GAME ART: ANGELA WASKHO'S WEAPONIZING COURTSHIP (2020)
Weaponizing Courtship is a virtual performance-for-video created by Angela Washko for Fotomuseum Winterthur (Zurich, Switzerland), 2020 as part of SITUATIONS / STRIKE, curated by Marco De Mutiis. As Washko explains,
Weaponizing Courtship traces a brief history of how military vision and technology have been incorporated into computer games and refers to artistic interventions into military-influenced gaming spaces. Moreover, Washko presents her research on the practices of several infamous pick-up artists (or seduction coaches), including her critical feminist pick-up artist dating simulator The Game: The Game. The performance-for-video culminates in a critical playthrough of Super Seducer, a commercial video game that uses gaming conventions born out of the militarization of gaming mechanics – and which uncomfortably and unironically presents women as targets to conquer.
Angela Washko is a New York-based new media artist and facilitator who works to mobilize communities and creates new forums for discussions of feminism where they do not exist. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.