Event: David Wojnarowicz 70 Years
Readings from The Waterfront Journals by Morgan Bassichis, Nayland Blake, Peter McGough, James Romberger, Pamela Sneed, Paul Soileau, Tommy Turner, Marguerite Van Cook, with Amy Scholder. Music by Rimbaud Hattie (Doug Bressler, Julie Hair, and John Kelly)
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Presented in collaboration with the David Wojnarowicz Foundation, P·P·O·W, & Visual AIDS
Gallery:
About the Event:
On the occasion of what would have been his 70th birthday, the David Wojnarowicz Foundation in collaboration with the New York City AIDS Memorial, Visual AIDS, and P·P·O·W staged a production of Wojnarowicz’s seminal monologues, The Waterfront Journals, a collection of autobiographical fiction inspired by the many people he encountered in his early twenties. Readers included Tommy Turner, James Romberger, Marguerite Van Cook, Peter McGough, Nayland Blake, Morgan Bassichis, Paul Soileau, and Pamela Sneed, with introductions by Amy Scholder, were accompanied by the band Rimbaud Hattie—comprised of Wojnarowicz’s former 3 Teens Kill 4 bandmates Doug Bressler and Julie Hair, along with John Kelly. The Memorial also unveiled a park bench dedicated to Wojnarowicz to memorialize his championing of the fight against HIV/AIDS. Following the performances, a procession moved from the New York City AIDS Memorial to Hudson River Park, symbolically ushering Wojnarowicz’s spirit in communal recognition and celebration.
Born September 14, 1954, Wojnarowicz came of age enmeshed in and inspired by the countercultural scene of downtown New York in the 1970s. A prolific painter, printer, photographer, writer, and activist, Wojnarowicz spoke to the social iniquities he recorded firsthand in his memoirs, graffiti, and virtuosic multimedia compositions. His works were widely shown at such iconic downtown venues as Civilian Warfare, Gracie Mansion Gallery, and P·P·O·W.
Other programs brought together multiple generations of artists, performers, musicians, and speakers to showcase Wojnarowicz’s original artworks and reify the relevance of his practice more than thirty years after his untimely passing from AIDS-related illness in 1992. The events started with a sold-out, outdoor screening at the Museum of Modern Art on the evening of September 11. Wojnarowicz’s late-80s films In The Shadow of Forward Motion (ITSOFOMO) (1989) and A Fire In My Belly (1986-87) anchored a night dedicated to the artist’s incredible use of collaged footage to address socio-cultural topics while contextualizing Wojnarowicz’s output among his contemporaries and filmmakers one generation removed. Following this, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art continued the festivities, hosting another sold-out evening of readings and activations on September 13. During the event, Wojnarowicz’s film, ITSOFOMO, was screened with a live musical accompaniment by Ben Neill, former collaborator and composer of the film’s original score in 1989. This screening marked the first time Neill has played alongside the film in six years, most recently performing a live score as part of Wojnarowicz’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2018. Preceding the performance, several of the artist’s friends and champions across multiple generations, including Cynthia Carr, Carlos Motta, and Sur Rodney (Sur), recited passages that span the artist’s output, from his iconic memoir Close to The Knives to lesser-known personal notes and missives.
Press:
About David Wojnarowicz:
David Wojnarowicz (1954 -1992) was among the most incisive and prolific American artists of the 1980s and 90s. Wojnarowicz’s work has been the subject of career retrospectives at major institutions including Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois (1990); New Museum, New York (1999); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018); Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2019); and Musee d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (2019). The artist’s work is held in prominent public collections worldwide, such as Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles, California; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Tate, London, United Kingdom; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among many others. In 2022, the solo exhibition Dear Jean Pierre: The David Wojnarowicz Correspondence with Jean Pierre Delage, 1979-1982 at P·P·O·W unveiled an archive of letters, drawings, and photographs from Wojnarowicz’s early career, followed by the release of a catalog published by Primary Information in 2023. In 2024, the seventieth anniversary of his birth, Wojnarowicz’s work will be featured in group exhibitions at Saar Historical Museum, Saarbrücken, Germany, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California.
About Rimbaud Hattie:
David Wojnarowicz and Brian Butterick met at a poetry reading in Prospect Park in the 1970s. The concept of “Rimbaud in America” appears after Brian, who had attained the nickname “Rimbaud” (after the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, with a nod to his intellect) by his circle of friends while living in Provincetown, 1977, went on to portray Rimbaud in the majority of David’s “Rimbaud In New York” photography series from 1978 to 1981. The two lived together in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, and collaborated on many film and music projects including the band “3 Teens Kill 4”, which also included Doug Bressler and Julie Hair, who now play in Rimbaud Hattie.
Rimbaud Hattie was formed out of the deep love of Brian Butterick, also known as “Hattie” (Hattie Hathaway was his drag persona that was born at the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge). Each of the four artists in this collective - comprised of Doug Bressler, Julie Hair, John Kelly, and Heather Litteer - had creative relationships with Brian, and some of our songs also reflect the relationship between Brian and David. One mission they share is to keep the spirit of “Hattie” alive through an ongoing collaboration of music and performance.
