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ADDIE WAGENKNECHT (US) OPTIMIZATION OF PARENTING, P.II

JUNE 29 TO AUGUST 05

ARSENAL ART CONTEMPORAIN

BIO - ADDIE WAGENKNECHT

Addie Wagenknecht (born in Portland, Oregon) is an American artist and researcher living in New York City and Austria. Her work deals primarily with pop culture, feminist theory, new media and open source software and hardware. She frequently works in collectives, which have included Nortd Labs, F.A.T. lab, and Deep Lab. She has received fellowships and residencies from Eyebeam, Mozilla, and the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry. She is represented by bitforms gallery in New York City.

VIDEO

The video Optimization of Parenting, Part 2 is a robot arm that reacts whenever a baby in the bassinet cries or awakes from sleep. Mothers are socially often expected to be full time parents. This is sometimes due to lack of options, the cost of childcare or the lack of family support. As a result, the mother often loses the very creative practice she has spent an entire life building. Being a stay at home parent without help is literally like having four full time jobs in a row, all the time, without weekends or evenings off. And yet, if a woman was to spend 24 hours a day doing anything else, all the time, without stopping, people would think she was insane. Parenting, for whatever reason, is exempt from this rule. In order to optimize as much of the routine tedious monotony of parenthood as possible and make it an option for all women to have both her creative work and children we must optimize the process of parenting. The automatic repetitive task can be transferred to other devices, without affecting 'the development of the baby. This frees the mother to do their creative work without having to factor or budget for the high cost of childcare or feel she is pigeonholed into the role because it is simply 'a women's nature'.

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