Angela Washko
Associate Professor | Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA, UNITED STATES
Angela Washko is committed to telling complex and unconventional stories about the media we consume from unusual perspectives.
Biography
As a feminist media artist working in a variety of forms, Angela Washko is committed to telling complex and unconventional stories about the media we consume from unusual perspectives. Washko’s practice spans interventions in mainstream media, performance art, digital works, documentary film, video art and video games. A recent recipient of the Creative Capital Award, the Impact Award at IndieCade and the Franklin Furnace Performance Fund, Washko’s practice has been highlighted in The New Yorker, Frieze Magazine, Time Magazine, The Guardian, Artforum, the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, The New York Times, Rhizome at the New Museum and more. Her projects have been presented internationally at venues including Museum of the Moving Image (New York), Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Milan Design Triennale, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennial and the Korean Film Archive.
Areas of Expertise (6)
Documentary Film
Performance Art
Digital Works
Mainstream Media
Video Games
Video Art
Media Appearances (4)
The politics of play at Northeastern University’s Gallery 360
The Boston Globe online
2023-03-08
As a child in the 1990s and early 2000s, Angela Washko played video games. Her video “Don’t Leave Me” from the “Heroines with Baggage” series — artfully installed over her wallpaper, “Heroines with Baggage: Setting the Stage” — dissects how the games amplified the gender binary. It’s horrifying. Wasp-waisted women swoon as hulking, weapon-wielding men work to save them. In the wallpaper, Washko parses the images with text: “saved by a knight,” “perpetually apologetic,” “women dying while men watch.”
PAM CUT's Doc-O-Rama Shines a Spotlight on Queer Performers
Willamette Week
2022-09-07
Mrs. Kasha Davis appeared in Season 7 of RuPaul’s Drag Race for only a few episodes, but her story and persona were enough to inspire Angela Washko to become a film director. “Kasha was such a casting anomaly,” says Washko, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon and artist in the fields of new media, fine arts installations and video game design. “She’s a queen who found drag much later in life, with a very specific persona, which wasn’t like a pop star or model, but a 1960s housewife. That was radical to me as a feminist artist, to see a drag performer doing this as an homage.”
Forget Making Art in the Studio. Artists Are Now Developing Their Latest Works in the Metaverse
artnet online
2022-01-04
Traveling through the bloodied lands of Azeroth, a warlock might be surprised to find the different races of the World of Warcraft game singing kumbaya around a campfire. But something like that became a regular occurrence when the artist Angela Washko, 35, started leading regular conferences on gender sensitivity in the virtual world in 2012. “I had been working with interventionist artists like the Yes Men and Flux Factory doing performances in public spaces,” explained Washko, who started playing video games when she was five years old. “I started thinking about how some of the gaming environments I was in—specifically the multi-user gaming environments—would benefit from the practices of those activist-oriented communities.”
Stamps Speaker Series lecturer discusses misogyny, video games
The Michigan Daily online
2020-02-07
Angela Washko, an artist, writer and activist, began her lecture speaking about her project targeting hate speech in public video games — specifically World of Warcraft — at a crowded Michigan Theater. “I thought that I could use my background in performance art, grassroots activism and collective organizing to directly talk to players about why the community had become so homophobic, misogynistic, and racist in its public communication channels, at least on all the servers that I’ve played on,” Washko said.
Media
Publications:
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Videos:
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Industry Expertise (2)
Performing Arts
Media - Online
Accomplishments (5)
Official Selection, Big Sky Pitch, Big Sky Film Festival, (professional)
2022
American Documentary Film Fund Finalist (professional)
2022
Grand Jury Prize: Documentary Feature Film, Buffalo International Film Festival, (professional)
2021
Grand Jury Prize: Documentary Feature Film, San Francisco Documentary Festival (professional)
2021
The Creative Capital Award (professional)
2020
Education (2)
University of California at San Diego: M.F.A., Visual Art 2015
Tyler School of Art of Temple University: B.F.A., Painting/Drawing/Sculpture 2009
Links (3)
Event Appearances (5)
Worldbuilding
(2022) Equal Esports Festival Cologne, Germany
Keynote Speaker
(2021) And& Conference Leuven, Belgium
Keynote Speaker
(2021) Clash of Realities Conference Cologne, Germany
Visiting Artist Lecture Series
(2021) Tyler School of Art Philadelphia, PA
Beyond Digital Lecture
(2021) Festival der Darstellenden Kunste Hauptsache Hamburg, Germany
