Dara Birnbaum
:
Damnation of Faust
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Dara Birnbaum addresses the frequently undervalued aspect of femininity in the Faust myth with her video installation Damnation of Faust (1984), which is dedicated to the character Gretchen. Mounted photographs from the original video trilogy in Krems, Evocation and Will O' The Wisp, are shown next to a photograph over coloured areas on the wall.
The project has been returned to the Landessammlungen Niederösterreich in 2018 and is no longer on view.
'Damnation of Faust' by the American Dara Birnbaum has found an ideal location at the Donau-Universität, where new media play an important role. As one of the essential media artists of the present, it is not only in this piece that Birnbaum addresses stereotyped female representations with television as a mass media, and popular visual cultures. 'Damnation of Faust' (1984) integrates various particular elements, approaches and forms of presentation that the artist uses: video installation on monitors, enlarged still shots, lighting elements, colour and architectural space. Originally an installation at the Carmelite convent in Valencia, monitors and photographs were arranged on the red painted arcades of a cloister. Of the trilogy of videos, Evocation (1983) and Will O' The Wisp (1987) are to be seen in Krems. On show are children in a playground in Manhattan and the shot of an almost motionless woman. With the simultaneous footage running, Birnbaum is addressing the development of Gretchen, the protagonist in the Faust legend. The aim of the artwork is to get a hearing for the frequently ignored female voice in the tale. The artist's very careful and precise definition of the arrangement is provided by the still photographs on the wall, while the monitors with the moving images form an intermediary space.
(Brigitte Huck)
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