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Technology/Transformation:
Wonder Woman
1978–79, 5 min., 50 sec., color, stereo sound
 Technical
assistance: Ed Slopek/Nova Scotia College of Art and Design;
original television footage: CBS Inc., Wonder Woman; sound:
Wonderland Disco Band
Appropriating imagery from the TV series Wonder Woman,
Birnbaum isolates and repeats the moment of the "real"
woman’s symbolic transformation into superhero. Entrapped
in her magical metamorphosis by Birnbaum’s stuttering edits,
Wonder Woman spins dizzily, like a music-box doll.
Pop-Pop Video
1980, 9 min. (total length), color, stereo sound
 General
Hospital/Olympic Women Speed Skating
6 min.; vocals: Dori Levine, Sally
Swisher; instrumentation: Robert Raposo; disco: Donna Summer
Kojak/Wang
3 min.; instrumentation: Rhys Chatham
In the dynamic Pop-Pop Video tapes, Birnbaum appropriates
standard television genres — soap opera, sports event, action
drama — to deconstruct the idiomatic meaning of TV’s
structural codes and conventions, such as the intercut and reverse
shot.
Damnation of Faust:
Evocation
1983, 10 min., 2 sec., color, stereo sound
 Producer/director:
Dara Birnbaum; camera: Dara Birnbaum; postproduction director:
John Zieman; with Kit Aldendice, Michelle Denisco, Alice Denobregga,
Jerry Dinatolli, Georgeann Ditelli, Kim Galiardo, Pam Hysinger,
Michael Libonati, Ronald Lonergan, Oggi Ochoa, Dino Polichelli,
Jenny Porter, Amanda Stark, Timmy Stark, Millard Thomas, Gertrude
Vaughn, Gina Vesce
Evocation is the prologue of the three-part series
Damnation of Faust, in which Birnbaum transforms the Faustian
myth into a dreamlike introspection on the duality of the internalized
self and the external world.
Damnation of Faust:
Will-o’-the-Wisp (a Deceitful Goal)
1985, 5 min. 46 sec., color, stereo sound
 Producer/director:
Dara Birnbaum; camera: Dara Birnbaum; editors: Rick Feist, Dara
Birnbaum; music: Mike Nolan and Paul Jacob; with Caatje Cusse;
produced in association with the Contemporary Art Television
Fund
A woman gazing through a window, reflecting on a romantic
loss and betrayal, gives voice to Marguerite, the female character
from the Faust legend, in an eloquent reverie on memory and reality.
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