Click Closer: an intimate listening and writing journey w/ Deepa Paul

Join writer Deepa Paul in an intimate listening journey that traces a personal history of desire and erotic self-discovery, and explores the significance of virtual spaces like Y2K-era craigslist, dating apps and Whatsapp chats in the shaping of sexual identity and intimacy. 

Toggle between lust and loneliness, thrills and taboos, past and present as Deepa reads excerpts from her memoir, Ask Me How It Works: Frequently Asked Questions About My Open Marriage, and shares private voice notes from lovers she met on Tinder throughout the course of her seven-year open marriage.  

Sit back, lie down and come closer as words and vibes collide in the atmospheric tracks of Nijmegen-based producer Mingvs (whom Deepa first met via dating app Happn), turning up the heat in our cozy Koepelzaal. 

At the end of the session, you’re invited to engage with Deepa’s writing with found poetry, a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them. It is a literary equivalent of a collage by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning. With the words you have highlighted in the readings from Deepa, you are invited to reflect on what intimacy in the digital age means to you, and leave with your own poetic creation to share, keep, or whisper into a lover’s waiting ear.  

It’s the first decade of the new millennium. You’re searching for sex, connection, a bit of excitement. You log on to the Internet to satisfy your desires. Where do you go?  

Before OkCupid, Fetlife, Tinder, or even Google, there was craigslist.  

Started by Craig Newmark as an email list to friends featuring local events in the San Francisco Bay Area, craigslist hit the Internet in 1996, becoming the largest American classified ads website devoted to listing jobs, housing, sale items, gigs, services and discussion forums. Think Marktplaats, but Y2K. 

By the mid-2000s, craigslist had expanded to 70 countries worldwide, covering dozens of categories. For those who knew where to click, one of those categories was a secret back room—an anonymous online playground where anyone in search of kink, thrills, or even love might find it. 

But virtual choices have real consequences. So what happens when digital desire unfolds IRL?  

Click Closer: an intimate listening and writing journey w/ Deepa Paul is onderdeel van Felix Fridays. Na afloop kun je een drankje drinken en napraten bij DJ & drinks.

Deepa Paul | Host

Born to Filipino and Indian parents in Manila, the Philippines, Deepa Paul is a writer, author and independent creative residing in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 

She started writing for Seventeen Magazine Philippines at age 17, followed by lifestyle bylines in The Philippine Star, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Singapore Women’s Weekly. Her personal essays appear in Cheex, Gal-Dem, the Sky Island Journal, Expanded Field Journal and Rappler.  

Alongside her work as a copywriter for brands like NBC Universal, Netflix and HBO, Deepa is the author of Ask Me How It Works: Frequently Asked Questions About My Open Marriage. She has read her work at Schmutz Cinema and Body Electric Presents, showcases for arthouse erotic films and live performances in Amsterdam.  

She was a sex and intimacy panelist at Come Alive, a large-scale exhibition on the power of pleasure, and featured speaker at the 10th anniversary celebration of De Meerminners, the Netherlands’ longest-running polyamory community.  

In her Substack newsletter Letters by Deepa, she explores the balance between being a mother, wife, girlfriend, daughter, adventurer and herself—all at the same time. Find her on Instagram as @storiesbydeepa. 

Mingvs | Sound

Mingvs (pronounced as Mingus) doesn’t ‘play nice’, his music needs to stress and strain. By adding different elements to his music, Mingvs prevents his music from adhering to the current stereotypes and creates ways to find contradictory elements that work together aesthetically. As a true sample archaeologist, he digs through the most obscure archives, looking for gems to insert into his music.  

He describes his music as a mixture of electronic, spheric, ambient, hip-hop, trap and downtempo. In his work, you encounter breakbeats, synthesizers, heavily edited (female) vocals, and obscure samples from the most peculiar places. “I don’t want to tell a clear-cut story, but I hope that my music moves the audience.  

Mingvs wants to move his audience, both physically and mentally, and leave them stimulated and enthusiastic, curious for more. 

Mingvs Soundcloud