a half human, half machinic, hybrid language would appear partly fervent and partly compulsive. If not evidence of a seizure of power, the convulsive appearance of the 'postoptical unconscious' is at least one more sign that this is not about speaking, but that we are being 'spoken', as per Lacanian theory. Favouring program code over surfaces/interfaces, genotext over phenotext, and poiesis over aisthesis leads to a liberating effect in the ASCII works and codeworks by mez, Jodi and Netochka Nezvanova insofar as the focus on 'postoptical unconscious' allows for the removal of deception; it removes the delusion that, or rather allows one to take leave of the belief, for example, that even today, surveillance can only take place when a camera is present. Codeworks draw our attention towards the increasing codedness and programmedness of our media environment. These works use the poor man’s medium, text, which also appears performative or executable in the context of the command line. By working specifically with this ambivalence of simplicity and totality of execution, they warn of the potential totalitarian dimension of algorithmic genotext. Translation by Dr. Donald Kiraly