Nancy Mauro-Flude aka sister0

My work is concerned with the timeless relationship between technology, culture and performing arts, where I encompass the imperfect notions of human fatality and fragility, that the all too perfect digital world ignores. My current research, looks at performative elements in videogames and how common fictional objects that furnish these worlds cut back into the realm of real life. I validate layers of metaphysical, personal and cultural meaning that are often lost in contemporary gameplay.

'Nancy Mauro-Flude’s work is a generative collision of net technology, riot grrl, dance, open source programming, vaudeville and the concerns of the psyche, her work weaves together transcendent practices of many kinds while feeding from the rot and beauty of contemporary daily life'.
            -Filter Magazine, Linda Dement

During my residency at SUBOTRON, q21 I will work on two projects:
At the AiR base Resist, she said is a performative account of imagining oneself as a game character, by picking up ready made pieces of consumer capitalist wreckage and playing with them - for real. Despite the obvious cultural references, through surrealism, repetition, level design and use of location as narrative, the work establishes a strong connection to videogames; there is no dialogue and no significant character development - except the determination to resist.

Highlighting repetitive, ritualistic and quasi-mythical elements in video games, paying careful attention to logos, colours, flags and props, such as; the crowbar, the bunch of dead red roses, the Pac-Man - this autobiographical piece references the eviction of the Punk Rock Inn, Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 2005.

and

p a r a p h e r n a l i a
sistero.org/paraphernalia/
dolls and curiosa embedded with hacked gamepads are played as instruments in a live performance that divine samples from diverse sources; chip glitches, break beats, noise guitars.

p a r a p h e r n a l i a is a self-crafted hardware and software application used in a _30-minute live performance (*Chip-core cabaret*)_ by girl hacker sister0.
Logitech 2 wireless gamepads are modified to be sonic emulators.

This project is a playful ode to the history of paraphernalia and its feminine roots. The Artist residency period would allow me to develop more of these objects and the content of the performance itself.


'Moving and manipulating the dolls she evokes a vaudeville techno electro-clash version of a karaoke singing ventriloquist.' Mirko Tobias Schäfer

focus on games & gender topics:
Since developments in the gaming industry are very much geared towards a male dominated audience, my proposed modification of the typical gaming hardware i.e. my gamepad mods (see fig.1,3,4) draw upon the history of paraphernalia, and its feminine roots. The word paraphernalia is Medieval Latin, as the bride's property apart from her dowry that she can dispose of at will. Personal amulets, menstruation items, talisman type gadgets, a bottle of oil, a doll, things that are usually judged as waste, trash or excessive.

During the residency I'll be making more actual game-pad characters that are sonic emulators, and a performance event that demonstrates their use. ROCK AND ROLL. This set up is also quite gender specific because as is often the case in contemporary video gaming, a common scenario is a male sitting at a computer staring at a screen . However, in p a r a p h e r n a l i a the performance and the hardware and software application, the wireless game-pad mods are sonic emulators, fine-art objects, they are theatrical props and talismen that among other things, modify sound. A woman character operates the small game-mod characters (hacked gamepads), allowing her moving through a space as if she has come into the realspace from inside a game.

During my residency at SUBOTRON, q21 I worked on two exhibitions:
I was the 09# exhibitor at AiR base Q21, Museum Quartier Vienna. Presenting 'Resist, she said' a performative account of imagining oneself as a game character, by picking up ready made pieces of consumer capitalist wreckage and playing with them - for real. Despite the obvious cultural references, through surrealism, repetition, level design and use of location as narrative, the work establishes a strong connection to videogames; there is no dialogue and no significant character development - except the determination to resist. Highlighting repetitive, ritualistic and quasi-mythical elements in video games, paying careful attention to logos, colours, flags and props, such as; the crowbar, the bunch of dead red roses, the Pac-Man - this autobiographical piece references the eviction of the Punk Rock Inn, Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 2005.
The first iteration of a new work "My First Burial' a mediation on arcane use of hardware and software. Featured in the exhibition 'Skin is Looking for a cream: On sensitivity in art of women' Frieraum Q21, Museum Quartier Vienna. Curator Ivana Moncolová (SVK)