Platform Power

Artificial intelligence, platform consolidation, geopolitical struggles over digital infrastructure, and increasingly polarized online cultures have transformed the terrain of public life. Critique of digital systems is no longer confined to specialists. But what comes after diagnosis? A conversation organized by the Institute of Network Cultures.

For over two decades, the Institute of Network Cultures has critically engaged with digital culture through research, artistic experimentation, and para-academic forms of public engagement. How have the conditions for critique changed?

If earlier moments of network culture were shaped by promises of openness, participation, and distributed organization, the present conjuncture raises more difficult questions. What forms of critique remain possible when digital infrastructures increasingly mediate politics, labor, culture, and knowledge? Has the object of critique itself shifted — from websites and social platforms to AI systems, synthetic media, logistics, and new forms of algorithmic governance?

At the same time, the institutional conditions for critique have also changed. As universities and cultural institutions face increasing pressures of precarity, quantification, and commercialization, para-academic spaces such as the Institute of Network Cultures have taken on renewed significance. But how can critical and experimental spaces sustain themselves while maintaining autonomy?

As the opening event of the Institute of Network Culture’s Exit Fest — marking a moment of institutional transition as INC reimagines its future beyond the university — this event brings together leading thinkers in media theory and critical network cultures. The conversation reflects on platform power, the changing conditions of critique, and the institutional and collective forms through which critique might still be sustained — both within and beyond the university.

Speakers

Tiziana Terranova is Professor of Cultural Studies and Digital Media Theory at the University of Naples “L’Orientale.” A major theorist of network culture and digital capitalism, her work explores digital labor, automation, platform economies, and the digital commons. She is the author of Network Culture (2004) and After the Internet (2022).

Ned Rossiter is Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, and a theorist of media infrastructures, logistics, and organized networks. His work examines how digital systems reorganize labor, institutions, and political life, with particular attention to automation, platform economies, and new forms of organization.

Yuk Hui is Professor of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam and one of the leading contemporary philosophers of technology. Known for his concept of cosmotechnics, his work explores the relationship between technology, culture, ecology, and planetary futures, challenging universal understandings of technological development.

Anna-Verena Nosthoff is Junior Professor of Ethics of Digitalisation at the University of Oldenburg and Co-Director of the Critical Data Lab at Humboldt University Berlin. Her work examines platform power, AI, cybernetics, and digital governance, with particular attention to Big Tech, political subjectivity, and contemporary forms of technological control.

Geert Lovink is founder of the Institute of Network Cultures and Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the University of Amsterdam. His work spans tactical media, organized networks, platform critique, and alternative forms of publishing and digital organization. He is the author of numerous books on internet culture and networked media.

Marc Tuters(introduction) is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and co-director of the Open Intelligence Lab. His research focuses on platform cultures, propaganda, conspiracy theories, and digital infrastructures, with particular attention to online political movements and media ecologies.

Jernej Markelj (chair) is a Lecturer in New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on affective politics of digital media, agentic imaginaries of AI, and online gender.