ICA is proud to partner with Visual AIDS for the thirtieth annual Day With(out) Art by presenting STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven newly commissioned videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic by Shanti Avirgan, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Carl George, Viva Ruiz, Iman Shervington, Jack Waters/Victor F.M. Torres, and Derrick Woods-Morrow.
The seven short videos range in subject from anti-stigma work in New Orleans to public sex culture in Chicago, highlighting pioneering AIDS activism and staging intergenerational conversations. Recalling Gregg Bordowitz’s reminder that “THE AIDS CRISIS IS STILL BEGINNING,”* the video program resists narratives of resolution or conclusion, considering the continued urgency of HIV/AIDS in the contemporary moment while revisiting resonant cultural histories from the past three decades.
Visual AIDS is a New York-based non-profit that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over. In 1989, Visual AIDS organized the first Day Without Art, a call to the art world for mourning and action in response to the AIDS crisis. For Day With(out) Art’s thirtieth year, over 100 institutions worldwide will screen STILL BEGINNING, recognizing the important and necessary work of artists, activists, and cultural workers who have responded to AIDS while emphasizing the persistent presence of the epidemic.
*The phrase first appeared in Bordowitz’s installation Drive (2002) and was recently displayed as a banner at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Shanti Avirgan, Beat Goes On
Beat Goes On is an all-archival video portrait of Keith Cylar (1958–2004), the co-founder of Housing Works and a central figure in the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP) NY.
Carl George, The Lie
The Lie is the latest in an ongoing series of short films drawing on found footage and materials from the artist’s archive. Offering “ruminations on ruined nations,” the film aims to expose the links between war, AIDS, capitalism, and the persistent mythologies that bind them all.
Nguyen Tan Hoang, After Heaven
After Heaven returns to two subjects from the artist’s 1995 video on gay Asian sexuality, 7 Steps to Sticky Heaven, examining how HIV/AIDS has shaped their lives in the 24 years since.
Viva Ruiz, Chloe Dzubilo: Love Warrior
Viva Ruiz invites transgender AIDS activist, artist, and beloved friend Chloe Dzubilo (1960-2011) to speak via never before seen Hi-8 footage filmed by Chloe’s then-partner Kelly McGowan.
Iman Shervington, I’m Still Me
I’m Still Me highlights Sian, a Black woman living with HIV in Louisiana, who works in partnership with the Institute of Women & Ethnic Studies to address the disproportionate effect of HIV on Black women in the South.
Jack Waters, (eye, virus)
Through an experimental collage of video and pictographs, (eye, virus) explores how conversations around disclosure, stigma, and harm reduction shift across generations and from public to private realms. Produced in collaboration with Victor F.M. Torres and Nikki Sweet.
Derrick Woods-Morrow, Much handled things are always soft
Derrick Woods-Morrow documents the geography of the public sex culture of Black Chicago from the 1960s through the 1980s, in conversation with photographer and long-term survivor Patric McCoy.
Programming at ICA has been made possible in part by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts and the Lise Spiegel Wilks and Jeffrey Wilks Family Foundation, and by Hilarie L. & Mitchell Morgan.