On Friday, July 13, the Whitney will host Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic, a symposium that takes its name from an oral history project by the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. The symposium welcomes conversations with artists, activists, and oral historians on memories of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and ‘90s. Learn more on whitney.org.
[(From Left to Right: John Fekner, Jenny Holzer, David Wojnarowicz, Keith Haring and Michael Smith). “Urban Pulses” Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, PA 1983 Photo credit: David Lubarsky 1983 Courtesy John Fekner Research Archive]
ITSOFOMO (In the Shadow of Forward Motion) is a multimedia performance that David Wojnarowicz made in collaboration with composer and musician Ben Neill in 1989. Integrating music, text, and video in a multi-dimensional format, the work embodies the act of acceleration and its sensory manifestations. It is through this frame that Wojnarowicz addressed the accelerating AIDS crisis and the politics of AIDS in the United States at that moment.
The work debuted at The Kitchen in 1989 and has not been performed live in New York in 25 years. This September, Ben Neill and the percussionist Don Yallech, who played alongside Neill and Wojnarowicz in 1989, revisit this fierce meditation on history and power at the Whitney Museum.
For those who don’t know and don’t want to click thru to find out: Jonas Salk is the reason we in North America no longer live in terror of polio. He also refused to patent or profit from his vaccine. He also spent the last years of his life researching a vaccine for AIDS, long before that was cool and back when a lot of people were secretly hoping it really would just kill all the gays. So you’re damn right people applauded and gave free upgrades.
Reblogging again because this time I did click through, and because of the times in which we live: Jonas Salk was Jewish, and the child of immigrants.
do you ever think about chuck palahniuk writing “we don’t have a great war in our generation, or a great depression… the great depression is our lives” in the early 1990s as a young gay man living in america at the peak of the aids epidemic
like i know the main thing i’ve seen people talk about is the obvious homoeroticism between the narrator and tyler and, y’know, how a fight club is the epitome of constructing intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men BUT if you think about it in the context of the time palahniuk was living in as a gay man there is SO much more to it than that
he wrote a book that’s all about grappling with death and pain and wanting to take them into your own hands… literally the first line of the book ends with “the first step to eternal life is you have to die.” it’s the narrator visiting all these different support groups for different diseases like cancers and blood parasites as a ~tourist in order to feel healthy and alive and free (note: most people who died of aids didn’t die of the virus itself but of opportunistic infections and aids-related cancers). it’s about how “on a long enough time line, everyone’s survival rate drops to zero.” like yes it’s intricate rituals, but it’s very specifically men sharing bodily fluids and blood. it’s about reclaiming death and using it as a symbol.
it’s about feeling abandoned and forgotten and ignored by the establishment and wanting to burn everything down because of that, about an entire generation of gay men trapped in a great spiritual depression, waging a war, a revolution, for their lives but one that was not acknowledged publicly for yearswhile they suffered. it’s about living double lives, becoming someone Different under the cover of darkness, someone Stronger and Braver who could rage against the system the way you never even dreamed of doing in the daylight
it’s about being a member of A Club (where the initiation is a kiss that burns your skin) that exists everywhere and nowhere, and being able to immediately pick out someone else who’s In The Club just by looking at them even though no one around you has a clue, and you just nod at each other and acknowledge your shared experience and save your actual interactions for secret back rooms and basements—except pretty soon other people can tell there’s something Unsavory going on with you because you start exhibiting physical signs that you can’t hide anymore including bloody lesions on your face.
literally every line of this book (and the film) mean More if you read it through this lens. “you aren’t your name. you aren’t your family. … everything you ever love will reject you or die.” taking the sentence “i am the toxic waste byproduct of God’s creation” that is the worst thing anyone could fear about themselves (and like.. it’s literally homophobia. especially re: gay men during the aids crisis) and weaponizing it because it means you have nothing to lose. tyler saying fuck the police and telling the police commissioner that “the people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. we’re the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. we make your bed. we guard you while you’re asleep.”
