Becoming the Virus: Queer Art That Infects
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Laura Stamm Becoming the Virus: Queer Art that Infects Abstract During the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, queer artists and activists were confronted with the question of how to redefine and implement queer politics. As the pandemic progressed, American artists such as Jenny Holzer and Félix González-Torres began to use the virus itself as a way to talk about a queer politics that infects public spaces and penetrates ideological barriers. Queer artists developed an awareness of the power of specific modes of representation and visual codes. In this essay, I explore how they infiltrated mainstream systems of representation by employing such codes. Codes of representation and institutional structures can, according to these artists, be used as the host body for a queer political virus, with this host, then, unwittingly attacking itself. Moreover, I return to queer rhetorical and artistic practices of the 1980s and 1990s AIDS crisis in order to not only chart an important queer history, but also to ask what these strategies might teach us now, or in the case of New York-based visual artist and AIDS activist Kia LaBeija, how these strategies appear now. These queer modes of representation do not necessarily belong to the AIDS crisis past; they persist in the present. Like dreams traversing the conscious Holzer’s advice: “Use what is dominant in a culture and the unconscious, the parasite is to change it quickly.”3 Codes of representation opportunistic, searching for holes, and institutional structures can, according to these openings. Politically speaking, to become artists, be used as the host body for a queer political the virus is to become the agent—the virus, with this host, then, unwittingly attacking agency for change. itself. I return to queer rhetorical and artistic - Simon Leung (1991)1 practices of the 1980s and 1990s AIDS crisis in order to not only chart an important queer history, During the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, but also to ask what these strategies might teach us queer artists and activists were confronted with the now, or in the case of New York-based visual artist question of how to redefine and implement queer and AIDS activist Kia LaBeija, how these strategies politics. As the pandemic progressed, American appear now. LaBeija’s 24 was first exhibited as artists such as Jenny Holzer and Félix González- part of Visual AIDS’ gallery show “Ephemera as Torres began to use the virus itself as a way to talk Evidence” (2014), placing her in a milieu of queer about a queer politics that infects public spaces, artists who use ephemera or mundane remains as infiltrates mainstream systems of representation, the source material for representing queer life and and penetrates ideological barriers. Gran Fury, history. Her work, however, is also tied to another ACT UP’s graphic art faction, utilized pictorial queer history, that of Harlem’s ballroom culture, conventions from advertising for posters that with LaBeija serving as the current Mother of covered public spaces and buses with phrases like House of LaBeija. LaBeija’s work reminds us that “Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifference AIDS remains in our present, that bodies still live Do.”2 These often billboard-sized pieces utilized with the virus and need our political attention. Her marketing parlance while also engaging with much photographs and videos follow a lineage of queer of the hateful and homophobic discourse circulating artists who embrace the parasitic nature of the HIV during the AIDS crisis. Gran Fury, in other words, virus to become agents for change. took advantage of a recognizable media form In 1993, years of queers’ organizing against to spin accepted AIDS-crisis knowledge and to AIDS, González-Torres described his desire to critique negligent institutions, echoing artist Jenny infect the system as a sort of ideological guerilla CONTAGION 9 Ennuri Jo and Michael Anthony Turcios, editors, Spectator 39:1 (Spring 2019): 9-15. BECOMING THE VIRUS warfare. He states: For González-Torres and many other artists, their way into the body of the state was through Well, my first reaction was a very the art museum. The museum is an established predictable leftist reaction which more cultural institution, one that often receives and more I am questioning and finding government funding and one that people enter very static and self-defeating. At this point with respect and admiration. Michael Cohen, the I do not want to be outside the structure assistant director and curator for 80 Washington of power, [sic] I do not want to be the Square East Gallery, discusses his battle to get opposition, the alternative. Alternative Gran Fury’s art into a museum. He explains: to what? To power? No. I want to have “It took quite a bit of convincing to get [Gran power. It’s effective in terms of change. I Fury] in an institutional