Never Alone, Except for Now

“Never Alone, Except for Now attends carefully to populations, publics, and the potentials of relation amid networked life. For Kris Cohen, artworks ranging from novels to performances to new media art capture both the logics and affects of distributed networks. Equally accomplished in the areas of aesthetics, history, and theory, this timely book takes seriously ordinary digital experiences of trolling, emoticons, search engines, and social media as sites of thick ethical negotiation.” - Patrick Jagoda, author of Network Aesthetics

"Employing an original and vivid theoretical framework, Kris Cohen's book represents the next stage in the discussions of relational aesthetics, participatory art, and digital media theory, amplifying them in truly unique and memorable ways. I know of no other project that considers contemporary art's engagement with various publics together with digitally networked life and forms of online sociality. Never Alone, Except for Now will appeal to all those interested in contemporary art, aesthetics and politics, social media, and digital culture as well as those working on questions of sociality, intimacy, and new forms of community." - John Paul Ricco, author of The Decision Between Us: Art and Ethics in the Time of Scenes

“Never Alone, Except for Now [is] an essential contribution to our evolving cultural study of who we are and what, in the tightening embrace of computational superintelligence, we will come to be.”