Hiv and Aids Kin: the Discotecture of Paradise Garage

Home , Paradise (nightclub), Paradise Garage

HIV AND AIDS KIN: THE DISCOTECTURE OF PARADISE GARAGE

Ivan L. Munuera Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021

RUSHIN’ IN THE SKY: 1 Series I. Internal Files: CELEBRATION, CONFUSION, Fundraising: Gay Men’s Health Crisis. 1982-1984. AND MOURNING TS The National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce Records, “Rushin’ in the sky, flyin’ high, trippin’ on the moon 1973-2000: Series I. Cornell …, here in me, sexualityyy”—the lyrics of Cerrone’s University Libraries. Archives hit “Trippin’ on the Moon” reverberated at Paradise of Sexuality & Gender. 2 One of the first news Garage, a nightclub located at 84 King Street in items that called AIDS “gay Lower Manhattan, New York, on the night of April cancer” or “gay plague”: 8, 1982. Paradise Garage was also known as “Paradise Lawrence K. Altman, “Rare Gay-Rage” because the queer community that Cancer Seen in 41 Homosex- uals,” The New York Times, https://doi.org/10.1162/thld_a_00717 frequented the club was extremely politically active. July 3, 1981; Matt Clark and In fact, that night the club was hosting April Marianna Gosnell, “Diseases Showers, a party organized by GMHC (Gay Men’s That Plague Gays,” Newsweek, Health Crisis1) to fundraise in support of initiatives 21 December 1981, 51-52; and Michael VerMeulen, “The Gay intended to confront a new epidemic called the Plague,” New York Magazine, 2 “gay cancer” or the “gay plague” by the media. May 31, 1982, 52-78. This “gay cancer” or GRID (Gay-Related Immune 3 “Current Trends Pre- Deficiency) had already affected more than 300 vention of Acquired Immune New Yorkers; by spring, half of them would be Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS): Report of Inter-Agency 3 dead (Fig. 1). Recommendations,” Morbidity GRID was renamed AIDS (Acquired Immune and Mortality Weekly Report Deficiency Syndrome) during the summer of 1982 32, no. 9 (March 4, 1983): 101-3. and was described as a syndrome “at least moderately 4 Altman, “New Homosexual Disorder Worries Health predictive of a defect in cell-mediated immunity, Officials,” The New York Times, occurring in a person with no known case for May 11, 1982. diminished resistance to that disease”4 and “a rare 5 Lawrence K. Altman, and rapidly fatal form of cancer”5 manifested as “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals” Kaposi’s sarcoma and/or the infection PCP (pneu- 6 Lillian & Clarence de la mocystis carinii pneumonia). Before 1981, cases Chapelle Medical Archives. of Kaposi’s sarcoma were so infrequent that the NYU Cancer Registry. cancer struck just two out of every three million 7 Altman, “Rare Cancer Americans. Indeed, the NYU Cancer Registry archives Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” show only three cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma for the whole of the 1970s.6 In July of 1981, there were at least 41 cases, a number that increased every day.7 This uncommon form of cancer later became one of the AIDS-defining illnesses and probably the most visible sign of the disorder given the apparition of purple-colored tumors on the skin. In the confusion of the early 1980s, when AIDS was still an unknown medical affliction, nightclubs like Paradise Garage provided spaces for information

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States government, along with the mainstream media and several health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), sought to identify and confine potential risk groups, which came to be known as the 4Hs8—homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs, and Haitians—a list the CDC provided on March 4, 1983.9 Members of these groups were ostracized and deprived of considerations typical during the outbreak of an epidemic: protocols of announcement, transparency in information, research, and measure-taking. Gary

