Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

In Canon: Taking to the Streets, Birnbaum breaks with traditional documentary format. Using tools from the low-end and high-end of technology, she episodically views recent events of student activism in the United States. This is a study of the 1987 Take Back the Night march on the Princeton University campus. Birnbaum's treatment of the original student-recorded VHS footage reveals this march as having the potential to develop political awareness through personalized experience. The students attempt to "put across a historical message" that was started in San Francisco in 1978: the protest of any form of violence against women. Take Back the Night now represents men and women, in solidarity with one another, marching against sexual violence of any kind. Here the activity remains specific to violence as perpetrated against persons in the Princeton community.

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.