Rating: NNN
Back in the 80s, David Wojnarowicz was spewing dark chunks of art all over Lower Manhattan. Pleasure Dome’s screening — a first in Canada and co-presented with the Splice This! Super 8 film festival — shows DW collaborating on sometimes predictable fantasies of art rebellion. Richard Kern’s You Killed Me First stars Wojnarowicz and the notorious Karen Finley as a mom and dad pitted against their misfit, murderous daughter. The teen devil-worshipping Where Evil Dwells provides the missing link between Kenneth Anger and Harmony Korine.
After Wojnarowicz was diagnosed with HIV in 1987, his work took a more directly political turn. His safer-sex video Fear Of Disclosure makes a pitch for clarity. But he was more complicated than that. The best piece in the program is Fire In My Belly, a mixmaster travelogue combining Mexican pop culture with Wojnarowicz’s own private system of symbols. It was completed after his death. (June 21, 7 pm, Tranzac Club)
THE EFFACEMENT OF SELF: THE COLLABORATIVE FILM AND VIDEO WORK OF DAVID WOJNAROWICZ
Rating: NNN
