Posts By: Geert Lovink

Interview with Geert Lovink about Platform Brutality

By Geert Lovink, January 21, 2026

By Enrico de Angelis, conducted via email on November 15, 2025, first published on January 20, 2026 by Untold Magazine here. Platform Butality (Valiz, Amsterdam, 2025) is the latest book by Dutch theorist and critic of digital cultures Geert Lovink. It covers the post-COVID period, characterized by wars (the invasion of Ukraine, the genocide in [...]

Second Interview with German Media Theorist Annekathrin Kohout

By Geert Lovink, November 26, 2025

On Annekathrin Kohout’s two recent publications about the hyper-reactive and social media’s take-over of the art world “Art that generates klicks. Careers that depend on the number of followers. Critics who exchange memes instead of reviews. Museum directors who shut up, in fear of shitstorms. Welcome to the Brave New Art World.” This is how [...]

Contribution to the Design Debate 2025

By Geert Lovink, October 26, 2025

(This short statement was written for the Next Nature/Design Debate 2025, that took place during Dutch Design Week, on October 25, 2025 in Evoluon, Eindhoven. Geert Lovink in debate with Paul Hekkert about the thesis: “When machines create, there is nothing left for designers.” The event was framed like this: “Welcome to a world where [...]

On Internet Aesthetics, Art Practice, Grief and Death – Interview with Geert Lovink by Raquel Luaces

By Geert Lovink, October 8, 2025

Raquel Luaces is a PhD student in the Department of Image and Design, Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona. From September-December 2025 she is a guest researcher at INC. Her supervisor is Montse Morcate, whose work focuses on photographic representations of illness, grief and death (not unlike the work of Tamara Kneese). [...]

The Story of Italian Brainrot – Collective Musings on a Meme Wave

By Geert Lovink, September 30, 2025

By Francesco Barchiesi & Geert Lovink “The most solid pleasure in this life is the empty pleasure of illusion.” Giacomo Leopardi During the first months of 2025 the meme sphere got taken over by Italian Brainrot. The hype coincided with the beginning of the Trump II presidency, when Elon Musk and his DOGE troops were [...]

Out Now: Platform Brutality by Geert Lovink

By Geert Lovink, September 27, 2025

Platform Brutality by Geert Lovink, Valiz, Amsterdam, September 2025. Jetzt auch auf Deutsch, Die Brutalität der Plattform, erschienen bei Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, November 2025. The Spanish edition (with Bellaterra) and the Italian one (with Meltemi Editore) will be out in the first half of 2026. The internet has become an integral part of all human [...]

Living With Algorithms In Costa Rica – Interview with Ignacio Siles

By Geert Lovink, September 3, 2025

How do we live, or rather cope, with algorithms? Ignacio Siles wrote a book about it, Living With Algorithms, Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica (MIT Press, 2023). I met Ignacio Siles in San Jose in April 2025 when I had the honor to open the academic year of the University of Costa Rica [...]

Notes on Deletion and Technological Sacrifice

By Geert Lovink, August 27, 2025

“Artists have successfully used toilets before, so why not large language models?” Hito Steyerl – Set as default location: “Wenn ich nicht hier bin, bin ich auf dem Sonnendeck.“ Rationalism today: explaining genocide for the good – Ethics advice: “If you can’t get the model to say what you want, just rewrite the data.” – [...]

Interview with Klaus Theweleit on Male Fantasies Today

By Geert Lovink, July 21, 2025

If you’re curious about the intellectual roots of my former theory collective Adilkno and the current Institute of Network Cultures, look no further than the book I read in early 1983, half a year before I graduated in political sciences at UvA: the two-volume Male Fantasies by Klaus Theweleit (then only available in German). This [...]

Bookness in the Arts (for Valiz, written in 2022)

By Geert Lovink, May 17, 2025

(I noticed that I never put this text on my own blog. I wrote it for the twenty years Valiz anniversary publication, Future Books(s), Sharing Ideas on Books and (Art) Publishing, edited by Pia Pol andf Astrid Vorstermans, Amsterdam, June 2023, p. 232-239. Thanks a lot for all the comments of Sepp Eckenhaussen, Silvio Lorusso [...]