What does it mean by the ‘Post-digital’? Is it not absurd to speak of the end of digital technology when the world is ever more digitalized? To understand the term, one must realize that it does not describe the end of digital technology, but instead, a sociocultural condition that is saturated by it (Blas, 2014), resulting in “new cultural, symbolic, and material forms” (Klein, 2021, pp. 28-29), or in the context of this research, in new affective forms.

The post-digital condition is thus categorized by the uncertainty brought forth by digital saturation and alludes to an unknown in our current circumstances. How does this naturalization of digital technology influence our ways of living and affective experiences? With this question in mind, the ongoing project titled “Post-digital Angst”1 delves into the various experiences and forms of ‘Angst’ that we have come to encounter in the current post-digital “messy state” (Cramer, 2014).

As art critic Gene McHugh (2011) wrote in his performative WordPress blog titled Post-Internet (http://122909a.com/),

“[A]ny hope for the Internet to make things easier, to reduce the anxiety of my existence, was simply over – it failed – and it was just another thing to deal with. What we mean when we say “Internet” became not a thing in the world to escape into, but rather the world one sought escape from… sigh… It became the place where business was conducted, and bills were paid. It became the place where people tracked you down..” (McHugh, 2011, p. 5)

With the extensive naturalization of digital technology in our daily lives, the conventional split between the digital world (primarily the Internet) and the actual (material) world has been widely dissolved. As McHugh noted, there is no longer a clear separation between the Angst that we got from the ‘digital world’ and that from the ‘real world,’ as the digital world is the real world. The fact that we have come to be anxious regardless of the socio-technological realm we are in, signifies how Angst has always been a condition that is immanently rooted. The project, therefore, wishes to examine the issue of “Post-digital Angst,” not as a phenomenon that originates from digital technology per se but rather as an immanent human condition that catches on the post-digital landscape. If the ever-frequent global emergencies have reminded us of one thing, we have never been free of the burden of existential predicaments amid an uncertain future. In the face of the increasing disquiets and Angst in the current times, perhaps a revisit to our human conditions could be crucial in shedding light on how we should address these dreadful circumstances.

The following essay serves as the first chapter of a three-part project in which I have focused on the personal and direct experiences of Angst in the Post-digital world. For us to study and, more importantly, apprehend the idea of Angst, it is crucial to take on a ‘situated approach,’ as the apprehension of Angst denotes an understanding that is not solely intellectual and cognitive but also embodied and affective. The very word “apprehension” could have two meanings: (1) “to understand” (to have mentally grasped) and (2) “to be anxious” (to be mentally grasped) (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). By this logic, one is to grasp (apprehend) the concept of Angst when they are simultaneously grasped (apprehended) by Angst, and it is so often that Angst has grasped us before we come to grasp it. Angst thus functions as a form of “tacit knowledge” – a “nonlinguistic, intuitive, and even at times unconscious form of knowledge” (Donmoyer 2008, p. 861).

In approaching the “tacitness” of Angst, I have utilized our daily encounters in the Digital Milieu as handles for ruminations on the issue. This ‘situatedness’ is crucial, as it enables the incorporation of the most immediate and direct experience of Angst in the discursive formulation. This situated approach is further facilitated by artistic practice, which serves as a process for various discourses and perspectives, whether personal or theoretical, to collide and synthesize. The following essay, therefore, comprises a triad of artistic practices, situated encounters, and theoretical references, which interweave into an exploration of our direct experiences of Angst in the Digital Milieu.

I would like to start with a sense of hollowness, which has instinctual arisen when I try to apprehend the condition of our ‘post-digital Angst.’ While the term ‘hollowness’ is often used interchangeably with ‘emptiness’ or ‘nothingness,’ my choice has been deliberated with reference to the semantic nuance it entails, which could provide insights regarding the nature of our Angst in the Digital Milieu.

