Angela Washko | Weaponizing Courtship | 2020 29.09. – 16.10.2020 | online

SITUATION #210

In a newly commissioned virtual performance, Angela Washko will take us on a digitally mediated deep-dive that explores the integration of military technology into video games and its manifestations in the male seduction field. Weaponizing Courtship will trace a brief history of how military vision and technology has been incorporated in computer games and refer to artistic interventions into military-influenced gaming spaces. Moreover, Washko will present 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 pre-recorded performance will culminate in a critical playthrough of Super Seducer, a commercial video game that uses gaming conventions born out of the militarisation of gaming mechanics – and which uncomfortably and unironically presents women as targets to conquer.

More by Angela Washko: angelawashko.com/home.html