Tag: Angela-Washko

Trevor Smith on Angela Washko: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

What I find fascinating about Angela Washko’s work is that she didn’t set out to make art about video games, but recognized that it was possible to produce her projects within the game itself.

One of the special features of World of Warcraft is that it encourages social and conversational interaction. For example, within its open landscape there are towns where players might gather to socialize rather than engage in combat.

Washko used this forum to conduct absurdist performances and engage other players in discussions of gender, sexism, and harassment.

Her work inside of World of Warcraft began in 2012, a couple of years before Gamergate made us all aware of the vicious harassment and threats to which women and gender non-conforming gamers were commonly subjected.

Washko’s point was not to critique the game itself, but rather to get inside and facilitate a dialogue about the rules by which we are all agreeing to play.

Return to the artist page.

Angela Washko

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz
“World of Warcraft is a perfect petri dish for conversations about feminism with people who are uninhibited by IRL [in real life] accountability.”

 

 

WHO

Artist and writer Angela Washko (born 1986, United States) creates absurdist performances as well as new forums for discussing feminism in frequently hostile spaces. Washko’s online life has been a catalyst for artistic production since 2012.

 

WHAT

Washko investigated the social spaces of World of Warcraft (WoW), the highest-grossing multiplayer online role-playing video game over four years. Drawing from her own experience as a player, she began to think of WoW as less of a game and more as a massive, networked social space. Washko created and documented a series of performances in the game, during which she spoke with other players about issues of identity and gender, particularly focusing on how women are treated in the game space.

 

WHY

While playing WoW, Washko began noticing a proliferation of female avatars in the game space. She was disappointed to learn that most of the female avatars were in fact male players who preferred to look at female avatars on screen. This discovery led her to begin a series of performances in the game.

 

LISTEN

PlayTime curator Trevor Smith on the ways Angela Washko’s work reinvents the rules of the game. Read the transcript.

 

 

WATCH

Angela Washko describes her encounters in World of Warcraft. Read the transcript.

 

 

WORKS

 

Performing in Public: Ephemeral Actions in World of Warcraft, 2012–17
Three-channel video installation
Courtesy of the artist

 

Performing in Public: Four Years of Ephemeral Actions in World of Warcraft (A Tutorial), 2017
1 minute, 44 seconds

 

The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, 2012

Nature, 2012
7 minutes

Healer, 2012
4 minutes

Playing A Girl, 2013
21 minutes

Red Shirts and Blue Shirts (The Gay Agenda), 2014
24 minutes

We Actually Met in World of Warcraft, 2015
52 minutes

Safety (Sea Change), 2015
44 minutes, 19 seconds

 

/misplay
From The World of Warcraft Psychogeographical Association, 2015
1 hour, 15 minutes

 

(Image credits: Courtesy of the artist; courtesy of the artist; photo by Allison White/PEM.)

Play Digest: Gwen Smith and Angela Washko

Posted on by Eugenia Bell

Gwen Smith and Angela Washko come to the idea of the avatar and what it might represent from two different places. Nonetheless, the work of both artists can teach us something about compassion, hate, and who we are.

New York-based artist Gwen Smith‘s Yoda Project is something of a collaboration. Her partner, fellow artist Haim Steinbach, has for a number of years taken Yoda as his avatar. Over time Smith has photographed Steinbach in everyday situations, often with their son in the frame—using it as an opportunity to make something of a photographic growth chart and to use this playful approach to illustrate her family’s character. Smith describes herself as “an artist, a mother, a seeker, a finder, and a player,” and her playful (yet thoughtful), observational oeuvre captures this complexity.

Angela Washko has assumed a herculean task using a massive platform: “teaching feminism” and questioning received notions of women within the milieu of World of Warcraft, the most popular, cumbersome, multi-player video game in the world. For her, game hacking is a feminist project. As assistant professor of art at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Washko’s academic work not only embraces play, but messes with it and the expectations we may of it, and it doesn’t stop with tackling the creation and perception of female avatars in WoW: recently she’s taken on that most loathsome of cultural phenomenon, The Game.

“Tired of playing [WoW] as directed,” Washko went off-piste and began asking questions and naming names. Unfortunately, she “did not learn how to turn WoW into a space for equitable, respectful conversation,” as intended, but she has unmasked some ugly truths about who we are and how we present ourselves in the realms of these games: “Who we are online is who we are IRL.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lydia Gordon, assistant curator for PlayTime, will be moderating an upcoming panel, Game Changers: Women Activists in Digital Space, at PEM on Saturday, May 5, at 4:15 pm. Join us for this special PlayTime conversation with artist Angela Washko, scholar and activist Susana Morris, and game designer Jane Friedhoff. The panel is made possible by the George Swinnerton Parker Memorial Lecture Fund and offered in conjunction with the Present Tense Initiative.

(Image credit: Photo by Allison White/PEM.)