Etymologically, it is easy to notice how the word “hollow” derives from “hole,” or in old English “holh,” meaning “cavity” – “an unfilled space within a mass“ (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). Therefore, the state of hollowness is neither solely positive nor negative, but a negative in positive; in other words, a state of privation amid abundance, thus contrasting it from pure emptiness or nothingness, which does not share such an aporic nature. In describing the plague of spiritual hollowness after WW1, T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965) wrote:

“We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men […]

Shape without form, shade without color,

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion”

(Eliot, 1963, p. 79)

The conflicting experience of being both “hollow” and “stuffed” situates these men in a state of limbo, where their “stuffness” only contrasts their innate hollowness. Alluding such ambivalent feelings in the post-digital world, do we not similarly find ourselves stuffed with an abundance of information yet remained internally hollowed? This stuffness of information is nevertheless an accentuation of spatiality within us as if a hole has been revealed in us.

To further trace this relationship between ‘hollowness’ and ‘spatiality’, one could turn to the Chinese character 「虛」(pronounced as heoi1 in Cantonese).2 The character of 「虛」comes to entail two general meanings: 1) a feeling of hollowness and 2) a dwelling area (or sometimes a ‘deserted area).3 The character, therefore, signifies the feeling of being hollow, but also the primal condition of spatiality that begets such feeling. Interestingly,「虛」was archaically used to symbolize a ‘big mountain’ 「大丘」(daai6 jau1),4 and it is through the envisioning of a mountain that we can understand how the double meaning has been derived; when one embodies the mountain’s extensive spatiality, an innate hollowness could consequently emerge.

The feeling of hollowness is, therefore, a symptom that is indicative of our immanent possibility, where an existential cavity and, indeed, a hole remains inside us, waiting to be fulfilled and actualized. Do we not find ourselves in the Digital Milieu as if we are in the middle of a vast mountain, where rapid technological development has unveiled to us an expansive spatiality and, with it, possibility? Hollowness is thus the state of inertia that arises as the paralysis of possibility, where one is stuffed with an abundance and yet remains empty, in turn becoming what T. S Eliot called a “gesture without motion” (Eliot 1963, p. 79) – a conflicting state in which one struggles with stagnancy and lethargy. If the state of hollowness evinces an inert orientation, Angst precedes such inertia and resides in the initial disorientation, manifesting as what Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) called the “dizziness of freedom” (Kierkegaard 1844, p. 61).

For Kierkegaard, Angst arises when one realizes their freedom and existential possibility, thus disclosing them to the “anxious possibility of being able” (Ibid., p. 44). It is therefore not surprising that one could feel dizzy in the Digital Milieu when the extensive habituation of digital technology has given us ‘ability’ together with ‘anxiety’, as one finds themselves in a constant struggle with their potential for making various choices. To situate this experience in the very moment of my writing, I have gathered research sources spanning across four desktops, 20 windows, and 30 websites, all of which are running simultaneously on my computer as I converge pieces of information into a single word document. I am therefore anxious, not only because I must actualize this piece of writing, but also because I am confronted with the possible content that I am able to include in my writing. The Internet has facilitated my ability to research, as it has enabled me to access various types of information embedded with hyperlinks. Yet, these hyperlinks will often lead me to other hyperlinks, which could go on ad infinitum, as if I am looking down into a yawning abyss of information. In the face of this overwhelming chain of information deferral, I have often found myself instinctively drifting away from my thesis writing, as the “infin-mation” has made me ever more anxious, and I must confess that at times I simply wished to stay “inclosed” and remain hollow. Indeed, it might be a temporary solution for one to defend against Angst by retreating to hollowness, where our “apathy and lack of feeling” (May 1973, p. 25) has allowed us to ignore and “shut up” (May 1977, p. 45) the anxious possibility of oneself, just as I have attempted to escape dizziness through laziness, which of course, has only fueled my persisting unfulfilment.

