Dara Birnbaum

For more than thirty years, Dara Birnbaum has occupied a crucial yet unique position in the field of video art and installation, with provocative and influential works that incisively critique the mass media and its effects on audience. This survey addresses the dearth of serious critical writing on Birnbaum's innovative artistic activity. The maturation of her work in the late 1970s and early 1980s was accompanied by a distinctive awareness of the medium's dominant form: commercial television. She has engaged in a lively analysis of the agendas and stereotypes hidden in society's ascendant means of communication. This book combines images of her landmark pieces such as Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978-79), Damnation of Faust Trilogy (1983-87), and Elegy for Donna (2005), among other works with fascinating dialogues between Birnbaum and the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist as well as numerous insightful essays. Including never-before-released images from the artist's personal archives and bringing together early and recent works, this publication is the most comprehensive resource available on this important figure in contemporary art.