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“Hey hey! Ho ho! Homophobia has to go away! “
This was a chant from the ACT-UP rally in New York in 1989. Now, the audio clip of this protest will resonate throughout Greenwich Village for the next month.
It’s part of Hear Me: Voices of the Epidemic, an audio piece that will play every night at 7 p.m. in December at the New York City Aids Memorial, an outdoor public space on the corner of West 12th Street and Greenwich. Avenue in New York. City. World AIDS Day begins on December 1.
“It is an important day to remember, to reflect on the past, honor those we have lost and educate people that it is ongoing,” said Dave Harper, executive director of the New York City Aids Memorial. “We want to remind people that the AIDS epidemic is not over yet.”
According to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 38 million people worldwide are living with HIV, with 1.7 million new infections in 2019 (690,000 people died of AIDS in 2019).
The audio piece features clips, arranged chronologically, of famous speeches, songs, hymns, personal poems, and protest clips, all of which shed light on the stories of New York. “There are so many rich and vibrant oral histories in New York City, it’s a difficult but hopeful time in New York history,” said Harper.
There are excerpts from playwright Larry Kramer’s 1991 speech, where he says: “Forty million infected people is a plague! We’re in the worst shape we’ve ever been in. “(Kramer, an LGBT activist, died earlier this year).
There are clips of speeches by activist Egyptt LaBeija from the 6th annual tribute walk to the last Visual Aids speech in 2018, who, speaking of Greenwich Village, said: “And seeing all this town transform into what it is now, is taking away the history of what this town was and should always be. The town is for us. Can I get an amen? “
The crowd roars, “Amen.”
“We wanted to create something that lives and breathes, that is not static,” said Harper. “The key was to include key historical figures who were involved in the early days of the epidemic, alongside the young and vibrant voices of today.”
At 10 a.m. every day, the monument will also feature a recording read by an art collective called What Would a Doula With HIV Do?, a group of activists, friends and caregivers, and long-term survivors of HIV, who will read the names of more than 2,000 New Yorkers who have lost their lives to AIDS (more than 100,000 New Yorkers have died from AIDS).
“It’s important that we name the people we’ve lost,” said Theodore Kerr, creative consultant on the project.
These audio pieces are accompanied by an online component called A Time To Listen, a series of conversations in which selected experts reflect on candid clips from the history of AIDS that helped inspire this project.
One of the most influential speeches as part of this project is Vito Russo’s speech Why We Fight, which is included in the montage that plays at 7pm throughout the month of December.
“For me, to this day, it gives me the creeps,” Harper said. “It is exciting to hear his voice, he did not live to see the monument he built, the emergence of useful treatments for HIV. To remember his words of anger and hope, which are relevant not only to HIV, but to the current pandemic we are experiencing. Those people never gave up. “
In his speech he says: “Someday, the AIDS crisis will end. Remember it. And when that day comes, when that day has come and gone, there will be people alive on this earth, gay and straight people, men and women, black and white, who will hear the story that there was once a terrible disease. in this country and around the world, and that a brave group of people stood up and fought and, in some cases, gave their lives so that other people could live and be free ”.
Kerr says it’s important to look back on another epidemic. “With Covid-19, we can hear these oral stories and how people live in the past and present, helping us to overcome the current pandemic that we live in.”
He also wants more of us to remember that people are still living with HIV today. “I always ask, how do you remember an epidemic when it is still ongoing?” asks Kerr. “People don’t talk about what young people with HIV have to deal with. In many ways, it is difficult because both are not only struggling with the virus, but with the history of HIV.
One of the artists in the collection is artist and writer Kia LaBeija, who reads a poem called Drafted that she wrote and recorded in 2017. LaBeija, who was born with HIV, writes about her mother in the poem, writing: “He found himself fighting a battle that he was destined to lose, but along with his smile, I inherited the thickness of his skin, the blood running through my veins, his only will in life.”
“I wrote it in my bathtub, which is where I write all the good stuff,” LaBeija said by phone from Los Angeles. “I posted a lot of art about living with HIV, but I’m publicly processing it, and at that point, I started to feel overwhelmed by it.
“But it reassures me to think that we are all on this earth for a reason,” he said, “By sharing my experience, I hope I can change the narrative, change people’s hearts, or help someone in a similar situation.”
World AIDS Day is a double-edged sword for people living with HIV, LaBeija says. “It’s a day when we can have conversations, honor those we’ve lost and those who are still with us,” he said, “but I want people to keep talking about it on December 2, 3 and 4.
“We need to continue these conversations. AIDS is an ulcer, it is still a great crisis. “
