2021 Graduate Student Symposium Keynote | A Viral Theory of Art: AIDS and the Aesthetics of Protest
Channel: Barnes Foundation
Date: 2021-03-12

The 25th Annual Graduate Student Symposium on the History of Art—Keynote Lecture
Co-organized by Bryn Mawr College in collaboration with Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania

 
A Viral Theory of Art: AIDS and the Aesthetics of Protest
Jonathan D. Katz, Associate Professor of Practice, History of Art, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, University of Pennsylvania
 
Felix Gonzalez-Torres once compared his art to the workings of a virus, saying, “I want to be like a virus that belongs to the institution.” At the time, the HIV virus that was killing him provided a model for his relationship with the museum world. The defining characteristic of HIV is its ability to camouflage itself within the immune system—to appear to be part of the system it is intent on destroying. In this talk, Katz traces the history of this viral approach to art, from the Pictures Generation through the upheavals of the AIDS epidemic and into contemporary activist art, exploring how and why protest today so often resembles the very forms it works against.