For over two decades, the Institute of Network Cultures has critically engaged with digital culture through research, artistic experimentation, and para-academic forms of public engagement. How have the conditions for critique changed? 

If earlier moments of network culture were shaped by promises of openness, participation, and distributed organization, the present conjuncture raises more difficult questions. What forms of critique remain possible when digital infrastructures increasingly mediate politics, labor, culture, and knowledge? Has the object of critique itself shifted — from websites and social platforms to AI systems, synthetic media, logistics, and new forms of algorithmic governance? 

At the same time, the institutional conditions for critique have also changed. As universities and cultural institutions face increasing pressures of precarity, quantification, and commercialization, para-academic spaces such as the Institute of Network Cultures have taken on renewed significance. But how can critical and experimental spaces sustain themselves while maintaining autonomy? 

As the opening event of the Institute of Network Culture’s Exit Fest — marking a moment of institutional transition as INC reimagines its future beyond the university — this event brings together leading thinkers in media theory and critical network cultures. The conversation reflects on platform power, the changing conditions of critique, and the institutional and collective forms through which critique might still be sustained — both within and beyond the university.