INC Newsletter November – 2022

​The (political) power of memes has moved beyond virtual images. The distinction between the virtual and ‘real life’ no longer applies, or perhaps was never really there. Their effects (or should we say affects?) are moving through digital infrastructures, policy, regulations, and bodies. If memes are used as a tool by the alt-right to mobilize people to storm the Capitol and play a substantial role in the Ukrainian war, can they also be used by the left to spark a revolution, as memetic warfare is more immediate and accessible than real-life demonstrations? What kind of labor would that require? And what if memetic logics of spreading information were applied to spread progressive ideas for a possible future? 

This Friday, on the 11th of November, we have invited various theorists, researchers, journalists, activists, designers, and other creatives and thinkers to critically reflect on the tacticality of memes. During a one-day conference at Spui25, we dive into meme activism & political warfare, meme design & labor, and speculative memes & imaginaries. The Memes Beyond the Image Conference is also the launch of the Critical Meme Reader #2: Memetic Tacticality, which is edited by Chloë Arkenbout and Laurence Scherz.

This conference is free of charge, takes place at Spui25 in Amsterdam, and is also live-streamed. Full program and registration HERE.

This book locates India’s flourishing internet within a complex 24-year history that has seen an unprecedented re-organization of social and political life. Three essays provide independent perspectives on a common area of ​​inquiry, an era that witnessed a fundamental mutation of the State, its mechanisms of planning and governance, the public domain, and the everyday, all mediated by digital technology, all impacting its internet. Bringing the essays together is a common timeline, which begins in the late 1970s, and includes such landmarks as the Information Technology Act, the much-discussed Aadhaar biometric identification program, the checked career of social media, and the widespread use of internet shutdowns.

Order or download a copy HERE.

Underneath the user interface of any website—be it simple or complex—lurks the web developer’s struggle with money, prestige, and power. An ever-lasting race to the top, never not working. Yet what are these unseen costs of being a traditional web developer, and who decides the rules of the game?

In this book on the psychology of an emerging yet often overlooked profession, Maisa Imamović explores the technological complexities underneath ordinary websites by asking questions such as: Who is a web developer? What does their assistant look like? Why does everybody want a ‘simple’ website? What on Earth is WordPress Cringe? And what does it mean to be a female freelance web developer in a world full of tech bros?

Strolling through this landscape of questions with irony and self-reflection by her side, Imamović takes the reader on an insightful, playful journey. Combining recollections of the author’s very first digital friend with a characterization of a bossy Senior Web Developer and his loyal Assistant as well as funny, raw testimonies of her own (post-pandemic) development within the field, the book can be read as a quest for liberation of the constraints of being both a web developer and a user.

Maisa Imamović is an Amsterdam-based writer, web developer, designer, and artist, currently doing an MA at CalArts. The Psychology of the Web Developer: Reality of a Female Freelancer is her first book.

Order or download a copy HERE.

We’re addicted to large-scale platforms, unable to return to the frivolous age of decentralized networks. Zoom fatigue, cancel culture, crypto art, NFTs and psychic regression are all markers of a platform culture that no longer serves the general public, but favors platform giants instead. Our very own media theorist and internet critic Geert Lovink argues that we can reclaim the internet on our own terms. How, for example, do we make sense of the rising disaffection with the platform condition, and what can be done about it?

To honor the launch of Lovink’s new book, Stuck on the Platform, we have organized not one but two events centering on the book.

​​On the 9th of November at 20h, we’ll host a book launch and talk for Stuck on the Platform, taking place at De Dépendance in Rotterdam. Following a presentation of the book, digital anthropologist Payal Arora and Bits of Freedom director Evelyn Austin will join the conversation. More information and tickets can be found HERE.

On the 24th of November, it’s time to celebrate with both talk and music at OT301 in Amsterdam, where Lovink will be interviewed about the book by curator and researcher Annet Dekker, after which live (drag) performances and DJ sets will ensue. Feeling trapped by the internet, you say? Not with these tunes! Let’s dance away all of our internet troubles by enjoying a live drag performance by Lucien Le Chevalier, a french boi who really (REALLY) loves horses, pop trash, and clouds; as well as music sets by justin case and Mo Wrights. The event starts at 19h and is free of charge. More information HERE.