"Dara came up in an era in which video artists had to beg, borrow, and steal to make their work. Many of them were dependent on the benevolence of better-off friends who owned equipment and had access to editing studios, in stark contrast to what artists can do simply with a mobile phone today. As such, Dara possessed vast theoretical and technical knowledge about the moving image."
"This she would convey with compassion and authority in her famous emails, often hundreds of words long, in which she typed out the date and the cc: recipients in the body of the mail as if it were a printed letter. Dara's formality would melt into warmth and familiarity once she ascertained she was being spoken to with reciprocal consideration."
Dara Birnbaum died in May, leaving a community of artists, gallerists, and curators who supported her work. She emerged when video artists often relied on friends for equipment and editing access, a contrast with today’s mobile-phone capabilities. Dara combined deep theoretical and technical knowledge of the moving image with clear communication, often in long, formal emails that softened into warmth when met with reciprocal regard. Her fastidious character helped establish her as a leading video art pioneer while sometimes complicating relationships and limiting broader acclaim. Her work appears in museum collections worldwide as an example of feminist video art. She was born in 1946 in Queens, and her democratic sensibility drew from an architect father's emphasis on efficient, people-centered design.
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