Web Library War

About

A metaphor might seem like a mistake, a wrongly placed word, something that does not make sense but then, strangely, it does. As a figure of speech it adds new meaning: it refers to one thing by mentioning another, and by doing so, it detaches the affects of one area and passes them on to another. It is in this moment of transference that a crack appears, a dissonance that sparks the imagination for behavior and perception—while at the same time setting certain limitations and norms as some qualities are highlighted while others are obscured. Since metaphors are pervasive in everyday life, not only in language but also in the materialities that surround us, we often do not recognize the metaphorical origin of the words we use.

The internet is full of metaphors. In the late nineteen-eighties and early nineties, when the computer and the internet uncoupled from their original military and academic application and became more common, metaphors flourished, offering a shared language to make the new technology accessible and trustworthy. The internet was imagined as something that was outside of us, a world to be discovered—a ‘cyberspace’ or a ‘high-speed information highway.’ Today, the internet has become an integral part of everyday life in many parts of the world. In keeping up with this transformation, we no longer talk about the ‘internet’ or ‘going online,’ but use secondary terms that directly refer to our activities, such as ‘sharing,’ ‘swiping,’ and ‘posting.’

The role metaphors play in the language around computers goes even deeper. In fact, without metaphors we would not be able to talk about and with computers at all. Strictly speaking, our interactions with computers is primarily limited to clicking (with a mouse or trackpad), typing (on a keyboard), or touching (a touchscreen or trackpad), and it is only through the connection to metaphors and their manifestations in icons that our repeated movements gain meaning. Metaphors translate algorithmic processes into understandable icons and signs on the screen, enabling users to handle, modify, or manipulate them, without any programming skills necessary.

From Web, Library, War to Fire, Garden, Feed homes in on key metaphors to scrutinize imaginations of the internet and online experiences. The six metaphors of the project set up an overarching logic or idea of the internet. They spill over, build on, or mutually reframe one another. Some are older than others and sound odd, others are still in use or even omnipresent. The featured metaphors come from the English language and are rooted in a Eurocentric use of the internet. We decided to focus on them because they are close to our personal experience of the internet and influenced many other languages, including ours.

Web turns to an early metaphor, evoking both interconnectedness and entanglement—from the spider’s web and rhizomatic thinking to algorithmic traps, spiderbots, and nodes of (mis)information. Library reads the internet as an archive and universal knowledge system, reflected in file structures, search interfaces, and the enduring metaphor of digital storage. War takes the internet as a site of conflict, from cyberwarfare and automated military systems to online propaganda, hate speech and the weaponization of language. Fire captures the internet’s intensities, from overheating data centers and their environmental effects to firewalls, viral trends, and the burning acceleration of online attention. Garden treats the internet as an artificial biotope, shared by humans, bugs, and worms alike, shaped by gated monocultures and their extractive data harvesting, while grassroots efforts push towards permacomputing, digital rewilding, and commoning. Finally, Feed explores one of the defining metaphors of the contemporary internet. It describes the endless consumption and uninterrupted incorporation of content—from social media feeds and doomscrolling to the economies of attention that nourish, exhaust, and ultimately metabolize their users.

Events

Metaphors we scroll by - reading group II.

From Web, Library, War to Fire, Garden, Feed

Date	5 Nov 2026 3 Dec 2026 10 Dec 2026 7 Jan 2027 21 Jan 2027 28 Jan 2027 6:30 PM
Location	/rosa, Heidelbergerstr. 28, 12059 Berlin
Register	info[at]netzkunst[dot]berlin

Six new metaphors - six new reading sessions! The internet is full of metaphors. Our use of language, the descriptions of our everyday applications and experiences of the internet, are incredibly figurative: we get caught in algorithmic traps, archive our lives in digital libraries and are targeted by propaganda bots; firewalls guard our devices, platforms grow into walled gardens, and the feed hungers for our attention. The Reading Group “Metaphors we scroll by” continues to explore these images: their historicity, their influence on our notions of the internet, their technical manifestations. Throughout November and December, we will read various texts (German/English), visit websites, and discuss various usages of the internet. Everyone is welcome to join, for one or several sessions. We’ll meet six times in total at the project space /rosa in Neukölln, Berlin.

Throughout November and December, we will read various texts (German/English), visit websites, and discuss various usages of the internet. Everyone is welcome to join, for one or several sessions. We’ll meet six times in total at the project space /rosa in Neukölln, Berlin.

Funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

From Web, Library, War to Fire, Garden, Feed

(performative) lectures

With	Elena Beregow, eeefff
Date	27.11.2026 7PM
Location	Kunsthalle Dortmund, Dortmunder U, Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse, 44137 Dortmund
Language	English

A metaphor might seem like a mistake, a wrongly placed word, something that doesn't make sense but then, strangely, it does. The internet is full of such metaphors. They reveal how we interact with machines, what desires and fears we share, and how they interfere in our lives. War to Fire invites researcher Elena Beregow to talk about fire across the threshold of nature and culture, asking how combustion, both as material force and metaphor, shapes ideas of passion, crisis, and social transformation. Afterwards, the artist collective eeefff will turn to the metaphor of war: in a lecture-performance they trace how militarization, extraction, and colonial logics seep into everyday life through maps, algorithmic assistants and lines of code.

