[BRIEF NOTE] Gregg Bordowitz
Apr. 19th, 2005 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI've read Gregg Bordowitz' The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986-2003 at the Toronto Reference Library, again. I rather like it.
Bordowitz' career is interesting. Educated in New York City as a filmmaker, after his diagnosis as HIV positive in 1998 he became one of the major figures in ACT UP/New York. His training helped make him a major contributor to ACT UP's DIVA TV. Bordowitz is perhaps most famous for his 1993 film Fast Trip, Long Drop examining his personal relationship to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its sequel, the 2001 Habit. He has remained engaged in the fields of HIV/AIDS activism and film, and is now an Assistant Professor in the Film, Video, and New Media Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Some online Bordowitz text documents of note include Artery' 1999 interview, Bordowitz' essay "Here And There" on HIV/AIDS activism in the era of globalization, this 2002 interview (PDF format) at the website of the ACT UP Oral History Project (itself very interesting), and this 2004 commentary (PDF format) from the September 2004 issue of Artforum Critical Art Ensemble, attacked by the American government following allegations of bioterrorism.
Multiple factors make Bordowitz and The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings interesting to me. He has managed to integrate his personal background so effectively with theory and with the implementation of theory. Further, there's the fact that his implementation of theory isn't in the realm of text that I'm (obviously) familiar with, but rather in the realm of the image (video and film, dramatic and non-dramatic content, all at once). There's his personal bravery (as an out bisexual man, as a HIV positive man, as a video activist).
We can find role models in the oddest ways, can't we? Again, kudos to the Internet.
Bordowitz' career is interesting. Educated in New York City as a filmmaker, after his diagnosis as HIV positive in 1998 he became one of the major figures in ACT UP/New York. His training helped make him a major contributor to ACT UP's DIVA TV. Bordowitz is perhaps most famous for his 1993 film Fast Trip, Long Drop examining his personal relationship to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its sequel, the 2001 Habit. He has remained engaged in the fields of HIV/AIDS activism and film, and is now an Assistant Professor in the Film, Video, and New Media Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Some online Bordowitz text documents of note include Artery' 1999 interview, Bordowitz' essay "Here And There" on HIV/AIDS activism in the era of globalization, this 2002 interview (PDF format) at the website of the ACT UP Oral History Project (itself very interesting), and this 2004 commentary (PDF format) from the September 2004 issue of Artforum Critical Art Ensemble, attacked by the American government following allegations of bioterrorism.
Multiple factors make Bordowitz and The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings interesting to me. He has managed to integrate his personal background so effectively with theory and with the implementation of theory. Further, there's the fact that his implementation of theory isn't in the realm of text that I'm (obviously) familiar with, but rather in the realm of the image (video and film, dramatic and non-dramatic content, all at once). There's his personal bravery (as an out bisexual man, as a HIV positive man, as a video activist).
We can find role models in the oddest ways, can't we? Again, kudos to the Internet.
