Posted 14 hrs ago
2 min read
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How to tell of decades of fighting against HIV when the whole world is concerned about another virus? As World AIDS Day took place on December 1, the New York City AIDS Memorial unveiled a new outdoor sound installation that allows New Yorkers to hear 40 years of harrowing stories about this scourge. .
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This installation, titled “Hear Me: Voices of the Epidemic”, will feature poems, speeches, music and historical texts throughout the month of December on the scale of the AIDS crisis in New York. More than 100,000 residents of the US city have died of AIDS, according to the New York City AIDS Memorial. This is why a sound tribute from the militant collective “What Would an HIV Doula Do?”, Bringing together the names of more than 2,000 New Yorkers who have died of the disease, will be broadcast each morning at 10 a.m. (EST) as part of the facility located in the Greenwich Village area.
At 7 p.m. (EST), visitors to “Hear Me: Voices of the Eppidemic” will also be able to discover the 45-minute recording that gave its name to the installation, and in which historical figures and contemporary artists retrace more 40 years of fighting AIDS. It includes excerpts from a speech given by the late playwright Larry Kramer in 1991, where he said: “Forty million people infected, it’s a plague! We are in the worst situation we have ever known”, thus a recording that artist David Wojnarowicz made in 1989 during an event of the ACT-UP association, and poems by artists Constantine Jones and Kia LaBeija.
“During this troubled time, I think a lot of us are trying to find a way to be together. ‘Hear Me’ is one of them – a bold and visionary way forward. It is a sound installation that uses the history of AIDS, the voices of our activist movements and the New York City AIDS Memorial as a place of community life. Each evening, for a month, ‘Hear Me’ is an invitation for people to be together while respecting social distancing, a place to reflect on the past, while coming together in the present to imagine and work for a better future.“, said writer Theodore Kerr, who was the creative consultant to” Hear Me, “in a statement.
For those who won’t be able to experience the sound installation in person, leaders of the New York City AIDS Memorial have designed the educational video series, “A Time to Listen”. Researchers, artists and activists decipher the speeches and other historical documents on the history of the fight against AIDS, which inspired “Hear Me: Voices of the Epidemic.
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