Video
You Killed Me First-Installation
"People have a television sometimes when they're eating."- Richard Kern
In December of 1985, Ground Zero Gallery hosted David Wojnarowicz's collaboration with Richard Kern, Installation 8, which incorporated elements of Kern's film, You Killed Me First. Although the film was originally shot by Kern on Super 8mm, Kern had the film transferred to videocassette at a trusted facility, Brodsky-Treadway, in Boston for Wojnarowicz's installation. This is the first time that Wojnarowicz would incorporate video elements into his exhibited work. The video played on loop, with audio, throughout the extent of the installation, along with multiple recorders placed around the gallery of found nature sounds.
For more details about this installation, please visit the Installation 8 page.
In The Shadow of Forward Motion
"[Wojnarowicz] videotape was reportedly the most striking element of the performance piece."[1] Not only were the video element of Wojnarowicz's performance striking but it stands as the most completed moving image work by the artist. Many elements from In The Shadow of Forward Motion or ITSOFOMO's video were edited together from Super 8mm footage Wojnarowicz's had taken over the last four years. Similar to the recontextualized Mexico footage in Rosa von Praunheim's Silence=Death, footage from Wojnarowic'z unfinished Mexico film, widely known as A Fire in My Belly, appears frequently in ITSOFOMO.
Originally, the film was shown on as a multi-channel projection, alongside a live soundtrack performed by Ben Neill. The performance was also performed with a four-channel projection on a single screen, synced with a record which included a recorded version of the previous performances. The text was recorded at Jim Thirwells studio, (Listed as Foetus studios), Lydia Lunch's studio (listed as Lunch Studio), and Fun City Studios. Voices were recorded at a "Hollerin' Contest" in North Carolina in 1989. Although ITSOFOMO was edited on U-Matic, with the help of Phil Zwickler, who also provided a free editing facility, it was transferred to four VHS tapes for the original performances. Each tape is 00:60:00 minutes.
For more information about this performance please visit the Multimedia Performance page.- ↑ Lippard, Lucy R. "Passenger on the Shadows." Aperture, no. 137 (1994): 6-25. http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2105/stable/24471705.
