Anger, art, and AIDS - Brief Article

New York's Guggenheim Museum acts up with a historic exhibit of video art from the AIDS epidemic

By 1985, AIDS was quickly turning gay artists into activists. Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart opened, Keith Haring painted AIDS-themed tarpaulins at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery, and Scott Heron and Erik Paulo made a video.

Heron and Paulo's call for safer sex, Laff at the Fags, wasn't run-of-the-mill angst-ridden activist art. Instead, it included such John Watersesque antics as graphic sex with a carrot and orange, masturbation sequences, and a temper tantrum involving consomme and a fire extinguisher. Now it's just one of the videos that make up "Fever in the Archive: AIDS Activist Videotapes From the Royal S. Marks Collection."

Curated by Jim Hubbard, president of New York's Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film/Video Festival and project director for the Estate Project's AIDS Activist Video Preservation Program, and organized by John G. Hanhardt of Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum, "Fever" screens at the Guggenheim December 1-9.

"I wanted to be as inclusive as possible," Hubbard explains when asked about his criteria for curating the series, "to show the grassroots response to AIDS in all its manifestations. I excluded tapes which were from the government's point of view, mainstream media's point of view, educational tapes that were made to promote abstinence. Instead, I really wanted it to be the people in the trenches who dealt with AIDS the way it existed on the street, to see their point of view."

Drawing from the Royal S. Marks Collection of 2,000-plus videos, which is housed at the New York Public Library, eight thematic programs were conceived, including "First Person Singular," "Drugs Into Bodies," "Collective Action," and the saucy "Reclaiming Desire--How to Have Sex in an Epidemic." Artists include Tom Kalin ("They Are Lost to Vision Altogether"), David Wojnarowicz ("Fear of Disclosure"), Ellen Spiro ("Diana's Hair Ego: AIDS Info Up Front"), and Robert Hilferty (whose 1990 "Stop the Church" features the infamous 1989 die-in at St. Patrick's Cathedral). Artists' collectives show up too, as in "Testing the Limits: N.Y.C. (Part 1)."

While 98% of AIDS activist videos were made between 1987 and 1993, recent pieces--including a segment from "Undetectable," Jay Corcoran's sobering look at the effects (and lack thereof) of AIDS drug cocktails--are included in the series too. In these days of accessible video equipment, Hubbard says that's important.

"I didn't want it to be a completely historical era that's separated from ours," he explains. "These activists were a rather large group of people. These are tapes filled with passion, and they used what was available to get the word out. It's important that people don't think media is something separate from their own lives, something you watch on TV or in the movies. It is available to you."

Ferber contributes to Time Out New York and other publications.

Find more on the Guggenheim Museum's AIDS activist video exhibit at www.advocate.com

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