Bauer, assistant to President Reagan, told Face Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 the Nation that the reason the president did not utter the word “AIDS” publicly until a press conference 8 During the first years of Issues, Policies and Programs held in late 1985 was that the administration did the HIV and AIDS epidemic, (Washington DC: Intergovern- the words “group” and not perceive the epidemic as a problem until then. mental Health Policy Project, “community” were often George Washington University, AIDS was not yet considered serious because by mixed, referring to the same 1987). the mid-1980s “it hadn’t spread into the general part of the population affected 13 Similar forms of neglect population”10—as if the patients infected were not by HIV and AIDS. Nowadays, have persisted even after this part of the US population, as if they held some the Centers for Disease date, considering the history Control and Prevention (CDC) of stigmatization that people other citizenship, as if they were another kind of has defined “group”—as in living with HIV and AIDS faced, kin. Nevertheless, by 1985, already 20,000 Americans “control group” or “test as will be explained later in had died from the disease—an epidemic according group”—as a segment of the this paper. to the CDC’s own definition of that term: when population affected by specific 14 Tim Lawrence, Life and conditions, a definition that Death on the New York Dance `the number infected rises above the level expected does not link the individuals Floor, 1980-1983 (Durham 11 in a given population in the same area (Fig. 2). to a greater context outside and London: Duke University The epidemic was finally considered serious in of the study. These individuals Press, 2016), 328. 1987, when the Assistant Secretary of the Department share common characteristics but they do not necessarily of Health and Human Services, Robert E. Windom, share common values. The declared in a memorandum that word “community,” however, suggests a link in a much AIDS is the number one health priority … The magnitude broader sense—local, state, of the problem is illustrated by the fact that over regional—even when the 40,000 Americans have been diagnosed with AIDS, individuals are taken out of of whom half have died. It is estimated that 1.5 million the context of a study. These Americans are already infected with the Human individuals share common Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and that many of these values in a given geographical persons will eventually develop AIDS or a related area. In this sense, the words illness. In addition, every State [of the United States] “group” and “community” are 12 has reported AIDS cases (Fig. 3). used in this paper following the CDC recommendations, As the government of the United States neglected but also with a historical sense. to respond to the epidemic, and did not even Territorial connotations, national definitions, and other publicly account for the actual dimension HIV/AIDS community-based associa- 13 had reached until 1987, parties like April Showers tions are used to describe provided a space for information and discussion groups. Information provided for those affected. François Kevorkian, the DJ that by the CDC. played “Trippin’ on the Moon” at Paradise Garage 9 “Current Trends Pre- vention of Acquired Immune on April 12, 1982, expected the club-goers to engage Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS): in a sheer collective celebration that night. Even Report of Inter-Agency though the audience danced to the beats of this Recommendations,” 101-3. intergalactic sexual-liberation anthem, they also 10 Jan Zita Grover, “AIDS: Keywords,” in AIDS: Cultural interrupted the music constantly, screaming “this Analysis/Cultural Activism, 14 is an emergency, people are dying left and right.” eds. Douglas Crimp and Leo These cries were accurate. A significant percentage Bersani (Cambridge, MA: of the people who attended the party succumbed MIT Press, 1988), 23-24. 11 Information provided to the epidemic in the years following, including by the CDC. Michael Brody, the proprietor of Paradise Garage; 12 AIDS: A Public Paul Popham, one of the founders of GMHC; Keith Health Challenge: State

134 HIV and AIDS Kin: The Discotecture of Paradise Garage

Fig. 1 Poster for April Showers, April 8 1982, Paradise Garage. Gay Men’s Health Crisis records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library/GMHC. Courtesy of GMHC. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021

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Haring, the artist behind the graffiti that decorated Fig. 2 Temporal distribution of diagnosed cases of the club; and Larry Levan, another DJ at Paradise the immune suppression in New York City. March 1982. New York City Municipal Archives. Garage and its undeniable star. In what could be read as an inflection point in the way Paradise Fig. 3 AIDSGATE, The Silence = Death Project, 1987. Garage performed as a site for collective activism, Courtesy of Avram Finkelstein. now tinged by sadness and fury, Kevorkian never played the song again (Fig. 4). While nightclubs are commonly perceived as dark, autonomous interiors filled with purely hedo- nistic sounds, that night speeches punctuated the music, turning the club into a political space. Stories

