AIDS & ART

AIDS &
ART
Blue Fraser, Lia MacKinnon, Caitlin Rabb, Toulouse Ren, Margot Thorseth

All the downtrodden, tired, fed up, broken hearted angels
circling over our heads
AIDS & art: a retrospective (1983-now)

Page
Date Due
04-05 John Greyson: Groundwork (1983)
06-07 Marc Lida’s AIDS #5 (1983)
08-09 Fuck You Faggot Fucker (1987)
10-11 John Greyson: Beginnings (1987)
12-15 AIDS by General Idea (1987)
16-17 John Greyson: Pop-a-Boner (1993)
18-21 Blood, Politics, and Performance (1993)
Art: Ron Athey’s Four Scenes in
a Harsh Life
22-23 AA Bronson’s Felix Partz (1994)
24-25 John Greyson: (2003)
A Hybrid Docu-Fiction
Musical Multi-Channel
Installation Video Opera!?
26-29 The Body as Spectacle: (2013)
Ron Athey’s Incorruptible
Flesh and the shifting
discourse of the ‘post-AIDS’ body
30-33 Kia LaBeija (2014)
34-37 The Bethesda Brotherhood (2014-2016)
38-39 John Greyson: AIDS Video: (2022-)
Past, Present, and Future

1983
John Greyson
Groundwork
Since the very beginning,
cinema has been used
not only as a vehicle
for entertainment but
as a means to push
narratives. However, early cinema
was expensive and difficult
to produce. This all changed
with the advent of affordable
and easy-to-use analog video
technologies like the VHS and the
camcorder entering the consumer
market in the late 1960s to the
early 80’s. As cinema entered a
new era in tandem with global
avant-garde, postmodern and
new-wave movements, through
the relative ubiquity of personal
video recording, there was a huge
boom of both experimental and
accessible video art.
With the newfound
availablity and affordability of
video technology, marginalized
populations, more than ever, were
able to have their voices heard
and acknowledged on their own
terms.
And then came AIDS.
The 1980s saw a new boom in
queer activism, largely centered
around the AIDS epidemic. By
the end of the decade, “urgency
and rage began to collapse into
despair and frustration for the
ACT UP generation.” However, a
“renaissance of film and video
arrived, just when the passionate
energy that had characterized
AIDS activism was flagging;”
this ‘New Queer Cinema’ was a
“fiercy serious cinema,” with aims
to completely overhaul past,
present, and future, laying the
groundwork for “whatever and
whomever” came next.
In this four-part series
interspersed throughout our zine
centered around generations of
queer and AIDS-focused art from

5
the 1980s to our present time
(2022), we will be exploring AIDS
activist film and video art, honing
in on John Greyson’s career which
spans over four decades. Keeping
in mind the explosion of New Queer
cinema, and the multiplicity of
artists encircling this genre, for
brevity, this series is focusing
on John Greyson through personal
interviews at his Toronto queer
district home.
John Greyson, ‘art school
dropout,’ moved to Toronto in 1980
from London, Ontario to write for
The Body Politic, and to pursue
a life grounded in queer art and
activism. Spanning four decades,
Greyson has directed more than
sixty films, created several
performances and installation
pieces, and published a plethora
of articles in both academic
journals and popular press.
Throughout his career he has been
deeply imbedded in grassroots
activist movements around the
world, and has been instrumental
to multiple collaborative video
projects and programs. He has
served as a full-time professor
at York University’s Film
Department since 2005.
Lia MacKinnon

1983
MARC LIDA’S
“AIDS #5”
In 1981, a now historic
article was released by
the CDC reporting that
between the period of
October 1980 to May 1981,
five young, sexually active gay
men were experiencing symptoms
of an unusual diesease. They
described an unlikely lung
infection in previously
healthy young men. At the
same time, a New York doctor
reports a rare and aggressive
form of cancer being seen
specifically in gay men. Within
days, the CDC released reports
of opportunistic infections
appearing in homosexuals.
Very little was clear about
the virus, but one thing was
obvious, it was ripping through
the gay community. Originally
referred to as GRID or ‘Gay
Related Immunodeficiency,’ by
the autumn of 1982, the CDC
began using AIDS, ‘AutoImmune
Deficiency Syndrome, to describe
the disease.
When Marc Lida created
his piece “AIDS #5” in 1983, very
little was known about the AIDS
virus. The only certainty at that
time was that AIDS was a death
sentence. The language used in
reference to AIDS was rarely
hopeful, making motifs of death
typical of the time.
Lida’s “AIDS #5,” depicts
two men having sex while death
looms over them in the form of
a skeleton hovering in the sky
overhead. The men, central to
the image and narrative, painted
in an expressionist style, evoke
of feelings of loss in the viewer.
More importantly, the feeling of
love despite loss. Indicitive of
the fear circulating at the time,
“AIDS #5” encapsulates the fear
of homosexuality causing death.
At the time of its painting
in 1983, there was a prominent
fear that the existence of gay
men was being threatened. The
distorted imagery and frantic
brush strokes are representative
of Lida’s emotional reaction to
the AIDS crisis. However, the
men continue to have intercourse
despite the possibility and
imminence of death.
Unfortunately, Lida
himself succumbed to AIDS in
1992. This work represents the
bleakness of an HIV diagnosis at
the beginning of the pandemic.
There was very little to be done
for those who were HIV positive,
and death seemed inevitable.
Marc Lida’s “AIDS #5” serves as a
poignant marker of this time.
Caitlin Rabb