While the Digital Milieu has ever-more possibilities and choices, the experience of Angst and hollowness is certainly not exclusive to the post-digital condition. It would be too naïve for one to consider the habituation of digital and network technology as the main cause of our Angst, as our struggles with Angst has remained an existential issue that haunted us across all epochs. It is easy to blame the uncertainty of the post-digital condition as the cause of our Angst, but such induction is, at best, superficial and, at worst, luddite-like. As Rollo May (1909 – 1994) put it, “on the deepest level, the question of which age we live in is irrelevant.” (Ibid., p. 273) It is not that technological development has made us free in the Digital Milieu; we have always been free existentially, or to paraphrase Kierkegaard, we are freedom (Kierkegaard 1849, p. 29). The possibilities brought forth by technological development merely awaken our innate freedom, which through our realization of it, has manifested as Angst. The moments of post-digital Angst are therefore variations of our existential Angst, which arises when the ‘dizziness of freedom’ reveals itself in our daily experiences of Digital Milieu. The Post-digital Angst is therefore not so much a new phenomenon than a ‘situated revelation’, and it is within the scope of this project to study the specific post-digital conditions and situations in which Angst is revealed.

Perhaps the feeling of hollowness is only possible in the first place because there exists an essential ‘lack’ in our Being – a ‘nullity’ (or nothingness) that resides at the core of our existence. This is what Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976) referred to as our primordial “guiltiness” (in German Schuld). Such existential guiltiness does not connote the colloquial or, at times, religious sense of “blameworthiness,” nor does it imply any moral failure (Wrathall 2021, p. 365). Rather, it refers to the ineradicable and unjustifiable nullity (in German Nichtigkeit) of our Being for which we are nonetheless responsible. Heidegger explicitly suggested that we did not “acquire” this nullity. It is not a result of the privation of something; rather, such nullity has primordially existed in the first place, as the basis of our Being (Heidegger 1927, p. 329). It is with this primordial nullity and guiltiness, where one could find themselves equipped with a “constant neediness” in their lives, (Scott, 2010, p. 61) and such “mode” of existence is what Heidegger called as “Care” (in German Sorge).

While colloquially associated with “love” and “sympathy,” the word Care (Sorge) originated from Latin cura, meaning “devotedness” as well as “anxious exertion” (Heidegger 1927, p. 243). Care is therefore a form of general anxiety, which fundamentally structures the way we exist and engage with the world. As Heidegger explains:

“Having to do with something, producing something, attending to something and looking after it, making use of something, giving something up and letting it go, undertaking, accomplishing, evincing, interrogating, considering, discussing, determining…All these ways of Being-in have concern [besorge] as their kind of Being” (Heidegger, 1927, p. 83, emphasis added).

Thus, Care predisposes our Being-in-the-world as the ontological structure of our existence and underlies everything we do – to the extent that even when someone is “neglecting, renouncing” or “taking a rest”, they are still existentially Caring, although deficiently (Ibid., p.83).

Living in the Digital Milieu, one is often tasked with multiple things to take care of. The development of network technology has enabled us to take care of various tasks remotely. This heightened our sense of engagement with the Digital Milieu, as if we were dragged along by the rapid flow of information and communication, producing frictions and anxiousness. Considering the times of the pandemic, we have managed to maintain our Care with the help of emails, social media and online meeting platforms like ZOOM and it was common for many to work even more during the lockdown as if they were dragged on through virtual means 24/7. It is, therefore, easy for one to hold the digital infrastructure as the cause for our increasing need to ‘care’ and to accuse technology for ‘dragging us’ along, yet the development of network technology and its extensive application are nonetheless part of the capitalistic mechanism, of which runs on our ontological “Care” (Sorge) in its operation – it is not so much that information, social media, or emails are ‘dragging’ us, but rather we are the ones that are constantly ’grabbing’ them. The digital infrastructure simply functions as means for us to ‘take care’, and the very ‘need to care’ emanates not from digital technology, but rather our ontological devotedness to the world.

