Stefanie Koscher (Vienna, Austria): “The Life and Death of Steffko – Die Kunst #1” (2014)

Steffko – Die Kunst #1 is an ongoing multimedia project by Stefanie Koscher, that started in 2010. Steffko – Die Kunst #1 is a virtual performative persona. As an alienated reflection of the human psyche being exposed to the web 2.0, the main interest of Steffko – Die Kunst #1 lies in topics such as online performance, internet as a stage, virtual personality, virtual image and virtual self-representation. Steffko – Die Kunst #1 is participating in a gender discourse, trying to break, (re)define, confuse and question past and current roles, women have been identifying themselves with. Steffko – Die Kunst #1 is on a utopian quest for the answer to the question \”What does femme even mean?\” These ideas show up as transmedial works, which are presented in the form of performances, installations or experimental digital videos that can be perceived as a symbolistically aestheticized study of virtual social phenomena.

BIO: Stefanie Koscher is an Austrian musician and multidisciplinary artist currently based in Vienna. Koschers transmedial concepts are often supported by and expressed through video and digital media. Transformatory processes of the human psyche in a post-virtual age have constituted an important focal point in her work. While living in NYC (with occasional stays in Berlin from 2009-2013), she developed a virtual performative persona called Steffko – Die Kunst #1 (short: #SDK1): the protagonist of most of her audiovisual digital media pieces. She also creates analog artwork, such as collages and mixed media works. The images are aiming to bring a utopian order into a chaotic overflow of visual stimuli. End-products often become dissonant, alienated and strange and put a spotlight on the absurd and contradictory. Her work builds a connective tissue to the collective unconscious and asks the spectator to decrypt context and meaning intuitively. ARTIST’S WEBSITE