As we come back to the first week of the new year, a time that many of us think about resolutions and goals for the next 12 months, I have decided to do something different. This year I have decided to create a manifesto which addresses what I feel (perhaps personally) are the real challenges that I face both creatively and personally, and may be you do too.
The Manifesto comprises of 10 points of digital removal, so I (we) can become once again rooted in the real world and less in the virtual, making real art and real connections. Of course, the internet/digital technology/AI is here and not going away (and in someways is quite useful but in others extremely negative). Yet to me it is like the pub you really liked going to, in fact loved going to, but over the years has changed, a new crowd have taken over and it has been sold to a big bland corporation and so one (I) feels that it is time to find somewhere else to hang out. Through this I began thinking of how absence and the re-engagement with inconvenience (yep I really don’t need that USB Cable delivered in the next 3 hours, tomorrow or next week are seriously fine, if it was that urgent then I probably would have or be able to find a spare….you know by asking someone locally…which would be even quicker than A****n). It seems to me that the act of rebellion is no longer the traditional means of struggle, arms, protest but of removal and inconvenience. Checking out of the business model that controls our lives. I maybe wrong, but I am giving it a try, the ‘there is another way’ philosophy is coming back in a big way!
10 Commandments of Digital Absence.
1. We cannot turn it off.
A phrase that is heard so often! Yet why can’t we do it? It is not because we are weak, but because the digital world is designed that way. Every notification is a lever to pull to feed a slot machine. Your compulsion to be digital is not an accident; it is the business model. You can step back or limit your interaction with the digital dopamine hit.
2. We cannot turn it off.
Because the social, political and cultural system seemingly requires it. Work, banking, medicine, love, all of these are now routed through digital screens, interaction with the world through the means of a swipe. To “opt out”, step back or disconnect seems risk exclusion from the conditions of survival in the modern world. Is there another way, yes of course. This doesn’t mean returning to the past, it doesn’t mean switching off completely, but it might mean inconvenience.
3. We cannot turn it off.
Because we have allowed our identities to be subjugated and bound to it. To be unseen or not present in the digital world is to be irrelevant. Isn’t it strange how employers, family, peers, strangers all demand visibility for us? To be silence can’t be read as failure, to outcast oneself. Absence is treated as deviance.
4. Anxiety is the rhythm of the machine.
A new level of anxiety tied to the phone buzz in our pocket or the absence of the buzz, we seemingly twitch and fidget to answer a ghost vibrations. Time itself has been colonised by a machine driven by the requirements of corporate attention: refresh, reply, repeat. To resist feels dangerous. To silence one’s device feels like guilt. There is no need to disappear, but to acknowledge that most things are not that urgent. Sometime reflection is much better than impulse.
5. Absence is rebellion.
Isn’t it funny that in just 15 years or so the refusal to post, to leave a message unanswered, to let time dilate into slowness is considered sabotage, an act or rebellion. To not post through personal agency is to get your work demonetised, as you are not a good digital citizen feeding the content beast. This is not apathy but refusal, the new resistance.
6. Absence must be collective.
This post could read as a ‘lifestyle’ hack, as one person disconnecting is a lifestyle provocation. However, if a community disconnects this then is a disruption. Yet if a culture disconnects, this is a revolution. If we could withdraw together (not fully remove or stop, but simply pull back) we could reclaim the tempo of ‘real’ life.
7. The blackout is already coming.
I am trying not to be too pessimistic, but realistic, we have already seen the effects of storms, cyberattacks, grid failures on digital resources, systems, infrastructures and whole regions have gone dark. The reliance on digital tech and the removal or analogue (eg copper wiring for telecomms) may also become more problematic given the changes in climate which are occuring. There is no denying that either by physical or malicious means machines will go dark. What is interesting is when they do currently, we rediscover how fragile the “always-on” world truly is. Don’t through the analogue baby away with the bathwater. Remember how to connect with the tactility of past technology, the analogue can be bodged to work again. The digital is throw-away.
8. The paradox remains.
Being alone and absent liberates the self but abandons the world. Yet absence from the digital may threaten the collapse of modern digital systems, but also opens the possibility of a new real connections.
9. To practice absence is to prepare.
Here comes the reality for me, in 2026 I am going to support and build the offline commons. Learn and relearn analogue skills. I want to value boredom, slowness, silence. I want to refuse the demand to be always-available, always-productive, always-visible.
10. The unthinkable gesture.
So, this is the rub, it feels that to turn it off, that is truly off is almost unimaginable in 2026. I feel that precisely because it is unimaginable, it is necessary. It a way to make a crack in inevitability of what we are told is to come and a reminder that this life is not destiny.
To start my creative journey in 2026, I am continuing to work on my ‘feeding the algorithm’ series, here is the first work.
