Gordon Winiemko

The ecstasy of success, the agony of defeat… Is there any middle ground anymore? That Douchebag Was in My Way (FTW) is a site-specific, four-channel video. It is the latest in a series of works featuring Winiemko encroaching into public spaces while playing a character drawn from the world of professional sports–with its aggressive competitiveness and elevation of athletes to superstardom–in order to highlight the winner-take-all culture that fuels gentrification and economic inequality at large.

Winiemko gets down to business in Ballard, Lower Queen Anne, South Lake Union, and the Central District, playing his own private game of b-ball. If you have the means to move into an area and play your own private game at the expense of the community, that’s what you do, right? In addition to the rapacious privatizing of space, this piece evokes the simultaneous “public-izing” of the private, where everything we do has become a performance for on-screen consumption in an attempt at advancing our individual brand.

Principal shooting by Matt Fish
Studio shoot by David Lawrence
Additional shooting by Dalya Faeq and Gordon Winiemko

About the Artist

Gordon Winiemko is a Los Angeles based artist whose work explores the cultural framework: those “things we do” that are sometimes so commonplace that we often forget how they shape our lives, for better or worse. His work has been shown at a host of media festivals and conferences, such as the International Symposium on Electronic Art and SXSW; at exhibition spaces like La Casa Encendida, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and at screening venues like Anthology Film Archives, ATA, The Blinding Light, and the late, great 911 Media Arts Center.