Issue 42 / September 2019 Notes on Curating www.oncurating.org WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT AIDS COULD FILL A MUSEUM Edited by Theodore (ted) Kerr Contributions by Szymon Adamczak, Rahne Alexander, Jordan Arseneault, Kelvin Atmadibrata, Nicholas D’Avella, Adam Barbu, Emily Bass, Edward Belleville, Vladimir Cˇ ajkovac, Jean Carlomusto, Renaud Chantraine, Cecilia Chung, Marika Cifor, Jaime Shearn Coan, Emily Colucci, Siân Cook, Rev. Michael J. Crumpler, Demian DinéYazhi´, Avram Finkelstein, Olivia Ford, Lyndon K. Gill, Stamatina Gregory, l.n. Hafezi, Kate Hallstead, Deon Haywood, Heather Holmes, Catalina Imizcoz, Alexandra Juhasz, David Kahn, Luiza Kempin´ska, Theodore (ted) Kerr, Naina Khanna, Kairon Liu, Suraj Madoori, Michael McFadden, Miiro Michael, Florent Molle, Carlos Motta, Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad, Sandrine Musso, Louie Ortiz-Fonseca, Manon S. Parry, People with AIDS advisory committee, Benji de la Piedra, John Arthur Peetz, Ricky Price, Dudu Quintanilha, Yvette Raphael, Sheldon Raymore, John Paul Ricco, Hugh Ryan, Nelson Santos, Charan Singh, Manuel Solano, Charles Stephens, Tacoma Action Collective, The HIV Howler, Greg Thorpe, Alper Turan, Triple Canopy, Mavi Veloso, Visual AIDS, What Would an HIV Doula Do?, Hubert Zie˛ ba Contents What You Don’t Know About AIDS Could Fill A Museum Introduction 48 Graphic Ephemera 5 Lasting Impact: Building an Online What You Don’t Know About AIDS UK HIV/AIDS Design Archive Could Fill A Museum: Siân Cook Curatorial Ethics and the Ongoing Epidemic – Artist Project in the 21st Century Theodore (ted) Kerr 57 AIDS, Coca-Cola, 14 and the Tompkins Square Park Riot Framing The Issue Avram Finkelstein Theodore (ted) Kerr 68 A Body of Work: Corporeal Materials, Presence, Forgetting and Memory in Jerome Caja’s Exhibition, Remains of the Day 19 Kate Hallstead A Brief History of HIV: A Conversation Between Two Friends 72 Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad and Louie Ortiz-Fonseca In Case You Forgot How I Looked Dudu Quintanilha 28 – Artist Project Waniyetu Wowapi and HIV/AIDS Sheldon Raymore 78 – Reprint Legacy: A Timeline of HIV/AIDS Carlos Motta 31 – Reprint Luckiest Guy Michael McFadden – Artist Project Seeing 34 The Lost and The Found 83 Rahne Alexander HIV Ambivalence and Game-Playing Influence Artist Kelvin Atmadibrata in Conversation with 40 Oral Historian Benji de la Piedra Inheriting AIDS: A Conversation Adam Barbu and John Paul Ricco 90 Looking for the Faces of Our Friends 46 Emily Bass and Yvette Raphael April 20, 1993 David Kahn, Brooklyn Historical Society 98 – Reprint Stones and Water Weight: Working Out Past and Future with Mykki Blanco Edward Belleville 1 Issue 42 / September 2019 Contents What You Don’t Know About AIDS Could Fill A Museum 105 Collecting The Denver Principles People with AIDS advisory committee 169 – Reprint Abiding Relations Through Recovery, Restoration and Curation 108 A Conversation Between Jean Carlomusto, Poland and AIDS Alexandra Juhasz, and Hugh Ryan A Conversation Between Szymon Adamczak, Luiza Kempin´ska, and Hubert Zie˛ ba. 177 Status = Undetectable: 120 Curating for the Present and Future From Tactic to Demand: of AIDS HIV Visibility Within a Culture of Criminalization Marika Cifor Theodore (ted) Kerr – Reprint 188 Fieldnotes from the Afterlife: 128 Lyle Ashton Harris’ Living Archive HIV Affects Indigenous Communities Lyndon K. Gill Demian DinéYazhi´ + R.I.S.E. — Review — Reprint 192 132 Public Ruptures, Public Readerships: Because PrEP is Not About AIDS AIDS in Writing An Exchange to Expand on the PrEP Manifesto Heather Holmes between Carlos Motta and John Arthur Peetz 199 140 Precarious Structures: Shooting Up in the Museum: HIV, Museums, and History Intravenous Drug Use in Brian Weil’s Catalina Imizcoz The AIDS Photographs Stamatina Gregory 206 AIDS Politics of Representation and Narratives: 151 A Current Project at the Museum of European Among Four Friends: and Mediterranean Civilizations Conversations Before and in (Mucem) in Marseilles, France a Hospital Waiting Room Renaud Chantraine, Florent Molle, Charan Singh and Sandrine Musso – Artist Project 219 158 AIDS and the Medical Museum Gaze: Fingerprints, Unfinished Collecting and Exhibiting Science and Society A Conversation Between Mavi Veloso Manon S. Parry and Nicholas D’Avella 232 Viral Memories: The Making of Institutional History and Community Memory in the HIV/AIDS Crisis Ricky Price 2 Issue 42 / September 2019 Contents What You Don’t Know About AIDS Could Fill A Museum 243 311 Love Happened Here [INSTRUCTIONS FROM CHLOE], Nelson Santos A Curatorial Statement – Artist Project l.n. Hafezi – Reprint 257 #StopErasingBlackPeople 315 Tacoma Action Collective Could I Be A Happy Person? – Reprint A Conversation between Artists Kairon Liu and Manuel Solano – Reprint Making 324 Disability, HIV, Art, and, Culture 261 Miiro Michael How to Have A Lecture Series In An Epidemic 327 Jordan Arseneault Intersectionality, HIV Justice, and the Future of Our Movement 267 Cecilia Chung, Olivia Ford, Deon