Kiss the Girls: Make Them Cry, 1979

As televisions became increasingly common in American living rooms in the 1970s, Birnbaum was among the earliest artists to use television content as source material. Altering, glitching, cutting, and splicing it often without seeking legal permission, she claimed she was manipulating “a medium which is itself highly manipulative.”

Here she alternates between television recordings from the game show Hollywood Squares and a blue screen with scrolling lyrics to popular disco songs. Birnbaum appropriates the gestures and expressions of the game show contestants, isolating the show’s comical elements but stripping them of their context.