Wa.a.s is a British art group that uses performance, installation, video, participatory art and Ritual in its practice.
WAqualillies is a professional synchronised swimming/dance company founded in 2008 with teams in California, New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Canada, France, and Australia. They are known as pioneers in the renaissance of water ballet as entertainment. Their work has been seen most notably in the Coen Brothers' 2016 film Hail, Caesar!, Glee, Jane the Virgin, ABC's Splash, the TED (Conference), Miami Fashion Week, Kim Kardashian Toasts The Emmys, and for Esther Williams at the Turner Classic Movies's Film Festival. They also offer seasonal synchronized swimming fitness classes
WBig Nazo is a performance group headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. Erminio Pinque, who is both the founder and artistic designer of Big Nazo, envisioned his concept as a puppet show without the stage.
WBlue Man Group is an American performance art company formed in 1987, known for its stage productions which incorporate many kinds of music and art, both popular and obscure, in its performances. Performers, known as "Blue Men", have their skin painted blue. During productions, the performers are mute and always appear in groups of three.
WCaligola is a worldwide network of artists founded in Northern Italy in the 1970s, active in the underground of Stockholm (Sweden). In 2008, the artists' collective was joined by the two Swedish musicians Björn Dixgård and Gustaf Norén.
WCollective:Unconscious is a non-profit corporation, founded in New York City in 1993, and incorporated in 1995. Originally based on Ave. B in Alphabet City, it moved to 145 Ludlow Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side, in 2004 it relocated to Tribeca until July 2008.
WCyclecide is an American bicycle club based in San Francisco, California, composed of clowns, altered bikes, and a traveling show called "The Bike Rodeo", which is a public performance, and not a bicycle rodeo, a children's bicycle safety clinic.
WFYTA are an Athens-based conceptual art and performance art duo. Their work problematises Greek identity and nationalism. FYTA's work combines different media and disciplines mostly operating within the wider framework of overidentification, queer politics and anti-humanist art, while they aim at a performative destabilisation of concepts of truth and nature / the natural.
WThe Haters are a noise music and conceptual art troupe from the United States. Founded in 1979, they are one of the earliest acts in the modern noise scene. The group is primarily the work of the Hollywood, California-based musician, artist, writer, and filmmaker GX Jupitter-Larsen, accompanied by a constantly changing lineup of other "members", usually local experimental musicians and artists in whatever town a Haters performance happens to take place.
WImprov Everywhere is a comedic performance art group based in New York City, formed in 2001 by Charlie Todd. Its slogan is "We Cause Scenes".
WThe Kipper Kids were a duo composed of Martin Rochus Sebastian von Haselberg and Brian Routh, two artists known for the extreme and often comedic performance art they made together in the 1970s and after. Von Haselberg lives and works in New York, U.S.; and Routh was living in Leicester, England, at the time of his death from cancer. From 1971, the duo were also known as Harry and Harry Kipper.
WLa Machine is a French production company based in Nantes, France, which is famous for La Princesse, a 50-foot mechanical spider constructed in Nantes, France.
WLady Circus is a performing arts troupe in New York City composed of eight ladies who perform solo, in small groups, or in a variety show setting in their entirety. The troupe was founded by Anya Sapozhnikova in New York in 2007.
WMacnas is a performance company based at the Fisheries Field in Galway, Ireland. Its public performances are noted for being "pioneering, inventive and radical" in style. The company has been credited with changing the nature of public entertainment in Ireland and is regarded as highly influential within the field of spectacle performance.
WActive since 1995, Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. is a Filipina American artist trio known for their use of humor and camp to explore issues of culture and gender. Founded in San Francisco by artists Eliza Barrios, Reanne Estrada, and Jenifer K. Wofford, the group's full name, Mail Order Brides/M.O.B., conflates a once-common stereotype of Filipina women as "mail order brides" with an acronym suggestive of an organized crime organization. The group has often been referred to in shorthand as "M.O.B."
WRaske menn is a trio of Norwegian comedians who have gained fame in Norway for their sketches and shows. The trio consists of Anders Hoff, Øyvind Rafto and Calle Hellevang-Larsen.
Wmonochrom is an international art-technology-philosophy group, publishing house and film production company. monochrom was founded in 1993, and defines itself as "an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism". Its main office is located at Museumsquartier/Vienna.
WThe Mutoid Waste Company are a performance arts group founded in London, England by Joe Rush and Robin Cooke in collaboration with Alan P Scott and Joshua Bowler. It started in the early 1980s, emerging from Frestonia's 'Car Breaker Gallery'. They are probably best known for their recycled art installations at Glastonbury Festival and refer to themselves as the Mutoids.
WMy Barbarian is a Los Angeles based collaborative theatrical group consisting of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade. The trio makes site-responsive performances and video installations that use theatrical play to draw allegorical narratives out of historical dilemmas, mythical conflicts, and current political crises.
WNeedcompany is an international performance group formed in 1986.
WA Night at Switch n' Play is a 2019 American documentary film produced by Chelsea Moore and directed by Cody Stickels. The film is about the long-running, Brooklyn based drag and burlesque artist collective, Switch n’ Play. The documentary features performances and commentary by Divina GranSparkle, Pearl Harbor, K. James, Miss Malice, Vigor Mortis, Nyx Nocturne and Zoe Ziegfled. The film had its world premiere at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival in Toronto on June 1, 2019 and its New York City premiere was at NewFest on October 26, 2019, where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary. It also won Best Ensemble Performance at the Fargo-Moorhead LGBT Film Festival, and won for Best Feature Film at the Trans Stellar Film Festival. The collective has also won 'Best Burlesque Show' at the Brooklyn Nightlife Awards in 2017, 2018, and 2019. It was filmed on location in Brooklyn at the Branded Saloon, where the group regularly performs.