While Care (Sorge) is a quotidian anxiety that persists in our existence, Heidegger considered Angst as the profound and momentary “mood” that reveals the authentic nature of our Being. (Bergo, 2021, p. 34). For Heidegger, we exist “inauthentically” for the most part of our lives, situated in our daily surroundings and immersed in our “average everydayness”. In this banality, we have mostly acted as “they-self,” as we have steadily fit into the crowd and “fled” from our true self (Heidegger, 1927, p. 230). Still, there exists a profound moment when we come to our “conscience” - when we are withdrawn from our everyday life and confronted with a sense of existential unsteadiness. This revelatory moment is what Heidegger called “Angst”, in which we are “individualized” from our everyday environments and brought “face-to-face” with ourselves. It is in Angst when one might encounter questions such as ‘what am I doing?’, ‘who am I?’ or ‘what should I do?’, as we are “disclosed” to the “nullity“ of our Being and the “utter insignificance” of what is in-the-world. We have come to realize that there is not an absolute reason why we are who we are, and doing what we are doing. The fact is, we were “thrown” into the world without any choice, while constantly “projected” towards indefiniteness, only to ultimately reach complete nothingness upon death. Thus, Heidegger said: “In that in the face of which one has anxiety, the 'It is nothing and nowhere' becomes manifest” (Ibid., p.231).

Yet, such “nothing” is not “totally nothing,” but “nothing ready-to-hand” (Ibid., p.232). By realizing the nullity of our Being, we have also learned about its possibilities. While in Angst, we are confronted with “the ‘nothing’ of the world,” we are also disclosed to the “ownmost potentiality-for-Being,” which includes the “freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself” (Ibid.). Ultimately, we could choose to live authentically by embracing the unavoidable nullity and possibility of our finite Being. Instead of being “carried along,” we could “resolutely” resume our existential responsibility and carry out our own choices in life.

To situate the profound experience of Angst in a post-digital context, I would like to recall a personal encounter. On a Sunday afternoon, I was casually lying on my bed while scrolling through my phone. Since I was browsing through social media and fully submerged in “they-self”, I was unaware that my phone was running out of battery. Thus, in a split second, the image on my phone was withdrawn, and the screen turned pitch black. Amidst such nothingness, another image has emerged – a reflection. While I have used the phone as a doorway for my daily escapism, it had become a mirror that confront myself with myself ; it is in such anxious moment when I was withdrawn from my daily (digital) environment and individualized into a pre-digital vacuum - in which I asked myself: what am I doing?

One of the most anxious experiences in the Digital Milieu is nonetheless the moment of ‘information latency,’ denoting the time for information to be transferred across servers and devices. (Cambridge University Press, n.d.) A common example of such a ‘delay’ would be the time to load a webpage, or in the same manner, any piece of information that is to-be-accessed through digital devices. I have come to notice how the level of information latency correlates with the degree of one’s Angst: from having a weak signal to losing internet access - our most radical Angst arises when our device has stopped functioning or, indeed, become absented, leading to the loss of information-at-hand. While the term ‘latency’ is now widely applied in the context of information technology, it was originally derived from Latin “lateo”, meaning “concealed” (Wedgwood 1872, p. 378). Thus, it is in the moment of information latency when the information-at-hand is concealed. Yet, this concealment is also simultaneously an unconcealment; as it also unconceals oneself from they-self. Since our worldly affairs in the Digital Milieu are highly entangled with the Internet and the digital infrastructure, the very concealment (latency) of the Internet and digital information withdraws us from our “average everydayness” and brings us face-to-face with ourselves as such and it is in this very moment of self-confrontation one becomes anxious.

I have noticed the increased tendency to text right before my flight takes off, as there is an ever-strong desire for connection when one is facing the imminent loss of it. Yet, it is not so much that I am anxious about the ‘absence’ of the social media and the Internet, but rather the ‘presence’ of the nothing that is revealed throughout the flight. It is amid the various selection of movies and entertainment when one is nonetheless compelled to ask: What should I do now? When confronting the nullity of our Being, we might feel uncomfortable or, indeed, uncanny. This “uncanniness” in Angst is what Heidegger called “unheimlich,” which could be literally translated as “not-at-home.” For most of our lives we are “fallen” and “absorbed” in our everyday environments; we seek to stay in our comfort zone and dwell in a stable condition that makes us feel “at-home.” Nonetheless, such homeliness is shattered when one encounter profound Angst, in which we are withdrawn from the stability of our everyday lives and individualized as oneself. It is therefore in Angst when the “everyday familiarity collapses,” and the experience of uncanniness (unheimlichkeit) arises, as one is indeed “not-at-home” (Ibid., p.233).