AIDS #5 (1983)
Marc Lida

This artwork is one of
Wojnarowicz’s more
well-known creations. It
recently came back into
the public eye when Dan
Levy (widely known for acting in
Schitt’s Creek) wore a piece of
fashion inspired by Wojnarowicz’s
piece at the 2021 Met Gala.
Wojnarowicz was born in
New Jersey in 1954. He has been
quoted as stating he was “eight or
nine” years old when he started
doing sex work in Times Square.
Over the years, he became known
for his other work, gaining
notoriety as an AIDS activist
and as an artist. He continued
creating work that centred around
his own experience as a man with
Fuck You Faggot Fucker (1984)
David Wojnarowicz
1984
DAVID WOJNAROWICZ
FUCK YOU FAGGOT FUCKER
AIDS, and around his activism,
until he passed away in 1992 at
the age of thirty-eight.
I chose to respond to
this piece with one singular
photo that I felt best described
my reaction to seeing this for
the first time: pride. I am proud
of my community and all that we
have been through. I am proud of
all those who have come before
me. I am humbled by the great
sacrifices many were forced to
make. I am saddened by the loss of
so much history, so much culture,
so many beautiful souls. But I am
proud to be a gay trans man. The
intersection of my identities puts
me at great risk for contracting
HIV/AIDS in my lifetime. As a gay
man, I am at risk of contracting
it within the community (I am not
implying that gay men are the only
demographic affected). As a trans
man, I am not taken seriously
by medical professionals when
I present with symptoms of any
kind (I also was directly told
by my doctor that PrEP “would
not be necessary” because I am
“effectively a straight woman”).
As a gay trans man, I face unique
odds of contracting and suffering
from this virus. HIV/AIDS has
always been personal to me, and I
wanted to show that in my photo.
Photo prints, acrylic, collage, on composition board

For this project,
I gathered one of several
silicone phalluses I use to have
penetrative sex with other men,
my vegan leather harness, some
of my condoms, and a lube packet.
I packed them into a tote bag
emblazoned with the logo for
a sex toy company (I figured it
was appropriate), and I hopped
on the metro. I walked from the
metro to my close friend’s front
door, entered their apartment,
and there, in the somewhatdimly-lit
kitchen, on the floor,
I photographed some of my most
personal, private items in front
of a backdrop I had printed out
earlier that day, simply stating,
“I am a proud faggot fucker.”
This project is me exposing some
of the most private parts of my
life, in an effort to help viewers
reflect on what people with HIV/
AIDS went through, and continue
to go through. Their most private
lives are put on public display.
They are dehumanised, demonised,
and humiliated. For me, the effect
of an untold amount of strangers
seeing my personal items is
intense exposure. Vulnerability.
I am thoroughly humbled by the
vulnerability experienced by
those who came before me, and so
I push myself to experience this
feeling in an attempt to honour
them.
Toulouse Ren

1987
John Greyson’s first
foray into AIDS video
was his 1987 music
video spoof The ADS
Epidemic (short for
Acquired Dread of Sex), created
in collaboration with composer
Glenn Schellenberg. The film
draws influence from ‘80s queer
new wave and synthpop, and Rosa
von Praunheim’s pioneering
German AIDS musical comedy A
Virus Knows No Morals (Ein Virus
kennt keine Moral, 1986). Greyson
also pastiches Luchino Visconti’s
1971 adaptation of Death in
Venice , transplanting its main
character Gustav von Aschenbach
into modern-day Toronto. Greyson
and Schellenberg adopt a musical
modality to lampoon the AIDS
public health messaging at
the time. As art historian and
activist Douglas Crimp puts it,
Greyson’s glitzy, tongue-incheek,
sex positive, MTV take on
the AIDS PSA directly challenges
the prudish norms of early AIDS
messaging with lines like, “you
can get ADS from the Toronto
Sun, you can get ADS from Ronald
Reagan, stop the ADS plague,
safe sex is fun.” Also released
in 1987 was UK-based video artist
Isaac Julien’s classic This is Not
an AIDS Advertisement, a more
abstract but still decidedly
satirical take on the AIDS PSA.
The sensual montage of cheesy
imagery was incidentally shot
partially in Venice.
Lia MacKinnon
AIDS education campaigns
devised by marketing
agencies contracted by
governments [failed to]
take into account any
aspect of psychic life but
fear. An industry that has
used sexual desire to sell
everything from cars to
detergents suddenly finds
itself at a loss for how to
sell a condom.

