Dara Birnbaum

Dara Birnbaum

New York, USA

Most Known for...

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Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman 1978 (5.6)

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'.
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Artbreak, MTV Networks, Inc. 1987 (4)

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.
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Remy/Grand Central: Trains and Boats and Planes 1980

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.