(Dr Lovink is a co-founder of the Fibreculture Network; that is now well and truly dead. I can’t say that I miss it; it brought out my Nihlist instincts in me in a way that blogging never has. This is sure to be an excellent talk; bloggers in Sydney should attend).
‘Blogging, the Nihilist Impulse’
public lecture by Geert Lovink
Tuesday 12 December, 6 - 7.30pm
Eastern Avenue Lecture Theatre
Eastern Avenue Complex, University of Sydney
hosted by the Department of Media and Communication and Digital
Cultures Program, and the Research Institute for Humanities and Social
Sciences, University of Sydney
About the event:
This lecture-presentation will consist of three parts. In the
introduction Geert Lovink will give an overview of the Institute of
Network Cultures in Amsterdam which he founded in 2004, emphasizing
possible Euro-Australian collaborations. He will then present the main
thesis of his upcoming book ‘No Comments’, a General Theory of Blogging
that investigates the ‘nihilist impulse’ behind all the ranking,
linking and commenting.
Blogs should not be reduced to news. Instead,
the mass drift to write online diaries should be seen as a defence
mechanism to zero-out mainstream media and create a space for
contemplation and confession. The presentation ends with Mieke
Gerritzen’s Beautiful World, a typo-theory film for which Lovink was
one of the script writers.
The presentation will be followed by refreshments.
About the presenter:
Geert Lovink (NL/AUS), media theorist, critic and author of ‘Dark
Fiber’, ‘Uncanny Networks’, ‘My First Recession’ and ‘The Principle of
Notworking’. He worked on various media projects in Eastern Europe and
India and earned his PhD from the University of Melbourne. In 2003 he
worked as a post-doc researcher at the Centre for Critical and Cultural
Studies, University of Queensland. He is co-founder of Internet
projects such as The Digital City, Nettime, Fibreculture and
Incommunicado.
In 2004 Geert became director of the Institute of Network Cultures
which is part of the Interactive Media School at Amsterdam Polytechnic
(HvA) and Associate Professor at the Media & Culture Department,
University of Amsterdam. In 2005-2006 he was a fellow at the Berlin
Institute for Advanced Study where he finished his third volume on
critical Internet culture, Zero Comments (Routledge New York, May
2007). His blog may be found at www.networkcultures.org/geert
Map information for Eastern Ave Lecture Theatre (F19) is at:
http://db.auth.usyd.edu.au/directories/map/building.stm?location=19K
For further enquiries contact Dr Gerard Goggin, Dept of Media &
Communications:
gerard.goggin at arts.usyd.edu.au or 9036 6424
