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Collage of five diverse artworks from the Hammer Museum Collections side by side. From left to right: 1) Contemporary painting of two embracing figures with surreal elements. 2) Post-impressionist style painting of trees with vibrant blues and greens. 3) Black and white illustration of a face with intricate patterns. 4) Japanese woodblock print style image of a figure in a checkered robe. 5) Photograph of a couple dancing, the woman in a black dress and the man in white

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Digital Archive Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology
Art Dara Birnbaum, Pop-Pop Video: Kojak/Wang
Pop-Pop Video: Kojak/Wang, by Dara Birnbaum, 1980

Dara Birnbaum, Artist
Pop-Pop Video: Kojak/Wang , 1980

Medium
Single-channel video, color, stereo sound
Dimensions
3:00 min.
Credit Line
Courtesy of the artist and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. Video still courtesy of EAI

For her Pop-Pop Video series, first exhibited at the Kitchen in New York City in 1980, Dara Birnbaum edited together disparate broadcast footage into fast-paced single-channel videos that comment on the homogeneity of the televisual vocabulary. Kojak/Wang crosscuts sequences from the popular crime show Kojak with a commercial for the technology company Wang Laboratories in order to relate the violence of a rapid-fire gunfight to the onslaught of colorful rays going to and from a computer monitor. In these videos, Birnbaum selected paradigmatic television segments and used formal devices of television such as repetition, framing, intercutting, and slow motion in order to reveal a common arena of power, competition, drama, and violence.