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Canon: Taking to the Street

Dara Birnbaum

1990 00:10:54 United StatesEnglishColorStereo

Description

Starting with student-recorded VHS footage of two successive Take Back the Night marches at Princeton University, Birnbaum develops a saga of political awareness through personalized experiences. This localized student activity then progresses to, and is contrasted with, the 1988 National Student Convention at Rutgers University. Through this dynamic portrait, Birnbaum posits a series of compelling questions: How can the voice of the individual make itself seen and heard in our technocratic society? What forms of demonstration support this expression? How is a voice of dissent made possible?

Breaking with traditional documentary format, and using tools from the low and high end of video technology, Birnbaum here replays events of student activism in the United States.

About Dara Birnbaum

An architect and urban planner by training, Dara Birnbaum began using video in 1978 while teaching at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where she worked with Dan Graham. Recognized as one of the first video artists to employ the appropriation of television images as a subversive strategy, Birnbaum recontextualizes pop cultural icons (Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978-79) and TV genres (Kiss the Girls: Make them Cry, 1979) to reveal their subtexts. Birnbaum describes her tapes as new “ready-mades” for the late 20th Century—works that “manipulate a medium which is itself highly manipulative.”

See also: Dara Birnbaum: An Interview