As cyberspace expands infinitely, we are confronted with the physical, emotional, and affective thresholds of our bodies. To subject ourselves to a complete absorption of this surplus of digital information is to undergo a permanent electrocution via overstimulation. This acceleration of information exchange is leaving its psychopathic mark on the collective mind by instilling anxiety into the masses. We glitch, we twitch, we spasm. While the symptoms of a bloated digital age are felt on a communal scale, capitalism has successfully pathologized anxiety as a deficiency on the individual level.

Perhaps it boils down to accessibility, this capacity for people (and bots) to present themselves in my DMs or on my homescreen as a hovering notification demanding my attention. Until I reply, the notification lingers. It implants itself in the back of my brain as I try to make it through the day, prodding me once in a while to reply, reply, reply—with emojis, exclamation marks, acronyms, or even full sentences.

With thousands of marginalized and oppressed communities struggling to survive in a neoliberal society that favors individual progress over collective action, perhaps we should allow the spectral figure of the comfort woman, revived through Cha’s novel, to remind us of the power of female resiliency and the compassion that may emerge from traumatic pasts.

For viewers who had previously been inclined to close a tab on their browser or quickly scroll past an image, the spectacle of death in a gallery space in London—far removed from the realities of living as a Black man in America, or that of a Bedouin man claiming his right to live on land that Israel does not recognize—is just as easy to turn away from as changing the channel.

The only break I had from the anxiety-overload of different forms of digital communication was an AI duplicate of Syms going through the same types of motions you might see when creating a character on the popular computer game, The Sims. Her AI replica awkwardly shuffles her feet, dances in place, sighs, and occasionally pulls faces as if to test the facial recognition software she’s using. After a brief pause in the onslaught of digital media, a message appears in simple black text: “TEXT ME - 07449 896452.” I attempted to text the number several times, only to receive an error message in response. Out of the corner of my eye I saw in bold font on the wall “I can’t even get a text back.”

Through fourteen original essays, Techno-Orientalism provides an insightful reflection on the tropes that Western media falls back on when expressing concerns regarding East-Asia’s growing cultural influence.

Showing at full scale for the first time since its debut in 1989, Fin de Siecle II is an amalgamation of clips taken from tv shows, music videos, and advertisements. A grid of naked women walking against a fleshy backdrop; 3D renderings of a bald man's head; stars that rotate as if they were doing somersaults; and the silhouette of a woman bearing some resemblance to Jennifer Beals in Flashdance.