Dara Greenwald

Dara Greenwald (1971–2012) was an interdisciplinary artist with a PhD in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, and a BA in Women's Studies from Oberlin College. Her collaborative work involved video, writing, public art, activism and cultural organizing.

As an artist, Dara Greenwald's mission was "to make resistance visible, and present." She was well known for her activist-oriented video and performance art as well as her many collaborations and organizing practice. Her 2005 video work United Victorian Workers was screened at a number of venues including Creative Time's major exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, Democracy in America, curated by Nato Thompson, as well as the Aurora Picture Show, San Francisco Art Institute, and the Brecht Forum. In 2008, Greenwald completed Spectres of Liberty: Ghost of Liberty Street Church, a project in collaboration with artists Josh MacPhee and Olivia Robinson. In a feature in Sculpture Magazine, author Jesse Ball describes the work's intention as an attempt to "make the invisible visible, from daily routines to entire cultural moments" and "to re-create the façade of a missing building and thereby trigger its psycho-physical space in the landscape as well as its historical context." The work consisted of an inflatable model of Liberty Street Presbyterian Church blown up in a parking lot and became a temporary community event space in Troy, NY. The church had originally burned down in 1941 and its memory was revitalized through video projected within the giant inflatable sculpture in collaboration with The Rensselaer County Historical Society. After this project took place, Greenwald, McPhee and Robinson continued working on similar projects under the collective name Spectres of Liberty and received a grant from Franklin Furnace Archive and the Harpo Foundation to continue making work through this collaboration.

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