gallery. They were want to be like a virus that belongs to the like we’ve never had our work historicized or institution. All the ideological apparatuses institutionalized[;] we don’t want it. But I came are, in other words, replicating themselves, up with the educational idea. It’s an educational because that’s the way culture works. So place where there is continuity between the if I function as a virus, an imposter, an past and the present.”5 Cohen convinced the art infiltrator, I will always replicate myself collective to “institutionalize” their work in 2012 together with those institutions.4 with the promise that it will educate the public and tie together the political past, present, and González-Torres begins with this image of being future. But while it may have taken some coaxing outside of the structure—outside of dominant to get Gran Fury’s work into a museum, other culture—as a mainstay of leftist critique. He points artists have actively used the museum as a space to post-structuralist criticism’s tendency to argue for queer organization and strategizing. The that making the mechanisms of ideological state “Homo Video: Where are We Now” exhibition apparatuses visible, and articulating a politics in (1986) at the New Museum in New York City, opposition to power, is the only way to dismantle one of the earliest of its kind, sought to use film dominant structures. But González-Torres and video to “challenge the various ideological contends that creating art and political critique apparatuses which continue to harass, contain, outside of power, in essence, makes one powerless. and suppress the condition of homosexuality.”6 He argues that, instead, one should use their The museum’s gallery space and contents are presumed outsider status to dismantle structures conventionally deemed culturally important, a in power from within. The queer activist becomes space filled with art that speaks to the human an imposter through reverse transcription, an agent experience. The museum, to paraphrase Cohen, who slips inside ideological apparatuses’ bodies uses material culture and cultural artifacts to and begins to replicate and transform the DNA reify the beliefs and social practices that all too codes. These notions of a virus entering a body and frequently suppress queerness. Yet, by inhabiting enacting change as an antibody might remind one of the museum space, queer artists harness its the Frankfurt School’s hypodermic needle model of power for alternative purposes. By invading the ideology, in which the passive masses are inoculated gallery, queer artists invite viewers witness human with ideology. Members of the public, instead of experiences that dominant culture had rendered simply being hailed discursively, to paraphrase unimportant or unworthy of view. Louis Althusser, are injected with ideology and thus become a body of the state. In this model of Curating Community, Exhibiting History ideology, the media-saturated culture industry permeates the body’s surface and makes changes The museum and/or gallery space holds a unique, from the inside. Queer artists such as González- even privileged position in queer and AIDS art Torres, however, see a different possibility. Instead history. The museum was the space where queer of being a prophylaxis, individuals can also act as activists protested Nicholas Nixon’s People with a virus that slips inside the host body of the state. AIDS (PWA) portraits (1988), and it was the 10 SPRING 2019 STAMM space where artists such as David Wojnarowicz, Some parts of the two-room exhibition Peter Hujar, and Nan Goldin exhibited their are more categorized, like a sizable back personal experiences of the AIDS crisis.7 Museum wall portion containing predominantly exhibitions, broadly speaking, require curators works related to the AIDS epidemic, to make decisions about the history they want to placed next to a corner of pieces that deal tell: whose histories to include, whose stories to in the sexual and sordid, cleverly located tell, whose experiences stand in for a particular behind an installation of Trojan condom history, and which experiences can be said to boxes. Visible are works that recreate represent a community or even an entire nation. hospital restraints used in early treatment The museum, in these terms, becomes a vehicle days and mix HIV antiviral medication for historical encounter and an institution that Zerit (now considered excessively toxic) reinscribes traditions and cultural heritage. It into a traditional still life. Edward A. reifies dominant historical narratives, highlighting Hochschild’s sizable cross studded with already-esteemed individuals, stories, and ways of vials of blood, pills, and sand makes quite depicting personhood. The pieces of artwork that an impression even before considering its adorn museum walls typically reinforce dominant painful context. A closer look at some of aesthetic movements and construct a shared the vials reveals a staggering amount of public understanding of culture.