From Web, Library, War to Fire, Garden, Feed is a book and event series that explores imaginations and narratives of the internet. It was initiated by Tereza Havlíková, Julia Kochanek, Anneliese Ostertag, and Sasha Weber, and is the second iteration of their long-lasting collaboration. For their research, they are currently Medienkunstfellows at the College for Social Sciences and Humanities, an interdisciplinary research center of the University Alliance Ruhr.

The event is funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, and curated by Tereza Havlíková, Julia Kochanek, and Anneliese Ostertag.

Program:

5PM curatorial tour by Inke Arns through the exhibition INDUSTRIAL: Seidenstraßen 3000.

Tereza Havlíková, Julia Kochanek, Anneliese Ostertag, Sasha Weber Introduction: From Web, Library, War to Fire, Garden, Feed

A metaphor adds new meaning: it refers to one thing by mentioning another, and by doing so, detaches the affects of one area and passes them on to another. It is in this moment of transference that a crack appears, a dissonance that sparks the imagination for behavior and perception, while, at the same time, setting certain limitations and norms. From Web, Library, War to Fire, Garden, Feed turns to those cracks; In collaboration with artists and theorists, the project explores the history, power, and logic of the images through which we think about and with computers. In their introduction, the editors of the book, Tereza Havlíková, Julia Kochanek, and Anneliese Ostertag, as well as the graphic designer, Sasha Weber, will introduce the frame and method of their research.

Elena Beregow Lecture: Where There Is Fire: On Combustion and the Making of the Social.

Fire occupies a peculiar place at the threshold of nature and culture: as an elemental medium, a cultural technique, and a founding scene of social life. At the same time, fire provides a powerful metaphorical repertoire through which societies imagine passion, conflict, progress, crisis, and transformation. Moving between the materiality and metaphorics of combustion, this talk explores how fire shapes both imaginaries and thermopolitics — and how its capacity to transform matter becomes a way of thinking about social transformation itself.

eeefff Lecture Performance: Conditions of War, Fairytale About Love, fixDisputedCities, Total Metrics, Factory of the Map, Minimum Wage May Be Denied

Cyberwarfare, digital mapping, algorithmic assistants, and code instructions quietly reshape reality, embedding militarization into homes, bodies, and imaginations, while extractivist fairytales and hidden comments in code reveal how violence becomes normalized at an infrastructural level. In their lecture performance, the artist duo eeefff explores how digital architectures reproduce logics of control, territorial domination, and resource extraction, fusing imperial violence with technological standardization. Combining sound, embodied actions, and moving images based on recently leaked Yandex codes, they inquire how Russia’s colonialism extends through algorithmic systems and technological platforms.

BIOS

Elena Beregow is Juniorprofessorin für Kultursoziologie an der College for Social Sciences and Humanities, University Alliance Ruhr. Her research lies at the intersection of sociological theory and cultural sociology, with a particular interest in the materiality of social life, metaphors, and the relations between bodies, technologies, and environments. She currently leads the research group Sweat: Sociology of Transpiration in the Age of Global Warming.

eeefff (Minsk/Berlin) is artistic cooperation / made-up institution / cybernetic political brigade / poetic computations / hacking unit / queer time. It is neither one of these, nor all together. Active from 2013. The group works with emotions and affects shaped by technologies and makes software-based projects, publications, networks, and platforms that critically explore digital labour, value extraction, and community formation. Methods include: public actions, online interventions, performative seminars, software, and hardware hacking, framing environments, and choreographing social situations. Organizers of the School of Algorithmic solidarity (2022-ongoing) that was initiated to explore the relations between infrastructural time, algorithmic abstractions, and bodies. Co-organizers of Work Hard! Play Hard! (2016-2020), Decentric Circles Assembly (2024) and Forest Assembly of Educational fictions (2025). More info: https://eeefff.org/

Tereza Havlíková explores the (hi)stories of net art within curatorial, archival, and academic contexts. Julia Kochanek is a researcher and curator interested in photography, its theories and practices, as well as image culture. Anneliese Ostertag is a curator and researcher working across visual arts and performance, with a focus on queer-feminist practices. Sasha Weber is a graphic designer and co-founder of the queer photography competition ‘Gaze’. For the fellowship, they work together on behalf of Zentrum für Netzkunst, supported by Prof. Dr. Elena Beregow from College for Social Sciences and Humanities.

Team

Medienfellows
Tereza Havlíková, Julia Kochanek, Anneliese Ostertag, Sasha Weber

Public Relations
Igor Štromajer

Webdevelopment
Paloma Oliveira