Joan Braderman (1948–2025) is an American video artist, director, performer, and writer. Braderman's video works are considered to have created her signature style known as "stand up theory." Via this "performative embodiment," she deconstructs and analyzes popular media by inserting chroma-keyed cut-outs of her own body into appropriated mass media images, where she interrogates the representation of ideology (such as money, race and gender) and the transparency of photographic space in U.S. popular culture.
Early life and education Joan Braderman was born in Washington, DC, to parents Betty and Eugene Braderman.
Braderman attended Harvard University, graduating in 1970 with a BA cum laude where she recalls being the only woman in her filmmaking class. In 1971, she entered graduate school at New York University. Braderman's studies began with a focus on 16mm filmmaking. Once in New York City, she studied Cinema Studies, the new graduate department at NYU, but her focus moved on to video art production. She was taught by friends, comrades, and by herself at the free Media Access Centers which could be found in New York state at this time. Throughout the 1970s, Braderman was an anti-war, feminist and civil rights activist, involved in various political organizations. She received her MA from New York University in 1973, and a Masters of Philosophy in 1976.
Personal life Braderman was first married to her work partner, Manuel DeLanda in 1980. She was then married to Robert C. Reckman in 1996. Reckman is a design-builder and co-founder of Construct Associates in Northampton, Massachusetts. He hoped to convince her to remain in Northampton, where he was part of building the town's renaissance. She left New York City and accepted a job at Hampshire College in the well-known Film, Video and Photo Program there.
Career Braderman is a Professor Emerita of Video, Film and Media Studies at Hampshire College. She has taught internationally at institutions such as The School of Visual Arts in New York City, School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, The Hartford University Art School, The Media School at The University of the Arts, London, and the Universidad catolica portuguesa in Porto, Portugal.
She is president of the small video/film company No More Nice Girls Productions. She has served on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts as well as other feminist organizations such as the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse, NYC. She also served on the boards of film and television organizations including the Association of Independent Film and Videomakers (AIVF), publisher of The Independent; The Independent Television Service (ITVS), and others. Braderman worked with several mass organizations for coalition building and shared electoral work for local progressive politicians such as Jose Rivera. In the Coalition for a Peoples Alternative, she had worked with Rivera on organizing the "Peoples' Convention" in 1980 to advocate for affordable housing, and a variety of other issues for which progressives had been fighting. The Convention temporarily reclaimed 12 burnt-out blocks of the South Bronx at Charlotte Street in NYC where they built their own "White House" and Peoples' Park. There, 5,000 delegates from all over the country including Puerto Rico, camped and conducted their plenary sessions in a huge tent on the site.[ABC & NBC News, Aug.1980]
Braderman is a founding member of Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, a magazine produced by a collective of feminist artists and writers to publish work by women in the arts that ran from 1977 to 1993. She wrote and directed her film about the collective, titled The Heretics, in which 24 artists spoke about the times they shared on the project challenging established notions of gender and power. The Heretics was premiered in a solo screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2009, where it ran for a week.
Film, video and writing Braderman's work appears in numerous international permanent collections: The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam The Museum of Modern Art, New York City DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park: Lincoln, Massachusetts Institute of Contemporary Art, London Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris Pacific Film Archive: Berkeley, CA Harvard University Cinematheque: Cambridge, MA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid Wexner Center for the Arts: Columbus, OH Walker Art Center: Minneapolis, MNRich, B. R. Chick flicks: theories and memories of the feminist film movement. Durham: Duke U Press, 2004. Print.
