Mubi, the global streaming platform, production company, and film distributor, published an extensive essay on the work of Professor Angela Washko, along with an interview.
Matt Turner writes, “Video games and other virtual environments are arenas in which we can be whoever, or whatever, we want. Why then, given the utopian possibilities, do racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of harassment and intolerance remain so pervasive? This question has preoccupied new media artist and academic Angela Washko over more than a decade of making art that navigates game spaces and online communities. Working in a variety of forms including live (and virtual) performance, documentary film, moving image, net art, and video games, Washko’s practice, per her own description, is “devoted to creating new forums for discussions of feminism in the spaces most hostile toward it.” Whether she’s dueling internet pickup artists, intervening with multiplayer online game spaces, writing and lecturing, or creating her own narrative games which pose an alternative to mainstream perspectives, her courageous, contentious work looks into dark areas that other artists often avoid.”