About the Annual Conference of Network Society

English｜中文

The Annual Conference of Network Society is an academic seminar series focusing on the social and spatial consequences of industrialization and informatization in China. In addition to holding symposia and launching open source E-journals, the annual conference of Network Society establishes mesh networks of art-creating and co-working with artists and hackers as well.

In 2016, the “Forces of Reticulation” was held at the China Academy of Art(CAA) as the first annual conference of network society, founded by the Institute of Network Society(INS) at the School of Intermedia art(SIMA). The conference includes 4 symposia and a young scholar forum, along with an outcomes report of the China Art Hackathon #02 “Civicth0n” and a new book launch of “L’art dans: L’anthropocne”(2016) by Bernard Stiegler. Scholars including the founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures, Dutch-Australian media theorist and critic, Geert Lovink’; Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, Wendy Chun; Professor at the University of Tokyo, Hidetaka Ishida; Senior Researcher at Digital Cultures Research Lab (DCRL), Leuphana University Lueneburg， Martina Leeker；Doctor Hiroki Azuma at the University of Tokyo；Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London，Matthew Fuller, etc. Since then, the following 5 Annual Conferences of Network Society are held annually in Hangzhou and Shanghai.

“Another Walk with Lefebvre: Critique of Urbanism and Everyday Life in the Algorithmic Age”(2017) is the second annual conference of network society, in which the INS invited scholars from the U.K., Canada, Italy, France, Australia, Japan as well as China mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to examine Henri Lefebvre’s work on the progress of urbanization and the works done by the algorithm. The presented scholars include Senior lecturer at the Manchester Architecture Research Centre, The University of Manchester, the editor of Lefebvre’s “Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment” (2014), Lukasz Stanek； Research member of the Italian national research program “Governing the smart City”， Simona de Simoni； And professor of philosophy of Nanjing University, Liu Huaiyu.

The third annual conference of network society is “Intelligent Urban Fabric(IUF)”(2018)， organized by the Institute of Network Society(INS), the Institute of Cultural Innovation and Visual Communication, and the Institute for Collaborative Innovation in Chinese Visual Studies from China Academy of Art. The academic committees invited scholars and experts on community development including the Chairman of Alibaba Group Technology Committee, founder of Alibaba Cloud, Wang Jian; Research director at Waag, Chris Julien, and core members of Dutch non-profit free software foundry Dyne.org, etc. to see the “Smart City”, the regional development, and the rural electronic market as a whole.

The fourth annual conference of network society “Netizen 21: Beyond Personal Account”(2019) explored the history of the network society in China over the past two decades. Here, “21” refers to both the 21 years since the term “Wang Ming (网民)” (Netizen) was coined, and internet users in the 21st century. This conference had panelists from 8 regions and countries all over the world, including Italian media theorist and activist Franco “Bifo” Berardi; The vice-president of Research at the ArtEZ University of the Arts, Dr. Nishant Shah; And the co-organizer of the “Platform Cooperativism,”, Nathan Schneider.

Organized during the global pandemic, the fifth and sixth annual conferences of network society, “The Web of Phronesis”(2020) and “Instantly Reciprocal: The Moments for Cooperative Life”(2021) paid more attention to the praxis than theoretical research. “The Web of Phronesis” explored technical development and social dilemma that hindered by each other. In addition to 4 academic seminars, INS organized a mesh network workshop with DWebShanghai in CAA. Later, based on the experimental projects in the field of blockchain, metaverse, and community currency that the Institute of Network Society has been working on over the past year, the “Instantly Reciprocal: The Moments for Cooperative Life” organized 3 seminars as well as a live-sound party, a blockchain market, and an exhibition of a represented city on Metaverse platform, Decentraland. During the years 2020 and 2021, the fifth and the sixth conferences of network society had experts and scholars including the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin; The Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, Glen Weyl; The International Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Danny O’Brien; Crypto-anarchists, founders of Cypherpunk Bitstream, Frank Braun and Smuggler; Professor of New Media at the University of Maine, Jon Ippolito; Professor of Fudan Journalism School, Pan Ji; And professor of National University of Singapore, Jack Linchuan Qiu.

During the past 6 years, the Annual Conferences of Network Society have connected 46 worldwide scholars and activists from 41 leading universities and research institutes in 11 countries and four continents (including the University of Manchester (UK), Alibaba Group (China), the Institute of Network Cultures（Netherland）Lüderberg University (Germany), University of Tokyo and Waseda University (Japan), Microsoft Corporation (USA), etc.). The academic committee has received a total of over 600 papers from young scholars. In 2018 and 2021, the “Forces of Reticulation—— Essays of the First Annual Conference of Network Society”(ISBN 978-7-5503-1522-8) and “Netizen 21: Beyond Personal Account—— Essays of the Fourth Annual Conference of Network Society”(ISBN 978-7-5503-2525-8) have been published in China.