Editor: Keith Davis Writer: Dave Maley Publisher: Office of Public Information Volume 22, No. 8   November 29, 1999

Multimedia Artist's Works to Be Screened at Ithaca College The Handwerker Gallery will present a video screening of selected works by New York multimedia artist Dara Birnbaum on Thursday, December 9, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Birnbaum's explorations into the metaphorical potential of video technologies, as well as her reconstructions of television and other mass media images, will be highlighted in a continuously running 30-minute video. The event is free and open to the public. The works to be screened are Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, Pop-Pop Video, and two selections from the trilogy Damnation of Faust. In the first work Birnbaum appropriates the familiar imagery of the Wonder Woman television series, isolating and repeating the scene when an ordinary citizen turns into a superhero. Through selective editing, Wonder Woman seems to be trapped in her metamorphosis, spinning dizzily like a figurine in a doll box. In Pop-Pop Video Birnbaum takes scenes from Kojak, General Hospital, an Olympic speed skating competition, and a Wang computer commercial and, through various editing techniques, shows how deeper meanings can be found in the imagery of pop culture. The other works to be screened are taken from the trilogy Damnation of Faust, in which Birnbaum transforms the Faustian myth into a dreamlike introspection of the tensions between the internalized self and the external world. Birnbaum received a bachelor's degree in architecture from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) and a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has presented international solo exhibitions of her work at a number of venues, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the IVAM Centre Julio Gonzalez in Valencia, Spain; and the Musée d'Art Contemporain in Montreal. Her work has also appeared in group exhibitions at the Tate Gallery in London, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin. For more information call the gallery at 274-3018 or contact Jelena Stojanovic, director, at 274-3548.

Created by Andrejs Ozolins. Updated 29. Nov. 1999