Over Our Dead Bodies: World AIDS Day of Action at Edinburgh College of Art

To mark World AIDS Day on the 1st of December, Gay Club – an LGBTQIA group at Edinburgh College of Art, run by myself – in partnership with the Staff Pride Network and Visual AIDS, present the World AIDS Day of Action!

By James Bell

World AIDS Day is a moment to remember those lost and equally to learn from the activism and action during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s. In the morning, we present a screening of artist Stuart Marshall’s work Over Our Dead Bodies (1991) – recently acquired by the University Library and available to watch here. The film, commissioned by Channel 4, documents AIDS activism in the United Kingdom and United States. The artist and researcher, Conal McStravick, will then lead a workshop, with Louise Neilson, exploring oral histories and personal testimony held at the Lothian Health Services Archive. The workshop will trace histories of people with HIV/AIDS themselves, as well as HIV/AIDS community care and alliances in local and transnational responses to HIV/AIDS, then and now. Our Day of Action draws to a close with a thinking in the contemporary of the way in which HIV/AIDS intersects with sickness and illness, with a screening of Visual AIDS, Everyone I Know is Sick, featuring newly commissioned artists short films Dorothy Cheung, Hiura Fernandes & Lili Nascimento, Beau Gomez, Dolissa Medina & Ananias P. Soria, and Kurt Weston. Queer and crip discourses on the HIV/AIDS provide an important lens through which we can understand connections and feel resonances with other moments of activism.

Key to this Day of Action is the ongoing role artists play in intervening in, and activating the histories of HIV/AIDS and placing them in dialogue with the present. Conal in particular has played a leading role in the reparative work on the life and legacy of an artist like Marshall, an important, if previously overlooked, figure within histories of British experimental cinema and AIDS cultural activism. Moreover, Conal’s use of the workshop, as a generative and generous mode of learning within which to engage with archival remnants and partial histories, creates creative connections with these marginalised pasts. Visual AIDS commissioning of artists to respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis then and now, also extends the political potentials and allows us to imagine communities and alliances across time and place. In the face of the tremendous loss and trauma of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the often partialness of the archival record, artists offer novel and performative ways to explore history, memory, and time.

The World AIDS Day of Action! nods to important and marginalised histories at Edinburgh College of Art. In 1981, the same year homosexual acts between men were partially decriminalised in Scotland, Bobby Grierson, a student and president of the Gaysoc at ECA, organised the Gay Week of Action, with guest lectures and a group exhibition, including artwork by David Hockney. This week exists within a unique and rich history of art student activism and organising at ECA, where students took action and control in amongst the bleak political context of 1980s Britain. I stay close to these other moments when organising the World AIDS Day of Action, nodding to and learning from these important and marginalised histories within the very same corridors of the art college where I work.

Author Bio

Dr James Bell (he/him) is a Lecturer in Contemporary Art Theory at Edinburgh College of Art, and specialises in queer and trans art, activism, culture, and social histories. You can find out more about James’s research here.

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The World AIDS Day of Action! is organised as part of Gay Club, with support from the School of Art, Edinburgh College of Art, and the University Staff Pride Network. For more information, please contact James at j.bell@ed.ac.uk

Gay Club is open to LGBTQIA students, staff, and allies and is a space to share queer, trans, and non-binary art and practice at Edinburgh College of Art. In 2023, Gay Club is kindly supported by alumni and friends of the University of Edinburgh through the Student Experience Grants scheme. You can join the mailing list here.