“People always assume that on campus we’re immune from HIV, we’re immune from sexually transmitted infections.” says Jia Hui Lee ’12, political chair of the Harvard College Queer Students and Allies. “The reality is that we can’t assume that it doesn’t happen. These support systems are very, very important.”

In disseminating information about AIDS on campus, “ACT UP” seeks to reverse the policy, and the mentality that underlies it. “I think anonymous testing is something that needs to be available to students and to everyone,” Grace says. “I think it’s an important thing for the university to consider. Among other things that’s one of the shifts that I’m hoping to see happen.”

But in order for “ACT UP” to be more than just another exhibition and to actually affect such change, it needs to have a reach beyond the activist and artist community. “One of the most wonderful things about this exhibition, and about visual arts in general, is that it can provide us with an opportunity to really strike at a topic from many different disciplinary perspectives. Because this is such an essential historical material and one that has really been lacking in popular consciousness now—or at least on campus—Helen saw really intently a need to have as broad a reach as possible,” Grace says.

As a result, the exhibition—a collaborative effort across the university—is supplanted by a variety of events, meant to appeal to audiences with a variety of interests, including symposiums hosted by Harvard University Center for AIDS Research, and one by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

“We looked across the college and the university to see people who were working on AIDS/HIV,” says Molesworth. “And there are tons of people working on AIDS/HIV. So we thought the thing to do is to try to make this thing as interdisciplinary as possible. Because the movement was interdisciplinary.”

Just as the ACT UP movement naturally attracted a diverse group of people, so did this event. “We were approached by the Harvard Art Museum and specifically Claire, and met with them about the idea of collaboration,” says Stella Gukasayan, Program Coordinator at Harvard University Center for AIDS Research who is organizing one of the events. “Before they approached us to discuss that, Laura Bogart, a faculty who is part of the Harvard University Center for AIDS research, and I were working together to plan this HIV Denialism, Mistrust, and Stigma symposium. It just happened to be such a natural, organic mesh. It fit perfectly.”

The variety of subject is not the only way that the organizers made sure to appeal to a wide audience on campus. “ACT UP New York” involves students directly as well. “I got excited about the idea of students engaging in something as hard core and high profile as the Harvard Art Museum symposium,” says Trevor J. Martin ’10, who is putting on a performance art piece in conjunction with “ACT UP New York.” “It’s pretty much unprecedented for students to get really involved and really engage content-wise through the practice of art in symposiums.”

Students will also have the opportunity to work with members Fierce Pussy, an artist collective who were heavily involved in the movement and whose work will be featured in the exhibition, sponsored by the Women’s Center of Harvard College. “They did action art in order to wake up the culture and the society at the time to the AIDS crisis and to other issues related to AIDS including gender identity, construction, and explorations of how art, gender and sexuality intersect,” says Susan Marine, director of the Women’s Center of Harvard College. “We don’t have a lot of opportunities here for students to be directly involved with professional artists who are political in their work and who have politics in the centrality of their work, so to me it seems like a great opportunity to do that.”

STUDENTS ACT NOW

There are hopes that “ACT UP New York” will not only engage students but also inspire them to take action on what has come to be a fairly politically dormant campus. “After 9/11 our ability to be really critical of our government and to protest in public has been demonstrably curtailed,” Molesworth says. “This is a show that shows what happens when citizens insist that the government meet their needs. I guess I’m interested in sharing that history with people who haven’t seen that kind of thing in action.”

Some students have already taken on the challenge. Martha “Martabel” Wasserman ’10, who is a VES and Women, Gender, and Sexuality concentrator, will be creating an exhibition catalogue as her senior thesis. “I think it’s really important to be able to show this event and story outside the Harvard community or people who are coming to the show,” Wasserman says.

Other students are participating in the creative aspect of the show. “It hit me that the students can use the ACT UP symposium as a platform where they can really take some artistic risks,” says Martin, who thinks the artistic handling of AIDS bears the situating of body in space. “My personal feeling is that the art students here and also the students interested in the arts really don’t take the same amount of risks even though we have more liberty to do so. I really wanted to latch onto this opportunity to do a performance piece with students at the symposium in the exhibition space, so that it can function as a gesture to the university but also the student body.”

It is, of course, not an easy task for students to get involved in symposiums such as “ACT UP New York” or to even find opportunities to exhibit one’s work. “It’s not a lack of motivation, or a lack of will to engage in political issues, it’s just the question of: where is the platform to do it?” Martin says.

However Martin hopes that student artists will be inspired by the resourcefulness and persistence of ACT UP, which found means of expression outside of traditional forums. “How can you make sure that the inspiration that the students will feel from this exhibition is going to carry forward? What’s going to happen after the symposium leaves? I don’t think these issues should be forgotten. Nor should the inspiration that one feels when they see how many risks people took to make this work, and also how resourceful the ACT UP members were,” Martin says. “I would really hope that students would take that as a model. You have something to say, you go out and find a way to say it. There is a means to meet that end, no matter how innovative or resourceful you have to be.”

SPEAKING OUT