John Greyson
Part I:
Beginnings

1987
AIDS (1987)
General Idea
Acrylic on Canvas

AIDS BY
GENERAL
IDEA
General Idea,
composed of
three artists
- Jorge Zontal,
AA Bronson, and
Felix Partz created this piece
in response to an invitation
to exhibit from the American
Foundations for AIDS Research
(amfAR). Titled AIDS, the first in
General Idea’s Imagevirus series,
aims to explore multiple aspects
of AIDS through media.
AIDS directly mimicks
Robert Indiana’s 1966, LOVE,
a very popular and highly
commercialized piece (circulated
through postage stamps, holiday
cards, keychains, et cetera),
which spread worldwide and
scribed in the cultural canon
of the 1960s. AIDS, in using the
exact layout and color scheme but
replacing the word ‘LOVE’ with
‘AIDS,’ features three bright
hues - red, green, and blue. The
vivid colour palette instantly
attracts the eye of the viewer. The
cheerful hues, existing in stark
contrast with the updated text,
boldly transform the original
artwork into one which denotes a
dark and taboo topic of the time
- AIDS.
Through their appropriation
of Indiana’s infamous piece
traditionally speaking on love,
a generally relateable theme,
AIDS inspires the viewer to see
that AIDS is just as ubiquitous as
love - both present and relatable
to everyone whether or not we
care to realize. In swapping
out “LOVE” for “AIDS,” the piece
establishes a connection between
two words and through their
interchangeability implies a
connection between love and AIDS
- AIDS is LOVE and LOVE is AIDS.
Noting the universal
recognition of Indiana’s work, the
group aimed for the same amount
of widespread use for their
image as well. General Idea’s
decision to parody Indiana’s
LOVE, a cultural phenomenon of
the 60’s, aims to boldly signal
the presence of a new cultural
phenomenon - the HIV/AIDS
pandemic. In the widespread
promotion of AIDS, General Idea
aims to mirror the spread of the
AIDS virus - “infecting” spaces
with AIDS imagery to create AIDS
visibility cross-culturally.
They accomplished this through
multiple iterations of their work
- transforming AIDS to sculpture,
wallpapers, posters, prints, and
a variety of other functional
pieces (plates, jewelry, et cetera).
In the following year after its
creation, the group made twelve
more paintings featuring the
same imagery in different colour
palettes.
General Idea started
poster campaigns to display
their “AIDS” imagery in major
cities across the globe, ranging

1987
from Toronto to Berlin,
even displaying “AIDS” on a
billboard in Times Square.
While the original painting
was initially well-received by
the public, when the posters
were released General Idea
was deeply criticized from
AIDS activists because of
the lack of information on
AIDS in the posters. As much
of the activism surrounding
AIDS was focused on both
providing information and
correcting misinformation
on AIDS, AIDS activists took
issue with the posters’ lack
of information on HIV/AIDS.
However, AA Bronson, one of
the members of General Idea,
spoke on the issue during an
interview stating the lack
of information was somewhat
intentional. Creating a piece
in poor taste is what inspired
the work to begin with.
The lack of information
given from a single image,
“AIDS,” serves as a powerful
commentary on the lack of
resources provided for those
faced with an AIDS diagnosis.
Using the elements of parody
to their advantage, General
Idea combines the taboo
subject of AIDS with the
fame of the original piece to
confront the stigma associated
with AIDS head on. General
Idea was widely successful
in providing visibility for
AIDS through their work
appropriating, reworking,
and widely distributing their
AIDS artwork. Continuing to
use appropriation of other
modalities throughout the
1980s with projects like
‘FILE,’ a parody of the popular
magazine ‘LIFE,’ which at face
value appears identical to
‘LIFE,’ yet is “riddled with
layers of fact and fiction;”
a fitting phrase for General
Idea’s entire body of work.
Shortly after it’s
production, the piece takes
on a whole new meaning when
when two of the three members
of General Idea are diagnosed
as HIV positive between 1989-
1990. Their diagnoses create
a newfound urgency behind
the work AIDS, with Zontal
publicly announcing his
status in an interview with
CBC Radio. Zontag’s public
announcement of his status as
HIV positive was incredibly
controversial as AIDS-related
stigma kept many HIV+ people
from ever speaking about their
diagnoses.
Both Jorge Zontal and Felix
Partz died of AIDS-related
causes in 1994. AA Bronson
carries the legacy of General
Idea through his continued
art career.
General Idea’s works continue
to increase in demand and are
still gaining international
recognition decades after
their creation.
Blue Fraser

AIDS (1987)
General Idea
Acrylic on Canvas Screen Print on Wallpaper

1993
John Greyson
Part 2:
Pop-a-Boner
(1993)
One of Greyson’s bestknown
films is his 1993
feature Zero Patience
- and for good reason.
This irreverant and
glamorous movie musical tackles
the myth of AIDS Patient Zero
with wit and style, and a healthy
serving of irony. The film imagines
a washed-up Sir Richard Francis
Burton - known for his English
translations of the Kama Sutra
and a rendition of the Arabian
Nights infamous for its emphasis
on sexual imagery, as well as his
quest to measure all the dicks.
Burton, after an “unfortunate
encounter” with the fountain of
youth finds himself working for
the Toronto Museum of Natural
History. Here, he meets Zero, a
fictionalized version of Gaetan
Dugas, the Québecois flight
attendant accused of bringing
HIV to North America, and the
two form a reluctant partnership
that, of course, ends in sex.
The fabulously depraved
musical numbers - choreographed
by Susan McKenzie and composed,
once again, by Glenn Schellenberg
- are befitting of a supremely
twisted Busby Berkeley film.
Numbers include, “Pop-a-Boner,”
wherein three towel-clad men
explain the rules of bathhouse
etiquette, and “The Butthole
Duet,” featuring Richard’s and
Zero’s anuses singing to each
other under the sheets. Suffice it
to say, Zero Patience is a far cry
from the largely melodramatic
AIDS features it precedes.
Comparisons to von Praunheim’s A
Virus Knows No Morals is easy to
spot, clearly influential to
Greyson’s style. However, Zero
Patience is a wholly unique