anyways it’s not just homoerotic, it’s gay in a very specific way grounded very specifically in the moment in time when it was written and in the generational trauma of the aids crisis thanks for coming to my ted talk
everyone is deleting the caption to this but this work is called “perfect lovers” by the gay artist felix gonzalez-torres. the piece is about the illness and death of his HIV-positive partner ross laycock:
ForUntitled (Perfect Lovers) (1991), he synchronized two industrial clocks placed side by side. Inevitably, because batteries fail and things tend toward entropy, the clocks would slowly begin to advance at differing rates, out of sync, having moved, however briefly, perfectly together. (x)
“Don’t be afraid of the clocks, they are our time, time has been so generous to us. We imprinted time with the sweet taste of victory. We conquered fate by meeting at a certain time in a certain space. We are a product of the time, therefore we give back credit where it is due: time. We are synchronized, now and forever. I love you.” (Gonzalez-Torres, 1988)
“They kept asking me why I had an AIDS foundation: why I cared? I wasn’t gay and I didn’t have AIDS. And I told them that the only reason anyone knows who I am in this world is because of the support and efforts made on my behalf by gay people. They believed in me when I didn’t know how to believe in myself.
Take away all the paintings, all the music, all the dance, all the films, all the theater, all the architecture and design, all the science, all the books; everything that was created by gay people. There would be so little left that what was left wouldn’t even matter.”
For those of us who did not live through the AIDS Crisis, it is difficult to truly fathom the terror and confusion of the tragedy - the lack of information, suffering, and inevitable death many in our community faced. In celebration of the UK’s LGBT History Month, Reddit users shared their experience of living during the, at the time, ceaseless state of fear. They also highlighted a group of people who go overlooked despite their selflessness and sacrifice:
I do want to add this. There is a group of people that to this day get little credit for all the hard work they did during the crisis and that was the lesbian community. They were not directly affected by the spread of the virus but so many of them jumped on the bandwagon right at the beginning, gave everything they had helping out wherever they could and in many cases, led the way when things got really bad in the mid- to late 80’s. We should all be eternally grateful to them for what they did.
- Reddit user VillageGuy
This perhaps doesn’t surprise you - we are after all a relatively supportive community that share similar political and social agendas. Nevertheless, in 1970s there were separatist attitudes between gay men and lesbians that harbored deep resentment between the two groups. But as the epidemic took its toll, the lesbians stepped up even in the face of death, and did the work that other people feared to help those who had been infected:
I knew a woman around that time who’d had at one point been making bank in construction. But at the outset of the AIDS crisis she had abandoned her career to pursue nursing instead, and was close to her degree when we were hanging out. She was a big, hearty drinker, and fortunately so was I. We’d been utterly thrashed at a bar once when someone whispered a fairly benign but nonetheless unwelcoming comment about her. Middle fingers were exchanged, and afterwards, furious and indignant, I asked her, Why do you do it? Why did you abandon a career to take care of these assholes who still won’t pay you any respect?
‘She cut me a surprisingly severe look, held it and said, “Honey, because no one else is going to do it.” I remember feeling ashamed after that, because my fury and indignation weren’t going to clean blood and puke off the floor; it wasn’t going to do the shit that needed to get done.
- Reddit user arocklegend
Normally, I tend to summarize the history in the hopes of that you take something away from the post even if you don’t have the initial interest in history but this time I’ve decided against that. I feel that these first hand accounts of the crisis and the lesbians are so valuable and touching that I can’t possibly do them justice. I’ve decided to copy-paste some of them so if you can, please take the time to read through them. The least we can do is acknowledge the seminal role the lesbians played:
... These women walked directly into the fire and through it, and they did not have to. And that they did it even as some of the gay men they took care of treated them with bitchiness, scorn, and contempt…
…When the AIDS crisis struck, it would be many of these same women who would go straight from their jobs during the day to acting as caregivers at night. Because most of them lacked medical degrees, they were generally relegated to the most unpleasant tasks: wiping up puke and shit, cleaning up houses and apartments neglected for weeks and months. But not being directly responsible for medical care also made them the most convenient targets for the devastating anger and rage these men felt – many who’d been abandoned by their own family and friends.