Although the moment of information latency could induce Angst and uncanniness, it can also serve as a “moment of vision” (in German Augenblick) to review our lives and recognize the indefinite possibilities at hand. While such latency of information will only be gradually minimized by the rapid development of telecommunications (e.g., the competition of 5G and many more generations ahead), there will always be existential moments when one is individualized and confronted with themselves. Essentially, it is not detrimental to be ‘wired in,’ as this is simply the nature of our Being, but we should always be aware of the imminent resurgence of Angst, as it will always continue to haunt us in various situations. Instead of fleeing from it, one should, therefore, embrace it by taking hold of the possibility and freedom ahead; only through which can we resolutely own our lives.

It is common to experience a sense of uncanniness (unheimlichkeit) when encountering eerie and peculiar situations in life, which are often marked by the presence of absence, such as in a haunting apparition.

I have once encountered a ghostly TikTok video while browsing Facebook (a rather strange phenomenon that is worth further discussion, perhaps). The video was uploaded by a TikTok user called D.M.Wesley (@Dommatigian) (Wesley, 2022), who claimed that his apartment, built in 1932, was haunted. To prove his claim, he managed to capture a paranormal sighting with his phone. In the video, Wesley was sitting in his living room when a loud and repetitive banging sounded from his closet. The banging seemed to be directed toward the Cross hanging outside the room, which eventually dropped on the floor. To trace the source of the banging, Wesley proceeded to open the door of the closet and looked inside. Yet what he encountered was neither a ghost, nor an animal, but rather ‘nothing’ – and it was then when the banging had stopped.

I had seen the reposted video on a Taiwanese media page, where a user jokingly posed a rather profound question: “Is it scarier to have seen ‘something’ after you have opened the door, or to have seen ‘nothing?’” (Tsou 2023)

The answer to this rhetorical question is, of course, the latter – that it is profoundly “scarier” to encounter “nothing” than “something”. Crucially, it is not ‘fear’ that we experience in the face of nothing, but rather ‘Angst;’ as it is in fear when one is threatened by ‘definite’ entities within-the-world, whereas in Angst, one is confronted by an ‘indefiniteness’ of “nothing and nowhere” (Heidegger 1927, p. 230). Thus, it could be less intimidating, or even comforting, to see a ‘specter’ as opposed to nothing, since a specter is nonetheless a form of presence that could partially fill the nullity-at-hand. In the case of horror films, do ghosts and monsters not serve as a form of definite object onto which we can channel and fixate our objectless Angst? A specter is, therefore, a futile projection towards the nullity of our Being, an ’apparition’ that sources from our immanent Angst.

An apparition is thus not something “alien or new,” but rather what was once familiar, yet “estranged” or, at times, “repressed”. The return of such forsaken familiarity is therefore “unheimlich” (uncanny or unfamiliar), in the literal sense, what is now “un-familiar” has resulted from the estrangement of what was once “familiar” (Freud 1919, p. 245).

Prior to Heidegger, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) similarly discussed the issue of uncanniness in his widely influential essay Das Unheimliche (The Uncanny), first published in 1919. In search for the semantic meaning of uncanniness (unheimlich), Freud quoted Schelling that “’Unheimlich’ is the name for everything that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light” (Ibid., p. 224). Based on such definition, Freud proceeded to analyze the unheimliche from a psychoanalytic perspective and explain how such unfamiliar feelings come from the recurrence of what was once familiar. This could be the return of “infantile complexes” which was previously “repressed” or the re-confirmation of “primitive beliefs” that were thought to be surmounted (Ibid., p. 249). In either case, what is considered uncanny involves the “doubling” of oneself – the return of an estranged self that has come to haunt us from our past.

