Weaponizing Courtship
Please view in HD.
In a newly commissioned virtual performance-for-video for Fotomuseum Winterthur, Angela Washko takes us on a digitally mediated deep-dive exploring the integration of military technology into video games and its manifestations in the male seduction field. 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.
Exhibited:
SITUATIONS / STRIKE, Fotomuseum Winterthur (Zurich, Switzerland), 2020