Dara Birnbaum
| Dara Birnbaum | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1946 New York, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Field | installation artist, video artist |
Dara Birnbaum, born in 1946 in New York ,USA, where she continues to live and work, uses video to reconstruct television imagery using as material such archetypal formats as quizzes, soap operas, and sports programmes. Her techniques involve the repetition of images and interruption of flow with text and music. She is also well known for forming part of the feminist art movement.
[edit] Work
Her most prominent piece of video art is the 1978 - 1979 video art piece Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman. In this work she uses appropriated images of Wonder Woman to subvert the ideology and meaning embedded in the television series.[1] "Opening with a prolonged salvo of fiery explosions accompanied by the warning cry of a siren, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman is supercharged, action-packed, and visually riveting... throughout its nearly six minutes we see several scenes featuring the main character Diana Prince... in which she transforms into the famed superero." [2]
In 1979 she started to make fast-edited video collages from footage appropriated while working for a TV post-production unit.[3] She participated in the 1985 Whitney Biennial.[4]
In her 1990 single channel video work Cannon: Taking to the Street the political act of taking to the street is framed through an iconic evocation of the Paris uprising of May 1968, interspersed with amateur footage from a Take Back the Night march held at Princeton University in April, 1987.[5]
Her 1994 six channel video installation Hostage has as its subject the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer in 1977.[6]
Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.[7] She also has works in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.[8]
In 2010 she won a United States Artists Fellow award.[9]
[edit] External links
- Artist's official website
- Artcyclopedia entry
- Popcorn and Politics - Activists of Art entry
- Video Databank entry
- Dara Birnbaum - student documentary
- Dara Birnbaum in the Mediateca Media Art Space
[edit] References
- ^ Margot Lovejoy, Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age, Routledge, 2004, p108. ISBN 0415307805
- ^ T.J. Demos, Dara Birnbaum, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, MIT/Afterall Books, 2010, p1. ISBN 1-846380-66-9
- ^ Catherine Elwes, Video Art: A Guided Tour, I.B.Tauris, 2005, p108. ISBN 1850435464
- ^ Margot Lovejoy, Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age, Routledge, 2004, p129. ISBN 0415307805
- ^ Dot Tuer ' Mirrors and Mimesis: An Examination of the Strategies of Image Appropriation and Repetition in the Work of Dara Birnbaum' issue 3 May 1997 n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal online pp.4-16
- ^ Dot Tuer, Mining the Media Archive: Essays on Art, Technology and Cultural Resistance, YYZ Books, 2006, p45. ISBN 0920397352
- ^ moma.org.uk
- ^ National Gallery of Canada's Cybermuse website
- ^ United States Artists Official Website
