Art & Performance in the Time of AIDS

This seminar explores the varied ways artists responded to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 90s through performance, theatre, and activist art.  As government indifference persisted and deaths soared, artists became radicalized and contemporary art and performance became a vehicle for activism.  We will follow different tactics in artwork responding to AIDS including the use of gay desire as a weapon and emblem of the fight for visibility.  The work we will view, think about, discuss, and write about is political, often angry, and always suffused with loss.  Because AIDS affected marginalized communities whose histories are still being told, we will examine a range of artists and materials that includes but also moves beyond the gay white male perspective.  We will spend time with theatre work by Reza Abdoh, Tony Kushner, and María Irene Fornés, videos by Juanita Mohammad, visual art by Kia LaBeija, Felix González-Torres, Martin Wong, and David Wojnarowicz, music by Mark Adamo and Diamanda Galás, among other lesser known artist/activists.  We will approach these works alongside critical and creative writing by José Esteban Muñoz and Audre Lorde among others.  The final project will be a research paper, built in stages throughout the semester, that engages critically with artwork that intersects with AIDS activism.