film that could only have been
conceived during the lawless
zeitgeist of the New Queer
Cinema, and could only have been
executed this well by Greyson
and Schellenberg.
An HBO film adaptation of
And the Band Played On, the 1987
book which popularized the myth
of Patient Zero, also happened
to premiere in 1993. In stark
contrast with Zero Patience, And
the Band Played On took at face
value Gaetan Dugas as scapegoat.
On top of that, And the Band Played
On is a very dry and melodramatic
docudrama with a sprawling
2h20 runtime. Speaking of dry
melodramas, Jonathan Demme’s
sorely closeted, conservative,
and, arguably, homophobic
Oscar-winning AIDS feature
Philadelphia was released to
US theatres on the same weekend
as Zero Patience. Greyson cites
Derek Jarman’s experimental
soundscape Blue and Cynthia
Roberts’ 1994 real-time docufiction
hybrid as superior works
dealing with AIDS.
Lia MacKinnon

1993

BLOOD, POLITICS, AND
PERFORMANCE ART:
RON ATHEY’S FOUR
SCENES IN A HARSH LIFE
(1993-1996)
In a trucker hat and
machinist’s uniform,
performance artist Ron
Athey sits on a chair
drinking scotch as drag
queen Divinity P. Fudge, covered
in balloons, dances onto a small
stage in front of a crowd of people
shrouded in darkness - so begins
the first of four scenes in Athey’s
Four Scenes in a Harsh Life.
As Athey takes a lit cigar and
begins aggressively popping the
balloons, industrial music blares
over the speakers. Divinity, now
stripped from drag, crouches
below Athey while he begins to
slice a series of ritualisticstyled
patterns into their back.
Athey blots the blood with paper
towels as two people in butcher
uniforms string the bloodied
paper towels on a clothesline
dancing above the audience. Thus
ends the first scene. i
This scene totals around
ten minutes. However, unknown
to Athey at the time of his
performance, these ten minutes
sparked a string of controversies
surrounding HIV, art, and
blood in what Athey now refers
to as the ‘Polemic of Blood’. i
Four Scenes in a Harsh Life,
performed at Patrick’s Cabaret
and presented by the Walker
Art Center during Minneapolis’
fifth LGBT Film Festival, was
met with fear, disgust, reproach
and confusion by mainstream and
right-wing media with Ron Athey,
the HIV+ performance artist at
center stage. The controversy
surrounding Athey’s performance,
and subsequent fallout centered
around an HIV+ artist using blood
in their act, contributed to the
ever-growing complicity between
the art world and public funding.
Athey, although never directly
applying for funding through the
NEA (National Endowment for the
Arts), was used to criticize the
NEA and bolstered (along with
the NEA Four) the censoring of
artists’ work through withholding
funding to certain subject matter/
mediums.
However, Athey’s works
were not funded publicly outside
of a $150 stipend from the NEA,
distributed through the Walker
Center, for his performance. Nor
has he ever requested funding
through the NEA or any such art
endowments. As powerful as Athey’s
Four Scenes in a Harsh Life is,
the response by mainstream media
pundits to the performance itself
was exaggerated - painting Athey
as a morbid artist, paid for by tax
dollars to spew “buckets of HIVtainted
blood” at the audience.
Controversy surrounding his
performance, lying at the
intersection of art and politics,
points to how art existing, even
within a subculture, is never
outside culture and political
tension.
i. “The belief that all blood is HIV-positive, that, against science, it could be airborne.”
Ron Athey, in Polemic of Blood,” Walker Art, https://walkerart.org/magazine/ron-athey-blood-polemic-post-aids-body.

1993
Four Scenes in a Harsh
Life, the second part of Athey’s
‘holy torture trinity,’ centers
blood and ritual sacrifice as a
meditation on the inner turmoil
in the rejection of Christianity
within his early adolescence,
centering each performance as
parts a whole biblical story,
with HIV and martyrdom at the
center. i For Athey, “death has
been a constant companion,”
showing up in many of his works.
Growing up in a Pentecostal and
profoundly religious home, Athey
uses subversion of familiar
ritualistic and religious imagery
to grapple with his status as HIV
positive, his sexuality, gender,
and struggles with addiction and
suicide.
Performance art in and
of itself is already a highly
politicized form of art because it
deals directly with the body of the
artist. The body becomes the art,
the expression and the ‘painting.’
Front and center, the body of
the artist is the foreground of
art. One cannot skirt or avoid
direct confrontation between the
viewer and the artist. In its best
form, performance art subverts
- allowing for an exploration
of the often highly politicized
body. Athey’s performance
style, influenced by Jean Genet
and William S. Burroughs,
modification and scarification,
showing in-vivo the late ‘80s and
early ‘90s discourse surrounding
HIV as tying sexuality with
disease.
Through Athey’s literal marking
of his body, he attacks and
subverts the dominant discourse
surrounding the queer body
through physical performance.
Four Scenes in a Harsh
Life, performed from 1993 to
1996, marks a time during the HIV
epidemic where the imact of HIV
on the art world - particularly
within queer subcultures -
reconfigured how art was not only
thought about but produced. Ron
Athey, through grief and loss of
many of his idols in the postpunk/pre-goth
scene, works to
reconfigure and recapitulate this
loss - inviting his audiences to
see the physical mainfestations
of his grief.
Margot Thorseth
often employs turture, body
2 “Athey developed what he calls the ‘holy torture trinity’ of works: Martyrs & Saints, 4
Scenes in a Harsh Life, and Deliverance. All three pieces combine elements of religious imagery, medical
treatment, sexual fetishes, and an inevitable progression through injury towards death.” Alison
Young, Judging the Image: Art, value, law, (New York:Routledge, 2005), 108.

