The work of Gretchen Bender (1951, Seaford, Delaware – 2004, New York) uses ‘media against itself—to have it entertaining and critical simultaneously’ (1). During the 1980s she became aligned with the artists from the Pictures Generation, producing video works and installations that appropriate elements from television, films and corporate aesthetics. In 1984, through the artist Amy Denker, she gained access to the equipment of the Computer Graphics Lab at the Institute of Technology in New York where she started to incorporate computer-generated images into her work. Wild Dead (1984) brings together logos for General Electric and AT&T among others, reproducing them alongside contemporary artworks and abstract computer graphics. These are set to a soundscape by Stuart Argabright and Michael Diekmann. These alternate at a rapid pace that evokes the disrupted stream of remote-controlled television. ‘I think of the media as a cannibalistic river. A flow or current that absorbs everything’ (2), Bender stated in 1987.

(1) Gretchen Bender to Peter Doroshenko, Everson Museum of Art.
(2) ‘Gretchen Bender by Cindy Sherman’, BOMB Magazine, 1 January 1987.