TECHNOLOGY/TRANSFORMATION: WONDER WOMAN
DARA BIRNBAUM, 1978–1979
She keeps spinning. Diana Prince spins, there's a flash of light, and out comes Wonder Woman. Lynda Carter. Boots, bracelets, hair somehow perfect. Then it happens again. And again. By the third time, it's funny. After a few more, it starts to feel a little off. In 1978, Dara Birnbaum gets hold of footage from the Wonder Woman television show and starts chopping. The plot goes. The villain goes. Most of the heroics go. What stays is the thing everybody was waiting for anyway. Spin. Explosion. Superhero. Diana Prince disappears. Wonder Woman shows up. And before she can enjoy it, somebody needs something. Go stop this. Go rescue him. Go save the world. She barely gets the bracelets on before the power gets assigned a job. So Birnbaum yanks her back to the beginning. Spin. Explosion. Superhero. Again. Now you start noticing what a weird little deal television is offering. A flash of light. A new outfit. A perfect body. Done. That's how a woman becomes powerful. It has to look good, happen fast, and be ready for the next episode. Birnbaum repeats the trick until the trick starts looking like a trap. Is Diana controlling the transformation, or is the transformation controlling her? Television in 1978 only goes one way. Into your house. You don't answer it. Video art already existed. Artists had been pointing cameras at themselves for years. But you definitely don't steal television's pictures, cut them up, and send them back. Birnbaum did. Friends inside the industry got her the footage. Birnbaum didn't own a VCR. She cut it on an industrial editing deck. Then she showed the finished video, not in a museum, but in the storefront window of a hair salon in SoHo. A room full of people changing their hair, watching a woman who can't stop changing.