This collection of essays departs from the days when being away from the keyboard (AFK) still felt like a real possibility. In today’s landscape of habitual connectivity, no matter where you are, you constantly wonder what’s happening on your phone. Often, this is not a good feeling. These essays take the bad feelings and glitches that are an integral part of our life AFK as starting points, exploring their political dimensions. Each part of the book uses the alphabet as a supportive structure to talk about attachment, breakups and the haunting effects of the techno-military-industrial complex. While the digital fabric of everyday life does not feel the same for everybody, no one can disentangle themselves from it. Instead of being stuck with techno-pessimism, these essays acknowledge bad feelings AFK and sit with our complicated relationship to them.

Design: Lukas Graf
Editor: Olivia Leiter

Launched on the occasion of the exhibition Ungovernable Ingredients at silent green Berlin, 18–20 December 2024 as an publication with an exhibition design by Maria Capello and a video by Paul Haas.