"Banned for Life": The Story of the National Portrait Gallery's iPad Activist

[Sasha]

"Banned for Life": The Story of the National Portrait Gallery's iPad Activist

Courtesy YouTube
Protester Mike Blasenstein with an iPad screening David Wojnarowicz's "A Fire In My Belly" in the National Portrait Gallery





By Ben Davis

Published: December 7, 2010
Protesters Mike Blasenstein and Mike Iacovone were removed from the premises and banned from the Smithsonian Institution.




WASHINGTON, D.C.— Controversy continues to build around the Smithsonian Institution's decision last week to cave in to conservative pressure and pull "A Fire in My Belly," a video work by the late artist David Wojnarowicz, from its place in the National Portrait Gallery's "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture" exhibition. In the past few days, a solidarity campaign has come together, launched by artists, galleries, and major museums. On Saturday, December 4, two activists were detained at the National Portrait Gallery while staging their own protest action. One, Mike Blasenstein, had been standing peacefully beside the entrance to the gallery containing the "Hide/Seek" show, displaying "A Fire in My Belly" on an iPad hung around his neck and holding a stack of fliers with text explaining his action. The second man, artist Mike Iacovone, filmed the action (his footage of the subsequent arrest is available online). Both were released — but only after being made to sign letters pledging not to return to Smithsonian Institution facilities.
Today, ARTINFO spoke with Blasenstein about the experience, why he decided to protest, and what Wojnarowicz means to him.

Why did you decide to go to the National Portrait Gallery with an iPad around your neck?
I just felt this is an important issue. I'm not really an artist or an activist, but when I heard that they took it down, it just seemed to send such a clear negative message. So I thought to myself, I would send my own message and bring this art back into the museum.

Tell me what happened.
Well, I first planned to show the video in the exhibition itself. But when I entered the gallery, I quickly realized that this wasn't going to work — there were more security guards than patrons in there. So then I ended up just outside the entrance to the show, playing the video around my neck and holding out these fliers about the controversy. The most discouraging thing about it was that the few people who came up and took the fliers, as soon as they did, security guards swarmed them, basically forcing them to give back the information.
I had come hoping to be at the National Portrait Gallery all day, just showing this work, but after seeing how many security guards were around I realized that it wasn't going to last long. After a few minutes, a security guard asked me to give him my iPad and the fliers, but I didn't say anything or move. When he understood I wasn't going to cooperate, he said, "I don't have time for this shit," and took them from me.
They told me to turn around and put my wrists together behind my back, but I figured, why should I help them detain me? This is what they call passive resistance, right? And I went limp. At the same time they were surrounding my friend Mike Iacovone, who was filming the whole thing, and handcuffing him. Then they took us both into a stairwell. Security asked us, "Are you going to leave the museum?" and we both said no. They told me that this meant we were going to be arrested, and they called the [Washington, D.C.] Metropolitan Police Department. When MPD came, they left the stairwell with the Smithsonian guards, to confer, I guess. MPD came back and said that instead of arresting us, they were barring us from all Smithsonian facilities instead. We asked for how long, and they only said "a very long time." We both signed the forms.
We asked for copies, but they wouldn't give them to us. Both Mike and I, we left thinking that we were banned for life. Later, a blog got copies of the forms and posted them, and you can see what weird documents they are. On Mike's, it states that he is banned for 12 months, but mine has no time limit at all.

How does it feel to be "banned for life"?
It's upsetting, of course. But it's also silly. It's not really going to affect my life too much, not now. But me being banned from the Smithsonian is not the most important thing. I can fight that later.
Have you ever been banned from any other institutions?
No, none. Not even a bar.

What's next? Do you plan to keep protesting?



Well, yes, definitely. People in D.C. are really riled up about this. This is an important thing. As someone not really connected with art or activist circles, the response has been really encouraging. People keep reaching out to me.
For this kind of censorship to happen in 2010 — I just don't want it to happen again. I was too young to really be aware of all it meant back in the 80s when they were attacking Robert Mapplethorpe. But even then, not having admitted to myself that I was gay, even though I really knew it, I knew that it was an attack, that it was about an attack on gay people.
The whole uproar about the video is awful. But in another way it also makes me happy. When I went in there, when we went into the gallery, I just felt so alone. But it has meant so much to see the outpouring of support, to see that people really care. People really do care. And this is not going to happen again.

source:http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/36...tivist/?page=1

[Pretty Flaco]

What exactly was the video about? I've never heard of it.

