Dialogue is the most intensive and highly intimate form of communication. It demands the highest attention. What counts in a dialogue is not who says what, but what is created in the commons. But what if dialogue is not working?
Capitalist societies are anti-dialogic. Most of the communication in the public realm is based on marketing principles. Technologies such as social media create self-referential bubbles, attention – a key faculty for dialogue— gets destroyed and with it also care.
What is dialogue, how can we think about it and how can we practice it, if the forces of the market are stacked against it?
Oliver Vodeb is the principal curator of Memefest and Lipstick+ Bread, an academic in the School of Design at RMIT and a founding member of Academics for Public Universities and Public Universities Australia.