These women walked directly into the fire. They came to the aid of gay men even when it was unclear how easily the virus could be transmitted. Transmission via needlestick was still a concern, so they often wore two or three layers of latex gloves to protect themselves, but more than once I saw them, in their haste and frustration, dispense with the gloves so that they could check for fevers, or hold a hand that hung listlessly from the edge of a bed whose sheets they had just laundered.
They provided aid, comfort, and medical care to men withering away in hospices, men who’d already lost their lovers and friends to the disease and spent their last months in agony. They’d been abandoned by their own families, and were it not for lesbians – many if not most of them volunteers – they would have suffered alone. And when there was nothing more medicine could do for them and their lungs began to fill with fluid, it was often these same women who’d be left to administer enough morphine to release them, given to them by the doctor who had left the room and would return 15 minutes later to sign the certificate (a common practice at the time)…
…HIV killed my friends, took my lover from me, and tore up my life. During that time, I did what I could. But nothing I did then or have ever been called to do in my life puts me anywhere near the example set by the lesbians I knew in the 80s and 90s. I’ve felt obligated to remember what they did, and to make sure other people remember it too.
- Reddit user arocklegend
As a lesbian if this era, I echo much of what OP says. While I was not ‘at risk’ (per se, we know more these days), we all lost many good friends. It is true that there is a somewhat mystifying (to me) separatist attitude between some gay men and lesbians, especially back then, this tragic time really brought us together.Sitting at the bedside of a terminally ill friend, and just holding their hand when everyone else was just terrified, was a gift I was one of those willing to give. No one should die alone, and no one should be in the hospital on their death beds with family calling to say “this was gods punishment”. My friends and I, men and women, acted as a protective layer for ill friends, and companion to mutual friends juggling the same, difficult reality of trying to be there, and be strong when we were losing our family right and left. Difficult times, that should never be forgotten.
- Reddit user h20rabbit
Our sister lesbians took on the care of these AIDS patients because no one else would. They were angels, and gave comfort to those dying.
I have to add, that not once did I ever hear them complain. They just stepped up to the plate, and did it. I’m humbled by their compassion and generosity.
- Reddit user Griffie
I also strongly encourage you to read through the Reddit thread HERE to get an insight into the crisis that statistics and facts alone can’t provide.
“It was a tsunami. In April of ’82 there was an article in the New York Times about a new gay cancer, and everyone thought ‘oh well.’ I was in my twenties. I wasn’t worried about a thing. But then every week you started to hear about somebody becoming ill. My boss was one of the first. He was a famous florist. He went into the hospital on Thanksgiving and was dead by Easter. I lost most of my friends. A lot of the first men to die were privileged. They were closeted, corporate white men. During the day they were bankers but at night they’d hit the leather clubs and bars. But they learned their privilege didn’t matter after they got sick. They were just ‘gay.’ We had to fight for AIDS to be recognized by the government. We joined together with people of color, and junkies, and prostitutes. It was a beautiful thing, really. Our feminist lesbian sisters taught us how to protest because they’d been doing it for decades. They showed us how to organize meetings, and bring people together, and force the government to the table—things we’d never had to think about as white men.”
“Our feminist lesbian sisters taught us how to protest because they’d been doing it for decades. They showed us how to organize meetings, and bring people together, and force the government to the table—things we’d never had to think about as white men.”
Me when genderists make absurd claims like TERFS contributed towards AIDS genocide
They don’t care to know that thousands of lesbians (that would now be considered “TERFs”) supported and cared for HIV+ gay men, and gay men dying of AIDS? That generation of lesbians spent their time, money and energy doing everything in their power to help the gay men who were being abandoned by their families and by a significant portion of the medical community.
Trans positive/ trans activist/ queer theory ppl need to learn their fucking history before opening their mouths and making absurd, baseless claims. Stop bein like Trump and spewing bull shit that you know will catch on bc it fuels your fucked up agenda of female/lesbian erasure.
AIDS ISN’T OVER FOR ANYBODY UNTIL IT IS OVER FOR EVERYBODY! ACT UP 30th Anniversary Rally, NYC AIDS Memorial Park, March 30, 2017. Photo by Molly Gingras
Join the fight. ACT UP still meets every Monday at 7pm at the LGBT Center in NYC.
