A Day With(Out) Art / World AIDS Day Commemorations
DECEMBER 1st
As we come to terms with the grief and losses from COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests, I am reminded of another time when I lost so many friends so suddenly and unexpectedly. I was taken back to a time when love and mortality were daily confrontations in our collective lives—when lights dimmed as dear friends, colleagues, and role models succumbed to AIDS.
In her book The Gentrification of the Mind, Sarah Schulman struggles to understand and express the meaning of that loss—how “a certain urban ecology of queer subculture existence has been wiped out, through both AIDS and gentrification,” and how this “ecoside” has resulted in less diversity. Almost without realizing it—one person at a time—we lost pioneering artists who challenged the status quo in performance, installation, improvisational live music, dance, drag, and the intersection of new technologies. Shulman says, “When they died, their practice of creating new paradigms outside of institutional structures was removed from sight.”
Though she is speaking about the East Village, the spirit of activism and outrage that grew out of the AIDS pandemic is part of a continuum of history here and now. Remembrance brings it all back home. SSB joins with Howl!, Visual AIDS and all who commemorate more than 3 generations of artists, filmmakers, playwrights, poets, writers, designers, intellectuals, clubgoers, and beloved citizens of the world who were decimated by the disease and to celebrate the people who continue to care for people with AIDS and strive to create a better world for all of us. Don’t miss these two important events:
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
Enduring Care / A Day With(out) Art
100+ Screenings Worldwide Presented by Visual AIDS
Featuring newly commissioned work by Katherine Cheairs, Cristóbal Guerra, Danny Kilbride, Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad and Uriah Bussey, Beto Pérez, Steed Taylor, and J Triangular and the Women’s Video Support Project.
Friday, December 3, 2021, 7–9 PM
Collective Space/Embodied Resistance: 40 Years and Beyond of AIDS, Art and Activism
Our Partner Howl! Arts presents a panel discussion featuring photographer Lola Flash, performer Rafael Sánchez, writer Pamela Sneed, performance artist John Kelly, and historian Aldo Hernández. Each panelist will contextualize specific bodies of work that were made during or speak to the height of the AIDS epidemic.
Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project, 6 East First Street
—Susan Martin, SSB Founding Director