Dara Birnbaum: The Dark Matter of Media Light

Dara Birnbaum: The Dark Matter of Media Light
Author: -
Publisher: S.M.A.K.; Serralves; Prestel
Language: English
Pages: 368
Size: 21.5 x 28 cm
Weight: 2.0600 kg
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9783791351247
Availability: In stock
Price: €59.00
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Product Description

Exhibition itinerary: S.M.A.K., Gent, Belgium, April 4 – September 6, 2009; Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal, March 26 – July 4, 2010.

Co-edited by S.M.A.K.− Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst and the Serralves Foundation in partnership with Prestel/Delmonico Books.

The publication, which accompanies the first major retrospective on the work of Dara Birnbaum, is also a book on the entire journey of this pioneering artist, who for over thirty years has occupied a crucial and unique position in the field of video and installation art.

This book combines documentation on seminal works with numerous and penetrating essays and fascinating dialogues between Birnbaum and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

It includes unpublished images from the artist's personal archive and bringing together some of her first works with more recent works, this publication constitutes the most complete documentation to date on this important figure in contemporary art. It also contains biographical data and bibliography.

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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.