about hospitals that refused to treat those affected Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 by the disease, funeral directors who declined to embalm the bodies of AIDS victims, and emergency medical technicians who ignored calls in so-called gay neighborhoods found in Paradise Garage a place where they could be collectively responded to. The club-goers also shared information about upcoming street actions and demonstrations to engage the governments of New York and the United States, as well as the addresses of lawyers for those seeking legal counseling. As AIDS grew into a pandemic, these stories and announcements linked the celebratory space of the club to an extended urban network—of celebration, confusion, and mourning through dancing, activism, and the sharing of information about the epidemic and its impact on the lives of those in attendance (Fig. 5). Paradise Garage was just one of the actors in a landscape populated by nightclubs and discos that became the center of an architectural and political revolution. From Danceteria to the Palladium, from The Saint to The Area, and through the meetings, parties, and benefits that happened inside these clubs, people living with HIV and AIDS found a place for public discussions, allowing for the formation of kin. Nightclubs contained, shaped, and propagated a very specific architecture: discotecture, the architecture of the disco, the creation of a space that 15 For more on discotecture, enacted the politics and social constructions of the see Ivan L. Munuera, “Disco- tecture: The Bodily Regime period relating to architecture and urban planning.15 of Archisocial Exploration,” Discotecture is a continuous performance and in Night Fever: Designing Club a collection of assemblages that render visible the Culture from 1960-Today construction of bodies, technologies, media, (Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design and environmental ideas. In the interaction among Museum, 2018). 16 The idea of a chosen kin designers and citizens, DJs and dancers, and is based in part in Donna technologies and regulations, architecture plays a Haraway’s notion of “staying fundamental role in creating a space that welcomes with the trouble,” of living with unexpected kinships. Discotecture shows that what and in relation to nonhuman others (in this case, HIV and happened in New York’s nightclubs had a series AIDS), which are kin in the of wide-ranging ramifications throughout the city, sense of “something other, proliferating in all directions, and generating and more than entities tied by instability, emancipation, and dissidence in streets, ancestry or genealogy.” See Donna Haraway, Staying with homes, town halls, and governments (Fig. 6). the Trouble: Making Kin in the If the creation of discotecture and the kinships Chthulucene (Durham: Duke that it allowed were marked by its celebratory University Press, 2016). aspects until the 1980s, during the HIV/AIDS crisis

136 HIV and AIDS Kin: The Discotecture of Paradise Garage the virus and the disease itself added another layer based on the response to the epidemic, the spreading of information, the transparency in the available data, and the collective caring among affected communities. This form of kinship was not based in the traditional understanding of lineage (consan- guinity, phylogenetic relationships, traditional family structures), but in the way they engaged with a virus (HIV) and a disease (AIDS) through their activism.16 HIV was the biological agent that allowed kinship to form among its carriers, acting Fig. 4 DJ Larry Levan at the Paradise Garage, as both kin and the apparatus by which kin was New York, 1979. Courtesy of Bill Bernstein. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021

created. But these ties were not only biological, they were also social and political; not all of the people involved in this kinship carried the virus or shared the same positive status—and even if they shared it, there were multiple thresholds in the viral load: undetectables, HIV positive with no AIDS, false positives, etc. Thus, the bonding between community members was more than biological, escaping the dichotomy/binarism of biological/non-biological kin. What they shared was a “chosen kinship”: an understanding of their relationship with HIV and AIDS different from the one embraced by medical authorities, media, and government officials.

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Moreover, the predominantly queer audience of discotecture helped form a rapid response to the epidemic through its own ways of understanding kin relations. As the anthropologist Kath Weston explains, kinships are formed in the queer community through the relationships among different subjects who share practices informed by their identity, creating an alternative to the biological family and/or the official institutions from which they have been excluded, a formation often called “chosen families.”17 The genealogy of these

