Bookshop Situation Series: Release of Platform Brutality by Geert Lovink, in conversation with Isabel Löfgren and mirko nikolić

Welcome to the launch of Geert Lovink’s new book Platform Brutality: Closing down on Internet Toxicity (Valiz, 2025), presented by the author in conversation with Isabel Löfgren and mirko nikolić (VISTRANS*).

This session will include reading passages from the book and discussion of its pressing themes such as platform politics, the effects on planetary and personal well-being, and the role of art in this equation. Lovink will also talk about the Institute of Network Culture (INC) publishing and streaming practices, and how they are an integral part of performing radical media and art critique. The event is organised by VISTRANS* Digital Transformations initiative, Södertörn University and hosted by Index.

About the book:

“The Internet has become an integral part of all human activities. Its toxic aspects have fully permeated our personal, social, and political lives, with people using it to attack others, normalise violence, generate and spread fake news and propaganda for extreme-right causes, to name just a few. This brutal turn ultimately affects everyone. How do we cope?

Internet Critic Geert Lovink’s central thesis is that social media no longer just distracts: it wounds. And yet, we stay. Technological violence is, in its essence, largely remote, invisible, and indirect. Exclusions, which many do not immediately notice, happen deep inside the code and network architecture. The answer will not be pacification or regulation but the dismantling of the platform principle itself.

Platform Brutality not only offers critical analyses but also dives into alternatives. Topics range from the violent turn of the internet and techno-feudalism debates, to loneliness on social media, radical data critique, mythologies that surround the smartphone, dreaming in the computer age, and offline romanticism, to question how to leave the platforms, bring back social networks, and design a new balance between analogue and digital.”

About the speakers:

Geert Lovink is a Dutch theorist and media critic at the University of Amsterdam. He is the founder of the Institute of Network Cultures (INC) and is the author of several books on Internet Critique.

The Visual Narratives and Planetary Transformations Studio (VISTRANS*) is an artistic research initiative led by artists Isabel Löfgren and mirko nikolić at Södertörn University. Through interdisciplinary dialogue and creative experimentation, the group reimagines the role of art, media, and visual culture in contesting dominant infrastructures and temporalities. It explores artistic and practice-based responses to the entangled ecological, political, and digital conditions shaping planetary life.

This event is supported by the Digital Transformations research platform at Södertörn University.

The Bookshop Situation Series at Index is based on events to present books, magazines, records and other artistic formats. The bookshop situation is a way to test content, to share it, to distribute it, offering situations to be part of a community of experimental producers and users.