Haywood, Thoughts on How to Include Spirituality Naina Khanna, Suraj Madoori, Charles Stephens in Exhibitions about HIV and AIDS – Reprint Rev. Michael J. Crumpler 331 272 Drunk At Vogue: The Last Disco Touch Across Time: Greg Thorpe Familial Loss and its Remains in Art During the Ongoing HIV/AIDS Pandemic 334 Emily Colucci Twenty-One Questions to Consider When Embarking upon AIDS-Related 283 Cultural Production Positive Space: An Exhibition Project What Would an HIV Doula Do? on HIV/AIDS in Turkey and Triple Canopy Alper Turan – Reprint 295 How to (Dis)quiet a Vampire Vladimir Cˇ ajkovac 303 How to Catalogue a Crisis: An Afterword to Lost and Found: Dance, HIV/AIDS, New York, Then and Now (2016) Jaime Shearn Coan 3 Issue 42 / September 2019 What You Don’t Know About AIDS Could Fill A Museum Introduction 4 Issue 42 / September 2019 Editorial What You Don’t Know About AIDS Could Fill A Museum Editorial What You Don’t Know About AIDS Could Fill A Museum: Curatorial Ethics and the Ongoing Epidemic in the 21st Century Theodore (ted) Kerr Rock Hudson, Magic Johnson, and Henki Karlsen, three men with HIV who have changed how people in various parts of the world think about the virus, and what we know about the ongoing epidemic. To learn more about how AIDS has impacted the museum culture and the way we discuss AIDS in culture, check out the essays in the COLLECTING section of this issue. This issue of ON CURATING began trying to find a place for an essay I had written about AIDS to appear within a curatorial context. From there, it bloomed into WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT AIDS COULD FILL A MUSEUM—a collection of essays, conversations, visual projects, reprints, and personal reflections from academics, artists, activists, writers, and others from around the world committed to the ongoing response to HIV. The over 40 entries in this issue explore and wrestle with AIDS-related culture in the 21st century, through four themes: forgetting, seeing, collecting, and making, all of which reflect on both the historical turn in contemporary AIDS cultural production, and the ongoing need to keep an eye on the present. The title of this issue comes from a 2014 panel I put together as the programs manager at Visual AIDS, a New York-based AIDS-focused art non-profit. At the event, writer 5 Issue 42 / September 2019 Editorial What You Don’t Know About AIDS Could Fill A Museum Hugh Ryan said something that I think reflects the spirit of this journal when he argued for transparency from curators, and museums: The museum becomes the objective voice, which doesn’t exist. That’s one of the big things, how do we forefront the people behind museums—the ethos behind the museums. How do we let people know what is the voice? Who’s in the room making this exhibit? What are they drawing from? That helps us understand what we’re actually looking at because there is a voice, there is a perspective, and to pretend there isn’t I think it weakens everything.1 His quote came months after The New York Times published his op-ed, How to White- wash a Plague, which called into question the exclusionary nature of AIDS in New York: The First Five Years,2 an exhibition at the New York Historical Society curated by Jean S. Ashton that Ryan felt left out the foundational role of activists and the LGBT commu- nity in the story of AIDS. The article came out during a heady time, in which much about AIDS culture and history was being debated. Several critics called into question the lack of diverse representation in the Oscar-nominated documentary, How To Survive a Plague (David France, 2012)3; there were concerns about Jared Leto’s perfor- mance as a trans woman with HIV in Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2013); there was unsavory cross-generational conversation inspired by a poster made by historian Ian Bradley Perrin and artist Vincent Chevalier that read, Your Nostalgia is Killing Me (2014, for PosterVirus); debates were had about the creation of an AIDS memorial in New York City4; and during the first run of the nationally touring exhibi- tion, Art AIDS America (co-curated by Jonathan David Katz, and Rock Hushka, 2015), the Tacoma Action Committee staged a die-in calling for more black representation in the show and systemic changes around racial bias at the museum.5 These conversa- tions, which as you will see in reading the rest of this issue, continue to reverberate to this day, and are rooted, I think, in both the end of a prolonged absence of AIDS-related culture in the public realm, which was then followed up by an intense onslaught of cultural production regarding AIDS history. I have come to dub this twinned phenom- ena the “Second Silence” and the “AIDS Crisis Revisitation,” and over the last six years, working with academic and filmmaker Alexandra Juhasz, we have populated the terms with meaning.6 We have come to understand that the Second Silence begins with the availability of life-saving drugs in 1996, causing people in the media and beyond to think that the crisis was over.