David Wojnarowicz: Screening and Conversation with Cynthia Carr and Ben Neill
EAI is pleased to present an evening in conjunction with Soon All This Will Be Picturesque Ruins: The Installations of David Wojnarowicz at P·P·O·W. The event will include a rare screening of ITSOFOMO (in the shadow of forward motion) (1989-1991), along with A Fire in My Belly (1986-1987), and will be followed by a discussion between composer Ben Neill and writer Cynthia Carr.
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Thursday, August 9, 2017 7:00pm Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) 535 West 22nd Street, 5th Fl. New York, NY 10011 www.eai.org Admission $7, Students $5 Free for EAI Members |
Throughout his paintings, photographs, films, and texts, David Wojnarowicz’s depiction of America as a “country of planes, trains and automobiles” is ominously associated with the violently accelerating machines of state and corporate greed. ITSOFOMO, a multi-media performance collaboration with composer and musician Ben Neill, is a powerful artistic indictments of nationhood and its threat to the lives of those caught in its grip.
ITSOFOMO was originally conceived in 1988, when Neill invited Wojnarowicz to work with him on a performance at The Kitchen. Speed and motion became an early theme as the two, according to Neill, “…met regularly at Disco Donut to develop applications of the phenomena implicit in the theoretical structures of motion within various media and their representations in the six senses.” The result was a charged layering of sound and moving image, spoken word and instrumentation. The first iteration of the performance included images synched across four monitors, dancers, Wojnarowicz’s resonant intonation of his own text, and Neill’s dynamic electronic score. Though the performance was carefully planned and structured, there was also live improvisation as Neill and Wojnarowicz calibrated their instruments of sound and voice.
Neill timed his music to build to an angry finale that amplified Wojnarowicz’s propulsive performance of his text, some of it written as a response to the recent death, from AIDS, of his mentor Peter Hujar. Wojnarowicz had just received his own HIV-positive diagnosis, and the horrifying disconnect between his personal experience of the disease and the Reagan administration’s inhumane handling of the AIDS crisis inflamed Wojnarowicz’s deeply entrenched anger and mistrust. Moving images accompanying Neill and Wojnarowicz’s performance vividly conveys a vision of America’s tainted identity: a backwards flag, soaring eagles and satellites, ads for the Boys Club, Susie Scribbles dolls and Jordache Basics and scenes of threatening velocity – fireworks, cataracts, carnival rides, and a snake slithering forward to devour a mouse.
ITSOFOMO relates to Wojnarowicz’s concept of the “pre-invented world” and dispels the American myth of a “one-tribe nation.” As he says in ITSOFOMO, “We are born into a pre-invented existence, within a tribal nation of zombies. And within that illusion of a one tribe nation there are real tribes. Some of the tribes are in the business of sucker-punching people’s psyches in the form of maintaining the day-to-day job of government. They sell the masses a pile of green-tainted meat, i.e., a corrupted and false history, as well as a corrupted and false future. And although that meat stinks of rot, blood, and puss, this particular tribe extolls these as if they are virtues made of glorious sensitivity.”
Neill and Wojnarowicz performed ITSOFOMO several times following The Kitchen appearance, touring to San Francisco, Seattle, and Minneapolis. The video component was repurposed for Wojnarowicz’s installation, America: Heads of Family/Heads of State, currently on view at P·P·O·W, the same gallery where it was debuted in 1990. Neill and Wojnarowicz planned to continue to develop their performance, but the project was cut short by Wojnarowicz’s death in 1992. A restaging of the original performance with video synched across four channels will be presented at the Whitney Museum in September. David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night is open at the Whitney Museum of American Art through September 30th; Soon All This Will Be Picturesque Ruins: The Installations of David Wojnarowicz at P·P·O·W is open through August 24th.
About EAI
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is a nonprofit arts organization that fosters the creation, exhibition, distribution, and preservation of moving image art. A New York-based international resource for media art and artists, EAI holds a major collection of over 3,500 new and historical media artworks, from groundbreaking early video by pioneering figures of the 1960s to new digital projects by today’s emerging artists. EAI works closely with artists, museums, schools and other venues worldwide to preserve and provide access to this significant archive. EAI services also include viewing access, educational initiatives, extensive online resources, technical facilities, and public programs such as artists’ talks, screenings, and multi-media performances. EAI’s Online Catalogue is a comprehensive resource on the artists and works in the EAI collection, and features expansive materials on media art’s histories and current practices:
www.eai.org
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Electronic Arts Intermix
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10011
t (212) 337-0680
f (212) 337-0679
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This program is made possible in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts’ 2017 Electronic Media and Film Presentation Funds Grant program, administered by the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