Game on! PlayTime on pem.org is live! Join the conversation: how is play changing our lives? In advance of the exhibition, we’ll explore the shifting role of play in art and culture with leading writers, thinkers, game designers, poets, artists—and you. This week, check out features by Virginia Heffernan, Carlo Rotella, Eric Zimmerman, J. Robert Lennon, Lizzie Stark, Angela Washko, Adam Bessie and Jason Novak, and more. #pemplaytime #peabodyessex @peabodyessex

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

The Women of World of Warcraft: An Interview

Posted on by goplay
“I was like, Wow! There’s all these women playing World of Warcraft again. It’s amazing! But they’re all played by men.”

Artist and gamer Angela Washko talks about entering the social sphere of the online role-playing video game World of Warcraft and investigating players’ views on gender.

Read the transcript.

The Women of World of Warcraft: Interview Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Hi, I’m Angela Washko and I’m an artist making work in performance. I make interventions in both public spaces and digital public spaces.

For a long time I’ve been operating as the Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

I was going into World of Warcraft and talking to players about the way that the player base informally created a kind of culture around excluding women and even within this world that has this like incredible fantasy landscape—so many different types of characters that you can play—there was kind of a shift in that all of a sudden I was like, there’s so many women avatars running around.

I was like, Wow! There’s all these women playing World of Warcraft again. It’s amazing! But they’re all played by men.

So I started interviewing players specifically about that.

So at first I was really excited about this whole like “men-playing-women” thing. I was like, Oh, like they’re going to have such an interesting experience in WoW. People constantly whispering them sexual comments….—stuff like that.

But when I asked them they said, “I play a girl because I don’t want to look at a guy’s butt all day.” I have like a hundred screenshots of this answer.

That sort of shift in identity and in representation, and sort of projection in this space was super fascinating to me.

So a couple of the videos in the Council series are fully dedicated to discussing that phenomenon.

Return to the artist page or video.

The Works

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz
Cory Arcangel

Image of Cory Arcangel, still from Totally Fucked, 2003, handmade hacked Super Mario Brothers cartridge and Nintendo NES video game system. Courtesy of the artist.

Cory Arcangel, still from Totally Fucked, 2003, hacked Super Mario Brothers cartridge and Nintendo NES video game system. On loan from the artist. Photo by Maria Zanchi. © Cory Arcangel

 

Cory Arcangel, still from Self Playing Nintendo 64 NBA Courtside 2, 2011, hacked Nintendo 64 video game controller, Nintendo 64 game console, NBA Courtside 2, game cartridge, and video. Courtesy of the artist.

Cory Arcangel, still from Self Playing Nintendo 64 NBA Courtside 2, 2011, hacked Nintendo 64 video game controller, Nintendo 64 game console, NBA Courtside 2 game cartridge, and video. On loan from the artist. Photo by Maria Zanchi. © Cory Arcangel

Learn more about Cory Arcangel.

 

Mark Bradford

Mark Bradford, Practice

Mark Bradford, Practice, 2003, video (3 minutes). Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland.

Learn more about Mark Bradford.

 

Nick Cave

Nick Cave, clip from Bunny Boy, 2012, video (14 minutes). Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. © Nick Cave

Learn more about Nick Cave.

 

Martin Creed

Martin Creed, Work No. 329, 2004, balloons. On loan from Rennie Collection, Vancouver. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

 

Martin Creed, Work No. 798, emulsion on wall, 2007. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

Learn more about Martin Creed.

 

Lara Favaretto


Lara Favaretto, Coppie Semplici / Simple Couples, 2009, seven pairs of car wash brushes, iron slabs, motors, electrical boxes, and wires. On loan from Rennie Collection, Vancouver. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

Learn more about Lara Favaretto.

 

Cao Fei

Cao Fei, Rumba 01 & 02, 2016, cleaning robots and pedestals. Photo courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

 

Cao Fei, still from Shadow Life, 2011, video (10 minutes). On loan from the artist and Vitamin Creative Space. Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space.

Learn more about Cao Fei.

 

Brian Jungen

 

Brian Jungen, Owl Drugs, 2016, Nike Air Jordans and brass. On loan from the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York. Photo by Jean Vong.

 

Brian Jungen, Horse Mask (Mike), 2016, Nike Air Jordans. On loan from the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York. Photo by Jean Vong.

 

Brian Jungen, Blanket no. 3, 2008, professional sports jerseys. On loan from the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York. Photo by Jean Vong.

Learn more about Brian Jungen.

 

Teppei Kaneuji

Teppei Kaneuji, Teenage Fan Club (#66–#72), 2015, plastic figures and hot glue. On loan from the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery, New York. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

 

Teppei Kaneuji, White Discharge (Built-up Objects #40), 2015, wood, plastic, steel, and resin. On loan from the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery, New York. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

Learn more about Brian Jungen.

