Kiss the Girls: Make Them Cry

Dara Birnbaum emerged as a pioneer of video art in the mid-1970s, when many women artists challenged the gender biases of mass media and popular culture. Early on she disrupted and deconstructed the language of television, in order to reveal embedded stereotypes and expectations. Indeed, Birnbaum’s works are among the most influential and innovative contributions to the contemporary discourse on art and television.

Kiss the Girls: Make Them Cry comprises two video monitors and four speakers presented atop their shipping crates, installed like technical “gear” rather than on conventional pedestals. The screens alternate between off-air imagery from the TV game show Hollywood Squares and a chroma-key blue screen displaying the lyrics of two hit disco songs, juxtaposed with independent covers of the original soundtracks. In this raucous yet meticulously composed work, Birnbaum underlines the ways in which gender is represented through familiar structures of entertainment.