Dara Birnbaum

Friedman documents a model during a fashion shoot, the exaggerated, staccato rhythms of her camera punctuated by machine-gun like bursts of fireworks and the chiming of bells. The model veers wildly between states of calm and hair-wringing distress in a short, hyper-kinetic sequence bookended by image fields of solid color; a slow approach to an intense, intimate proximity.

1. Damnation of Faust: Evocation - Using "found" imagery shot in a SoHo playground, the first part of the Damnation of Faust trilogy explores the possible relations between childhood play and a woman looking on from outside. Without dialogue, the gestures of the characters become their primary mode of communication. Visual motifs of pillars and fans, achieved through video wipes, plunge the viewer into the image while building parallels of movement and feeling. 2. Damnation of Faust: Will-o'-the-Wisp (A Deceitful Goal) - The second part of the Faust project centers on the development of Marguerite, the female character in the Faust legend. 3. Evocation of Faust: Charming Landscape - The final work in the Damnation of Faust trilogy, ironically titled Charming Landscape, investigates the way in which the urban landscape is a place "where you lose your identity."

1987, 30 sec, color, sound Produced for an Artbreak segment on MTV Network, this dynamic "thirty-second spot" presents an abbreviated history of animation according to the representation of women, from the cell imagery of Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell series to the contemporary digital effects of television. In Birnbaum's vision, Fleischer's spilled inkwell releases cartoon bubbles containing images of women from MTV music videos. With wit and panache, Birnbaum reverses the traditional sexual roles of the producer and product of commercial imagery: The final image is that of a female artist on whose video "palette" we see a glimpse of Fleischer.

This is an interesting little documentary about the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, which was apparently one of the global hotbeds of experimental/avant garde art- particularly video art- back in the 70's & 80's. MacGillvary interviews a number of the artists that were formative to the program. Many of whom would go on to become teachers at the school.

"Dara Birnbaum's Pop-Pop Video... [has] been hailed as [a] classic of the new wave. [The tape] juxtaposes fragments from a soap opera with sequences of ice skating races. The graceful movements of the skaters punctuate repeated excerpts from a dreadfully intense discussion between a doctor and his patient: ‘He doesn't do anything, doesn't say anything.... It's just the way he looks at me.... That sound crazy?’ The narrative builds up slowly as a few more words of the deadly dialogue are released. Extended in this way, the pathos is bare, the narrative content becomes meaningless and the result is particularly moving." --Katherine Elwes, Performance (July/August 1981)

Commissioned by Remy Martin for a public exhibition in Grand Central Station in New York, Remy/Grand Central is an advertisement with a deconstructive twist. In a syncopated collage of appropriated footage (including a TV commercial for Sergio Valente jeans) and a young woman drinking Remy on a commuter train platform, Birnbaum calls attention to how mass media advertising uses a woman's body as a vehicle for selling products. In a stylized pastiche that she terms "a snack-en-route with a pretty girl, animated trains, updated Bacharach muzak (Brazilian style), and pouring Remy," Birnbaum turns the tables on the media's use of woman as commodity.

Appropriating material from the introduction to the nightly television show, PM Magazine and a commercial for Wang Computers, Birnbaum uses enlarged still-frames from each of the sources to compound a new image of the indelible American Dream. To the soundtrack of an acid rock version of The Doors' L.A. Woman, repetitive images of an ice skater, baton twirler, cheerleader, and young girls licking ice cream, exemplify dominant cultural images of women — images that emphasize their performative nature: the idea that woman is a spectacle arranged for the (male) viewer's pleasure. The culimination of a series of works from 1978-82 dealing directly with television imagery and ideology, this tape is one of four channels shown simmultaneously in Birnbaum's installation at Documenta 9, in 1982.

Local TV News Analysis is the document of a collaborative project of Graham and Birnbaum, in which they investigate local television news, both in form and content. Three simultaneous realities of the news are revealed within one composite frame: the receivership of the family at home; the inside control room of the broadcast studio; and the local news itself.

Constructed of footage recorded from the television game show Hollywood Squares. The bulk of the piece is made up from recorded introductory gestures of female celebrities participating in Hollywood Squares, which are synced to then-contemporary Disco songs.

The video opens with a barrage of explosive imagery along with an audio track of a siren taken from the 1970s TV show Wonder Woman. The following scenes are fast paced repeated shots from Wonder Woman, with several scenes following of actress Lynda Carter as the main character Diana Prince, performing her transformative spin from secretarial role into superhero role. […] The representation of repeated transformations expose the illusion of fixed female identities in media and attempts to show the emergence of a new woman through use of technology. […] The video ends with a scene of repeating explosions that precedes a blue background with white text that scrolls upwards, delivering a transcription of lyrics to the song ‘Wonder Woman Disco'.

In an early work, video artist Dara Birnbaum records a cross section of fellow passengers aboard the Staten Island Ferry while en route to the Statue of Liberty. Asking subjects to use her video camera to capture their own views of the iconic monument, Birnbaum creates an homage to the immigrant experience.