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Some Thoughts on Wojnarowicz and the Never Ending Culture Wars

David Wojnarowicz "A Fire in My Belly" Original from ppow_gallery on Vimeo.

December 16, 2010. The above is taken from the Vimeo page of PPOW Gallery and from the archives of NYU's Fales Library. It represents two segments, of approximately 13 and 7 minutes, that David Wojnarowicz shot and edited on Super 8 in 1986-87, which he entitled "A Fire In My Belly". It is NOT the four minute piece that was yanked from the National Portrait Gallery show on December 1. It is also NOT the video I posted earlier on this blog, with its Diamanda Galas banshee wail/dirge of "Unclean". Nor the segment I have seen with an overlaid soundtrack of a 1980s ACT UP demonstration. Wojnarowicz shot and presented his original footage without sound, a suggestion of the urgency and severity of the political climate that led to the mantra of "Silence = Death".

It is two weeks since the "silencing" of "A Fire In My Belly", and as we near Sunday's rally on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum, it's clear that the culture wars are by no means over. This is hardly news to anyone following the hurtful antics of the Tea Party. Ever more empowered by their victories in the midterm election, the same purveyors of fear and purposeful obfuscation who demonized Obama for the past two years are trying to legislate and coerce the cultural landscape, to make art conform to their hypocritical and faux Christian yardstick. The fact that their cynical misunderstanding and bad intentions AGAIN fall directly on Wojnarowicz's shoulders is testimony to the enduring raw, elemental, and confrontational power of his art. Although the forces of reaction and censorship will always find something to belittle and attempt to repress, we almost have to thank them for forcing the issue and focusing attention on work that especially needs to be discussed and re-evaluated right now, as an antidote to right wing resurgence.


New York Rally to Stop Censorship at the Smithsonian: Sunday December 19, 1:00 PM, steps of the Metropolitan Museum

New Yorkers who want to protest the censorship of David Wojnarowicz’s video at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. get their chance on December 19. Organizers have called a march, gathering at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and concluding at the Cooper-Hewitt on 91st Street (like the National Portrait Gallery, the C-H is a Smithsonian Institution).

Protest Sunday, December 19 at 1:00 PM in New York City and take collective action for free expression.

GATHER on the Metropolitan Museum steps Fifth Ave. & 82nd Street

Then MARCH to the Cooper-Hewitt/Smithsonian FIFTH Ave. & 91st Street


David Wojnarowicz's "A Fire In My Belly"


The presumptive Republican Speaker of the House, orange-faced crybaby John Boehner, currently bathing in a post-electoral glow, is taking a retrograde Conservative stand against freedom of expression, calling for censorship of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, an exhibition of "gay art" at the National Portrait Gallery, and threatening a curtailment of government funds if they do not bow to his will. The NPG has cravenly caved in and removed David Wojnarowicz's 1987 video, "A Fire in My Belly", from the exhibition.

We have undertaken the necessary corrective of posting it above.


Protest over BP arts sponsorship rocks UK arts institutions

A related posting on this site.

from The Guardian:

The summer season of events at Britain's most prestigious galleries and museums will be picketed by artists and green groups intent on portraying BP's arts sponsorship as a toxic brand.

Protests are planned next Monday by an eco-alliance styling itself "Good Crude Britannia" at Tate Britain's celebration of its 20-year association with the international oil conglomerate.

Climate change activists, artists and musicians opposed to the fossil fuel industry are determined to highlight BP's link to the arts in the context of the company's international embarrassment over the continuing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.


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