71 GENIUS INTERVIEW Geert Lovink
ART ATTACK In the late 80s, Lovink was editor of a video art magazine, Mediamatic (right), and has followed new media ever since
FEED: How can traditional broadcasters make the transition to an online world – is it possible? GEERT LOVINK: We have a good example in Amsterdam. The local politics and parties don’t know what to do. They cannot think of a productive hybrid between local broadcasting and online video, and there is no one in that field who comes up with the proposal like, ‘OK, let’s bring the two together’. And this keeps on surprising us. They put millions into traditional local cable – broadcasting – but no one’s watching this anymore. Young people don’t even know that it exists. We’re in a complete stalemate. The politicians can only finance traditional local cable television – private or public, they will finance either. But none of them have a way to make that jump to the internet arena, and we are puzzled why. FEED: Can you speculate on why? Is it just because of entrenched ways of doing things? GEERT LOVINK: That, and because of commercial interests. ‘Hilversum’, as it is called here in The Netherlands– the public
many billion of dollars they’re earning doesn’t impress me – it’s the fundamental influence they’ve gained over the past ten years, which for online video has long-term ramifications. It makes it harder for other players to come in and for people to set up their own infrastructures, their own codecs and browsers. And the dominance of Android in the smartphone arena, and the way Google is manipulating this field via Android, is a complete unwritten story, especially with new industry standards. If we want to reform let’s say the online video use, and turn it into a public infrastructure, this is precisely the block you will run into. FEED: The major standards bodies can work for years on an industry standard, but a digital platform can roll out something very quickly that can challenge it overnight. GEERT LOVINK: And erase all that work. You think, ‘What have you been doing? Were you sleeping?’ These are regulatory regimes for a shrinking market, for traditional terrestrial television. Come on people, wake up.
and private broadcasters are based there. They dominate the advisory boards, they suggest the names for the CEOs of these companies or non-profits, too. None of them have any contact with the internet world. So how can we make progress? Not even Netflix has woken them up. Individually, as a career, people in Hollywood think, should I produce something for Netflix? Or should I work with the traditional studios? But in television, and in Europe, no. It’s business as usual. None of the models are changing. Netflix is ignored in Silicon Valley, too. They seem clueless about the rise of Netflix – as does YouTube, which should be concerned because, if you look at the numbers, YouTube’s influence is declining. For years, it’s been trying to do something about it. But I don’t see any long-term response, because Google does not believe in content. As long as you don’t believe in content, you’re out of the game.
ONE OF THE PROBLEMS WITH EUROPE WAS THAT IT WAS NOT PREPARED TO DEVELOP ITS OWN CONCEPTS WHEN TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES STARTED TO HAPPEN IN THEMID-90S
The next Video Vortex takes place in Malta on 26 to 29 Sept. To learn more, visit networkcultures.org
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