StorePast Event
David Wojnarowicz 70th Birthday Celebration
Readings from The Waterfront Journals with music by Rimbaud Hattie
Date:
Saturday, September 14, 2024 from 5:00pm–7:00pm
Price: Free
Visual AIDS EventLocation:
New York City AIDS Memorial76 Greenwich Ave
New York, NY , 10011
United States
David Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York, 1978-1979. Courtesy of P·P·O·W and the David Wojnarowicz Foundation
PRESENTED IN COLLABORATION WITH THE DAVID WOJNAROWICZ FOUNDATION, P·P·O·W, & the New York City AIDS Memorial
On the occasion of what would be his 70th birthday, the David Wojnarowicz Foundation in collaboration with the New York City AIDS Memorial, Visual AIDS, and P·P·O·W will stage 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.
The band Rimbaud Hattie—comprised of Wojnarowicz’s former 3 Teens Kill 4 bandmates Doug Bressler and Julie Hair, along with John Kelly—will accompany the readings. Following the performances, a candlelit procession will move from the New York City AIDS Memorial to the LGBTQ Memorial in Hudson River Park, symbolically ushering Wojnarowicz’s spirit in communal recognition and celebration. The NYC AIDS Memorial will also unveil a park bench dedicated to Wojnarowicz to memorialize his championing of the fight against HIV/AIDS.
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 will bring 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 will kick off with an 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) will anchor 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 will continue the festivities, hosting an evening of readings and activations on September 13. During the event, Wojnarowicz’s film, ITSOFOMO, will be screened with a live musical accompaniment by Ben Neill, former collaborator and composer of the film’s original score in 1989. This screening will mark 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, a number of the artist’s friends and champions across multiple generations will recite passages that span the artist’s output, from his iconic memoir Close to The Knives to lesser-known personal notes and missives.
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. This year, amid the seventieth anniversary of his birth, Wojnarowicz’s work will be featured in group exhibitions at Saar Historical Museum, Saarbrücken, Germany, and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California.
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