02.03 2013 @ 20.00
Platform / Kasern 14
Korsholmanpuistikko 6-8, Vaasa
Beate Linne, DE
Beate is a German based Performance Artist. She studied architecture at the University of Kassel, as well as German language and literature and fine Arts at the University of Hildesheim. She’s working as a freelance artist, teacher and since last year I’m co-organizer oft the International Performance Art Festival Blow.
Artistic Statement
I consider Performance as an opportunity to express myself by means of creating images and live actions with my body. I deal with basic issues of live, by exploring behaviour, testing limits and asking questions.The most important aspect is the encounter and the exchange between the people – and the possibility to initiate thinking processes and open the mind. In my performances I deal among other things with issues like deprivation, death, and confidence.The actions and materials often have a symbolic character. And usually I perform with great physical exertion, establishing a relation between my body, material and other people. I also like to involve the audience in the performance, so that they become an active part in it.
I don’t repeat my performances usually. But I work mostly over a longer period with the same materials. The choice of it for me is very important. I deal thoroughly with the material, so that I learn to know it very well and a kind of personal relationship arises. (Sometimes I collect material or I produce it by myself). This material has a kind of symbolic character and I use it as a basic element of the performance. With them and my body I try to create unusual or sometimes surreal images and situations.
Angela Washko, US
Angela Washko is an artist and community facilitator devoted to mobilizing people and creating actions, interventions, videos, and performances (often in video games). She is currently working on a project called “The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness In World of Warcraft – earning her the Terminal Award and Grant, a Danish Arts Council Grant, an upcoming fellowship and residency at HIAP in Helsinki Finland, and a solo exhibition at Austin Peay State University. She has also recently curated the Conflux Festival 2012 at NYU. She has recently performed or participated in exhibitions at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, New York University, Spattered Columns (NYC), Microscope Gallery (NYC), NURTUREart (NYC), Momenta Art (NYC), and Gowanus Studio Space (NYC), among many others. Washko has participated in artist residency programs at Contemporary Artists Center (Troy, NY), The Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia PA), Flux Factory (NYC), Gullkistan (Laugarvatn, Iceland), and HIAP (Helsinki, Finland). Features on Washko’s work have appeared in Rhizome, the New York Times, Hyperallergic, Time Out NY, Digicult, ANIMAL NY, and Gothamist.
Artistic Statement
Mobilizing communities and using play, I am an artist and facilitator creating new forums for discussions of feminism where and when they do not exist. These forums are created through actions, interventions, videos, and performances- sometimes in video games. I am dedicated to researching and ultimately changing unhealthy, unrealistic, limited, and object-oriented projections of women throughout different forms of media by creating public works that challenge our implicit acceptance of everyday inequality.
My most recent project, “The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness In World of Warcraft,” is a long-term research-based initiative I launched to create spaces for dialogue about feminism inside a video game with a community that is notoriously misogynistic and aggressive toward women. I am interested in the unusual political space that evolves within WoW. It takes quite a lot of effort to ever break into the social aspects of the game. One has to make a fairly serious commitment to the game (undergoing lengthy tutorials, quests, learning characters’ skills, finding equipment, fighting dragons/goblins etc.) to ever make it to the point where they are in a guild and regularly communicating with large groups of people. Because of that barrier between the committed and the dabblers, a unique social community is created in each realm of World of Warcraft that few know about, despite the game’s widespread popularity. The blatant discrimination, homophobia, and extreme sexism that persist are not a result of the developers’ aesthetics, but the community of avatar-hidden individuals that play it. I am creating videos from performances inside of World of Warcraft that investigate the relationship between female players and the intensely complex social communities within WOW. I am working on instituting a system in which players in my community are forced to take responsibility for their oppressive behavior, help to create an environment that encourages women gamers to participate, and present performances and videos to a non-MMO-informed public that is unaware that these communities exist.
In addition to making projects inside video games, I also create videos, performances and participatory installations. My works are all linked by a dedication to using play to address the contemporary power structures that women are faced with – whether they are within video game cultures, pop music, advertising, collectives, or the intense networking environment of the “Art World.” Ultimately I aim to subvert these power structures by infiltrating cultures in which they are evident, addressing them publically, bringing visibility to subtle (and not-so-subtle) discriminatory acts in contemporary culture, and ultimately mobilizing communities to actively change those structures through open discussion and collective action.
