chapter

Foreword

Geert Lovink

‘I believe in the possibility of tactical media; this conviction motivates my effort to trace its imperfections and perversions’ after Frantz Fanon.

At the time of its invention in the 1990s, ‘tactical media’ unfolded in an age of expansion of the digital, when networks and interactivity thrived, and neo-liberal globalization was hegemonic. Back then, digital and analogue coexisted and were mixed, much like the real and the virtual. In this reader, we examine how the tactical media concept progressed since then and is currently redesigning itself—this time under duress.

The part-activist, part-artistic practices gathered here showcase a will to experiment, often in conservative, regressive circumstances. Boredom, anger and despair are real. Appearances are not what they seem. Why am I feeling so fake today? The fragmentary nature of dissident media should not be read as a sign of weakness or defeat. They are signs of life amid stagnation. How do we stream together? What tools do we need for our collaboration?

Let’s face it. Movements and protest campaigns today feel an unarticulated need to use dominant social media platforms. Instead of building parallel alternative media, the social pressure to remain present on socials feels unavoidable. Instead of an exodus, we’re stuck. Instead of moral condemnation, corporate media prevail. It is still politically correct to use Instagram, in particular in contemporary art circles. There’s no digital underground or dark forest. If only. This is why INC is presenting a patchwork of minor media practices here, under the modest sign of ‘fragments’.

In Chaos and the Automaton, Franco Berardi states:

‘Fascism is a pathology of identity, hitting those who are too weak to accept the idea that identity is ever-changing and multifarious, and too frightened by their own uncertainty and ambivalence. ’
Antifa, or rather Nonfa, media that can overcome the fear and rage Berardi talks about have yet to emerge. Their birth has been postponed. I envision they approach us from the future and unfold overnight. The coming collective means of expression will be playful, cozy, hybrid, expanded, one-off and temporary, ready to disappear whenever time is up.

Another discussion is the continued use of the term ‘media’ (as in social media and tactical media). To me, much as the term ‘enlightenment’, the media is an incomplete project worth pursuing. A yet-to-be-developed Dialectics of Media will take feedback seriously and learn from the past. The aim of this reader is to bring together insights from activists and other misfits, amidst setbacks, regression, stagnation, and crisis, to turn the entropic forces upside down. Media mediate, and that takes time. In situations where we ran out of time, there is no easy way to reduce media to a slow, nostalgic infrastructure of the past, just because faster technologies were introduced. What do we gain from instant mediation? Who benefits from the lack of reflection? Instead of a boring interface and invisible algorithms, we need an editorial aesthetics that demands time from us. In defense of the media. What does it mean when we state, in variation of Foucault and Todorov, that mediation is an attitude, rather than a phase in history? Metaphors and terms matter. Some are tired, others fire up the collective imagination. Which meme brings you out on the street? Instead of complaining about the ADHD-stricken Gen Z, middle-of-the-road millennials and reactionary boomers, it is remarkable to see the ever-growing arsenal of activist media tactics unfolding worldwide. The good news is that all channels can and will be connected with the tools at hand.

This reader, produced in 2025-26, months before its own exit from the Polytech HvA, where it was embedded for 22 years, does not present an overall strategy. Neither does it try to historically contextualize tactical media. The essays and reports have been collected solely to share experiences. Unrest scales up, revolts go viral, and yet, the tactical subversions gathered here are not yet strong enough to overcome the self-obsessed surveillance platforms. This is a thick wall that tactical media initiatives run up against. Despite this limitation, the Institute of Network Cultures felt it necessary to gather inspiring tactical initiatives that defy the depressing logic of platforms. The tales of the tactical collected here contain seeds of a connectivity to come, a configuration of the techno-social that, at times, sails the waves of noise, always ready to find and express meaning. ‘Hört auf zu heulen; es hat erst angefangen” is a 1980s slogan that calls on us to stop complaining about the same old social media. We’re only at the dawn of the polycrisis.