kinships comes, in part, from the gay and lesbian Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 movements of the previous decades and from the organizations and institutions they created to 17 Kath Weston, Families idealized “good community.” confront the hegemonic discourses of that era.18 We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, See Christina B. Hanhardt, Kinship (New York: Columbia By the time the AIDS epidemic jumped into public “Butterflies, Whistles, and University Press, 1991). Fists: Gay Safe Streets Patrols consciousness in 1981, the gay movement had 18 See John D’Emilio, Sexual and the New Gay Ghetto, already created an affirmative group identity.19 If Politics, Sexual Communities: 1976-1981,” Radical History the protagonists of the HIV and AIDS activism The Making of a Homosexual Review 2008, no. 100 (2008): during this moment have frequently been reduced Minority in the United States, 61-85. 1940-1970 (Chicago: University 26 These spaces “were the to white gay men, the community that formed of Chicago Press, 1983). dark alleys, unlit corners, around Paradise Garage challenged the definition 19 Steven Epstein, Impure and hidden rooms that queers of the 4Hs categories as mutually exclusive and Science: AIDS, Activism, found in the city itself. It was lacking shared political demands; instead, it and the Politics of Knowledge a space that could not be (Berkeley, Los Angeles, seen, had no contours, and proposed a new intersectional chosen kin, a disco- London: University of never endured beyond the kin, across class and race differences with intersecting California Press, 1996), 11. sexual act.” Aaron Betsky, concerns: what it meant to live with HIV and AIDS. 20 Anthony Thomas, “The Queer Space: Architecture At the beginning of the 1980s, a cure or even House the Kids Built: The Gay and Same Sex Desire (New Black Imprint on American York: William Morrow and an effective treatment of HIV/AIDS was far from Dance Music,” Outlook 2, no. 1 Company, Inc, 1997), 141. being discovered, so those affected by the epidemic (Summer 1989): 5. 27 David France, How to proposed ways of living with it that could surpass 21 Keith Haring remembered Survive a Plague (New York: their marginalization. They proposed a collective that in the audience, “maybe Alfred A. Knopf, 2016), 37. effort to spread information and make themselves 70 percent of the kids are 28 Epstein, Impure black, 20 percent are Spanish, Science, 55. visible, and therefore accountable, to the authorities. and 10 percent are Oriental From the hemophilia advocacy groups that [sic] and white.” Quoted in constantly collaborated with GMHC, to the subjects John Gruen, Keith Haring: The that shared more than one category (Levan was Authorized Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, gay, a heroin user, and Haitian descendant), the 4Hs 1991), 89. taxonomy showed its falsity and its segregationist 22 On May 31, 1987, President modus operandi. April Showers created an alterna- Reagan finally declared AIDS tive to enact these discussions that transcended the a public health emergency, giving his first major address queer community. Racial debates also took place at on AIDS. It was at an outdoor Paradise Garage where “gay black men don’t have speech in Washington orga- to deal with the racist door policies at predominantly nized by amfAR, the American white gay clubs nor the homophobia of black Foundation for AIDS Research. straight clubs.”20 This environment witnessed the 23 This idea continued even into the late 1990s with coalition of race-based and gay activism in a coop- authors like Gabriel Rotello, erative effort. who blamed urban, gay, sexual The fused experience of joy, sadness, and activism culture for causing AIDS and created by April Showers became quotidian and the continued spread of HIV infection. In Gabriel Rotello, familiar at the club. After all, Paradise Garage was Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the known as the place where hybridity was celebrated: Destiny of Gay Men (New York: from its house music that crossed disco, hip hop, Dutton, 1997). and pop; to its audience, mostly from the black, 24 See Michael Bronski, 21 “AIDing Our Guilt and Fear,” Latino, and queer communities; to its architecture, Gay Community News, 9 an old parking garage renovated into a unique October 1982, 8. light-and-sound-system complex built by 25 As opposed to the

138 HIV and AIDS Kin: The Discotecture of Paradise Garage ephemeral interventions in the tradition of New York’s nightclub scene of the 1970s and 80s.

DISCOTECTURE: POPPERS, BUGS, AND DANCING

The political importance of the nightclub scene Fig. 5 If you want to stop AIDS, you have to know the facts. 1985. New York City Municipal Archives. and the activism it sustained in the redefinition of kinship provided by the queer, black, and Latino Fig. 6 ACT UP flyer, 1988. NYPL/ACT UP. Courtesy of communities was tested during the early years of the Avram Finkelstein. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 epidemic’s outbreak. Despite the CDC’s identification of the 4Hs in 1983, gay men were the face of the epidemic’s early years.22 The name GRID, as well as the common “gay plague” and “gay cancer” epithets, strengthened the idea of a specifically gay disease related to a certain environment-specific villain.23 Media writers, following the views of public health authorities, blamed the epidemic on gay promiscuity and the places gay people frequented.24 These were the dark rooms, nightclubs, and bathhouses of urban centers; in New York City the so-called “gay ghetto”25 was located in downtown Manhattan. Indeed, this gay ghetto comprised a city of many interiors, a city of archipelagos.26 This theory was adopted by doctors like Yehudi M. Felman of New York City’s Bureau of Venereal Disease Control, who declared that the disease’s cause “could be the bugs out of the pipes in the bathhouses”27 or poppers (amyl nitrite), a recreational inhalant popular among members of the queer community who found it enhanced experiences on the dance floor and in sexual inter- course. Statements like these generated a connection between nightclubs, the gay community, and HIV. As sociologist Steven Epstein pointed out, “AIDS became a ‘gay disease’ primarily because clinicians, epidemiologists, and reporters perceived it through that filter, but secondarily because gay communities were obliged to make it their own”28 with their responses and organized groups (Fig. 7). Meanwhile, parties like April Showers showed that the epidemic’s location was far from being confined to specific city areas or its many evening venues: HIV and AIDS had spilled over into other city services (hospitals, funeral homes, streets, etc.). The idea of localizing and segregating people living with HIV and AIDS into particular spaces, apparently outside of the general population, was immediately contested through different forms of activism, especially demonstrations and art—such as those of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) and Gran Fury, wielding its famous “Silence=Death” slogan—that together discussed the regime of confinement, stigmatization, and ghettoization of people living with HIV and AIDS, and the epidemic itself. HIV and AIDS was not confined in and

