Dara Birnbaum, Tiananmen Square: forced entry1990, five-channel digital video installation (color, sound, different durations), surveillance switcher, custom hardware. Installation view, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2023. Photo: Robert Gerhardt.
LAST SUMMER, I had the opportunity to speak with one of my heroines, Dara Birnbaum, about the evolution of video in five decades. I talked about torrenting and digitizing footage; she described breaking into news stations and trading contraband for tapes, which is infinitely cooler. ‘Signals’ at MoMA gives pride of place to Birnbaum’s 1990 installation Tiananmen Square: forced entry, and this is the first time I see the AFK piece. The five monitors, suspended from tentacle-like hardware, switch between broadcasts of the Tiananmen protests, each framing the event differently. At one point, I witnessed the breakup—Dan Rather and his CBS Evening News the film crew being shut down by the Chinese authorities. End of signal.
Martine Syms is an artist based in Los Angeles.
