#wojnarowicz

[certainwoman]

Wojnarowicz: F--k You F-ggot F--ker (2020), dir. Chris McKim

[bettedavissmoking]

“David Wojnarowicz (Silence = Death),” Andreas Sterzing, 1989. This portrait of the artist David Wojnarowicz was made by Andreas Sterzing in 1989, a year in which AIDS was estimated by the Centers for Disease Control to be the second leading cause of death among men 25 to 44 years of age. Wojnarowicz started out as an avant-garde painter and filmmaker in Lower Manhattan, but his work became far more politically charged after he discovered, around 1987, that he was H.I.V. positive. His sewn-up mouth became a recurring image in his art and activism, a gesture that took the slogan “Silence = Death,” which had been adopted as a rallying cry by AIDS activists and serves as the picture’s subtitle, to its logical, literal extreme. The task of educating the public about the crisis was largely left to activists and artists like Wojnarowicz. “I think what I really fear about death is the silencing of my voice,” he once said. “I feel this incredible pressure to leave something of myself behind.” #WorldAIDSDay #DavidWojnarowicz #Wojnarowicz #AndreasSterzing #SilenceEqualsDeath #KnowYourStatus https://www.instagram.com/p/CW-BftRMIui/?utm_medium=tumblr

[weneverlearn]

DAVID WOJNAROWICZ: LIFE INSIDE HIS BURNING HOUSE

David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992), multimedia artist, musician, AIDS activist and provocateur, brought a punk sensibility to NYC’s downtown gallery world. Director Chris McKim has released a searing new documentary, Wojnarowicz: F*ck You F*ggot F**ker.

David Wojnarowicz was an incredibly inventive NYC street artist of the late 1970s, who soon developed his work into some gallery acclaim, had a no wave group for a bit, and finally, and maybe most crucially, became a loud and pissed AIDS activist during the evil days of Ronald Reagan, before succumbing to the disease himself in 1992.

F*ck You F*ggot F**ker is an amazing new documentary about his life. I interviewed the director of the film, Chris McKim. He was also co-creator of RuPaul’s Drag Race. 

Check out our chat, above. 

[nicethingsthose]

“If I die of AIDS, forget burial - just drop my body on the steps of the FDA” (1990) - David Wojnarowicz

[panharmopticon]

Last night I felt unbelievably sad and sometimes it happens that way: a sensation comes out across the landscape into the cities and further into the window of the car as I'm coasting the labyrinths of the canyon streets. It feels for a moment like nothing more than wind; it's something I don't see coming and suddenly it's upon me and my eyes are blurring with tears and fragmented spills of neon and ghostly bodies of pedestrians and smokestacks and traffic lights and I'm gasping from a sense of loss and desire. I can't think of anything I am truly afraid of and I'm trying to give something unspeakable words; some of us live in big cities so we can be alone, so we can avoid ourselves, and yet by living within massive populations we can have help or love within reach if necessary. I am fearful of something more than fear: it's something in the landscape surrounding the cities and smaller towns between here and the coast, something out there that feels so empty and it is not made of earth or muscle or fur; it's like a pocket of death but with no form other than the light one might cast upon its trail of fragments. For a moment I think it's just the unfamiliarity of the landscape's agenda, what it contains in the future of its emptiness. I mean, out there I am in and surrounded by a void, a 'natural' counterpart to the industrial void of the cities. Out there I can feel buried under the dome of the sky and feel claustrophobic in the heat which is like a plastic cushion pressing unseen against all the surfaces of my exposed body and in all that dizzying stillness I feel like my soul and my flesh will suddenly and abruptly be consumed within the civilizational landscape or else expelled off the face of the earth. What troubles me is that I might not mind.

David Wojnarowicz, “Soon This Will All Be Picturesque Ruins” (1991)

[open24hours-backin5minutes]

‘Wojnarowicz’ Trailer: Provocative Artist and AIDS Activist Gets His Due in Documentary

Exclusive: A contemporary of Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe, "Wojnarowicz: F*** You F****t F***er" pays homage to David Wojnarowicz.

I need to see this! 

[beautifulstrangefortheeye]

[desjolieschoses]

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Face in Dirt), 1990.