This episode I’m delighted to be joined by Barbara Neves Alves. 

Barbara was, for four years, a colleague of mine at the Master Institute of Visual Cultures, in St Joost School of Art and Design, where I teach. During that time, she was responsible for thesis supervision for Situated Design masters students. I really enjoyed working with her for all of that time, despite the fact that about half of it coincided with the global pandemic. As you’ll hear, she has a really interesting way of approaching theory, and practice, weaving them both into each other. 

Barbara’s PhD was on the subject of Miscommunication: advancing the concept of Miscommunication to challenge the notion of ‘good communication’ as an objective of the field of communication design—communication is often failing to reach its intended audiences or outcomes. It expanded on miscommunication as concept and practice to demonstrate how social and cultural exchanges that produce error or misunderstanding can be provocative sites for developing new modes of communication design.

In this conversation, we talk about an article she wrote about her experiences at Occupy London years ago - there’s an odd echo of my conversation with Nelly Ben Hayoun last episode; we talk about her practice, teaching techniques, balancing the different modes of practice; and what she does if she’s stuck in a creative rut. As ever, there is a full transcript of this episode available, and the show notes have links to many of the things we’ve talked about.

This conversation was recorded way back in November 2021.

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Links

Barbara

• Barbara’s website: https://barbaranevesalves.net 
• Barbara’s article on Occupy: https://barbaranevesalves.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Miscommunicating_Publics_published_in_B.pdf
• Barbara’s PhD: https://www.academia.edu/30217879/Miscommunicating_and_design_Researching_miscommunication_as_a_proposition_for_designing_political_scenes 

Books and articles mentioned

• Inventive Methods, edited by Celia Lury and Nina Wakeford: https://www.routledge.com/Inventive-Methods-The-Happening-of-the-Social/Lury-Wakeford/p/book/9780415721103
• Claudia Giannetti: https://zkm.de/en/person/claudia-giannetti 
• Marcel-li Antunez (one of the creators of Fura del Baus): http://www.marceliantunez.com 
• Ursula K LeGuin: The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
• Kathy Acker: Against Ordinary Language: https://www.yvonnebuchheim.com/uploads/1/7/0/8/17088324/acker-kathy_the_language_of_the_body.pdf 
• Barbara’s project around José Gil: Portugal Today: Fear of Existing. https://manifoldbooks.nl/ADiplomatsWalk.pdf 
• Additional reading: Gordon Pask’s Conversation Theory discussed by Jon Goodbun and Ben Sweeting: https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/footprint/article/view/5668 
• Manifold Books, Amsterdam: https://manifoldbooks.nl

I hope you enjoy this episode! For more information, full transcripts, and more episodes, please visit the show website at www.holdthespace.art