Books for Arab American Heritage Month
In honor of Arab American Heritage Month in April, we are sharing books by Arab and Arab American authors that share their culture, history, and personal lives.
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Opening with a prolonged salvo of fiery explosions accompanied by the warning cry of a siren, Dara Birnbaum's video Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–79) is a concise, action-packed, and visually riveting video. During its seven-minute span we see, again and again, the transformation of the drab secretary Diana Prince into the super-heroic Wonder Woman. By isolating and repeating the moment of transformation—spinning figure, arms outstretched—Birnbaum unmasks the technology at the heart of the metamorphosis. In this illustrated examination of Birnbaum's video, T. J. Demos situates it in its historical context—among other developments in postmodernist appropriation, media analysis, and feminist politics—and explores the artist's pioneering attempts to open up the transformative abilities of video as a medium. Demos examines Birnbaum's influence on such artists as Douglas Gordon, Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, and Candice Breitz, and the turn toward “postproduction procedures”—the mobilization of existing imagery for innovative uses. He also reveals a fascinating historical shift in the reception of Birnbaum's work: a move from an emphasis on her deconstruction of mass culture ideology to an appreciation of her creative use of consumer imagery.
Opening with a prolonged salvo of fiery explosions accompanied by the warning cry of a siren, Dara Birnbaum's video Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–79) is a concise, action-packed, and visually riveting video. During its seven-minute span we see, again and again, the transformation of the drab secretary Diana Prince into the super-heroic Wonder Woman. By isolating and repeating the moment of transformation—spinning figure, arms outstretched—Birnbaum unmasks the technology at the heart of the metamorphosis. In this illustrated examination of Birnbaum's video, T. J. Demos situates it in its historical context—among other developments in postmodernist appropriation, media analysis, and feminist politics—and explores the artist's pioneering attempts to open up the transformative abilities of video as a medium. Demos examines Birnbaum's influence on such artists as Douglas Gordon, Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, and Candice Breitz, and the turn toward “postproduction procedures”—the mobilization of existing imagery for innovative uses. He also reveals a fascinating historical shift in the reception of Birnbaum's work: a move from an emphasis on her deconstruction of mass culture ideology to an appreciation of her creative use of consumer imagery.
In honor of Arab American Heritage Month in April, we are sharing books by Arab and Arab American authors that share their culture, history, and personal lives.
For National Poetry Month in April, we are sharing poetry collections and books about poetry by authors who have their own stories to tell. These poets delve into history, reimagine the present, examine poetry itself—from traditional poems many know and love to poems and voices that are new and original. Find a full collection of
