"If the internet began as a dream of a decentralized network, why would a history of it stick to the center? Mindy Seu takes this idea to heart in A Sexual History of the Internet. A synthesis of artist book, historical study, and performance piece, the project looks to cyberfeminists, sex workers, and others who have shaped online culture from the margins."
"In her feature on this 700-page book, Eileen Isagon Skyers posits the potential for the archive to be a form of activism, writing that "the project asks us to imagine what a consensual internet might look like." While Seu lays bare the systems of power that have turned the utopian fantasy of the internet into a dystopian reality, her strategies hint at the potential for a shared, democratic, and maybe even hopeful experience that still exists at the shadowy edges of internet culture."
The project traces how cyberfeminists, sex workers, and marginalized communities shaped online culture from the edges. The work synthesizes artist book, historical study, and performance to map these interventions and practices. The archive emerges as a form of activism that can model consent and communal governance online. The analysis reveals how military-industrial origins and concentrated power have warped early utopian ideals into dystopian outcomes. The project highlights strategies and marginal spaces that preserve shared, democratic, and potentially hopeful modes of internet use, inviting imagination of alternative, more consensual digital futures.
Read at Hyperallergic
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