Reflections on David Wojnarowicz and the Cross Country Tapes

Join Printed Matter St Marks on June 30 at 4pm for a conversation with Sur Rodney Sur, Jane Dickson and Cynthia Carr moderated by John Reed, reflecting on the their personal anecdotes of David Wojnarowicz’s life and work. The event will include a listening segment from the Cross Country Tapes project published in 2018 by Reading Group.

David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) was a writer and artist active in New York’s Downtown scene in the 1970’s and 80’s. In the 1980’s Wojnarowicz become one of the central figures in the AIDS struggle, as well as the target of homophobic censorship efforts by the American Family Association.

Wojnarowicz kept written and cassette tape journals throughout his adult life. The Cross Country Tapes is three-disc vinyl release publishes for the first time three of Wojnarowicz’s tape journals, documenting his thoughts, dreams, fears, and environment during two separate road trips he took to the American Southwest and West Coast in the first half of 1989. The original cassettes are archived as part of the Wojnarowicz Collection at Fales Special Collections and Library at New York University. Wojnarowicz died in New York in 1992.

This event brings together a group of creatives who were foundational to the downtown New York art scene to honor another great artist on the last day of Pride month. We will also be sharing a range of related Wojnarowicz books and ephemera, rare and recent.