Category:Interviews

Interviews are conducted as part of the research for the David Wojnarowicz Knowledge Base with friends, collaborators, curators, conservators, gallerists, and gallery staff who worked with Wojnarowicz or with Wojnarowicz's work in different capacities. This range of perspectives on the work preserves differing accounts of Wojnarowicz and his work. Among those that knew him personally, many recounted that Wojnarowicz tended to keep his relationships separate from one another, and would reveal different parts of himself depending on the relationship. Those that encountered his work professionally (ex. curators, gallerists, and conservators) similarly offered different views on Wojnarowicz's art and its display and preservation. These interviews were conducted by project directors Marvin Taylor and Glenn Wharton, along with other project staff.

Another goal of these interviews is to elucidate details of Wojnarowicz's media, techniques, and equipment in order to aid in the future conservation of his work. While some of these details are shared through interviews, and can be found throughout the medium-specific pages on this site, many interviewees relayed that Wojnarowicz simply did not discuss his artistic process in these terms. Aperture editor Melissa Harris noted "It’s much more likely that we would have talked about something that had to do with politics or censorship or AIDS than it is that we would have talked about his process," and others echoed this statement. While Wojnarowicz clearly experimented relentlessly with different media, created meticulous work, and made detailed plans and sketches for the realization of the mental images he sought to render in physical form, a common refrain throughout the interviews was that Wojnarowicz valued the communication of the message above any engagement with particular media.