Six Movements: Video Works from 1975 is a limited edition boxed set that represents Birnbaum's earliest experiments with the video medium.

These six performance-based works, in which the artist explores a woman's psychological state through physical gestures, are raw, direct, and unmediated. Birnbaum’s youthful movements constitute the sole performance of all six works. (By the late 1970s she would no longer appear on-screen, although she would often employ female figures as surrogates.) The pieces introduce themes that recur throughout her work, particularly the articulation of a feminist subtext through the central figure of a woman who is presented as both strong and vulnerable. She investigates the body as a vehicle for intense emotional or psychological manifestations while also foregrounding the relation of the camera/viewer and subject/performer. Although Birnbaum famously broke new ground in video by engaging directly with popular television as source material, these earliest works reveal a link to the Body Art and performance-video practice of the generation of artists who immediately preceded her, such as Vito Acconci, Dan Graham, and Bruce Nauman.

Credit:
Published by Marian Goodman Gallery in collaboration with Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.