James Wentzy

For the 2016 Day With(out) Art, Visual AIDS commissioned COMPULSIVE PRACTICE, a video compilation of compulsive, daily, and habitual practices by nine artists and activists who live with their cameras as one way to manage, reflect upon, and change how they are deeply affected by HIV/AIDS. This hour-long video program was distributed internationally to museums, art institutions, schools and AIDS organizations.

Through a stack of personal journals, this video reconstructs a biography of the South Dakota-born, New York City-enlightened artist James Wentzy. Tracing his days starting out as a struggling artist and later involved as an AIDS activist, the video provides an intimate portrait of a neglected hero.

Or, I Can't Scream Because I Have To Hold The Camera Steady. This eleven-minute video is a personal lamentation of the state of AIDS activism.

A 12-minute video produced for the 1996 MIX Film Festival. Jim Hubbard, the founder of MIX, asked Wentzy "to make it personal." It contains graphic demonstration of a condom being put on alongside of Hesse Helms, speeches by other reactionary political leaders, and stylized masturbation.

AIDS Community Television weekly series, originally telecast September 16, 1996. Sunday October 11, 1992 Bring your grief and rage about AIDS to a Political Funeral in Washington DC. You have lost someone to AIDS. For more than a decade, your government has mocked your loss. You have spoken out in anger, joined political protests, carried fake coffins and mock tombstones, and splattered red paint to represent someone's HIV-positive blood, perhaps your own. George Bush believes that the White House gates shield him, from you, your loss, and his responsibility for the AIDS crisis. Now it is time to bring AIDS home to George Bush. On October 11th, we will carry the actual ashes of people we love in funeral procession to the White House. In an act of grief and rage and love, we will deposit their ashes on the White House lawn. Join us to protest twelve years of genocidal AIDS policy.

A six-minute short produced for the 1994 MIX Film Festival, based on the treatise of the then-anonymous Kiki Mason, and distributed at events and festivities during Stonewall 25.

A six-minute short produced for the 1994 MIX Film Festival, based on the treatise of the then-anonymous Kiki Mason, and distributed at events and festivities during Stonewall 25.

A look at the ACT UP movement from its inception to the present day.

A twelve-minute video produced for the 1997 MIX Film Festival. The founder of MIX asked Wentzy to "make it personal." The video provoked a MNN public access hearing for whether it should be considered obscene and lacking artistic merit, to which they unanimously concluded that the video was, in fact, of serious, artistic, and political merit.

Or, I Can't Scream Because I Have To Hold The Camera Steady. This eleven-minute video is a personal lamentation of the state of AIDS activism.