Selected grants and fellowships Honored in 2013 as One of the Best 10 Female Filmmakers in the US by the Documentary Channel March 2013, when it was featured in "Her Take", showcasing documentaries by female filmmakers, a series videos and films, one by each honoree. National Endowment for the Arts; Individual Artist Grant, 1989 Bay Area Video Coalition MediaMaker of the Year Award for 2009 Hewllett – Mellon Foundation (1987, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001–2007) MacArthur Foundation (1998 and 2004) Fulbright Foundation Chair in Electronic Arts, Porto, Portugal (2002) Lemelson Foundation (1994, 1998) Wexner Center for the Arts, Visiting Artist (January & August 1993, Summer 1998) Koopman Chair in the Visual Arts, Hartford Art School, University of Hartford (1996–97) New York State Council on the Arts (1989, 1992, 1994, 1996) The New England Fellowships Program through the NEA & the American Film Institute (1989) The Jerome Foundation (1987–88) New York Foundation for the Arts (1987–88) Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Fellow (1979)
Video and film works + Natalie Didn't Drown – Joan Braderman ‘Reads’ The National Enquirer (1983) 28 min, colour. Braderman's first video to be released and reviewed appeared on NYC Paper Tiger Television in 1983. It features the artist performing a monologue that satirizes the popular tabloid The National Enquirer, interwoven with collaged chromakey images from the magazine itself. Braderman began developing the video after the founder of Paper Tiger TV, Dee Dee Halleck, dared her to slander the editor of the tabloid. Natalie Didn't Drown debuted Braderman's style, delivering her "one woman lunatic performance," later dubbed "Stand-Up Theory". Natalie Didn't Drown was originally broadcast on Paper Tiger TV and shown at the 1984 American Film Institute Video Olympics.Gever, Martha. Papertiger: Television Meets the Press. AFTERIMAGE Magazine. Nov. 1983. Print. Joan Does Dynasty (1986) 31 min, colour. In Joan Does Dynasty, Braderman "offers a comic deconstruction of this hour of U.S. TV; unpacking, on video, some tropes of the most successful and iconic nighttime soap operas of the eighties," through using blue-screened cut-outs of her own body and voice to foreground the techniques used in the dominant media production. Her voice and visual commentary in this work represent gender and class as if they are natural and transparent states of being. She collaborated with Manuel De Landa on the effects for which they became famous. Joan Does Dynasty is considered "the most widely distributed feminist video ever made". Joan Does Dynasty history of exhibition includes the 1987 Whitney Biennial, the Museum of Modern Art, the American Film Institute's National Video Festival, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and the Austria Viennale.Armstrong, Richard, and Whitney Museum of American Art. 1987 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. New York: The Museum, in association with W.W. Norton, 1987. The piece is screened regularly in the syllabuses of courses in video theory and production nationwide. No More Nice Girls (1989) 44 min, colour. Braderman's No More Nice Girls, comments on the artist's lived experience in her community of feminist scholars and artists. The work alternates between fiction and autobiography, following the personal and political lives of multiple female protagonists. No More Nice Girls premiered at The Collective for Living Cinema in New York in 1989 and won first prize at the Daniel Wadsworth National Video Festival in 1990.30 Second Spot Reconsidered: For A Bicentennial Without Colonies (1989) 11min, colour. 30 Second Spot Reconsidered: For A Bicentennial Without Colonies is taken from the true story of the artist in the 1970s when she attempted to purchase network time on broadcast television to advertise counter-bicentennial activities. The video demonstrates how censorship is embedded in the corporate systems that govern broadcast television. 30 Second Spot Reconsidered: For A Bicentennial Without Coloniesis distributed through the Video Data Bank. It won the Critic's Choice Award from The Boston Globe in 1990. Joan Sees Stars (1993) 60 min, colour. Reminiscent of Joan Does Dynasty, Braderman uses editing techniques to insert herself into scenes from popular Hollywood films. Her interaction with the image raises questions about the American fascination with celebrity, and how gender operates in Hollywood film. Joan Sees Stars focuses on the representation of Elizabeth Taylor and other Hollywood divas. The film was co-directed by Dana Master. Video Bites: Framed (1998–1999) 24min, colour Framed is the second installment of the longer piece, Video Bites. It is in current distribution. Video Bites: Framed offers a series of visual metaphors for the ubiquity of the "frame" in contemporary life through using her trademark chroma-key in a new way. Braderman frames and juxtaposes exterior landscapes as well as details or close-ups. The piece premiered at PANDEMONIUM, FESTIVAL FOR MOVING IMAGES, London, where it won the Audience Award in October 1998. It showed at such venues as The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard; "Film Series" at Ithaca College, 1999 and Boston Women in Film at Tufts University in 2000. Para No Olvidar: Los Calles de mi Habana viejo (2004) 6 min, digital, color, sound. A video collage of Old Havana streets, which was seen on the website of the Office of the City of Havana, the organisation responsible for rebuilding the old city. The piece now occupies a place in the Office's permanent collection. The Heretics (2009) Written and directed by Braderman, The Heretics, described as an experimental documentary, is an exploration of the Heresies Collective and Braderman's first feature film. The Heresies Collective is a feminist art group established in 1976 by Braderman, alongside 20 other founding members. The Heretics offers an inside look at one of the thousands of collectives working during the second wave of the feminist movement; it was produced by Crescent Diamond.
The Heretics was shot in 24p mini-dv video. It incorporates interview footage with still images, 3D animation, archival footage, artworks, and staged scenes where young actresses play the roles of collective members. The collage style of the film intentionally recalls the diversity of experience within the feminist art world in the late 1970s and 1980s, as well as the visuals of the Heresies issues themselves. The original soundtrack, primarily created by guitarist and producer June Millington, likewise draws from collage practices. Millington first found success in the all-woman rock band, Fanny, the first group of women rock' n' rollers to sign a recording contract with a major studio.( Warner Bros. Records ) Having played guitar for Chris Williamson, Holly Near, and others, she is considered one of the "godmothers of Women's Music, so she was an especially appropriate choice to create the soundtrack for The Heretics. When she heard the film was in post-production, she tracked down Braderman in her studio, watched the rough-cut for 10 minutes and said, 'All of your music needs were just resolved'."The F Word, Interview & Review, London, UK, 2012