An appparition might seem daunting and foreign at first, yet upon closer inspection, one might come to realize a deep-seated familiarity that spectrally trembles. If one is to truly unveil the haunting specter, it can only be revealed that behind the shroud was an estranged face of our own.

I once walked by an antique shop and saw a pair of candleholders through the window. They seemed to be emanating a sense of uncanniness, as if they were a ‘double’ that reaffirms each other’s presence. Yet I was not only interested in the holders per se, but also the ‘spectrality’ they implied. Staring into the vessels, I started seeing an apparition; a recurrence of the candles that were once burned on these holders, as if their ghostly flames had returned from the past to the present and flickered before my very eyes. It was from the nullity of these holders, where I saw the light and heat that was once aflame, as if what was hidden has come into light, revealing themselves as the holders’ haunting past.

The Internet essentially shares such spectrality of these flames, and the haunting nature of digitalization resides in the possibility for a piece of information to be infinitely reproduced, disseminated, and stored – a status close to immortality, with which it will remain transferrable and accessible forever, thus making it a specter that virtually lingers. At times, I have re-encountered memes and cute animal videos on social media. Despite having seen them, I do enjoy my revisit to them, as they serve as a reminder of a laugh and provide me with a sense of familiarity and warmth. On the contrary, perhaps one could imagine the “Angst” for having leaked their personal information online – sextapes, nudes, identifications, passwords and more; a part of our deeply private and personal self that will remain accessible and reproducible forever, leaving us in agony and helplessness as we are repeatedly haunted by our previous self.

When we encounter repeating objects, numbers, or events in life, it is common to feel “helpless” as we feel trapped in a loop of “inescapable” recurrences (Ibid., p. 237). For Freud, such repeating experiences are uncanny as they remind us of an instinctive compulsion in our unconsciousness – what he called “repetition compulsion.” Such compulsion is powerful enough to override our basic instinct to seek pleasure and compels us to repeat even the most traumatic experience in our lives. It is thus, in a loop of repeating patterns when we can feel hopeless, as if we are “daemonically” possessed and dominated by our uncanny compulsion to repeat (Ibid., p. 238).

Looking through the psychoanalytical lens, we can find similar experience from YouTube advertisements, which seems to be recurring in an uncanny way. Considering the experience of browsing YouTube, our desire to watch videos is often rejected by the spontaneous and repetitive episodes of advertisements. Psychoanalytically, such rejection could be considered as a form of “castration”; a concept that is not to be taken in a literal fashion, but rather in the sense that we have encountered “the loss of a prized object” and the “separation” from what we desire. It is through such “object-loss” that one has come to be anxious, thus developing an impulse to repress (Freud, 1927, as cited in May 1977, p. 142). While rejected, we are contrarily offered “the skip button”; a chance to reconcile our loss and repress our Angst. Yet, we have learned from Psychoanalysis that “repression knows no negation” (Vardoulakis 2006, p. 101), and our urging desire to repress the ad has only served to register them. As our Angst to repress grows stronger within a five-second window, whatever is shown in this period has nevertheless been reinforced by our very attempt to repress it. Thus, even without watching the full advertisement, we could still be haunted by this five-second fragment. While we could go on with our life thinking that we have successfully repressed and skipped the ad, it will come to be uncanny when the slogan or melody of the ad suddenly recurs in our minds. Often in the most banal moments, we could find ourselves involuntarily humming the melody of the ad and repeating the catchline; and only by then do we realize our possession by this capitalistic specter, which persists to recur in haunting us.

