direct everything in
the direction of combining the virtual with the physical space,
establishing local centers and strengthen the educational dimension of
the festival.

There are so many ideas but it is impossible to do everything at once.
Time and patience that's what it needs to develop a project which
remains healthy foundations in times of rapid growth!

Overall the mechanism of Memefest have proven to be a great
environment for the production of innovative and high quality
communications approaches.

7. Can you talk a little about the relationship between arts and political
Activism?

I am not sure I can give you a good answer at this moment. The whole
situation is very strange.

Activism and particularly media activism has become so popular that
most of the galleries have not only opened their doors for such
projects, they are actively encouraging artists to produce radical
works.

At one hand you have activists who claim they are artists. Some of
them are , some of them are not artists. Ok, this is a good tactic
especially if one gets trouble with the authorities, since art is
somehow allowed to do such things. On the other had you have artists
who claim they are radical or political but they are mainly exhibiting
in galleries. Art in any form is great and very useful for
communication –also for activism, but right now things seem to get
pretty tricky.

Activist art, ok it's nice to see it in galleries, but hey, such art
needs to be brought to the streets and in to peoples lives.

The other thing is that almost any one who deals with any level of
aesthetics claims he/she is an artist. Look for example graphic
design.
Most of the graphic designers do commercial work. Not most, but the
huge majority, though the graphic designs scene works very hard to
establish a art image of them selves.

I am not saying that graphic design can not be art. It can, but there
has to be some differences between aesthetics that is art and
aesthetics that is not art.

I mean, c'mon even advertisers think to a huge extend of them selves
as being artists.

So I am not very sure what's my general opinion on this particular
subject right now. Lot of young "artists" are working on projects and
some of them interesting ones, but practically all of them are trying
to get in to the media, to promote their work, to promote them selves,
they fight in which gallery they will exhibit in order to exhibit in
the most prestigious one etc…

Well art is not supposed to deal with such things. Also activism or
any critical approach on our lives and the world, be it science, life
or art should work in another dimension.

That's my opinion, but this dilemma is nothing new, it's a classic one.

8. Through the festival, you've been studying the various
Artistic-political manifestations and activities of each country as a result
of this "capitalized- globe". What differences have you realized? Is there
any 'activist' country in this list? What do you think about the Latin
America and Brazil repercussion over the international circuit?


I think that Latino America is very interesting. Works submitted in
the past have proven that. Also »Future studies« are showing that
Latino America is the new breeding ground for art, science, and i also
think for activism.

I somehow feel that the economically less developed countries have a
different momentum than the developed. Take for example the tactic
called culture jamming, which has it's ideological background in the
French situationist theory.

In USA, Europe and Canada this tactic has come to a point where it is
not really that much different form what the culture jammers want to
critique in the first place.

In the past 5 years we have been witness of a meteoric rise of media
activism, but because of the fact that most »activists« are actually
caught in the realm of competitive consumption the main reason for
practicing culture jamming is just being cool  in the way that Tom
Frank described the term in his great book "the conquest of cool" and
fetishism of the image.

Of course there are great exceptions but the general situation is that
the media activist scene in the developed west needs to reinvent it
self and new approaches have to be invented, developed and put in to
practice.

In the economically less developed countries such a  stage is not
reached yet in my opinion, so there is a chance of a more productive
development than we have witnessed in the developed countries.

If one analysis Memefest's submissions in a broader socio economic,
media/communication context, one can really learn from mistakes of the
other people, get inspired by each others, and by each others work,
which i think is great and very important.

The fact is that we are all in this together. There is one world and
solidarities have to be global and local at the same time.

9.Statistics (how many entries were submitted and how many people involved
in production)


391 entries from 36 countries, all continents in 2004.

Cca 5 people in the core team and 20 people around the world who are
active members of the network.

-- 
Roberta Alvarenga

55 11 9153-7364
São Paulo - SP / Brasil
eu at robertaalvarenga.com
www.robertaalvarenga.com