::fc-announce:: lecture at sydney uni by geert lovink (december 12)

[Geert Lovink]

'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