The Radical Design Podcast is a new special monthly show re-thinking the radical potentials of design. We aim to understand the world better through deep conversations with people who are doing significant things. Dive into design beyond the conventional. Hosted by Oliver Vodeb, the podcast explores how design intersects with social change, politics, and radical thought. Each episode features conversations with thinkers, activists, and creators who challenge norms, reimagine systems, and push the boundaries of what design can do.
We are interested in design emerging in the undercurrents, kicking capitalism while its down. Our first series, Radical Intimacies, features dialogues with contributors to the book Radical Intimacies: Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities, exploring themes of dialogue, power, land, interventions, and radical praxis. These conversations highlight design operating beyond dominant, extractive paradigms—aimed at imagining and building new worlds and social relations. Find the book here.
From the aesthetics of resistance to strategies of radical imagination, the podcast investigates the ideas shaping design as a tool for transformation.
About Memefest:
Memefest is an international network interested in transforming social relations through radical design. Independent and collaborative, it works with universities, practitioners, and social movements to create spaces for deep exchange in the undercurrents.
Credits:
Hosted by Oliver Vodeb / Memefest
Co-production with Intellect Publishers
Music by Bait: https://bait2.bandcamp.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Radical Design Podcast is a new special monthly show re-thinking the radical potentials of design. We aim to understand the world better through deep conversations with people who are doing significant things. Dive into design beyond the conventional. Hosted by Oliver Vodeb, the podcast explores how design intersects with social change, politics, and radical thought. Each episode features conversations with thinkers, activists, and creators who challenge norms, reimagine systems, and push the boundaries of what design can do.
We are interested in design emerging in the undercurrents, kicking capitalism while its down. Our first series, Radical Intimacies, features dialogues with contributors to the book Radical Intimacies: Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities, exploring themes of dialogue, power, land, interventions, and radical praxis. These conversations highlight design operating beyond dominant, extractive paradigms—aimed at imagining and building new worlds and social relations. Find the book here.
From the aesthetics of resistance to strategies of radical imagination, the podcast investigates the ideas shaping design as a tool for transformation.
About Memefest:
Memefest is an international network interested in transforming social relations through radical design. Independent and collaborative, it works with universities, practitioners, and social movements to create spaces for deep exchange in the undercurrents.
Credits:
Hosted by Oliver Vodeb / Memefest
Co-production with Intellect Publishers
Music by Bait: https://bait2.bandcamp.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aboriginal artist and activist Kristy-Lee Horswood and writer, teacher, and activist Sam Burch join Oliver Vodeb to discuss Aboriginal practices of “Seeing Country” and Radical Design. “Country” for Aboriginal people is a deep spiritual and cultural relationship with the land, waters, skies, and all living things—a source of identity, belonging, law, and responsibility.
The conversation centres around the chapter Seeing Country: Decolonization, Timeless Intimacies and an Escape from the Tyranny of the Dead Man’s Vision, which Sam Burch contributed to the Radical Intimacies book. It outlines some of the key ideas behind the practice of Seeing Country. As a practice grounded in lived experience, its radical potential for design lies in its specific relationality with the world—rooted in a deep appreciation of, and respect for, all living things.
The discussion touches on cultural positions formed in response to the ongoing colonisation of so-called Australia, offering relational frameworks that are deeply relevant to radical design. We hear about the meaning of “fire,” the spiritual nature of initiation rituals, the still ongoing forced removal of children, and ideas of what it means to be in “proper relationship.”
At one point, Oliver asks: “Is everything coming from the West bad?” Of course, it isn’t—but as Sam Burch notes, we need to better understand how different knowledge systems can “talk to each other.” Reflecting on capitalism through an Aboriginal lens, Kristy-Lee remarks that even Marx could have benefited from decolonial thinking.
This podcast is a beautiful journey into knowledge and radical relationality through dialogue.
Sam Burch and Kristy-Lee Horswood are both engaged in activist and educational work and have collaborated closely and meaningfully with Memefest since 2013.
Visit our website: https://memefest.org/knowledge/memefest-radical-design/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.