(Dear friend, please help us spread the meme. Copy this press release and send it to your friends and local newspapers. Media are usually making it difficult for us by censoring, or ignoring Memefest, so your help to get our voice heard is very important!)

MEMEFEST 2007- ENTERING THE SECOND HALF OF A DECADE OF CREATION, SUBVERSION, AND RESISTENCE! Memefest, the International Festival of Radical Communication–born in Slovenia and rapidly reaching a critical mass worldwide– is proud to announce its sixth 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 include ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­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, and Luli Radfahrer, Professor at the Communication and Art School in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and founder of Hipermidia, one of the first digital communication agencies in that country.

Traditionally, the Memefest team has asked participants to respond to the opinions expressed in a selected text using the medium appropriate for each category (Communication and Sociology- both written, Visual Arts, and Beyond….). This year, for the first time, we have chosen the same text for the academic and artistic categories, and, also unlike other years, where the chosen texts were essays, or book or manifesto excerpts, this year’s chosen text is the 1960’s movie trailer for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. This trailer features a witty, cynical, and humorous, yet dark and serious soliloquy by the director himself.

Even more pertinent (might we say urgent) today than when first seen generations ago in movie theatres, Hitchcok’s genius commentary on man’s relationship with nature will no doubt provoke a plethora of unequivocal responses. And, 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 2006, 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 producing. Deadline for submissions is May 20th 2007.