WOLAF was a satirical art activism project launched in 2010 by Andreas Heusser, Christoph Nüssli and Christoph Oeschger to subvert the Swiss right-wing populist party's campaign on the deportation initiative. The project consisted of the creation of the "Organization to solve the foreigner question" and series of actions and pranks performed by the fictitious representatives, Dr. Alois B. Stocher and his assistant George Klein.
WThe Orange Alternative is a Polish anti-communist underground movement, started in Wrocław, a city in south-west Poland and led by Waldemar Fydrych, commonly known as Major in the 1980s. Its main purpose was to offer a wider group of citizens an alternative way of opposition against the authoritarian regime by means of a peaceful protest that used absurd and nonsensical elements.
WPretty Porky & Pissed Off (PPPO) was a Canadian fat activist and performance art collective based in Toronto, Ontario from 1996 – 2005. They used their bodies as modes of resistance against discriminatory language, cultural and social practices and policies. Their feminist, queer, and LGBT politics were part of the DIY ethics of punk rock and the Riot Grrrl movement, and feminist activism. PPPO was a Canadian trailblazer in the international fat liberation movement.
WProcessional Arts Workshop (PAW) is an ensemble of performing artists and theatrical technicians founded in 1998, devoted to pageant puppetry and processional art. They are also known by the name Superior Concept Monsters (SCM). They are best known for creating the large-scale puppet performances that lead New York's Village Halloween Parade.
WPuppet Bike is a small street performer group in Chicago. The bike, which is complete with a fully mobile stage, is a common sight on the streets of the Andersonville neighborhood and in downtown in the Loop.
WSeven Sisters Group are a British performance company, formed in 1994. The group focuses on communicating contemporary issues through new and idiosyncratic works that defy labelling. Their highly acclaimed projects are often site specific and combine contemporary dance, installation art, performance art and spoken word.
WSpiral Q Puppet Theater is a puppet troupe that was founded in 1995 by Matthew "Mattyboy" Hart in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After traveling the country he was inspired by the street performance work of the Radical Faeries and the Bread and Puppet Theater in Glover, Vermont. On his return to Philadelphia, Hart founded Spiral Q as a way to use his newfound interest in puppetry, street theatre and pageantry to promote social and political change. To this day, Spiral Q seeks to bring the storytelling techniques of giant puppetry, pageantry, and toy theater to the urban backdrop of Philadelphia.
WSurvival Research Laboratories (SRL) is an American performance art group that pioneered the genre of large-scale machine performance. Founded in 1978 by Mark Pauline, the group is known in particular for their performances where custom-built machines, often robotic, compete to destroy each other. The performances, described by one critic as "noisy, violent and destructive", are noted for the visual and aural cacophony created by the often dangerous interactions of the machinery.
WteAtrum 7 is a German theatre company based in Frankfurt, Germany and Berlin. Until 2013, the most important venue in Frankfurt was located in an old landmarked factory building. Many productions of the theatre company take place on partly extraordinary locations: in cellar vaults, in schools and colleges, in the foyer of the Frankfurt Opera, in night clubs, former factory floors and storehouses.
WThrobbing Gristle were an English music and visual arts group formed in 1975 in Kingston upon Hull by Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Christopherson, and Chris Carter. They are widely regarded as pioneers of industrial music. Evolving from the experimental performance art group COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle made their public debut in October 1976 on COUM exhibition Prostitution, and released their debut single "United/Zyklon B Zombie" and debut album The Second Annual Report the following year. Lyrical themes mainly revolved around mysticism, extremist political ideologies, sexuality, dark or underground aspects of society, and idiosyncratic manipulation of language.
WVestAndPage is an artist duo founded in 2006 by Verena Stenke (Germany) and Andrea Pagnes (Italy), working in contemporary performance art, visual art, and film. Their work is positioned within the social, political and environmental context of spherology, fragility, memory activation and communication, with a strong influence of the artists’ backgrounds in philosophy and theatre. They present meditative and ritualistic performances that challenge impermanence, transformation and self-awareness. Over the past years they have presented their work extensively in Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australia. They work in extensive collaborations in what they call "collective performance operas", and create "temporary artistic communities". An untitled controversial work presented in Singapore in 2011, involves the couple drinking Pagnes' blood. The artist stated in an interview that blood is "the purest part of me", and that "I am using drops of my soul to say something."
WWomanhouse was a feminist art installation and performance space organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, co-founders of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Feminist Art Program and was the first public exhibition of Feminist Art. Chicago, Schapiro, their students and women artists from the local community, including Faith Wilding, participated. Chicago and Schapiro encouraged their students to use consciousness-raising techniques to generate the content of the exhibition. Together, the students and professors worked to build an environment where women’s conventional social roles could be shown, exaggerated, and subverted.
WThe Yes Men are a culture jamming activist duo and network of supporters created by Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos. Through various actions, the Yes Men primarily aim to raise awareness about problematic social and political issues. To date, the duo have produced three films: The Yes Men (2003), The Yes Men Fix the World (2009), and The Yes Men Are Revolting (2014). In these films, they impersonate entities that they dislike, a practice that they call "identity correction." The Yes Men operate under the mission statement that lies can expose truth. They create and maintain fake websites similar to ones they intend to spoof, which have led to numerous interview, conference, and TV talk show invitations. They espouse the belief that corporations and governmental organizations often act in dehumanizing ways toward the public. Elaborate props are sometimes part of the ruse, as shown in their 2003 DVD release The Yes Men. The Yes Men have collaborated with other groups of similar interest, including Improv Everywhere, Andrew Boyd and Steve Lambert.