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Dara Birnbaum

Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman

Vidéo | 0 | couleur | 5:50 | USA | 1979

Explosive bursts of fire open Technology/Transformation, an incendiary deconstruction of the ideology embedded in television form and pop cultural iconography. Appropriating imagery from the 1970s TV series Wonder Woman, Birnbaum isolates and repeats the moment of the "real" woman's symbolic transformation into super-hero. Entrapped in her magical metamorphosis by Birnbaum's stuttering edits, Wonder Woman spins dizzily like a music-box doll. Through radical manipulation of this female Pop icon, she subverts its meaning within the television text. Arresting the flow of images through fragmentation and repetition, Birnbaum condenses the comic-book narrative — Wonder Woman deflects bullets off her bracelets, "cuts" her throat in a hall of mirrors — distilling its essence to allow the subtext to emerge. In a further textual deconstruction, she spells out the words to the song Wonder Woman in Discoland on the screen. The lyrics' double entendres ("Get us out from under... Wonder Woman") reveal the sexual source of the superwoman's supposed empowerment: "Shake thy Wonder Maker." Writing about the "stutter-step progression of 'extended moments' of transformation from Wonder Woman," Birnbaum states, "The abbreviated narrative — running, spinning, saving a man — allows the underlying theme to surface: psychological transformation versus television product. Real becomes Wonder in order to "do good" (be moral) in an (a) or (im)moral society."

For four decades, Dara Birnbaum's pioneering works in video, media and installation have questioned the ideological and aesthetic character of mass media imagery, and are considered fundamental to our understanding of the history of media practices and contemporary art. Dara Birnbaum was born in New York City in 1946 where she continues to live and work. Dara Birnbaum received a B.A. in architecture from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, a B.F.A. in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, and a certificate in video and electronic editing from the Video Study Center at the New School for Social Research in New York. Dara Birnbaum was one of the first artists to develop complex and innovative installations that juxtapose images from multiple sources while incorporating three-dimensional elements - large-scale photographs, sculptural or architectural elements - into the work. She is known for her innovative strategies and use of manipulated television footage. Birnbaum's work has been exhibited widely at MoMA PS1, New York (2019); National Portrait Gallery, London (2018); Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio (2018); South London Gallery, UK (2011); major retrospectives at Serralves Foundation, Porto, Portugal (2010) and S. M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium (2009); Center for Contemporary Art, CCA Kitakyushu (2009); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (2006); and The Jewish Museum, New York (2003). His work has been exhibited at Documenta 7, 8 and 9. Birnbaum has won several prestigious awards including: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2021); The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Arts Residency (2011); the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2011); and the prestigious United States Artists Fellowship (2010). In 2016, she was recognized and honored for her work by The Kitchen, New York, at their annual gala. She was the first woman in video to receive the prestigious Maya Deren Award from the American Film Institute in 1987. In February 2017, Carnegie Mellon University's School of Art established the Birnbaum Award in her honour.