There are few better places to contemplate the origins of the internet than the grand La Trobe Reading Room at State Library Victoria. For Mindy Seu’s A Sexual History of the Internet, the already magnificent space was transformed, bathed in red and packed with an audience ready to explore a history of technology that is considerably more erotic, complicated and uncomfortable than most of us were taught.
Seu’s central proposition is deliciously provocative: the internet was shaped, in no small part, by sex, desire, pleasure, control and the business of extraction. But what made this experience particularly memorable was the way the story was delivered. This wasn’t simply a lecture where an expert stood at the front and an audience quietly took notes. Our phones became part of the performance, with the audience reading citations aloud together, transforming the room into a strange, collective chorus.
There was something wonderfully paradoxical about it. Seu was telling us the story of the internet, a medium that can make us feel connected while simultaneously isolating us behind individual screens, but here that same digital language became a tool for genuine connection. Sitting amongst a packed Reading Room, hearing other people participate and watching the story unfold around us made the audience feel unusually present to one another.
And this is precisely what a festival should be doing. Exploring ideas you might never otherwise encounter. Taking something familiar and turning it sideways. Making you learn, absorb and occasionally squirm a little while doing it.
The subject matter is heavy in places, but the participatory format gave it an unexpected lightness and immediacy. What could have been a dense world-class lecture became something much more immersive: part performance, part history lesson, part communal experiment.
Edgy, intelligent and deeply engaging, Mindy Seu offered a reminder that the best festival experiences don’t simply tell you something new. They change the way you look at something you thought you already understood.
Now or Never runs until 30 August 2026
Full program and tickets can be found here
