“I want to throw up because we’re supposed to quietly and politely make house in this killing machine called America and pay taxes to support our own slow murder and I’m amazed that we’re not running amok in the streets, and that we can still be capable of gestures of loving after lifetimes of all this” (Wojnarowicz 108).
Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration will be the subject of a free and informal discussion at Real Art Ways on Wednesday, February 9th from 6-7pm. Real Art Ways is located at 56 Arbor Street in Hartford.
Reading this text is an experience like battling a fever, in which one dips in and out of consciousness. It’s at once a dreamworld blur and a perfectly focused picture of an outsider’s life in America.
In late 2010, the Smithsonian removed Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly video from its National Portrait Gallery. Various museums and galleries, including Real Art Ways and the Wadsworth Atheneum, in protest of the censorship, showed this video or displayed other pieces of the artist and author’s work.