What Can Art Do? Intern Eliza Sprague ponders.

Visual AIDS Executive Director Amy Sadao speaking at NOT OVER. 

           What can art do? Earlier this month Visual AIDS director Amy Sadao posed a version of this question to a roomful of HIV/AIDS activists during the final session of QuoRum Forum’s discussion series Not Over: You Me Us & AIDS.  Truthfully, I didn’t give the query much thought,yet it remained in the back of my mind.

            I create to feel alive. I sing because it is allows me to express the deepest parts of myself.  I write because it centers me, allows me to process thoughts that may never have fully formed unless I transferred them from my brain to my fingertips. I create because it is so fantastically fun. I love the journey through the, at once familiar, and the wild lands of uncharted territory. I crave the adrenaline that arises from a mixture of excitement and fear.  Creating with others, sharing ideas and experiences, and opening up to the uncertainty of so many ideas feeds into my sense of adventure. 

            I feel the same way about activism.  Bottom line, I love adventures, I love challenges and puzzles and the sweet fear that comes with the uncertainty of success. I love to believe in things.  I want to make life better for people.  If I can use what I love to make other people happy, I get to both have a wonderful time, and feel great about myself!  Win-win right? 

            Except that caring deeply about something comes with a price. The more invested I get, the more I allow my emotional connection to trump the sense of challenge, and the more painful the inevitable setbacks and failures become.  When every passing day without universal access to ARVs, and with the looming threat of the inevitable destruction of the ecosystems I love, begin to feel like a punch in the stomach, my excitement turns to anxiety—and then exhaustion. 

 Che Gossett speaking as artist and activist Kate Huh, and Romantic Friendship hosts Cassie Wagler and Sasha Wortzel listen. 

          Writer and activist Che Gossett described the call to activism as a ‘visceral response to do something.’  Activism is not a purely logical activity. It is at its core an emotional one, based on a felt need to change something that is a weakness within our community. We seek to be not only the shakers of society, but also the builders of a better world. We cannot then disassociate ourselves from the practical and emotional impacts of our work, either personally or professionally. So how do we balance the two? How do we balance our deep conviction and belief in the issues we seek to address while maintaining the energy, creativity and courage necessary to continue fighting against seemingly insurmountable odds? 

            The evolution of AIDS activism in New York City is a fascinating example of a community attempting to address this problem. The intensity of the trauma associated with HIV/AIDS along with the close relationship between artists and AIDS activists has resulted in a movement that is unusually conscious of the need to provide a healing space for both those it seeks to help, and those involved in fighting the disease. AIDS work requires, and has therefore come to include that space, supporting the personal work as well as the political, in dealing with the effects of HIV. Art has played an integral role in shaping the psyche of the movement, and has been essential in cultivating psychological sustainability.

            The mid-nineties and early twenty-first century encompassed a period of deep therapeutic growth within HIV/AIDS activist communities chiefly led by art-based organizations that both preserved the histories of communities and individuals lost in the epidemic, and provided space for communal and individual catharsis.  In supporting the work of artists living with HIV, organizations like Visual AIDS allowed these individuals to focus on the process of healing through creation, and cultivated communities that could validate their experiences, and facilitate dialogue. 

Panelist Laura Whitehorn and activist Reina July speaking after the event! 

            As the AIDS crisis continues and economic hardship force service organizations and advocates to’ get creative’ in their efforts, the lessons of the last decades will become essential to the sustainability of the movement and those who take part in it. 

            The presence of art within this community has given us the tools, and awareness to deal with our own emotional wellbeing, and the needs of the community. Artistic expression allows us to experience inspiration, joy, pain and grief encased within an act of creation.  Instead of suppressing, or becoming bogged down in emotions, this creation expresses them while simultaneously producing energy that pulls us into further action, and increases our sense of camaraderie and empathy.  We can then connect to the underlying importance of the work without allowing the magnitude of our responsibility to become paralyzing. These qualities breed movements that succeed not only in the short term, but endure through years of struggle and turmoil. 

            For me, activism is at its heart an adventure. It is not a cold logical advance towards change, nor is it a constant passionate diatribe of ‘the way things ought to be.’  Adventure requires action as well as inspiration, creativity and courage under-laid with a passion for the truths sought, and the work that must be done.  The adventure and challenge activism provides, and the requirements of creativity and courage are reflected in the process of making art. That personal creation informs and makes possible the work we undertake in the outside world. 

            So while I still don’t know how I would respond to Amy’s question of what can art do, I know that art does something. 

Eliza Sprague is a student at Bennington Collage. She was an intern at Visual AIDS, and is now interning with Housing Works.