David Wojnarowicz at SFAI

Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Feb 11, 2011; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8

FIERY CONTROVERSY Film removed from Smithsonian comes to Santa Fe Art Institute Art Issues

MALIN WILSON-POWELL

For the Journal

David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly” — the artwork currently censored by the Smithsonian Institution — is on view in ourfair city. It was removed from the National Portrait Gallery “Hide/ Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture”exhibition that opened Oct. 30 and is closing this Sunday. This unfinished 20-year-old film has received worldwide attentionand become the unlikely eye of a much bigger storm. Ultimately, it is the excuse for another skirmish in an ongoing culturewar. Secretary of the Smithsonian G. Wayne Clough first pulled the film after a manufactured outcry comprised of the CatholicLeague’s e-mail list and endorsed by conservative members of Congress. Since early December, many, many institutionsstepped forward to put the work on view. The first venue was the feisty D.C. notfor-profit Transformer space. To date, not onlyhas the Museum of Modern Art acquired and exhibited the piece, but also video copies of “Fire” have been showingcontinuously at such venerable institutions as the Courtauld Institute in London. It is running on a continuous video loop at theSanta Fe Art Institute through Friday, Feb. 25, when SFAI is hosting a panel discussion that evening on the issue ofgovernment censorship. The panel lineup includes art world luminaries Robert Atkins, Roger Bedoya, Harmony Hammond andLucy Lippard, all of whom are veterans of previous shameful episodes of censorship and have long track records of vigilanceand activism.

For the next two weeks, visitors to SFAI can see for themselves the barrage of images assembled by Wojnarowicz for hisincomplete 13-minute film “A Fire in My Belly” from 1986-87. Buried in a fast-paced montage of the everyday brutalities of lifein Mexico, it is very hard to see the scandal in the 11-second image of a crucifix crawling with ants. More obscene by anymeasure of human decency are streets scenes of children and the handicapped reduced to begging, and the glorification ofsuch sports as cockfighting. Also, mixed into the flurry of images, are toughto-watch performance shots of a mouth bloodilystitched together so it cannot speak, blood dripping and splashing into a bowl, a bandaged, bloodied open palm with coinscascading from above.

Considering how automatic it is to avert our gaze from violence and poverty, in a 1989 interview Wojnarowicz said: “Animalsallow us to view certain things that we wouldn’t allow ourselves to see in regard to human activity. In the Mexican photographswith coins and the clock and the gun and the Christ figure and all that, I used the ants as a metaphor for society because thesocial structure of the ant world is parallel to ours. “

In the artist’s archives at New York University Fales Library & Special Collections, there is a cutting script the artist wasworking from that confirms sections are missing from the original 13-minute version. From this document, it is clear that hadthe artist completed the film, it would have run longer. Originally shot on grainy Super 8 mm film, “Fire” did not have asoundtrack. A 7-minute excerpt was discovered on another film reel in Wojnarowicz’s collection that was used by the artist andRosa Von Praunheim in von Praunheim’s 1989 film “Silence = Death,” with music from Plaque Mass by Diamanda Galas. This isthe YouTube version of “Fire” that is available online, with 8,203 viewers counted by Monday, Feb. 7.

As strange as it may seem, the center of the controversy –– the “Hide/Seek” version of “Fire” is actually a 4-minute edit fromthe 7-minute “Silence = Death” version, with an added soundtrack derived from an audiocassette in the artist’s archive andapproved by the artist’s estate. It is an abbreviated, secondary and relatively minor work by this important artist, with a themethat seamlessly follows a long lineage of images of the suffering Christ in Western art. Since Wojnarowicz died in 1992, noevidence has turned up, as yet, as to why the artist never completed his film. No one knows.

The author of the “outrage” that started the censorship ball rolling is an even more roundabout tale. Most news coveragenames the Catholic League as the source of the huge public brouhaha directed at the National Portrait Gallery. But investigativereporter Kriston Capps (at washingtoncitypaper. com) picked up the thread that led back to conservative talking head BrentBozell. Bozell founded the Parents Television Council in 1995 to flood authorities with indecency complaints. Bozell also foundedthe Media Research Center in 1987, a Webbased conservative newsroom, where Penny Starr is employed. In November, Starrcontacted House and Senate leaders contending: “The Smithsonian, is running an exhibition through the Christmas season thatfeatures an ant-covered Jesus and what the Smithsonian itself calls ‘homoerotic’ art. Should this exhibition continue or be

FIERY CONTROVERSY http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...

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canceled?” John Boehner and Eric Cantor’s offices responded with predictable talking points, and, yikes, the National PortraitGallery removed the work. As journalist Capps noted, “This is hardly organic outrage.”

A tsunami of protests and opinions has followed, and the fallout has been instructive. Smithsonian Secretary Clough neverfound his backbone. He could have done the simplest thing as his misstep became clear, i.e., uncensor the Wojnarowicz andput it back on view. In contrast, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, a member institution of the Smithsonian, didrise to the challenge with a January “Open Letter from the Board of Trustees” warning: “The attempt by any individual or groupto restrict the content … that may be shown at the institution that serves the public as a whole is counter not only to thefounding American principle of freedom of thought and expressions, but also to the spirit of inquiry at the core of theSmithsonian’s mission.”

Not only has this debate greatly expanded the audience for Wojarnowicz’s artwork, it has also further educated and alerted theinterested public about the mechanisms used by the very few who presume to speak for the many through loud and dishonestbullying.

If you go

WHAT: David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly” WHERE: Santa Fe Art Institute, 1600 St. Michael’s Drive WHEN: ThroughFeb. 25. Looping continuously Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-5p.m. COST: Free CONTACT: 505-424-5050 or [email protected]

COURTESY THE DAVID WOJNAROWICZ ESTATE, P.P.O.W. GALLERY, NEW YORK AND THE FALES LIBRARY, NEWYORK UNIVERSITY

A fire-eating street performer shows up in the montage of daily life in Mexico from David Wojnarowicz’s film “A Fire in MyBelly.”


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David Wojnarowicz’s unfinished, controversial, 20-year-old film “A Fire in My Belly” is running as a continuous video loop at theSanta Fe Art Institute through Feb. 25.


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An 11-second image of a crucifix crawling with ants is buried in the fast-paced montage of brutal images from DavidWojnarowicz’s film “A Fire in My Belly.”


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Documents

David Wojnarowicz at SFAI