“Because the AIDS body was still present. Brassy,
because defiant, because still here, because a
survivor, because of AIDS. So I just owned another
way of looking at my work, that my identity and
my experience is written on the body, whether or
not the piece is “about” that. My mother. Addiction.
AIDS. Faggotry. And, in whatever costume, the
queer body.”
Ron Athey

1994
AA
BRONSON’S
FELIX PARTZ
Felix Partz died of
AIDS-related causes
on the fifth of June,
1994. Hard to hold, yet
even harder to break is
Felix’s unflinching gaze in this
posthumous portrait. This is
what death looks like. In 1999, five
years after Felix Partz’s death,
AA Bronson sold the image of his
friend and former collaborative
partner to the National Gallery
of Canada. In doing this, he lets
Felix go into the world of the
object, reminding the viewer
that, we too, are mortal. He
allows the dead to walk among us.
It was not unfamiliar for queer
communities during this time to
see their loved ones ravaged by
AIDS. In 1994, AIDS became the
leading cause of death among
Americans ages 25-44. Felix
Partz in this image is himself,
but he is also
a representation of many people
who died at home, helpless to
the fatality of AIDS before
the availability of any sort of
treatment. This is how Felix
presented himself to people in
the last few weeks of his life,
surrounded by his favourite
things and adorned in pattern
and colour.
Felix, pictured here
three hours after his death with
his body so emaciated there is
not enough skin even to close
his eyes. Formally, the image
draws on multiple art movements,
reminding the viewer that HIV
can touch anything. There is a
surrealist gaze of his hollow eye
sockets that make you question
your own subconscious. His
mortality is staring directly at
you. The flatness of space and
mix of pattern is reminiscent
of Japonism. The juxtaposition
of brightly coloured bedding
and eclectic patterns versus the
emaciated figure is startling
- creating an evident tension
between life and death.

We need to remember, that the diseased, the
disabled, and, yes, even the dead walk among us.
They are part of our community, our history, our
continuity.
AA Bronson
(1999)
This photo creates an
important conversation for
viewers around HIV/AIDS, life,
and death. While the image is
hard to look at as it confronts
directly our own mortality, it is
necessary to do so. By allowing
the viewer access to Felix Partz
in his death, we are given the
space to reflect on and mourn a
generation lost to HIV - and face
the fear of our own mortality.
Caitlin Rabb

2003
John Greyson
Part 3:
A Hybrid Docu-
Fiction multi-
channel Video
opera?!

Yes, you heard that right!
Perhaps Greyson’s
most ambitious project
to date, Fig Trees
(2003) combines these
seemingly incompatible genres
and modalities in a rich tapestry
of “frothy absurd nonsense.”
Reminiscent of, yet wholly
different from, Gertrude Stein
and Virgil Thomson’s 1934 opera
Four Saints in Three Acts, Fig
Trees - to top it off - is narrated
by an albino squirrel. The piece
tells the story of prominent
South African AIDS activist
Zackie Achmat through the
anachronistic eyes of Stein and
Thomson, who, within Greyson
and Wall’s opera, are imagined to
be writing their own opera about
him. This meta-fictitious tale is
interspersed with real interviews
of living AIDS activists, most
notably Toronto AIDS activist,
Tim McCaskell.
Conceived and co-created
with composer David Wall, the
piece was unveiled in 2003 as
a series of eight installations
at the Oakville Galleries in
Oakville, a suburb of Toronto.
Further iterations followed at
various locations across Canada
in subsequent years. In 2007,
a single-channel feature film
version was filmed with the same
cast and additional scenes. The
feature version premiered in
2009 at the Berlin International
Film Festival.
Lia MacKinnon

