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When the Music Stops
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- Author(s) / Creator(s)
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My work is informed by decades of gay activist art, which helped to start the gay movement and later embraced the AIDS crisis and brought it to the attention of the world. I have always been involved with the activist movement by being part of ACTUP in the 1990s and participating in “Die-Ins”. I remember my first time at a Die-In (1990), which occurred on the steps of the BC courthouse in Vancouver. We used shock value and mobilized our people to bring awareness to the HIV crisis. Directly influencing me, and historically informing me, were Tom of Finland, Félix González-Torres, General Idea, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Joe Average. I am one of the few survivors from that time and my work draws from my experiences of that time while being informed by that history. HIV is still a crisis and I personally know people in the USA who are unable to access treatment for their HIV and are dying because of it. Rampant homophobia is still evident around the world. Pastors still call for our collective death. Gay men still get “fag bashed” at alarmingly high rates. The HIV crisis is not over. It lives on in our culture, in our souls, in the memories of the lost and forgotten. It is a war that has never ended.
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- Date created
- 2019-12-17
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- Type of Item
- Research Material