139 THRESHOLDS 48 KIN spread through a “gay ghetto.” This “gay ghetto” was actually the center where the response to the epidemic was articulated with a vortex located in Paradise Garage (Fig. 8). Paradise Garage, a former parking garage, was built in 1924 by the architect Victor Mayper and lay abandoned in the 70s until it was acquired by Michael Brody in 1977.29 For a year, a series of parties in this unfinished and continually changing space financially supported the renovation, until the club official- Fig. 7 Invite on cotton bandana to “Party of ly opened on January 28, 1978. The door policies Life” with Larry Levan and Juan ubose as DJ, were very clear: everybody was welcome through a Paradise Garage, New York, 1985. Wild Life Archive. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 referral- only membership that did not discriminate by class, gender, or race. The exclusionary policy of membership was based on the idea of creating a space of respite from the structural violence suffered by most of its patrons, in particular xenophobia, racism, and homophobia. Members had to know another member to get access to the club. They had to share kin. A ramp on the ground floor led club-goers directly to a 5,000-square- foot dance floor that could accommodate 2,000 people, all of them ready to dance in an environment where no alcohol was served, allowing the establishment to stay open after bar hours (Fig. 9-10).30 The work-in-progress aesthetic (the club was literally built party after party, gathering enough money to support the next construction phase) informed its experimental design: the as-is industrial space with a car ramp that gave access to the audience, the garden on the rooftop full of plants from Fire Island where Brody—the proprietor— owned a house, a movie theater that showed films 29 With financial backing London: The University of and catered a space for socializing, a coat check from Brody’s former Chicago Press, 2016), 15. room that served as a lounge with bowls full of boyfriend, Mel Cheren. fruit, and so on. The space’s constantly changing 30 The information about use and its hybrid nature also had an impact on Paradise Garage’ spatial distribution architecture its widely praised sound system. Instead of being comes from the New York City a standard device, it was a unique and innovative Municipal Archives, the NYC project tested and refined session after session Department of Buildings, and through the introduction of new elements and interviews with people who attended the club, such as the component parts for each event, including both photographer Bill Bernstein. unique pieces and new standardized products, 31 Designed by Larry Levan like the Levan bass horns—in honor of Paradise in collaboration with Richard Garage’s legendary DJ (Fig. 11-13).31 Long of Richard Long & This ad hoc strategy of construction was a Associates. Alan Fierstein and Richard Long, “Paradise response to the built environment of New York Garage: State-of-the-Art City at the time. After the deindustrialization Discotheque Sound Systems,” of New York during the 1960s, the city earned the Acoustilog, no date. moniker “disaster city,”32 yet it also became an 32 Douglas Crimp and Lynne Cooke, Mixed Use, area for experimentation. Below 14th Street lay Manhattan: Photography and 33 “the Wastelands.” The former industrial spaces Related Practices, 1970s to for manufacturing—now abandoned—were the Present (Cambridge, MA: abundant, generating a landscape of relatively MIT Press, 2010). 33 Aaron Shkuda, The Lofts cheap, vacant places for mixed-use rental: living, of SoHo: Gentrification, producing, and exhibiting (enabling the “loft Art, and Industry in New York, movement”). This surplus was a game-changer 1950-1980 (Chicago and

140 HIV and AIDS Kin: The Discotecture of Paradise Garage

Fig. 8 Silence = Death, The Silence = Death Project, 1986. Courtesy of Avram Finkelstein. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021