2013
THE BODY AS SPECTACLE:
RON ATHEY’S
INCORRUPTIBLE FLESH
AND THE SHIFTING DISCOURSE OF THE
‘POST-AIDS BODY’
In the 2015 anthology Art
AIDS America, Jonathan
Katz notes a shift in
discourse surrounding
HIV/AIDS as promoting
the AIDS crisis in the past
tense. I would argue that the
commodification of subversion
and the collapsing of the AIDS
crisis into the folds of history
has reframed queer performance
art outside of the political,
iconclastic imaginary. Aligned
more with sideshow attraction
and voyeuristic curiosity, this
‘shifting of AIDS into the past’
has affected the spectatorship of
the queer artist and the impact
of, as Ron Athey himself puts, the
AIDS body. Now, seen as a “tragic
tangent in American history,”
the impending threat of AIDS
and, by extension, the AIDS body
has been removed and replaced
with general detachment and
indifference within our current
cultural climate. i With AIDS
“safely sequestered in the
past,” voyeuristic consumption
of the queer body resumes its
pace , dramatically impacting
the affective quality of queer
performance art. For the purposes
of this article, I will be focusing
on Megan Hoetger’s recapitulation
of audience reaction from
Ron Athey’s 2014 performance,
Incorruptible Flesh: Messianic
Remains, at Stanford University’s
Pigott theatre. Emblematic of
the castrated threat of the AIDS
crisis, the shifting of the AIDS
body into mere abject curiosity
marks the body as art politic
merging irreconcilably with the
body as spectacle.
Athey’s series, Incorruptible
Flesh began in 1996 as a
collaboration with Lawrence
Steger, who later passed from
AIDS complications in 1999. Athey
has since revisited Incorruptible
Flesh with [Dissociative Sparkle]
(2006), Perpetual Wound (2007)
and, most recently, Messianic
Remains (2013). Messianic
Remains, the fourth instalment
of Incorruptible Flesh, inspired
by Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the
Flowers and iconic drag queen
Divine’s less than divine death,
is a meditation on death, (im)
mortality, iconoclasm, and the
spectacle of life.
However, the rise in
homonationalism and discourse
surrounding AIDS and ‘the gay
body’ is reflected in audience
reaction to Athey’s 2013
performance. Compared to his
previous performances in the
1990s, audience participation,
Hoetger stresses, is marked with
detached analysis, curiosity,
and collective anxiety over the
experience they are “supposed”
to have.
With a show “structured by [the]
collective disire to have ‘an Athey
i Of which theorizing or diving into the root of Western society’s detachment and indifference is beyond
the scope of this paper. There are innumerable possible explanations for this phenomenon, and most
likely the combinatory effect of a multiplicity of dialogues of which, for brevity’s sake, I will not go
into detail.

experience’ and anxiety over
what exactly that should look
and feel like,” - gawking at the
instruments and lewd comments on
the position of his body, with one
spectator describing to another
a brief history of the American
freak show - the preoccupied
and detached spectatorship of
the audience, at least to Hoetger,
seems trite and disinterested.
Messianic Remains, while
well aligned with Athey’s oeuvre,
shows a shift in the affective
control his performances have
over his audience. I would argue
that this shift demarcates a
shift in the affective control of
the queer body - the ‘AIDS body’
the ‘perverse body’ - and ties
in with the popular discourse
surrounding AIDS as a ‘problem’
that has been ‘solved.’ Now,
no longer seen as a threat to
public health, the AIDS body
takes its place among the freak
show circuit - ideologically depoliticized,
abject, and no longer
a thing to be feared but prodded
at and examined.
Pavlina Radia, in
their article on Baudrillard’s
postmodern Transaesthetics

2013
and spectacle, argues that
postmodernity and performance
art, in its attempts to use art as
a form of subversion to confront
commodification
through
spectacle, “inevitably objectifies
the other wtihin as a mirror
image of (their) (im)mortality,”
leaving them “equally caught up
in the iconoclastic strategies
they strive to reject in the first
place.” Athey’s Incorruptible
Flesh performances, ranging from
2006 to 2019, center the queer body
in this iconoclastic spectacle.
However, space, place, and time
are indispensable tools within
cultural analysis. Temporality
dictates how a performance may
be received or, more accurately,
how it may be seen yet not
witnessed. As Hoetger suggests,
it is in the audience wanting an
‘Athey experience’ that decenters
the work from the performer.
No longer subjective, Athey’s
message can easily be lost, fading
into the background of the ‘freak
show’ that is the AIDS body, that
is the performance artist, that
is the mutliated, incorruptible
flesh of Ron Athey. It is hard not
to draw parallels with the shift
in AIDS discourse over a similar
period of Athey’s performances.
The AIDS body - Ron Athey’s body -
is no longer subjective. Rather, it
is decentered from yet subsumed
within the queer body politic.
The commodification of
the AIDS body, more pernicious
than just a United Colours of
Benneton ad, dictates art’s very
production. Commodification
affects what is produced, how
it is produced, by whom, and
how it is (or is not) received.
Baudrillard would disagree that
any artist could effectively
subvert their own iconoclasm.
It would seem as though Athey
is no exception. However, the
question remains if it is possible
within the commodification of
subversion, for the artist to
emancipate their body from the
spectatorial freak show and, if
it proves to be impossible, what
we are witnessing is, perhaps,
a post-Barthean ‘death of the
artist.’
For Hoetger, the
transduction from visual to
auditory in Athey’s performance
is what captivates her. Has the
visual lost meaning? Overinundated
with the spectator’s
gaze, sublimated through
indifference and detachment from
the visual, has the queer body -
the AIDS body, the artist body -
no longer coded as threat, lost its
significance? Perhaps the space
of the performance, sterile and
academic, creates a spectatorship
driven by having “the experience
they were supposed to have, (to)
linger long enough to have spent
an appropriate time with the
work.”

