OLIVIA J. BENNETT


I’m an arts writer, researcher and critic based in Australia.

My work examines how digital culture, new media art, film and sound shape contemporary experience through futurology, incongruity and absurdity. I track how aesthetic movements absorb, resist or mutate alongside technological and economic shifts, often through fragmentation, multiplicity and nonlinear forms that mirror media saturation’s effect on perception and meaning.

Beyond writing, I’ve worked across programming, digital production and major cultural projects in Australia’s film and music industries. In 2019 I participated in the Melbourne International Film Festival’s Critics Campus and in 2020 I was part of Gertrude Contemporary’s Emerging Writers Program.

I also work as a freelance copywriter, content writer and strategist. With over five years of freelancing, three years in agency environments and two years navigating Melbourne’s strictest COVID-19 lockdowns, I’ve built a sharp adaptability—crafting strategy and storytelling across diverse industries. If you’d like to see my portfolio, shoot me an email.

I hold a BA in Art History and Curating from Monash University, majoring in Film Studies. My first-class Honours thesis at Melbourne University examined how the films of Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab function as object-oriented cinema, aligning with Timothy Morton’s concept of hyperobjects. Through this lens I explored how their films destabilise human-centred narratives, attune audiences to the nonhuman and engage with the inescapable entanglements of contemporary existence.


Open to new projects, commissions and creative collaborations—if you’re working on something interesting, let’s talk!



THE VICES — BEFORE IT MIGHT BE GONE


Joking aside, Jonathan [Kruizenga] clarifies, “We’re probably the least rock and roll band if you think of it like that. We don’t drink at shows. We don’t use drugs. We try to stay healthy.” The idea of vice, for them, has always been about something else—not indulgence, but obsession. “It’s about letting music take over your whole life and sharing that with others,” Jonathan says. It’s a force that pulls you under, something you willingly surrender to. Like a wave, it builds, grows and carries you forward before you even realize it.

Photography: Matt Weinberger. 

EUSEXUA

FKA twigs


1/2

FKA twigs make her long anticipated return with her third studio album, EUSEXUA, an ecstatic, otherworldly plunge into avant-dance-pop. Her fluid, meditative vocals weave through percussive highs and lows, vibrating with a soft yet full-bodied confidence—somewhere between Björk’s elastic range and Madonna at her most ethereal. The album breathes—rising, falling, pulsing—drawing from techno and acid house’s hypnotic beats, ambient and baroque pop’s grandeur, trip-hop and experimental R&B’s murky sensuality and the sharp, kinetic rhythms of ballroom and vogue. ‘Girl Feels Good’ is hypnotic in its simplicity: “When a girl feels good / It makes the world go ‘round”. ‘Death Drums’ pounds with SOPHIE’s hyperpop aggression and Death Grips’ digital hardcore before dissolving into a whisper-soft plea: “Drop your skirt to the floor / Tear your clothes, body torn”. On 24hr Dog, warbling, polyphonic vocals coil around fuzzy guitar, surrendering completely: “Please don’t call my name / When I submit to you this way / I’m a dog for you”. An all consuming vision of femininity, EUSEXUA feels everything, everywhere, all at once–desire and destruction, surrender and power, ecstasy without limits. 

PERVERT

Ethel Cain



Ethel Cain’s long-anticipated sophomore album Pervert is a pivot so strong, so well visioned, reminding die-hard fans that world-building comes at the expense of easy listening. Alongside the more palatable poetess of Lana Del Rey, Cain pushes in her stake to claim a new gothic romanticisation of the American South. Pervert’s languid composition layers deeply downtrodden ambient sounds with her characters’ subdued cries and siren calls. Red rusting strings, the fervent fuzz of thirsting electrical towers and the learned comfort of slack-handed chord progression. “I love you. I love you. I love you…” monotonously meditates ‘Houseofpsychoticwown’ into soft, sludge-filled oblivion. ‘Vacillator’ turns an outro drum tempo into a long drawn edge that only Cain can satisfy, but chooses to deny: “If you love me, then keep it to yourself.”  It’s an album that washes into you, rather than over you. Uninvited but unconsciously welcome, Pervert inspires a feeling of deep peace that can only come from skulking a rock bottom untoward faith—a place where very few dare to dance.