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."
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Titles by Dara Birnbaum:
Canon: Taking to the Streets 
Damnation of Faust: Evocation
Damnation of Faust: Will-o'-the-Wisp (A Deceitful Goal)
Evocation of Faust: Charming Landscape
Kiss the Girls: Make Them Cry
PM Magazine/Acid Rock
Pop-Pop Video: General Hospital/Olympic Women Speed Skate
Pop-Pop Video: Kojak/Wang
Remy/Grand Central Trains and Boats and Planes
Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman
Work by Dara Birnbaum also appears on:
Compilation: Dara Birnbaum: Damnation of Faust Trilogy
Anthology: Surveying the First Decade
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