Book Release | Offline Matters: The Less-Digital Guide to Creative Work

Offline Matters: The Less-Digital Guide to Creative Work exposes the true state of precarious work in the creative industries today, where the ‘digital first’ mindset is doctrine, burnout is an uninterrogated part of the deal, and formations of solidarity become increasingly difficult in fragmentised conditions.

Photo by James Cullen

Written by Jess Henderson (Alum Berlin ’19), the book combines insider accounts with mutual-aid guidance. In the words of Stefano Harney (SFSIA Faculty 19 and author of The Undercommons):

“Today we are all called upon to be the content providers of our own lives. This can be exhausting and estranging. Fortunately Jess Henderson has arrived to help us get offline, not into the pasts but into the presence of our lives. With compassion and humour Henderson brings us back to ourselves and it turns out we are not predestined to be profiled and branded. Offline Matters is the mutual help book we need right now!”

Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi suggests there is a stern relation between the book’s topic and our current moment:

‘This book is extremely timely. The pandemic has obliged everybody to stay online almost all the time. Offline Matters reminds us that life is (also) elsewhere. The neologism ‘offline’, which did not exist twenty years ago, has philosophical relevance. This book is hoping us to discover it.’

Find out more about Offline Matters here.

Excerpts can be found here: ‘Shock Me. Please’ and ‘Fake Busy: Nobody Wants To Be Vacant.’

About Jess Henderson

Photo by Yumna Al-Arashi

Jess Henderson is an independent writer, researcher, theorist, and author of Offline Matters: The Less-Digital Guide to Creative Work (BIS Publishers, Amsterdam, 2020). The book exposes the true state of creative work today, resulting from three years of intensive research conducted as an insider precariat of the creative industries.

Her work traipses the effects of technology on our everyday lives, and addresses notions of boredom, addiction, depressing overwork culture.

Jess is currently based in Zürich undertaking the first transdisciplinary study of the burnout. For more information on her work visit  No Fun and its online magazine.