DIVA TV was a gay and lesbian video activist collective founded in New York City in 1989. The name was an acronym for "Damned Interfering Video Activist Television". [1] [2] [3] Founding members include: Robert Beck, Gregg Bordowitz, Jean Carlomusto, Rob Kurilla, Ray Navarro, Costa Pappas, George Plagianos, Catherine Saalfield, and Ellen Spiro. [4]
DIVA TV was an affinity group with ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and it preserved many of ACT UP's demonstrations, civil disobedience actions and public reaction to the group from the streets of New York as the AIDS crisis unfolded there. Members of DIVA TV identified themselves as partisan activists who created media in the same way participants in the Indymedia movement would fifteen years later—or in the same way Third World Newsreel did in the 1960s using earlier 8-mm film technology.
In 1989, DIVA created three notable video productions: Target City Hall, about a 28 March 1989 ACT UP demonstration against New York City Mayor Ed Koch's inadequate response to the AIDS crisis, Pride on the 20th anniversary of the city's gay and lesbian pride movement, and Like A Prayer, five 7-minute perspectives on the ACT UP/WHAM (Women's Health Action Mobilization) 10 December 1989 demonstration at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York to protest Cardinal John O'Connor's response to AIDS. [5] Selected clips from DIVA TV's ACT-UP films can be viewed on their website. [6] A videotape archive of their work can be viewed at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, NY, and another [7] is available at the New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division. [8] [9]
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power is an international, grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. The group works to improve the lives of people with AIDS through direct action, medical research, treatment and advocacy, and working to change legislation and public policies.
Urvashi Vaid was an Indian-born American LGBT rights activist, lawyer, and writer. An expert in gender and sexuality law, she was a consultant in attaining specific goals of social justice. She held a series of roles at the National LGBTQ Task Force, serving as executive director from 1989-1992 — the first woman of color to lead a national gay-and-lesbian organization. She is the author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (1995) and Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (2012).
The Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) was founded in New York City on December 21, 1969, almost six months after the Stonewall riots, by dissident members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). In contrast to the Liberation Front, the Activists Alliance solely and specifically served to gay and lesbian rights, declared themself politically neutral and wanted to work within the political system.
Avram Finkelstein is an American artist, writer, gay rights activist and member of the AIDS art collective Gran Fury.
Vito Russo was an American LGBT activist, film historian, and author. He is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet, described in The New York Times as "an essential reference book" on homosexuality in the US film industry. In 1985, he co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a media watchdog organization that strives to end anti-LGBT rhetoric, and advocates for LGBT inclusion in popular media.
Diana's Hair Ego is an American documentary film about AIDS and one unconventional woman's efforts to educate her small, Southern community. While documenting an AIDS quarantine controversy in South Carolina with DIVA TV, filmmaker Ellen Spiro met DiAna DiAna, a local hairdresser who transformed her beauty parlor into a center for AIDS and safe sex information.
Ann Northrop is a journalist and activist, and the current co-host of TV news program Gay USA.
LGBT pride is the promotion of the self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as a social group. Pride, as opposed to shame and social stigma, is the predominant outlook that bolsters most LGBT rights movements. Pride has lent its name to LGBT-themed organizations, institutes, foundations, book titles, periodicals, a cable TV channel, and the Pride Library.
Lesbian feminist art activist collective fierce pussy was founded in 1991 in New York City. It is committed to art action in association with the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. The group uses lower case letters for their name in part because it is non-hierarchical. fierce pussy, as a collective, speaks of themselves as a singular person. This is consistent in an interview on their 2018-19 window installation at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. In the interview, fierce pussy states that "you don't need to refer to us as individual artists, all responses from our side are by fierce pussy. We are fierce pussy."
Gregg Bordowitz is a writer, artist, and activist currently working as a professor in the Video, New Media, and Animation department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Catherine Gund is an American producer, director, and writer who founded Aubin Pictures in 1996.
James Wentzy is known as an AIDS activist and documentary filmmaker associated with ACT UP throughout the 1990s.
The AIDS pandemic began in the early 1980s and brought with it a surge of emotions from the public: they were afraid, angry, fearful and defiant. The arrival of AIDS also brought with it a condemnation of the LGBT community. These emotions, along with the view on the LGBT community, paved the way for a new generation of artists. Artists involved in AIDS activist organizations had the ideology that while art could never save lives as science could, it may be able to deliver a message. Art of the AIDS crisis typically sought to make a sociopolitical statement, stress the medical impact of the disease, or express feelings of longing and loss. The ideologies were present in conceptions of art in the 1980s and are still pertinent to reception of art today as well. Elizabeth Taylor, for example, spoke at a benefit for AIDS involving artwork, emphasizing its importance to activism in that "art lives on forever". This comment articulates the ability of artwork from this time to teach and impact contemporary audiences, post-crisis. This page examines the efforts of artists, art collectives, and art movements to make sense of such an urgent pandemic in American society.
Suzanne Wright is an American artist and founding member of the art collective Fierce Pussy. She has worked in a variety of media, including collage, colored pencil drawings, painting, and sculpture. She describes her subject matter as "future feminism".
Jean Carlomusto is a New York filmmaker, AIDS activist, and interactive media artist. She produced and directed HBO's Emmy nominated documentary, Larry Kramer in Love & Anger, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival. Her works have been exhibited internationally in festivals, museums and on television. She was an early pioneer in documenting the AIDS crisis. As the founder of the Multimedia Unit at Gay Men's Health Crisis, she created the television series Living with AIDS. She was a founding member of DIVA TV and a member of the Testing The Limits Video Collective.
Raymond Robert Navarro was an American video artist, filmmaker, and HIV/AIDS activist. Navarro was an active member of ACT UP and a founder of Diva TV. His activism was featured in the documentary How to Survive a Plague. Navarro's art was exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Tacoma Art Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, among others. Navarro's papers, videos, and artworks are held at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries in Los Angeles.
Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 was a series of LGBTQ events and celebrations in June 2019, marking the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots. It was also the first time WorldPride was held in the United States. Held primarily in the metropolitan New York City area, the theme for the celebrations and educational events was "Millions of moments of Pride." The celebration was the largest LGBTQ event in history, with an official estimate of five million attending Pride weekend in Manhattan alone, including an estimated four million in attendance at the parade. The twelve-hour parade included 150,000 pre-registered participants among 695 groups.
The National LGBTQ Wall of Honor is a memorial wall in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, dedicated to LGBTQ "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes". Located inside the Stonewall Inn, the wall is part of the Stonewall National Monument, the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to the country's LGBTQ rights and history. The first fifty nominees were announced in June 2019, and the wall was unveiled on June 27, 2019, as a part of Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 events. Five honorees will be added annually.
Queer art, also known as LGBT+ art or queer aesthetics, broadly refers to modern and contemporary visual art practices that draw on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and various non-heterosexual, non-cisgender imagery and issues. While by definition there can be no singular "queer art", contemporary artists who identify their practices as queer often call upon "utopian and dystopian alternatives to the ordinary, adopt outlaw stances, embrace criminality and opacity, and forge unprecedented kinships and relationships." Queer art is also occasionally very much about sex and the embracing of unauthorised desires.
Joseph Fairchild Beam was an African-American gay rights activist, writer and poet.