Critical Writing Index

Retroactivism

by Lucas Hilderbrand

GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Apr 1, v. 12, no. 2, p. 303

Duke University Press

Lucas Hilderbrand recounts a history of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and offers am examination regarding his personal nostalgia/romanticizing/fascination of the movement. He looks at the significance of the rise of AIDS activism happening in tandem with the rise of accessible home video equipment, and notes that the organization was one of the first who used video-making as a tool to disseminate, document and educate. The article explores how the videos in ACT UP’s archive function to capture not only the political progress, but the emotion integral to the project. The author pulls from the archives, quoting prominent members who noted the contradictions and radicality of the movement. Hildebrand offers a discussion of affect, nostalgia and cultural memory and challenges the convention of looking at AIDS activism solely through the lens of trauma.

ITEM 2006.195 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Fight Back, Fight AIDS: Fifteen Years of ACT UP (2002)DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activist Television)

Storm the NIH (1989)James Wentzy

An Archive of FeelingsTony Molinari

Video Remains (2005)Ann Cvetkovich

Beyond ShameJim Hubbard

Fast Trip, Long Drop (1993)Sarah Schulman

Alexandra Juhasz

Patrick Moore

Deborah B. Gould

Gregg Bordowitz

Jean Carlomusto