A Fire In My Belly (Film In Progress) and A Fire In My Belly (Excerpt)

A Fire in My Belly is one of the most notorious and least understood films in contemporary art. Notorious because of its removal, in 2010, from an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery after the Catholic League and conservative members of the House of Representatives complained that an 11-second scene depicting ants crawling on a crucifix amounted to anti-Christian hate speech. Misunderstood because the cut produced for that exhibition (“Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture”) was re-edited from disassembled footage from a work in progress that Wojnarowicz never completed or presented during his lifetime. Rather, the artist edited and intercut the disassembled footage for use in Rosa von Praunheim’s 1990 documentary, Silence = Death. Most viewers now equate Wojnarowicz’s film with the 1990 or 2010 excerpts and with AIDS activism in general (the 1990 version is associated with Diamanda Galas’s “This is the Law of the Plague”; the 4-minute edit shown in 2010 added a soundtrack from a June, 1989 ACT-UP demonstration).



As originally envisioned by Wojnarowicz, A Fire in My Belly actually exists as two silent, fragmentary configurations comprising footage shot on Super 8mm film in three locations (Mexico, 1986; New York City, 1986 – 87; San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1987): 1) a 13-minute version opening with a title card and closing with an end title (“Film in Progress David Wojnarowicz 1986 – 87”); and 2) a 7-minute excerpt in a canister labelled “Mexico, etc… Peter, etc…” that arguably contains the most well-known sequences, including the photographer Peter Hujar on his deathbed; ants crawling on coins and on a crucifix; and Wojnarowicz apparently sewing his mouth shut. Together, these two incomplete films illuminate the larger project that the artist never finished. Beyond a reaction to the AIDS crisis, A Fire in My Belly touches on colonial exploitation, religious hypocrisy, and the social and economic inequities of industrialized societies. These themes are intercut with more joyous scenes celebrating the colorful pageantry and rituals of the poor and working-class Mexican cultures with which Wojnarowicz identified: "Going south of the border I found myth to still be very much alive and with it the sense of connection to the ground people walked on."