Saturday Nights at the Getty Presents ITSOFOMO by David Wojnarowicz and Ben Neill

Mark your calendars for January 11, 2020, at the Getty Center for ITSOFOMO (In the Shadow of Forward Motion), a multimedia performance created by artist David Wojnarowicz and composer/musician Ben Neill.

First presented as a live performance at New York’s interdisciplinary performance space The Kitchen in 1989, ITSOFOMO binds the haunting urgency of Wojnarowicz’s words to a sinister, elastic composition by Neill.

Integrating music, text, and video in a multi-dimensional format, the work embodies the act of acceleration and its sensory manifestations. A fierce meditation on history and power, Wojnarowicz’s words addressed the accelerating AIDS crisis and the politics of AIDS in the United States, set to music from Neill’s “mutantrumpet,” a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument. Four videos run simultaneously for the duration of the work, incorporating a wide range of the unflinching imagery typical of Wojnarowicz’s visual style that explore timeless themes of American myths, spirituality, sexuality, and death.

For this rare performance, Neill reprises his work, performing alongside the original percussionist Don Yallech, and Wojnarowicz’s film imagery and recorded voice. This event falls on the heels of ITSOFOMO’s first performance in New York in 25 years at the Whitney Museum, staged in conjunction with their retrospective exhibition David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night in 2018, and the 2019 reissue of the original recording on vinyl by Jabs Recordings, a Los Angeles-based record label run by curator Ethan Swan.

ITSOFOMO
Saturday, January 11, 2020
7:30 p.m.

Admission is free! For tickets and information visit https://www.getty.edu/visit/cal/events/ev_3054.html

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Dr. Jerry Doby Editor-in-Chief of The Hype Magazine, Media and SEO Consultant, Journalist, Ph.D. and retired combat vet. 2023 recipient of The President's Lifetime Achievement Award. Partner at THM Media Group. Member of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, the United States Press Agency and ForbesBLK.