MEMEFEST 2008- EXPLORING RADICAL BEAUTY OF COMMUNICATION! 

Memefest, the International Festival of Radical Communication–born in Slovenia and rapidly reaching a critical mass worldwide– is proud to announce its seventh annual competition. Once again, Memefest is encouraging students, writers, artists, designers, thinkers, philosophers, and counter-culturalists to submit their work to our panel of renowned judges.

This year, jury members will among others include ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­new media theorist, activist and founder and director of the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam, Geert Lovink (http://www.networkcultures.org/), Dori Tunstall  a leader in field of Design Anthropology and Associate Professor of Design Anthropology and Associate Director of the City Design Center at University of Illinois at Chicago, P.K. Langshaw, the Chair of and Associate Professor in the Department of the Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Jason Grant, Director of Inkahoots (http://www.inkahoots.com.au), the adventurous graphic design studio in Brisbane, Australia, Gon Zifroni from the excelent and inovative design research collective based in Amsterdam and Brussels, Metahaven (www.metahaven.net), and theater director virtuoso, Jernej Lorenci.

This years festival theme is RADICAL BEATY. Participants will respond to an excerpt taken from the movie Rize and comment on it with their works.

Here is how we defined radical beauty: Beauty is a cultural creation that expresses dominant values. In the 21st century beauty is often extremely commercialized. Radical beauty is a cultural creation that expresses the desire of a change in society. Radical beauty is about changing dominant values through action and creation. Grassroots projects are often the vectors of these changings. They experiment new practices and express new values.

Radical beauty

- content of communication: poetic dialogue and action between the world and grassroots projects or processes that are existing or yet to be realized
- process of communication: empowering relations between people
- aesthetic: evoking a strong feeling of affection or love

- with radical beauty we want to overcome to usual criticism of social construction of beauty, mostly regarding the representations of women in media.
- radical beauty is a theme but also a communications approach - Therefore we need to channel the concept of radical beauty in to specific problems/issues

As always, those whose work does not take a conventional format can enter the Beyond… category, where the name of the game is challenging mainstream practices and beliefs! Beyond… continues to grow in popularity as a category not only because of its avant-garde appeal but because it is open to non-students as well.

Memefest occurs completely online at www.memefest.org, and all entries will be available for full access and commentary in the site galleries. In 2007, Memefest received almost 500 entries from participants of every continent on the globe (‘cept Antarctica). We hope to get bigger, and to spread more of those good infectious ideas, so keep thinking- and creating.

Deadline for submissions is May 20th 2008!

Good luck!

www.memefest.org