ITSOFOMO (In the Shadow of Forward Motion) is a multimedia performance work created in 1989 by composer and performer Ben Neill in collaboration with artist and writer David Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1992. Integrating music, text, and video in a multi-dimensional format, the work embodies the experience of acceleration and its sensory consequences. It was originally developed in response to the AIDS crisis and the political conditions of the United States at that moment.
First presented as a live performance at The Kitchen in New York City in 1989, ITSOFOMO binds the urgency of Wojnarowicz’s texts to a sinister, elastic musical structure by Neill for his futuristic Mutantrumpet and orchestral percussion. In contemporary presentations, Wojnarowicz appears through original archival recordings of his voice, which anchor the work’s moral and emotional force, placing the live performers in direct dialogue with a powerful historical consciousness.
Four videotapes in Wojnarowicz’s signature style run simultaneously for the duration of the work, incorporating imagery characteristic of his visual language. Samples from the National Hollerin’ Contest provide an uncanny choral counterpoint, their strained vocalizations intersecting with Wojnarowicz’s delivery and the music’s forward momentum.
While much of the work is driven by confrontation and acceleration, ITSOFOMO also contains moments of tenderness and reflection, where expressions of love and vulnerability briefly interrupt the forward motion before urgency reasserts itself.
ITSOFOMO has been presented internationally at The Kitchen (New York City, premiere), San Francisco Art Institute, Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle), Exit Art (New York City), Hallwalls (Buffalo, NY), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Bang on a Can Festival (New York City), Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), Belluard–Bollwerk International (Fribourg, Switzerland), Theater Frascati (Amsterdam), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), and The Getty Museum (Los Angeles).
In the present climate of democratic erosion and rising authoritarianism, the reactivation of the work frames historical urgency not as a closed chapter, but as a recurring condition.
“The texts that David Wojnarowicz reads are an antidote to abstraction. Passionate, grounded, and dead-precise, these texts violently reclaim the body by forcing us to experience the visceral reality of space and time. Set against Ben Neill’s delicately composed mutantrumpet, percussion, interactive electronics, and Southern American ethno-music, ITSOFOMO’s forward motion becomes a battle to reclaim the organism of life.”
Sylvere Lotringer
Originally recorded in 1991, a new LP/digital recording is now available through Jabs Recordings. This is the first vinyl pressing of ITSOFOMO, the 2 x LP includes two new unreleased tracks: an instrumental version of the climactic final section THE COLLAPSE OF THE ILLUSORY ONE TRIBE NATION and a new remix by Ben Neill, ITSOFOMO Septimal Dub. Printed in an edition of 500 copies with a gatefold sleeve and an essay by Sylvère Lotringer, a portion of the proceeds from this LP will be donated to Visual AIDS.