“Divine Divinity”: Photo Catherine Opie
Maybe the stage, so far
from the audience. Or, perhaps,
the body, the incorruptible
body, the AIDS body, losing its
popular relevancy, has, yet
again, changed meaning.
Margot Thorseth

KIA
LABEIJA’S
MOURNING
SICKNESS
(2014)
Kia LaBeija is a fine
artist and dancer, but
first she is a queer
black woman living
with HIV. Her work
intends on making space for
those she says are forgotten.
She represents an everpresent
minority - children living with
HIV. Born in 1990, her life is in
and of itself a miracle. She has
lived far past what was assumed
for anyone living with HIV, let
alone children. LaBeija, along
with her mother, was diagnosed
with HIV in 1992. In 1993, just
a year after Kia’s diagnosis,
the mean age of survival for
children living with HIV through
perinatal transmission was just
under nine years. Kia, through
her life experience as HIV+,
gives meaning to “the power of
representation,” she “wants
to make sure that the lives of
children born with HIV are not
be reduced to one sentence in a
reports about ‘mother-to-child’
transmission.”
2014
Kia’s mother advocated
for the rights of Asian Americans
living with HIV until her death
in 2004. Kia’s art, following in
her mother’s legacy, uses her
own positionality to advocate for
those who are not being heard.
Kia LaBeija, house mother of
iconic House of LaBeija in it’s
50th year, credits the ballroom
community as being foundational
to her sense of identity and
belonging.
The series ‘24’ recreates
mementos, drawing on loss and her
own experience as a young queer
person living with HIV. Using
photographs to capture recreated
moments, LaBeija incorporates
elements of fantasy within her
reality. The series is indicative
of milestones encompassed with
grief.
In her work ‘Eleven,’
LaBeija is seen in her prom dress
at the doctor’s office having her
blood drawn. The assumption
behind this work is that Kia was
never expected to live to see this
day. The series was first presented
ten years after the death of her
mother. Kia herself is centered
in the photos throughout the
series.

Breaking the fourth wall,
LaBeija’s eyes connect with
the viewer and forces them
to experience these intimate
moments with her. The filters
and lighting used gives off an
element of fantastical realism
to her complicated and difficult
memories.
“Mourning Sickness,”
captures the feeling of the
isolation felt within
grief. A snapshot
of multifaceted
and tangible loss,
“Mourning Sickness”
tells the tale,
through LaBeija’s
perspective, of
the loss of her
own experiences
and opportunities
in growing as a
child with HIV. Her
presence, centered
in the image, is as
striking as it is
intense. LaBeija, in centering
heself, reclaims the narrative
overshadowed by the physical
ramifications of the
presence of HIV in
her life.
The title plays
on
‘morning
sickness,’ inspired
by memories of
her mother and
of Kia spending
many mornings
before school
being sick from the
medications keeping
her alive. She also
says it “evokes
locking myself in
the bathroom and
grieving for my
mother’s passing.
I still deal with these feelings,
and probably always will.” The
medium of the photo is relevant
to the content, as the photo itself
immortalizes these moments
both for the viewer, and LaBeija
herself. The tangibility of her
grief is something she will carry
on forever.
In “Kia and Mommy,”
LaBeija is lying on the floor of
her childhood bedroom clutching
a photo of her mother.

2014
As her photography practice
progressed, her mother had
already passed and she was
unable to take a portrait with
her. This portrait represents
that grief. Here, she represents
many children who have lost their
primary carers to HIV-related
illness. She is dressed up in this
image, presenting a glamourized
version of herself. She has said
that this is so other HIV+ people
may see themselves through her
as being beautiful.
Kia’s art is made to create
a space for HIV positive people
who see themselves in her work.
Kia LaBeija creates to ensure
that forgotten people have a
voice and community. Her work
is the amalgamation of her life
experience as a queer, HIV+ woman.
Drawing on her own experiences,
she makes herself vulnerable in
sharing her own experience and
creating community in her work
for those who have seldom seen
themselves represented. LaBeija
integrates the intersections
of politics and illness, while
delivering beautifully-crafted
mementos representative of an
entire generation living with
HIV.
Caitlin Rabb

Dove (2016)
Music: Pillar Point; Directed by Jacob Krupnick
Featuring Kia LaBeija
Music Video

JONATHAN
MOLINA’S
BETHESDA
BROTHERHOOD
2014
Between 2014 and 2016,
Jonathan Molina-
Garcia created a
multimedia series of
his works entitled
The Bethesda Brotherhood.
This series features a variety
of contemporary works in
different mediums including
photo, video, collage, and
needlepoint. The multiple
mediums Garcia works with
reflect his intersecting
identities as queer, HIV
positive, and a Salvadorian
immigrant. The Bethesda
Brotherhood series, inspired
by the relationships formed by
Garcia with older HIV positive
men (who he met over the
internet,) captures intimate
exchanges between himself
and his lovers. Through these
exchanges, Garcia explores
themes of visibility, identity,
and intergenerational
relationships. The use of
himself and his lovers as main
subjects in his art challenges
notions of undetectability by
making their lives, identities,
and experiences outwardly
visible through the work. This
series is representative of its
time, highlighting the ways
we are now able to meet people
through the internet and form
real, meaningful connections
with them.
The pool of Bethesda
is referred to in religious
literature as the place where
Jesus Christ bathed a paralyzed
man, completely curing him of
his ailments. This site holds a
double meaning: one of healing
and grace, and one of shame
and degradation of those who
are ailing. This resonates
with Garcia as his identity
also links him with multiple
meanings: as an immigrant
having both a Salvadorian and
American identity, as queer,
and as HIV positive. His status
as an immigrant both frees
and oppresses him, and his
HIV status being recognized
both negatively links him to
the government, yet gives him
access to medication. The pool
of Bethesda is a metaphor
for the current reality of
HIV - there are medications
now available to help control
the virus and heal the sick,
however, accessing this
lifesaving medications means
you are forced to exist within
many social stigmas and
barriers.
“Gerry” (2014), (featured
on the right) is a diptych
Garcia took of one of his
lovers. This work challenges
notions of
visibility - both of HIV+,
queer men and of being