[Jimmie Higgins]

What exactly was the video about? I've never heard of it.

The video they were playing was offensive to Christians apparently because it had shots of ants crawling over a crucifix. The art piece is about the pain of people with AIDS - so I guess for the right-wing: how dare this artist use a culturally significant symbol of pain and suffering to represent... people who are suffering horrible pain.

[Sasha]

The Video John Boehner Doesn't Want You to See


— By Stephanie Mencimer
| Mon Dec. 6, 2010 3:01 AM PST


— From "Fire in My Belly" by David Wojnarowicz

Last week, incoming House Speaker John Boehner and incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor were acting like they'd received a gift from above. On November 29, a Christian web news service published a critical story about "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture," a new gay-and-lesbian themed exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery that included a seemingly sacrilegious video of an insect-infested crucifix.In response, the two top House Republicans demanded that the gallery, part of the federally funded Smithsonian Institution, cancel the entire show. Cantor dubbed the exhibit "an outrageous use of taxpayer money."
Their conservative colleagues rushed to bring the wrath of Congress down on a staid institution best known for its First Lady portraits and Gilbert Stuart renderings of George Washington. Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, told Fox News, "If they've got money to squander like this—of a crucifix being eaten by ants, of Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts, men in chains, naked brothers kissing—then I think we should look at their budget."
For congressional Republicans, the kerfuffle was a welcome chance to rile up their base. Evangelical Christians have been uneasy with the rise of the tea party movement and its attempt to focus on fiscal issues to the exclusion of more controversial social ones. The Portrait Gallery provided the GOP leadership with an easy way to reassure socially conservative foot soldiers that it has not forgotten them: Reviving the culture wars of the 1980s, when conservatives crusaded against objectionable federally funded art. Attacking "Hide/Seek" provided an effortless victory with little downside: The artsy types who cried censorship generally don't like Republicans, and Bohner and company know that while the tea party is a vocal part of their coalition, evangelical Christians still make up a much bigger part of the electorate (and there are many tea partiers among them, too). And besides, there's nothing better than a fight over publicly-sponsored gay art to get evangelicals fired up.

The gallery quickly responded to the outcry by yanking "Fire in My Belly," a four-minute film some jokers have dubbed "Anty Christ." The graphic video, made in 1987 by artist David Wojnarowicz, depicts the agonies of AIDS through various representations, including an 11-second shot of ants swarming a wooden crucifix. (See a version of the video below.) The montage also includes clips of a man having his lips sewn together (a reference to the old ACT-UP motto "Silence=Death") and a shot of an erect penis.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether the religious right's indignation can be sustained. It's been more than two decades since congressional Republicans were outraged over giving federal funds to artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, whose infamous "Piss Christ" depicted a crucifix submerged in a jar of his own urine. At this point, most Americans seem beyond shockable, having survived The Vagina Monologues and the onslaught of online porn. Like Wojnarowicz's video, Cantor and Boehner's outrage feels like part of another era, not one where the military is, one way or another, about to allow gays to serve openly and lesbian weddings are chronicled in the society pages of the New York Times.
Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992 at the age 37 from AIDS, might have been amused to see conservatives introducing a new generation to his work. During his lifetime, he did battle with the Christian Right over NEA funding and other controversies. In the late 1980s, the American Family Association used cropped images of his work in an anti-NEA pamphlet; Wojnarowicz successfully sued the group for misusing his work.
On Wednesday afternoon, the scrappy DC art gallery Transformer set up a loop of Wojnarowicz's "Fire in My Belly" in its window on P Street, a bustling commercial strip just north of downtown. I walked past the storefront the following night on my way to the supermarket and watched the video with an eclectic group of passersby, who ranged from art aficionados to Whole Foods shoppers and customers of the low-rent Asian carry-out next door.
The cringes, though, were universal. "Fire in My Belly" makes "Piss Christ" look tame. Shown behind glass at night, the video looks like a horror film, what with the ants, the lips being sewn shut, mummified bodies, and other gruesome images. Outside of the context provided by a museum, the video is fairly inscrutable. Transformer's front door is right next to the Dumpster for a fried-fish place, which meant the video was accompanied by the smell of rotting fish and the sight of scurrying rats. But seeing as Wojnarowicz made his name in the East Village in the late 1970s by painting on top of trash can lids and other public canvases, perhaps this was a better place to appreciate his art than the rarified halls of the National Portrait Gallery.

+ YouTube Video

Stephanie Mencimer is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. For more of her stories, click here.

source: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/12/...narowicz-video