PM Magazine/Acid Rock

1982, 4:09 min, color, sound

PM Magazine/Acid Rock is a spectacle of visuals and sound, a delirious collage of appropriated TV imagery and dynamic pop music. The introduction to the nightly television broadcast PM Magazine and a segment of a Wang computer commercial are the sources for the highly edited and computerized visual score. To the recomposed music of the Doors' L.A. Woman, a continuous flow of emblematic images of self-satisfaction — the American Dream or America's dreamstate — assault the viewer. Stereotypical TV gestures and icons of leisure and consumerism (ice skater, cheerleader, a little girl licking an ice cream cone) are framed and re-framed, slowed and accelerated, colorized and abstracted. In a frenetic deconstruction of mass media ideology, Birnbaum recontextualizes and subverts television's representations of consumerism and sexuality.

PM Magazine/Acid Rock was originally produced as one of four simultaneous video/music channels for the installation of the same name at Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany.

Music Collaboration: Dara Birnbaum, Simeon Soffer. Vocals: Shauna D'Larson. Guitar: David Dowse. Drums: Jon Norton. CMX Editing: California Institute of the Arts. Post Production Editing: Long Beach Museum of Art, The Annex; Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.