Short bio
Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fiber (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016), Organisation after Social Media (with Ned Rossiter, 2018), Sad by Design (2019) and Stuck on the Platform (2022). Almost all these books have been translated into German, Italian and Spanish. In 2019 an anthology of his work appeared in Russian with other translations in Turkish and Chinese.
Geert Lovink got his BA and MA in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Amsterdam in 1984 and did his PhD at the English Department, Media & Communication Program at the University of Melbourne (2002). He was a postdoc at the Univerisity of Queensland in 2003. In 2004 he was appointed research professor (lector) at the Amsterdam University of Applied Science (HvA) where he founded the Institute of Network Cultures. From 2007-2017 he was Professor of Media Theory at the European Graduate School where he supervised five PhD theses. From 2004-2012 he was an associate professor in the digital cultures program of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam where he supervised numerous MA theses.
His centre organizes conferences, publications and research networks such as Video Vortex (online video), The Future of Art Criticism and MoneyLab (internet-based revenue models in the arts). Recent projects deal with digital publishing experiments, critical meme research, participatory hybrid events and precarity in the arts.
In December 2021 he was appointed Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the UvA Art History Department. The Chair (one day a week) is supported by the HvA.
Email: geert[at]xs4all[dot]nl.
In 2020 two text archives of Geert Lovink were transferred to the INC website:
The Adilkno/Bilwet archive, once hosted by desk.nl (1990-1999): https://networkcultures.org/bilwet-archive/
The text archive of geertlovink.org (2000-2010): https://networkcultures.org/geertlovink-archive/
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Long bio (until 2006, not updated)
Geert Lovink (Amsterdam), media theorist, net critic and activist, studied political science on the University of Amsterdam (MA) and holds a PhD at University of Melbourne. In 2003 he was a postdoc fellow at University of Queensland in Brisbane. 2004 he was appointed research professor at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (interactive media) and associate professor (new media) at the University of Amsterdam. His position was renamed as the Institute of Network Cultures (www.networkcultures.org). His instute so far organized five international new media conferences: one on the history of webdesign (www.decadeofwebdesign.org), one on alternatives in ICT for Development (www.incommunicado.info/conference), another on urban screens (www.networkcultures.org/urbanscreens), MyCreativity on the creative industries research (www.networkcultures.org/mycreativity) and the Art & Politics of Netporn (www.networkcultures.org/netporn).
In 2002 The MIT Press published two of his titles: Dark Fiber, a collection of esssays on Internet culture (translated into Italian, Spanish, Romanian, German and Japanese) and Uncanny Networks, collected interviews with media theorists and artists. V2 in Rotterdam published his second study on Internet culture, My First Recession, in 2003 (trans. in Italian). His inaugural speech in February 2005, The Principle of Notworking, has been published by Amsterdam University Press. In 2005-2006 he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg, the Centre for Advanced Study in Berlin where he finished the third volume of an ongoing research on Internet culture, Zero Comments, to be published by Routledge New York in 2007.
Geert Lovink is a member of Adilkno, the Foundation for the Advancement of Illegal Knowledge, a free association of media-related intellectuals established in 1983 (Agentur Bilwet auf Deutsch). From Adilkno the following books appeared: Empire of Images (1985), Cracking the Movement (1990) on the squatter movement and the media, Listen or Die (1992) on free radio, the collected theoretical work The Media Archive (1992 – translated into German, English, Croatian and Slovenian), the collection of essays The Datadandy (1994 – in German) and the book/CD Electronic Solitude (1997). Most of the early texts of Lovink and Adilkno in Dutch, German and English can be found at http://thing.desk.nl/bilwet. Geert Lovink’s recent online text archive is: www.laudanum.net/geert.
He is a former editor of the media art magazine Mediamatic (1989-94) and has been teaching and lecturing media theory throughout Central and Eastern Europe. He is a co-founder of the Amsterdam-based free community network ‘Digital City’ (http://www.dds.nl) and the support campaign for independent media in South-East Europe Press Now http://www.dds.nl/pressnow. He was the co-organizer of conferences such as Wetware (1991), Next Five Minutes 1-3 (1993, 1996 and 1999) http://www.n5m.org, Metaforum 1-3 (Budapest 1994, 1995 and 1996) http://www.mrf.hu, Ars Electronica (Linz, 1996 and 1998) http://www.aec.at and Interface 3 (Hamburg, 1995). In 1995, together with Pit Schultz, he founded the international ‘nettime’ circle http://www.nettime.org which is both a mailinglist (in English, Dutch, French, Spanish/Portuguese, Romanian and Chinese), a series of meetings and publications such as zkp 1-4, ‘Netzkritik’ (ID-Archiv, 1997, in German) and ‘Readme!’ (Autonomedia, 1998). From 1996-1999 he was based at De Waag, the Society for Old and New Media (http://www.waag.org) where he was responsible for public research. Since 1996, once a year he has been coordinating a project and teaching at the IMI mediaschool in Osaka/Japan http://www.iminet.ac.jp. A series of temporary media labs was started in 1997 at the arts exhibition Documenta X in Kassel/Germany called Hybrid Workspace (for archive see http://www.medialounge.net which continued in Manchester (1998) and Helsinki, in the contemporary arts museum Kiasma (http://temp.kiasma.fi).
Lovink organized the Tulipomania Dotcom conference, which took place in Amsterdam, June 2000, focussing on a critique of the New Economy www.balie.nl/tulipomania. In early 2001, after having moved to Australia, he co-founded www.fibreculture.org, a forum for Australian Internet research and culture which has its first publication out, launched at the first fibreculture meeting in Melbourne (December 2001). Other meetings took place in the MCA, Sydney (November 2002) and Powerhouse, Brisbane (July 2003). Since 2000 he is a consultant/editor to the exchange program of Waag Society (Amsterdam) and Sarai New Media Centre (Delhi). He recently co-organized Dark Markets on new media and democracy in times of crisis (Vienna, October 2002, http://darkmarkets.t0.or.at/) and Crisis Media, Uncertain States of Reportage (Delhi, March 2003, http://www.sarai.net/events/crisis_media/crisis_media.htm.). In April 2004, together with Trebor Scholz, he organized the conference Free Cooperation on the art of (online) collaboration, held at SUNY Buffalo (www.freecooperation.org).
Three books document his collaboration with the Dutch designer Mieke Gerritzen which he co-edited: Everyone is a Designer (BIS, 2000), Catalogue of Strategies (Gingko Press, 2001) and Mobile Minded (BIS, 2002) Together with Mieke Gerritzen in 1998 he co-founded the Browserday events (www.browserday.com), a competition for new media design students.