The Netflix series Black Mirror, directed by Charlie Brooker (2011), portrayed a dystopian world in which the development of new technology has led to many uncanny and dark events. Yet what is truly uncanny about the series is not the showcasing of technology’s detrimental development but rather the recurrence of human conditions that we have yet to escape. Despite the extensive technological development, we have remained haunted by our existential struggles; “isolation,” “lack of meaning,” “freedom,” and “death” (Yalom 1989, p. 8) – a set of unanswerable questions that has persisted to interrogate us, as if a ‘call of unknown’ that is spectrally ringing across space and time.

I was once texting a friend in the elevator to whom I was sending a question. Yet, due to the lack of signal, the question was trapped and suspended on my phone. It is in this moment of information latency, when what was originally directed ‘outwards’ turned ‘inwards’, and the banal question had momentarily morphed into a more profound form of ‘questioning’ – an existential interrogation of my life.

These suspensive moments in the Digital Milieu could indeed be anxious, yet one is nevertheless offered a chance to reflect upon their lives and realize the possibilities at-hand. It is common for us to remain “inclosed” when facing such anxious questioning, yet Kierkegaard (1844, p. 124) has reminded us that “freedom is constantly communicating.” While there is no absolute answer to one’s existential vocation, the way to ‘authenticity’ lies in the process of communication. It is in Angst when one might feel uncomfortable and uncanny, but it is also in this existential vacuum when we come to realize our freedom - our freedom to live, our freedom to change and our freedom to pick up this ‘call of unknown’.

Bettina Bergo, Anxiety: A Philosophical History, New York: Oxford University 2021.

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Chao Sheng Tsou (18 January 2023) '到底是開門之後有東西比較可怕，還是沒東西比較可怕？' [Facebook comment], Ettoday.net, accessed on April 27 2023.

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Zach Blas, “Contra-Internet Aesthetics“, in: You Are Here — Art After the Internet, Omar Kholeif (ed.), Manchester; London: Cornerhouse and SPACE 2014, pp. 86-97.

Fig. nr. 1: Mong-sum Joseph Leung, Untitled (Face time), 2023 – From the series “Untitled (Conditions)”. © Mong Sum, Leung

Fig. nr. 2: Mong-sum Joseph Leung, Untitled (Mount), 2023 – from the series “Untitled (Conditions)”. © Mong Sum, Leung

Fig. nr. 3: Mong-sum Joseph Leung, Untitled (No Service), 2023, screenshot from phone mounted on aluminum dibond and laminated with plexiglass. © Mong Sum, Leung

Fig. nr. 4: Mong-sum Joseph Leung, Untitled (No Service), 2023, screenshot from phone mounted on aluminum dibond and laminated with plexiglass. © Mong Sum, Leung

Fig. nr. 5: Mong-sum Joseph Leung, Seeing the Sun at Midnight, 2023, lightjet print on fiber-based Baryta paper, engraving on plexiglass, wooden frame. © Mong Sum, Leung

Fig. nr. 6: Screenshot of Chao Sheung Tsou’s comment on Facebook in original Chinese, 2023. © Mong Sum, Leung

Fig. nr. 7: Mong-sum Joseph Leung, Apparition, 2023, screenshot from phone, digital print on cotton, bespoke pullover; inkjet print on metallic paper, mounted on dibond, laminated with plexiglass, a set of two. © Mong Sum, Leung

Fig. nr. 8: Mong-sum Joseph Leung, Apparition, 2023, screenshot from phone, digital print on cotton, bespoke pullover; inkjet print on metallic paper, mounted on dibond, laminated with plexiglass, a set of two. © Mong Sum, Leung

Fig. nr. 9: Mong-sum Joseph Leung, Doppelgänger, 2023, pure silver candleholders, 3D-printed candles in resin from found-model, a set of two © Mong Sum, Leung

Fig. nr. 10: Mong-sum Joseph Leung, Untitled (W), 2023, resin-coating on UV print, laminated on acrylic with magnet. © Mong Sum, Leung

© 2024. This work by Mong-sum Joseph Leung is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. 

reposition ISSN: 2960-4354 (Print) 2960-4362 (Online), ISBN: 978-3-9505090-8-3, doi.org/10.22501/repos