Saturday, December 26, 2015

David Wojnarowicz - 'A Fire In My Belly' (ft. music by Diamanda Galas) - for Silence=Death (1989)

David Wojnarowicz has had more direct impact upon me than any other artist. He showed me that art and life were indivisible, that political activity was bound up with all of what we do, and that our spiritual being was both forged and manifest in these acts. This was a time in the United States in which The State and The Church were in immediate and constant collusion on multiple fronts to allow and control the spread of a plague they believed it would grant them a controlled genocide of 'undesirable elements', chiefly gay men and IV drug users. David Wojnarowicz and Diamanda Galas were artists who refused to let this pass quietly and who made this central policy the topic of much of their art for the 1980's, even as it felled their loved ones, and in the case of Wojnarowicz, themselves. This version of 'A Fire In The Belly' was approved by Wojnarowicz in his lifetime, and was displayed and then removed from the National Portrait Gallery in an act of State Censorship. It was kindly uploaded to YouTube by its producer, Michael Lupetin. Thank You So Very Much for making this available. Here also is an excerpt from ITSOFOMO (In The Shadow Of FOrward MOtion) by David Wojnarowicz and Ben Neill, also exhibited in 1989 and kindly uploaded to YouTube by Ben Neill: RISE TO GREET THE STATE, TO CONFRONT THE STATE.

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