Dara Birnbaum, Technology/transformation - Wonder Woman - Thomas J. Demos

Opening with a prolonged salvo of fiery explosions accompanied by the
warning cry of a siren, Dara Birnbaum's video Technology/Transformation: Wonder
Woman (1978--79) is a concise, action-packed, and visually riveting video. During
its seven-minute span we see, again and again, the transformation of the drab
secretary Diana Prince into the super-heroic Wonder Woman. By isolating and
repeating the moment of transformation--spinning figure, arms outstretched--Birnbaum
unmasks the technology at the heart of the metamorphosis. In this illustrated
examination of Birnbaum's video, T. J. Demos situates it in its historical
context--among other developments in postmodernist appropriation, media analysis,
and feminist politics--and explores the artist's pioneering attempts to open up the
transformative abilities of video as a medium. Demos examines Birnbaum's influence
on such artists as Douglas Gordon, Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, and Candice
Breitz, and the turn toward "postproduction procedures"--the mobilization
of existing imagery for innovative uses. He also reveals a fascinating historical
shift in the reception of Birnbaum's work: a move from an emphasis on her
deconstruction of mass culture ideology to an appreciation of her creative use of
consumer imagery.