Cloud Capital and Platform Regression – Review of Yanis Varoufakis, Techno Feudalism

By Geert Lovink, March 22, 2024

A meme is spreading: capitalism is dead. We’re toiling around in its carcass. Nothing appears as it seems in this zombie state of affairs. But why didn’t we notice? There’s confusion all over. Climate, Covid, Ukraine, Gaza. Is history accelerating, or, rather the opposite, stagnating, even regressing? In his latest book Techno Feudalism, Yanis Varoufakis [...]

For Maurice Nio: Unseen, Architecture Slipped Away by Lars Spuybroek

By Geert Lovink, March 18, 2024

Maurice Nio (1959), Dutch architect theorist, writer and artist passed away on July, 11, 2023. Last Friday night I attended the launch for his new book The Suspence of Architecture-The Necessity to Shine (published by Thousand and One Publishers in Amsterdam, order here). Maurice was still able to finish the manuscript. Many colleagues, friends and [...]

Extinction Internet: Italian, Portuguese and Polish Translations with Bonus Song

By Geert Lovink, March 11, 2024

Extinction Internet, the song, read by Geert Lovink, music by Gleb Dovzhuk @UKRAiNATV, recorded in Krakow, October 2023: There is a video version, made by David Herzog, you can watch it here. — Polish translation, published by Grupa Robocza in Krakow: https://wymieranie.mvu.pl/sklep/. Buy here: https://buy.stripe.com/eVacQB3aJ70B43mfYY. — Italian translation, published by NOT/Nero in Rome: https://not.neroeditions.com/extinction-internet/ Internet [...]

Out Now: Spanish Translation of Extinction Internet

By Geert Lovink, January 25, 2024

Lovink, Geert, Carlos A. Scolari y Laura Pérez-Altable. 2024. La extinción de internet: política, redes y plataformas. Barcelona: Departament de Comunicació, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Communication Reports 09: https://doi.org/10.31009/cr.2024.09. Or here: UPF Communication Report 09. (the original English version of the interview was posted here on this blog earlier) La extinción de internet: política, redes y [...]

Sinan Refik Akgün & Ebru Yetişkin: Interview with Geert Lovink (for Art Unlimited Magazine)

By Geert Lovink, January 10, 2024

(This is an email interview from late 2023, conducted for the Turkish Art Unlimited magazine that can also be read on their website here. In the printed version where you can find the Turkish translation there is also a QR code that leads to the sound registration of my talk in November at Akbank Sanat [...]

Copium Compendium: How Do You Cope in this Digital Age of Disaster?

By Geert Lovink, January 9, 2024

(Eurozine published an edited version of my new essay on copium here. The German translation was published in the spring 20024 edition, Lettre International #144. How do you cope with the wars, climate crisis, and misery all over? Below you can find my original version. In line with the INC experiments called ‘expanded publishing’, the [...]

Organizing Occupy Wall Street: Interview with Organizer Marisa Holmes

By Geert Lovink, December 18, 2023

Marisa Holmes is an organizer and educator from Brooklyn, New York. Her book Organizing Occupy Wall Street (Palgrave, 2023) is part personal testimony, memoir and critical analysis of this epic social movement and its immediate aftermath. She also made a documentary with the OWS Media Working Group called All Day All Week – An Occupy [...]

Review of Steve McQueen’s Occupied City: Amsterdam Holocaust Database Cinema

By Geert Lovink, December 4, 2023

The topic of documenting vanished places has occupied me for decades. What is this urge to record disappearance? It can be such a desperate mission. Why do we film absence? We want to document but there is nothing to be seen. In 1984, at age 25, I tried the same—and failed miserably. Together with a [...]

Smart Phone Mythologies–On Dasha Ilina’s Advice Well Taken

By Geert Lovink, November 29, 2023

Dasha Ilina’s video work Advice Well Taken: Folk Tales of Digital Savation uses the ‘techlore’ concept to find out what ‘urban legends’ are in the age of smartphones. You can watch the ‘director’s cut’ of the video installation here. You can also have a look at a selection of the catalogue here. The 2023 Impakt [...]

Extinction Internet-Interview with Geert Lovink by Carlos Scolari

By Geert Lovink, November 28, 2023

(This email interview was conducted in July 2023 by Carlos Scolari for the Spanish edition of the Extinction Internet essay and primarily deals with my 2022 book Stuck on the Platform) Carlos Scolari: At the beginning, US cyberculture was strongly connected to Californian alternative movements. A few days ago, while walking through Amsterdam together, you [...]