About the Readers:
Morgan Bassichis is a comedic performer whose recent shows include Can I Be Frank? (La MaMa, June 2024), about the queer performance artist Frank Maya, and A Crowded Field (Abrons Arts Center, April 2023), about the use and abuse of Jewish holidays by Zionism. Morgan is co-editor with Jay Saper and Rachel Valinsky of Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitzvah, published by Wendy's Subway in August 2023.
Nayland Blake is an artist, writer, educator and curator, whose works on race, sexuality and gender have been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. Their career retrospective “No Wrong Holes - 30 years of Nayland Blake” opened in 2019 at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and closed in 2021 at the MIT LIst Center. They are currently the co-director of the studio art program at Bard College.
James Romberger's pastel drawings are in numerous collections, and his art has been exhibited at Grace Borgenicht, P·P·O·W, Gracie Mansion, James Fuentes, and many other galleries in New York. In the 1980s, Romberger and his partner Marguerite Van Cook co-directed the noted East Village installation gallery Ground Zero, twice showing David Wojnarowicz. Romberger's graphic novels include the gay-themed 2020 Visions, Aaron and Ahmed, and the New York Times bestseller 7 Miles A Second with Wojnarowicz, which was also on display in the New Museum's 1999 Wojnarowicz retrospective and exhibited in MoMA's millennium show Open Ends. Romberger and Van Cook co-star (as themselves) in Make Me Famous (2021), an acclaimed feature documentary film about the career and mysterious death of Edward Brezinski, another of their Ground Zero artists, currently showing at film festivals worldwide.
Amy Scholder has produced two highly acclaimed feature films: My Name is Andrea, about the radical feminist Andrea Dworkin; and Disclosure, a history of transgender representation in film and TV. As a visionary leader in independent book publishing, Amy Scholder has brought high visibility to her authors and has been praised for her contribution to contemporary literature and popular culture. She met David Wojnarowicz in 1986 when she was an editor at City Lights Books. She published several books by David including Memories That Smell Like Gasoline, The Waterfront Journals, and In The Shadow of the American Dream.
Pamela Sneed is a poet, performer, and visual artist. Among her four volumes of poetry is Funeral Diva, which was widely featured, and won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry. She has been published in The Paris Review, Frieze magazine, Artforum, and the Academy of American Poets. Her visual work was featured in the group show Omniscient (2021–22) at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York. She performed the music of Big Mama Thornton, as part of the Juke Joint at the Park Avenue Armory, in March of 2023, in Head Back, Eyes to Sky in June 2023, and Hope Against Hope in May 2024, both at the New York City AIDS Memorial.
Paul Soileau is a performer and artist manipulating and perverting the realms of gender, identity, and good taste. He is best known for his personas CHRISTEENE and Rebecca Havemeyer. Paul’s work has been presented in spaces ranging from The Barbican Centre in London to The Parkside Lounge in NYC. He has collaborated with numerous acclaimed artists including Faith No More, Peaches, Justin Vivian Bond, Fever Ray, John Grant, Kembra Pfahler, Suicide, David Hoyle, and Marc Almond. He resides with his cat, Tickles Pickles, in Brooklyn, NY.
Tommy Turner is from New York City. He's an artist and filmmaker, whose work has been shown in many galleries and museums. Tommy met David at a club that they worked at, in 1982. Tommy says, "We worked together and became friends. We went on excursions taking photos, and road trips in his car. We collaborated on several projects, from performances to mags to our film, Where Evil Dwells. He was such an inspiration in my life."
Dr. Marguerite Van Cook is an artist, musician, writer, scholar, performer, and formerly the owner of Ground Zero, a gallery in 1980s New York that twice showed David Wojnarowicz. Additionally, she collaborated with David Wojnarowicz and James Romberger on 7 Miles a Second, a graphic memoir of Wojnarowicz’s life and death. She also is the author of a generational graphic memoir The Late Child and Other Animals with James Romberger. She has a leading role as herself in the acclaimed documentary feature The Brezinski Project. She is currently the president of the board at Visual AIDS and a board member at Unbuilt Labs, a think tank that addresses global sustainable development goals. She is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and Hunter College.
Support:
This event is presented in collaboration with the David Wojnarowicz Foundation and P·P·O·W, with support from Visual AIDS. Cultural programming at the New York City AIDS Memorial is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
The David Wojnarowicz Foundation’s mission is to preserve, advance, and honor the legacy and life of David Wojnarowicz—his art, his writings, his fierce commitment to social justice, and the cause of persons with HIV/AIDS. The Foundation is created to inspire and foster a new generation of queer artists and writers to find their voice, pursue their truth, and continue the activism that so defined Wojnarowicz’s life and art. Through scholarships and grants, the Foundation assists organizations and individuals supporting these ideals.
Photography: Avery Brunkus