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Dara Birnbaum: Damnation of Faust Trilogy

Using Wagner's Faust as a touchstone, Damnation of Faust is a trilogy of highly structured and composed video works evoking a free-floating, non-linear dream or memory. The broad themes of the work are conflicting forms of societal restraint and the struggles to define and express personal identity.

# Title Artists Run Time Year Country
1 Damnation of Faust: Evocation Dara Birnbaum 00:10:00 1983 United States
2 Damnation of Faust: Will-o'-the-Wisp (A Deceitful Goal) Dara Birnbaum 00:05:38 1985 United States
3 Evocation of Faust: Charming Landscape Dara Birnbaum 00:07:00 1987 United States

Damnation of Faust: Evocation

Dara Birnbaum
1983 | 00:10:00 | United States | English | Color | | |

DESCRIPTION

Using “found” imagery shot in a SoHo playground, the first part of the Damnation of Faust trilogy explores the possible relations between childhood play and a woman looking on from outside. Without dialogue, the gestures of the characters become their primary mode of communication. Visual motifs of pillars and fans, achieved through video wipes, plunge the viewer into the image while building parallels of movement and feeling.

This title is also available on Dara Birnbaum: Damnation of Faust Trilogy.

Damnation of Faust: Will-o'-the-Wisp (A Deceitful Goal)

Dara Birnbaum
1985 | 00:05:38 | United States | English | Color | | |

DESCRIPTION

The second part of the Damnation of Faust Trilogy centers on the development of Marguerite, the female character in the Faust legend. Masterfully composing fragmentary "memory" images in elegant 19th Century Japanese compositions, Birnbaum traces the process of deception and abandonment through the heroine’s mournful description of her state of mind. Passing images are suffused with light, obscured in a blinding brightness, to suggest forgetting.

This title is also available on Dara Birnbaum: Damnation of Faust Trilogy.

Evocation of Faust: Charming Landscape

Dara Birnbaum
1987 | 00:07:00 | United States | English | Color | | |
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DESCRIPTION

The final work in the Damnation of Faust Trilogy, ironically titled Charming Landscape, investigates the way in which the urban landscape is a place "where you lose your identity.” Two female residents of the inner city tell their stories in casual, on-the-street interviews. Building upon the theme of submerged violence, Birnbaum presents the fiery culmination of the legend in eerie slow-motion collage scenes of political unrest — from the lunchroom protests of Greensboro, NC, to the student revolts in Tiannanmen Square.

This title is also available on Dara Birnbaum: Damnation of Faust Trilogy.