141 THRESHOLDS 48 KIN for architects and designers, as Artforum critic Nancy Foote explained in her revelatory 1976 article “The Apotheosis of the Crummy Space.”34 These spaces were not only important because of the redefined “beauty” found in their industrial decay—pitted floors, crumbling plaster, exposed pipes, embossed tin ceilings—but also because of the freedom they gave one to create hybrid spaces, halfway between dwellings, artist studios, and exhibition spaces for varied events. Most importantly, this ad hoc aesthetic strategy— Fig. 9 Paradise Garage sign at the entrance of the the creation of an immediate response when club, New York, 1979. Courtesy of Bill Bernstein. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021

necessary, such as the Paradise Garage’s sound sys- 34 Nancy Foote, “The tem and its constantly changing spatial distribution Apotheosis of the Crummy Space,” Artforum 15, no. 2 and program—became the model for an emerging (October 1976): 28–37. form of political activism at a time when initially 35 The relevance of night- informal and discontinuous efforts to face the HIV clubs in the formation and AIDS epidemic turned into regular meetings of these groups derives and actions organized by recognizable groups from interviews conducted by the author with some 35 such as GMHC, ACT UP, and Gran Fury. The likes of their former members, of Paradise Garage brought together all kinds of especially Mark Harrington inhabitants—especially the activists, queers, and and Douglas Crimp. people of color who danced as a form of resistance, achieving general visibility and representation in American democracy. These activist dancers were equipped to accommodate, through their bodies and their interactions, alternative forms of political action—distinct from those of foreign diplomacy and intelligence, militarism vs. pacifism, and civil protest (Fig. 14).

142 HIV and AIDS Kin: The Discotecture of Paradise Garage

Fig. 10 Paradise Garage entry ramp, New York, 1979. Courtesy of Bill Bernstein. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021

143 THRESHOLDS 48 KIN BIOHAZARD SPACE: DISCUSSION AND COEXISTENCE

When doctors of NYC’s Bureau of Venereal Disease Fig. 11 Alan Fierstein (Acoustilog), drawing for Control blamed the infrastructures of nightclubs Larry Levan’s mixing desk at Paradise Garage, 1980. Courtesy of Alan Fierstein/Acoustilog Inc. and bathhouses for the spread of HIV and AIDS, echoing rumors of microbes in the water supply Fig. 12 Richard Long and Alan Fierstein, block of saunas, viruses in poppers, and bacteria in diagram of sound system for Paradise Garage, 1980. the ventilation systems of discos, medical theory Courtesy of Alan Fierstein/Acoustilog Inc. assumed a gay lifestyle provoked the epidemic. Fig. 13 Richard Long and Alan Fierstein, speaker Physicians described a biohazardous spatial layout at Paradise Garage, 1980. Courtesy of Alan configuration located in the gay ghetto, through Fierstein/Acoustilog Inc. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021

which biological substances posed a threat to the health of living organisms. This was meant to warn those potentially exposed to the substances, enacting a series of protocols and precautions. This claim had terrible consequences for the activist spaces that confronted the epidemic: during the decade to come, most of the saunas and bathhouses that operated in New York were forcibly closed after local health officials tagged them as places of “high-risk sexual activities.”36 A consequence of this legislation was the redefinition of the new forms of kinship embedded in discotecture.37 Instead of being located in specific 36 Maurice Carroll, “State ACT UP members, especially spaces (discos, saunas, bathhouses), the subjects Permits Closing of Bathhouses Mark Harrington. affected by the epidemic carried in their own bodies to Cut AIDS,” The New York and actions a new urban conception. A microbiolog- Times, October 26, 1985. ical and performative urbanism of biohazard— 37 The idea of how HIV and AIDS shaped the LGBTQIA+ one that first emerged in discotecture—was redefined community in the 1980s derives beyond the limits of the club, even beyond the from different interviews infrastructural extents of the city: conducted by the author with

144 HIV and AIDS Kin: The Discotecture of Paradise Garage

Fig. 14 Paradise Garage’s dancefloor, New York, 1979. Image courtesy of Bill Bernstein.

