Visual AIDS’ 30th Annual Day With(out) Art: STILL BEGINNING

The Harvard Art Museums are proud to partner with Visual AIDS for the 30th annual Day With(out) Art by presenting STILL BEGINNING, a program responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic. The seven newly commissioned videos are by Shanti Avirgan, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Carl George, Viva Ruiz, Iman Shervington, Jack Waters/Victor F.M. Torres, and Derrick Woods-Morrow.

The 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 phrase “The AIDS crisis is still beginning,” which first appeared in Bordowitz’s installation Drive (2002), the video program resists narratives of resolution or conclusion; it considers 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 nonprofit 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 With(out) Art, a call to the art world for mourning and action in response to the AIDS crisis. For Day With(out) Art’s 30th year, more than 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. 

Free admission. The screening will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. Films will show on a continuous loop between 11am and 4pm. The entire program runs approximately one hour.

Support for the screening is provided by the Richard L. Menschel Endowment Fund at the Harvard Art Museums.