Dara Birnbaum, a pioneer of the feminist and video art movements that have investigated, mimic and remixed mass media, died today, May 2 at the age of 78. The news of her death was announced by Marian Goodman Gallery, who represents the artist since 2001.
As a young artist in the 1970s, even when television was continued in film and art circles, Birnbaum understood his potential as a dominant power in American culture. During half a century career she split, again on each other and repeated extracts from sources that are so diverse as game show quizzes, sports programming, soap operas and YouTube videos to explore and to manipulate how information is distributed, transformed and assimilated.
Birnbaum was born in New York City in 1946, where she lived and worked her entire life. She achieved her bachelor in architecture at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, a bachelor in painting the San Francisco Art Institute, and a certificate in video and electronic editing of the New School for Social Research. Early influences – including a casual encounter with works by Dennis Oppenheim and Vito Acconci from outside a gallery window – and friendships with colleagues as a conceptual artist than Graham and writer Alan Sondheim sent her in the direction of her interest in feminist film and experimental media.
“Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman” (1978–79), misschien zag Birnbaum’s bekendste werk haar passende beelden van de gelijknamige superheld van ondervraagde afbeeldingen van geslacht in populaire media, die herhaling van haar metamorfose van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris van secretaris From secretary of secretary of secretary of secretary of Secretary of Secretary of Secretary of Superhero, saw to determine the idea of female identity as and to conquer the rise of a “new woman”. She continued her innovations in experimental media in her 60s and 70s. “Arabesque” (2011) stated the relationship between composers and musicians Robert and Clara Schumann, with clips from their versions that are recorded on YouTube and archive film clips in a working work for one channel A book with digital art.
Her work is held in the collections of museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, MoMa PS1, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; The Smithsonian in Washington, DC; The National Portrait Gallery in London; And the Fondazione Prada in Milan. Recent surveys and large solo exhibitions were held last year in Belvedere Palace, in Vienna; The Prada Aoyama in Tokyo in 2023; The Miller Institute of Contemporary Art in Pittsburgh in 2022, and various iterations of Documenta in Kassel, Germany.
During her career she received prizes and fellowships from institutions such as the Guggenheim, Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Academy of Arts and Letters, and was the first woman to receive the Maya Deren Award from the American Film Institute in 1987.
But the impact of Birnbaum is perhaps best measured in its constant influence on the careers of countless contemporary artists, writers and scholars: Cory Arcangel and Martine Syms call her as inspiration, and curators such as David Breslin and Kelly Taxter have credited her to work that work that work that work that work Defines the contemporary era. As Birnbaum said it himself In an interview from 2019 with Frédéric Moffet Reminded of her growing reputation, she can be remembered as’ the one who talks[ed] Back to the media. “
