LAST SUMMER, I had the opportunity to speak with one of my heroes, Dara Birnbaum, about how video has changed over five decades. I talked about torrenting and digitizing footage; she described breaking into news stations and bartering contraband for tapes, which is infinitely cooler. “Signals” at MoMA gives prominent space to Birnbaum’s 1990 installation Tiananmen Square: Break-In Transmission, and it’s the first time I’ve seen the piece AFK. The five monitors, suspended from tentacle-like hardware, switch between broadcasts of the Tiananmen protests, each one framing the event differently. At one point I witnessed the break—Dan Rather and his CBS Evening News camera crew being shut down by the Chinese authorities. End of signal.
Martine Syms is an artist based in Los Angeles.