 

Paul McCarthy

Paul McCarthy, Pinocchio Pipenose Householddilemma, 1994, video (44 minutes). On loan from the Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. © Paul McCarthy

Learn more about Paul McCarthy.

 

Rivane Neuenschwander

Rivane Neuenschwander, Watchword, 2013, embroidered fabric labels, felt panel, wooden box, and pins. On loan from the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil; and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Learn more about Rivane Neuenschwander.

 

Pedro Reyes

Pedro Reyes, Disarm Mechanized II, 2012–14, recycled metal from decommissioned weapons. On loan from the artist and Lisson Gallery, London. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

Learn more about Pedro Reyes.

 

Robin Rhode

Robin Rhode, still from He Got Game, 2000, digital animation (1 minute). On loan from the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

 

Robin Rhode, detail of Four Plays, 2012–13, inkjet prints. On loan from the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

 

Robin Rhode, Double Dutch.

Robin Rhode, Double Dutch, 2016, chromogenic prints. On loan from the David and Gally Mayer Collection. Photo courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

 

Robin Rhode, See/Saw.

Robin Rhode, See/Saw, 2002, digital animation (1 minute). On loan from the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

 

Robin Rhode, Street Gym, 2000–2004, digital animation (1 minute). On loan from the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Learn more about Robin Rhode.

 

Roman Signer

Roman Signer, Kayak.

Roman Signer, Kajak (Kayak), 2000, video (6 minutes). On loan from the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland.

 

Roman Signer

Roman Signer, Punkt (Dot), 2006, video (2 minutes). On loan from the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland.

 

Roman Signer

Roman Signer, Bürostuhl (Office Chair), 2006, video (1 minute). On loan from the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland.

 

Roman Signer, Rampe (Ramp), 2007, video (30 seconds). On loan from the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland.

Learn more about Roman Signer.

 

Gwen Smith

Gwen Smith, from the series The Yoda Project, 2002–17, sixteen inkjet printed photographs. On loan from the artist.

Learn more about Gwen Smith.

 

 

Angela Washko

 

Performing in Public: Ephemeral Actions in World of Warcraft, 2012–17, three-channel video installation. Courtesy of the artist.

 

Performing in Public: Four Years of Ephemeral Actions in World of Warcraft (A Tutorial), 2017, video (1 minute, 44 seconds). Courtesy of the artist.

 

The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, 2012, video.

Nature, 2012
7 minutes

Healer, 2012
4 minutes

Playing A Girl, 2013
21 minutes

Red Shirts and Blue Shirts (The Gay Agenda), 2014
24 minutes

We Actually Met in World of Warcraft, 2015
52 minutes

Safety (Sea Change), 2015
44 minutes, 19 seconds

Courtesy of the artist.

 

/misplay, from The World of Warcraft Psychogeographical Association, 2015, video (1 hour, 15 minutes). Courtesy of the artist.

Learn more about Angela Washko.

 

 

Agustina Woodgate

Agustina Woodgate, Rose Petals, 2010, stuffed animal toy skins. On loan from the Benjamin Feldman Collection. Courtesy of Spinello Projects, Miami.

 

Agustina Woodgate, Galaxy, 2010, stuffed animal toy skins. On loan from the Collection of Charles Coleman. Courtesy of Spinello Projects, Miami.

 

Agustina Woodgate, Royal, 2010, stuffed animal toy skins. On loan from the Collection of Alan Kluger and Amy Dean. Courtesy of Spinello Projects, Miami.

 

Agustina Woodgate, Peacock, 2010, stuffed animal toy skins. On loan from the artist and Spinello Projects. Courtesy of Spinello Projects, Miami.

 

Agustina Woodgate, Jardin Secreto, 2017, stuffed animal toy skins. On loan from Alex Fernandez-Casais. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

Learn more about Agustina Woodgate.

 

Erwin Wurm

Erwin Wurm, 59 Stellungen (59 Positions).
Erwin Wurm, 59 Stellungen (59 Positions), 1992, video (20 minutes). On loan from Studio Erwin Wurm. Courtesy of Studio Erwin Wurm.

 

Erwin Wurm, Double Piece, 2002, from the series One Minute Sculptures, ongoing, sweater, instruction drawing, and pedestal, performed by the public. On loan from Studio Erwin Wurm. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

 

Erwin Wurm, Organisation of Love, 2007, from the series One Minute Sculptures, ongoing, utensils, instruction drawings, and pedestal, performed by the public. On loan from Tate Modern. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

 

Erwin Wurm, Metrum, 2015, from the series One Minute Sculptures, ongoing, shoes, instruction drawing, and pedestal, performed by the public. On loan from Studio Erwin Wurm. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

 

Erwin Wurm, Sweater, pink, 2018, cotton-acrylic blend fabric and metal. On loan from Studio Erwin Wurm. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.

Learn more about Erwin Wurm.

loading...
Bitnami