‘undetectable.’ This is shown in
many ways, one being through the
interspersing sections of shadow
and light cast on Gerry’s nude
body. Gerry is both facing the
camera and has his back turned
within the two images, giving
us a view of his entire body -
save for the parts concealed
by the shadows. Gerry’s naked
body outstretched in energetic
stances is both vulnerable and
empowering.
Included in this series is a
short video of Gerry with the song
“Forever Young” (2014) playing in
the background as he brushes his
hair in a mirror. The song adds
multiple meanings. Originally
recorded in 1973, the iconic
‘Forever Young’ has transgressed
multiple decades through
remixes and reworking into new
versions throughout the years.
Blurring the line between public
and private, this video shows the
world an intimate moment that
would otherwise have gone unseen
outside of Gerry’s and Jonathan’s
worlds. Gerry stands naked as he
and Garcia, behind the camera,
go back and forth - exchanging
words and giggles that turn into
joyous belly laughs when Gerry
notes the lack of hair he has to
brush. ‘Forever Young,’ (shown on
the next page) demonstrates the
joy and care that can exist within
intergenerational relationships
between queer, HIV positive men.
“Stitch, Pop-Pop, Stitch
(2014)” is a short video that shows
one of Garcia’s lovers, Allan,

2014
Forever Young
Jonathan Molina-
Garcia
2014
Embed Forever Young here
link in endnotes
teaching him how to stitch. They
are sitting naked in a white room
on a white bed, their dark bodies
and bright patchwork contrasting
the sterile environment. Allan
and Garcia sit side by side, Allan
first explaining and showing
how a particular stitch is made,
then passing over the patchwork
for Garcia to try, guiding him
through the process.
This piece highlights the
intergenerational exchange
of knowledge that happens
between Garcia and his lover - an

embed stitch pop-pop stitch here
(link in endnotes)
exchange of knowledge that has
been happening between queer
HIV positive men for decades.
Allan is strict with his teaching
strategy and Garcia continuously
laughs in response. This exchange
demonstrates the conflict between
their generational influences on
communication and how they work
together to overcome in order to
learn and share a space together.
The intergenerational exchange
of knowledge has been vital to
queer men throughout the timeline
of HIV, passing knowledge and
caring for one another has been
a key factor in survival. Garcia
shows this exchange happening
in the modern day, reminding
viewers of how it has shaped our
history and demonstrates the
ways it manifests in the age of
technology.
Blue Fraser

2022
John
Greyson
Part 4:
AIDS vid-
eo: Past,
Present,
and
Future.
To conclude this piece, we
will be taking a sneak
peak at John Greyson’s
upcoming collaborative
AIDS video project,
Viral Interventions, and the
threads that connect it back to
his earlier works, especially
his collaborative cable access
programme Toronto Living with
AIDS (TLWA, 1989-1991). The
TLWA programme consisted of 13
commissioned half-hour AIDS
videos destined for distribution
on the public-access networks
of Rogers and MacLean-Hunter,
produced by Greyson and Michael
Balser. This was not the first of
Greyson’s curatorial endeavours
– he previously curated the Angry
Initiatives, Different Strategies
tape (1988) and co-curated Video
Against AIDS (1989) – but it was
the most widely distributed of
the three, being co-funded by
various public health agencies.
Greyson directed two pilots
for the programme in 1989, The
Great AZT Debate, about the
controversial antiretroviral
drug, and The World is Sick (sic),
which documented the 1989 World
AIDS Conference in Montreal,
as narrated by a snarky drag
queen. Though Greyson and Balser
managed to produce 13 videos
for the series, they were unable
to secure funding for a second
series, as the station manager at
Rogers Cable refused to continue
airing the programme due to
scenes of “men French kissing and
the caressing of thighs” in one of
the videos.

Greyson’s upcoming
project “Viral Interventions is
a direct response to” the TLWA
series. Greyson and Sara Flicker
are leading the project with
support from Alison Duke, Darien
Taylor, Richard Fung, and Ryan
Conrad. The project consists of
three series of six 10-minute
commissioned AIDS videos by a
diverse group of both new and
established artists. In addition
to the video programmes, the
last of which has locked picture,
Greyson and his collaborators
are planning
a conference, exhibition, print
publication, screening series,
and an interactive documentary
about the project itself. Though
the official launch date is not
until 2024, Greyson has kindly
informed us to keep our eyes on
the Cinema Politica schedule for
this summer (2022) for more news
about the project.
]
Lia MacKinnon

AIDS &
ART
Blue Fraser, Lia MacKinnon, Caitlin Rabb, Toulouse Ren, Margot Thorseth