“Creating the "post-scratch" chroma-key switcher effects she has made famous, the artist inserts her body into the world of the prime time soap opera, "Dynasty," where she does her now classic performance about the ways TV spectatorship simultaneously owns and disgusts its audience. Embodying the love/hate relationships so many of us experience with the characters and values of TV, Braderman "performs" feminist and reception theory, turning the reigning ideas of her period into video vernacular. She skewers 80's obsessions with money and power and its sexual anxieties in a piece - both hilarious and terrifying..."Few have matched the bravery and wit of JOAN DOES DYNASTY.”
Bob Reilly, SF MOMA
"Joan Braderman's sassy intellect and irreverent, female mouth, throwing caution to the winds - drive the images of her videotapes toward paroxysms of resistance, barely disguising, with scalpel-like irony and wit, the ways in which we should all be fed up to here with the cultural and political lies permeating daily life in these United States. You come away from her tapes invigovorated - - with a sense of possibility: for feminism, for women together, for social change, even for men and women. Some may call them wishful or utopian. I call them profoundly historical, courageous as all get out, and great fun."
Yvonne Rainer, Filmmaker
“Videomaker Braderman uses her own body as the site for exploring the ways our own culture of appearances meets the politics of identity... "She looks at life through rose colored glasses, then whips them off and dishes the dirt: movies meet life, life meets death and romance meets Perdue chicken in this meditation on our illicit VCR pleasures. Watch and eat your heart out.”
B. Ruby Rich
“A masterpiece.”
Joel Kovel, The Age of Desire and History and Spirit, et al.
“Smart, low-budget bridge between theory and pop culture, funny and devastating at the same time."
Philadelphia City Paper
“JOAN DOES DYNASTY has become the classic feminist performance video of the era.“
Dee Dee Halleck
“The artist's first venture into video performance is a manic enactment of the relationship of readers with tabloids. Championing gossip as "history according to women and more likely to be 'true' than the New York Times," she takes us on a schizophrenic personal narrative tour of the world according to the Enquirer.”
Martha Gever
"Slandering the publisher onscreen in true tabloid form, Braderman and De Landa create a style of scratch video, using sometimes vibrating, luridly framed video switcher "wipes" which both satirize and describe tabloid journalism's own glitzy style. An unreconstructed lover of tabloid fantasy, Braderman's face and body fly through the headlines and photos she loves in this brilliant and disturbing satire about popular culture and its ubiquitous place in our lives.”
Elizabeth Hess, The Village Voice
About
the
Work
Berkovitch, Ellen. “The Heretics, from Prince Street to Galisteo.” Adobe Airstream, 28 Jan. 2016.
Bloom, Lisa. Jewish Identities in American Feminist Art: Ghosts of Ethnicity. Routledge, 2006.
“Bodies in Crisis.” Chicago Reader, 22 Oct. 1993.
Cornwell, Regina. “TV or Not TV.” Contemporanea International Art Magazine, Oct. 1989, pp. 58-63.
Davidson, Jim. "Cable's 'Paper Tiger' Turns Tables on Media." The Pittsburgh Press, 1983.
Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media. Times Books, 1995.
Feuer, Jane. Seeing through the Eighties: Television and Reaganism. Duke University Press, 1996.
Fifield, George. Joan Braderman: A Video Retrospective. VideoSpace at DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Dec 1994 – Jan 1995.
Fuchs, Cynthia. “The Heretics.” PopMatters, 25 Feb. 2018.
Furlong, Lucinda. “Image World: Metamedia.” Whitney Museum of American Art. New American Film and Video Series, vol. 49, New York City. 9 Nov. 1989.
Gever, Martha, director. "Meet the Press: On Paper Tiger Television." Afterimage Magazine. vol. 11, no. 4. Nov. 1983.
Halter, Ed. “Women's Work: Ed Halter on The Heritics.” Artforum International, 5 Oct. 2009.
Hess, Elizabeth. “Tit for Tat at the Whitney.” The Village Voice, 24 Mar. 1987, p. 80.
Hoberman, Jim. “Best of the Whitney Biennial: Joan Does Dynasty.” The Village Voice, May 1987.
Jackson, Tim. “Coming Attractions in Film: March 2012.” Arts Fuse, 4 Mar. 2012.
Kenny, Lorrain. “Social Engagements: Women's Video in the '80s.” Afterimage, May 1987.
Kunitz, Daniel. “Automatic for the People.” The New York Sun, 20 Dec. 2007.
Kort, Michele. “DVD Watch: The Heretics.” Ms. Magazine, 2010, p. 61.
Lamble, David. “Deep in the Heart of Disney.” The Bay Area Reporter, 6 Apr. 2010.
Ledes, Richard C. “Disarming Genres.” Artforum, Oct. 1990, p. 172.
Math, Mara. “Women’s Festival Steps Up.” CineSource Magazine, Apr. 2010.
McCabe, Jess. “The Heretics.” The F-Word, 28 Sept. 2010.
“MoMA Presents: Joan Braderman's The Heretics.” Curated by Sally Berger, Museum of Modern Art.
Princenthal, Nancy. “Heretics Look Back: Review of The Heretics by Joan Braderman.” Art in America, vol. 98, no. 1, Jan. 2010, p. 30.
Pym, John, editor. Time Out Film Guide. 11th ed., Time Out, 2002.
Rainer, Yvonne. “Looking Myself in the Mouth.” October, vol. 17, 1981, pp. 65–76. JSTOR.
Rabinovitz, Lauren. "Video Cross-Dressing." Afterimage, March 1988. pp. 3-5.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Rotterdam 1987: The Once and Future Cinema.” Sight and Sound, 1987.
Rosenberg, Karen. “What’s on the Art Box? Spins, Satire and Camp.” The New York Times, 11 Jan. 2008.
Ruhl, Steven. “Video Art by a TV Infiltrator.” Amherst Bulletin, 22 June 1988, p. 21.
Saltz, Rachel. “Art in an Era of Consciousness Raising.” New York Times, 8 Oct. 2009.
Schmidt, Doris. “Unscrambling TV's Signals.” Union-News, 19 Oct. 1989, pp. W-1-W-3.
Seid, Steve. “BAM/PFA - Film Programs.” BAMPFA, 18 June 2003.
Silverstein, Melissa. “More Joy, Less Shame: The Heretics.” Women and Hollywood, 9 June 2010.
Snook, Raven. “The Heretics.” Time Out Chicago, 5 Oct. 2009.
Sterritt, David. “Tuning in to video as an art medium.” The Christian Science Monitor, 11 June 1987.
Taylor, Doreen. “Soap Gets Under Your Skin.” The Guardian, 24 Aug. 1987, p. 13.
“Time Out Says: Joan Sees Stars.” Time Out London, Dec. 1993.
Tobin, Amy. "Heresies’ Heresies: Collaboration and Dispute in a
Feminist Publication on Art and Politics." Women: A Cultural Review, 30:3, 280-296, DOI:
10.1080/09574042.2019.1653118. 2019
White, Jerry. “Program Notes: Joan Sees Stars.” International House: Neighborhood Film/Video Project, 11 Feb. 1994.
Wilber, Roy. “Joan Braderman: Feminist, Artist, Activist!” Moore Women Artists, 2016.
Wright, Patricia. “On her video screen, she presses the buttons.” Daily Hampshire Gazette, 5 Jan. 1995.
Ms. Braderman has also written and spoken extensively on film, video and the politics of representation.