Oral history interview with Alexandra Juhasz, 2017 December 19-21 Funded by the Keith Haring Foundation. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Alexandra Juhasz on December 19 and 21, 2017. The interview took place at the home of Alexandra Juhasz in Brooklyn, NY, and was recorded by Theodore Kerr for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Alexandra Juhasz and Theodore Kerr have reviewed the transcript. Their corrections and emendations appear below in brackets with initials. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Interview THEODORE KERR: Okay. So you sound good. ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: Okay. THEODORE KERR: I'm very happy. ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: Me, too. THEODORE KERR: Let's remind each other of the date. It is the 19th. December 19th. ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: December 19th. THEODORE KERR: Okay. So, this is Theodore Kerr interviewing Alexandra Juhasz at her home in Brooklyn, New York, on December 19th, 2017 for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Interview number one. Hi, Alex. ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: Hi, Ted. THEODORE KERR: Thank you for letting us be in your home for this interview. ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: You know, I'm extraordinarily honored to be part of this record and to be part of the archiving and historicizing of this record, one that's very important to me. THEODORE KERR: Yeah. When you think about today, who's in the room with you today, on a spiritual or intellectual or even emotional plane? ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: That's a really interesting question. It's a nice way to start. I would say something to you that you know because we are friends, and even because you knew me before that through my work. All of my AIDS work is situated in a large community of activists and artists who I've known since my 20s. So I grew up into myself as an adult and a person of the world through that community, and many of them are still here in New York and have continued to be my community. So I'm in conversation with them, and have been for 30 years. And that is actually an international community. So people across the United States and around the world. But AIDS work is always also in conversation [00:02:00] with people who have died, and is motivated in some part because of people who were sick and then died. All of my AIDS work is dedicated to my beloved friend, James Robert Lamb, who I call Jim, who was my best friend in college, and a man that I was in love with. I lived with him in New York City, and he died when he was 29. So he's always with me and he keeps me committed to stay the course because he deserves it. And he's just one. So we all have our person or people like that. We stay the course because they need not have died. And for me, always, AIDS work is about the future and people I don't know as well, or people I want to continue to be in my life in the future. Because a committed relationship to thinking about and being an activist and an artist, and in community around AIDS, is about wanting to think through the limits in our society that fell people unnaturally. And HIV/AIDS is one of those limits. So I speak to people in the future that I want to be here and I want to keep talking to. Even those people I don't know yet. They're in the room. THEODORE KERR: Okay. [00:04:00] Yeah. And I think that this—you know, a lot of your work does that and this will be part of that, I think. ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: That's part of why I'm honored to do it. THEODORE KERR: Good. This is a slightly similar, but it is a different question. So thinking about—you said at the end—who do you hope is going to be the audience for this? Who do you hope is going to read this online or request to hear your voice? ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: Well, I guess, a few kinds of people. One of the things that I talk about a lot in my community—and I name you as a member of that community, and as an interlocutor, so I hope that's okay on the record that we have an intimate intellectual and activist and artistic life together—is that AIDS is not over. We say that a lot in our community. And I imagine at some point it will be. You know, I hope in the future, I won't have to build a body of ongoing work around refuting that simple [. neologism. –AJ] But AIDS—people say now that AIDS is over. It's not. But, you know, I imagine there'll be a time in the future when it's over in the sense that it will be a disease that has a cure, and it won't afflict huge segments of the people in the world and America. So in that future, I look forward to people looking back to hear and gain insight how politically and [00:06:00] personally engaged and enraged humans contributed to the end of something that they despised. So that's one audience. But I don't know when that will be. I don't do my work anticipating it, but I assume, as long as the earth still exists, that it will happen, that AIDS will be over. But I guess the other audience in the future are feminists, and queer, and anti-racist activists engaged in whatever their despised, unjust, illicit, unattended-to blight may be. And I hope they get some sustenance and solace from the fact that disenfranchised people before them used the power of our intellect and the grace of our humanity, and our beautiful and complicated art, and our passion in the streets to respond and change something that mattered to us. So that, I suppose. Them. THEODORE KERR: Yeah. Those are, those are beautiful audiences. I'm going to check—that's better. ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: My microphone. THEODORE KERR: So yeah. We do have a robust friendship and working relationship. And I think oral history makes space for that. So just know that you don't have to treat me as like a— ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: Objective [laughs] outsider. THEODORE KERR: Yeah. Exactly. And if you [00:08:00] say something that's too familial and I think it needs to be unpacked a bit for an audience of the people you just mentioned, then I'll just prompt you on that. Is that okay? ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: Absolutely. THEODORE KERR: Okay. Also I think oral history also means that there's going to be times where than can be conversation, you know? It's an interview. I'm talking to you about your life specifically around the intersection of art and AIDS, but also, you know, part of—if I understand your work correctly, and I think I do a little bit, you are motivated by thinking with. ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: Absolutely. THEODORE KERR: Yeah. ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: Thanks. THEODORE KERR: Yeah [laughs], yeah. Thank you. ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: For letting me [laughs] get to talk to you back. THEODORE KERR: [Laughs.] ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: Hear from you, as well. THEODORE KERR: Oh, thank you. With these oral histories, what's really nice is that we get to hear about people's life through, before, after, with, on top of HIV. And I think that that's something that—especially if we're thinking about a future where HIV is vastly different. That will be exciting for readers and listeners. ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: Yeah. And I like the way that you say that, you know, because I think "it is over" is very hard for me to imagine. And it isn't a trajectory that motivates me. So "vastly different" makes a lot more sense anyway. Just like—I don't know—tuberculosis is vastly different and so are eating disorders. I mean, you know, they're culturally live. And it probably will remain culturally live certainly as long as people who have HIV and people who have known people who have HIV are with us. It's culturally live. THEODORE KERR: Yeah. And I think also in your opening statements, you've also said that it will be culturally live because it has impacted the way that the world works. You know, like it—somebody will listen to this in 50 years [00:10:00] and even if HIV isn't a live force, there's lessons within the response to HIV that can be used for whatever might be the travails of the time. ALEXANDRA JUHASZ: We understand that. And I'm sure that it is not something I need to spend a lot of time [on] in this interview, because you speak to so many other people whose work frames this, but one of the great gifts of AIDS activism and AIDS cultural activism is that we organized an analysis and a set of actions around people taking control of their own health. And health being the first link in a very complicated chain that included race, class, gender, but also education and wealth and location, where you happened to be born.