Fig. 15 Paradise Garage’s entrance, New York, 1979. Image courtesy of Bill Bernstein. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021

145 THRESHOLDS 48 KIN in 1987 the United States approved a travel ban for people who had tested positive for HIV; this ban was reinforced by Congress in 1993 in an amendment Senator Jesse Helms proposed; the Obama Adminis- tration revoked it in 2009, effective in January 2010.38 From 1987 to 2010, people living with HIV and AIDS who traveled to the United States embodied the borders, legislations, and regulations of the government, substantiating a definition of belonging that was not based on country of origin or any immediate threat such persons posed to others, but rather on ideological

frameworks inflecting the imaginary of the disease. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 The ways in which HIV is transmitted and the prognosis of people who lived with AIDS were 38 This ban continues in other already known by 1983. New knowledge about countries like Armenia, Brunei, China, Iraq, South Korea, Mol- transmission was advanced. Contagion could happen dova, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. via three routes only: sexual contact; significant Information in: ACT UP New exposure to HIV-infected body fluids; and from York Records. Bulk 1987-1995. mother to child during pregnancy, delivery, New York Public Library. or breastfeeding. The possibility of transmission 39 The discovery was announced in May 1983, when via breathing, contact, or just by living in the two different research groups same place was fictional, a biological impossibility.39 led by Robert Gallo and Luc Yet the travel ban remained active for almost Montagnier declared in the two decades. same issue of the journal Science (May 1983, 220) that The different treatments used in the fight the cause of AIDS was a novel against HIV and AIDS shaped these kinships with retrovirus: HTLV-III (Human specific, global regimes of circulation. Various T-Lymphotropic Virus) therapies to fight the disease remained unavailable in the article by Gallo, and LAV (Lymphadenopathy- and illegal in many countries; prescriptions, Associated Virus) in the article too, were limited in several countries. The cocktail by Montagnier. The two of pills and treatments that were effective in viruses turned out to be the the control of HIV/AIDS, thus limiting its lethal same and were renamed condition, generated a chronic carry-on disease HIV in 1986. 40 Information provided for each patient, which created a biotechnological by Humans Right Watch. identity out of the domain of confrontation 41 Rodney Dietert, between the virus and possible therapies, a domain The Human Superorganism: constrained by territorial laws. Nucleoside How the Microbiome Is Revolutionizing the Pursuit reverse-transcriptase inhibitors and zidovudine of Healthy Life (New York: (AZT) in the disease’s early days, very often com- Dutton, 2016). bined with radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and after 1987, antiretroviral therapy and highly-active antiretrovirals—all of these were available in a limited number of countries, and the latter was even banned in some nations, including India, Peru, and Nigeria, until 2003.40 HIV and AIDS defied the relations between species (human-to-virus) because of the potential death sentence to one of the agents (human); and this relationship was shaped by the built environment of discotecture in New York during the 1980s. If HIV/AIDS was a lethal epidemic during the 1980s (and still is all around the world), the kinships formed in discotecture through the response to this epidemic created an alternative: how to coexist with the epidemic, how to make the authorities accountable in the right to information, how to contest a healthcare system that

146 HIV and AIDS Kin: The Discotecture of Paradise Garage does not rely only on national regulations but on transnational agreements, and how to differently embody borders in the form of multispecies “superorganisms”41 composed of different bacteria, viruses, and microbes. Kinship established by the virus (HIV) and specific infrastructures (the pipes of the saunas, international borders), between the use of drugs (poppers, anti-retroviral) and locations (nightclubs, bathhouses, hospitals), between identities (the queer community, people of color) and performances

(dancing, demonstrations), between narratives Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00717/1611039/thld_a_00717.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 (the media) and official authorities (CDC, the government)—all contributed to a collective bodily regime of social exploration. Paradise Garage proposed a way of living with harmful and lethal agents through disco-kin without eliminating or segregating those already living with HIV or AIDS. Discotecture destabilized the traditional conception of making kin: instead of a biological lineage, it proposed an activist, socio-political bonding based on discussion and coexistence, not on stigmatization and obliteration (Fig. 15).

Ivan L. Munuera is a New York-based architectural and art historian, critic, and curator working at the intersection of culture, technology, politics, and bodily practices in the modern period and on the global stage. Since 2015, he is developing his dissertation on the urbanisms of HIV/AIDS in the School of Architecture, Princeton University. His work has been published in Log, The Architect’s Newspaper, and El País, among others. He has curated exhibitions at Museo Reina Sofía (The Schizos, 2009), Ludwig Museum (ACAX Residency, 2010), Princeton University (Liquid La Habana, 2018), and CA2M (Pop Politics, 2012-2013); and developed a series of broadcasted projects, including Bauhauswelle (Floating University Berlin, 2018), and Chromanoids (Istanbul Design Biennale, 2016; Seoul Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, 2017).

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