New exhibition ‘PROW:ESSE – Gender Diversity in Digital Arts and Craft’
The exhibition ‘PROW:ESSE – Gender Diversity in Digital Arts and Craft’ premiered at the HackThePromise Festival in Basel at Sep. 27th until 29th 2024. It is presenting the work of six highly talented demosceners in a completely new way.
The demoscene is one of the very few hobbyist communities that can easily provide the stories of multiple generations of gender minorities in tech, highly capable in their respective fields, who have embarked on the journey to make a living from their creativity. On that base curator Shana Marinitsch wanted to explore how gender expectations impact the access to digital crafts, trades and communities.
The featured artists are
- Faith aka Sylvia Ritter, professional illustrator, outstandingly gifted in drawing unique animals, playing with light, colour and details.
- Aldroid aka Alex Shaw, programmer at the intersection of art and high tech, as well as skilled firestarter for creative communities
- Luisa of Poo-Brain and Rabenauge, a jane-of-all-trades in graphics design from ANSI-Art and Pixel Graphics to 3D-Modelling and Animation
- Violet aka Violet Suchomski, whose versatility certainly teaches the audience that you can create art (and racoons!) on any hardware under the sun
- Flopine aka Florine Fouquart, household name in the Shader Coding community, role model to many live coders as well as one of the first waves heralding an upsurge of new, fresh and more diverse coders
- Lucid aka Lena Kilkka, electronic music composer, most famed for her soundtracks for Still and WAKE demos, mixing and experimenting with different mediums, instruments and styles
In interviews, texts and discussions the cis-, trans* and non-binary demosceners share their thoughts, experiences, but also recommendations and messages to people just starting out in the arts.
Read a detailed report about the show at the website of the producer of the exhibition Echtzeit- Digitale Kultur. There you can also find information, how the exhibition can be booked for future stagings.
[Foto by Mario Spuler, 2024 – CC BY-SA 4.0]