THE AESTHETIC OF AIDS (απόσπασμα)
By Mark Jacobs
AIDS activism has always been image-driven. The Silence=Death logo was professionally art directed, a re-appropriation of the pink triangle that had already come to stand for gay liberation paired with painstakingly selected Gill Sans Bold Extra Condensed type. A collective of artists called Gran furry was among an accomplished number who further defined the visual sensibility og the movement, achieving an incendiary crescendo with a Pope-skewering installation unleashed at the 1990 Venice Biennale. “AIDS made its debut among a very cultured group of people”, wrote Jesse Green, in a 2003 story tiled When Political Art Mattered that ran in The New York Times Magazine. “I sometimes wonder what would have happened if instead of emerging among urban gay men, AIDS had first burrowed its way into sexual lives of, say, accounts”.
The twin imperatives of the original movement, gay visibility and saving their own lives, predicated a hard style; ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleashed Power, even defines itself as a group united in anger. Protestors incorporated punk and military into wardrobes of fitted denim shorts, aggressive footwear and slogan T-SHIRTS. Gregg Araki, the filmmaker responsible for Nowhere, The Doom Generation and the more restrained Mysterious Skin, created a noteworthy vision of this angst in The Living End, a gay HIV-positive road movie from 1992. Its nihilistic pop heroes were good looking, twenty-something, listened to Dead Can Dance, drove a car with a “Choose Death” bumper sticker and had AIDS. Luke, a muscular, tanned hustler disposed to bashing gay bashers, wears a uniform of black sunglasses, a back leather jacket, jeans torn at the knees and a sleeveless Jesus and Mary Chain T-shirt, when he wears a shirt at all. He delivers the film’s thesis over a bowl of Barbie cereal in front of a Smiths popsicle boy tour poster. “Fuck work, fuck the system, fuck everything”, he says. When his sensitive counterpart Jon tries to walk out on their doomed trip, Luke forces sex on him while holding a gun in his mouth, a vivid assessment of the state of gay affairs before the Federal Drug Administration approved the first protease inhibitor in 1995. Araki dedicates the movie to “the hundreds who’ve died and the hundreds of thousands more who will die because of a big White Hall full of Republican fuckheads”. Class dismissed.
As a reference, Araki’s alternative vision is dark and contrary, stylishly dovetailing with the current taste for the last decade. A safe sex message can also be camp, as the mainstream preferred it, like Lisa Left Eye Lopes, who liked to wear colorful condoms over one eye. Or it can be uncomfortably recent, like a Katarine Hammet sheer midriff-baring halter-top from Sping/Summer 2004 that spells out ‘Use a condom’ in diamante studs. Or you might just feel like dancing to the socially aware lyrics of the 1991 club track People Are Still Having Sex be LaTour. (Its soft core acid house music party video can be seen at latourmusic.com) Dover Street Market is already ahead of the curve, having recently collaborated with Butt magazine on a T-shirt printed with a truly massive inverted pink triangle. It might be the official start of something impassioned or cleverly depoliticized, or both. The point is that we talk about AIDS with our lovers and friends and refuse to be embarrassed by the outspokenness of the men and women who afforded many of us the better lives we now lead. It’s called pride and not only gay people have it.
(Αναδημοσίευση από το βρετανικό περιοδικό i-D, τεύχος Νο 270, Οκτώβριος 2006)
By Mark Jacobs
AIDS activism has always been image-driven. The Silence=Death logo was professionally art directed, a re-appropriation of the pink triangle that had already come to stand for gay liberation paired with painstakingly selected Gill Sans Bold Extra Condensed type. A collective of artists called Gran furry was among an accomplished number who further defined the visual sensibility og the movement, achieving an incendiary crescendo with a Pope-skewering installation unleashed at the 1990 Venice Biennale. “AIDS made its debut among a very cultured group of people”, wrote Jesse Green, in a 2003 story tiled When Political Art Mattered that ran in The New York Times Magazine. “I sometimes wonder what would have happened if instead of emerging among urban gay men, AIDS had first burrowed its way into sexual lives of, say, accounts”.
The twin imperatives of the original movement, gay visibility and saving their own lives, predicated a hard style; ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleashed Power, even defines itself as a group united in anger. Protestors incorporated punk and military into wardrobes of fitted denim shorts, aggressive footwear and slogan T-SHIRTS. Gregg Araki, the filmmaker responsible for Nowhere, The Doom Generation and the more restrained Mysterious Skin, created a noteworthy vision of this angst in The Living End, a gay HIV-positive road movie from 1992. Its nihilistic pop heroes were good looking, twenty-something, listened to Dead Can Dance, drove a car with a “Choose Death” bumper sticker and had AIDS. Luke, a muscular, tanned hustler disposed to bashing gay bashers, wears a uniform of black sunglasses, a back leather jacket, jeans torn at the knees and a sleeveless Jesus and Mary Chain T-shirt, when he wears a shirt at all. He delivers the film’s thesis over a bowl of Barbie cereal in front of a Smiths popsicle boy tour poster. “Fuck work, fuck the system, fuck everything”, he says. When his sensitive counterpart Jon tries to walk out on their doomed trip, Luke forces sex on him while holding a gun in his mouth, a vivid assessment of the state of gay affairs before the Federal Drug Administration approved the first protease inhibitor in 1995. Araki dedicates the movie to “the hundreds who’ve died and the hundreds of thousands more who will die because of a big White Hall full of Republican fuckheads”. Class dismissed.
As a reference, Araki’s alternative vision is dark and contrary, stylishly dovetailing with the current taste for the last decade. A safe sex message can also be camp, as the mainstream preferred it, like Lisa Left Eye Lopes, who liked to wear colorful condoms over one eye. Or it can be uncomfortably recent, like a Katarine Hammet sheer midriff-baring halter-top from Sping/Summer 2004 that spells out ‘Use a condom’ in diamante studs. Or you might just feel like dancing to the socially aware lyrics of the 1991 club track People Are Still Having Sex be LaTour. (Its soft core acid house music party video can be seen at latourmusic.com) Dover Street Market is already ahead of the curve, having recently collaborated with Butt magazine on a T-shirt printed with a truly massive inverted pink triangle. It might be the official start of something impassioned or cleverly depoliticized, or both. The point is that we talk about AIDS with our lovers and friends and refuse to be embarrassed by the outspokenness of the men and women who afforded many of us the better lives we now lead. It’s called pride and not only gay people have it.
(Αναδημοσίευση από το βρετανικό περιοδικό i-D, τεύχος Νο 270, Οκτώβριος 2006)
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