"In A Sexual History of the Internet(2025), artist and researcher Mindy Seu proposes a different kind of archive: one that maps how bodies, desires, technologies, and systems of power have been entangled since the earliest days of our beloved web. Rather than frame this research through a traditional academic text or media theory, Seu retools the publishing format entirely, intentionally delivering the project as part performance, part artist book, and part financial experiment."
"Taken together, these components challenge the sanitized, teleological narratives that have long defined internet history. In their place, Seu offers a parallel record drawn from theorists, net artists, cyberfeminists, and sex workers - those who shaped the internet from the margins, often through websites, chat systems, forums, and cam networks used to advertise their services. These figures, whose contributions to online culture remain widely overlooked, become central to Seu's retelling."
A Sexual History of the Internet (2025) reconfigures archival practice by mapping how bodies, desire, technologies, and power have been entangled across the web’s history. The project uses performance, an artist book, and a financial experiment to subvert traditional publishing and historical narratives. The work elevates theorists, net artists, cyberfeminists, and sex workers who shaped online culture from the margins through websites, chatrooms, forums, and cam networks. The project exposes power imbalances in early web culture, including extractive practices, stolen images, misogynistic chatroom behavior, and techno-utopian fantasies, while highlighting women’s foundational contributions to online technologies and practices.
Read at Hyperallergic
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