Coinciding with World AIDS Day 2021, a new art film by AA Bronson and General Idea will be ‘virally transmitted’ on screens around the world. VideoVirus, a hypnotic, text-based video animation will poignantly mark 40 years since the HIV/AIDS disease was first recorded in 1981, and has been created in collaboration with UNAIDS and Terrence Higgins Trust. Presented by Circa on billboards in London, Seoul and Tokyo, the project comes as international health organisations continue to strive towards achieving zero new HIV transmissions by 2030.
The film will be presented daily from 1–30 December 2021 on London’s Piccadilly Lights (20:21 GMT), Seoul’s Coex K-Pop Square (20:21 KST), and Tokyo’s Yunika Vision (09:00 JST), as well as on the Circa website.
General Idea, an art collaboration between AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal, was first formed in Toronto in 1969. The group’s provocative, activist imagery confronted social power structures and experimented with traditional creative formats.
Top and above: stills from VideoVirus by AA Bronson + General Idea
The installation reimagines their seminal work, Imagevirus, first initiated in 1987 for a global audience. The project was a powerful reworking of Robert Indiana’s iconic Love design of 1966. In sculptures, paintings, videos, posters and shows, General Idea famously substituted the word ‘LOVE’ for ‘AIDS’, rendering starkly visible a then largely ignored crisis. In 1994, both Partz and Zontal passed away from AIDS-related causes.
‘General Idea first developed the concept of viral images in the early 1970s. In the mid-1980s that work became prophetically and tragically true, with the appearance of the HIV virus. In 1987 we exhibited our first AIDS painting and papered lower Manhattan with AIDS posters in the hope of making the image indeed viral,’ said AA Bronson, an artist, healer, curator and sole surviving member of the General Idea art group.
Portrait of artist AA Bronson. 2020
‘Thirty-five years later, and marking the 40th anniversary of AIDS first being recorded, I am honoured to join the Circa platform with this reimagined VideoVirus. General Idea's VideoVirus replicates the spread of HIV to the four corners of the world; it expands General Idea's signature theme of ‘image as virus’ for a global audience.’
Alongside the film, two new prints by AA Bronson + General Idea will be available to purchase via the Circa website. Sales proceeds will be invested in the #Circaeconomy, a circular model that supports their free public art programme and creates life-changing opportunities for the art and culture community.
Harnessing art as a catalyst to reduce stigmas and minimise the risk of people contracting HIV, Circa will also seek to educate audiences online via a programme of talks and informative videos guest-curated by new LGBTQ+ charity and new London-based arts hub Queercircle. To honour the collaboration, a #Circaeconomy grant of £5,000 has been awarded to Queercircle who will deliver an artist-led participatory residency and exhibition with an HIV positive person during their Winter 2022 season.
Still from VideoVirus by AA Bronson + General Idea
Seoul, COEX K-POP Square rendering of VideoVirus, by AA Bronson + General Idea
INFORMATION
-
Designer Marta de la Rica’s elegant Madrid studio is full of perfectly-pitched contradictionsThe studio, or ‘the laboratory’ as de la Rica and her team call it, plays with colour, texture and scale in eminently rewarding ways
-
‘Nothing just because it’s beautiful’: Performance artist Marina Abramović on turning her hand to furniture designMarina Abramović has no qualms about describing her segue into design as a ‘domestication’. But, argues the ‘grandmother of performance art’ as she unveils a collection of chairs, something doesn’t have to be provocative to be meaningful
-
A local’s guide to Los Angeles by defiant artist Fawn RogersOregon-born, LA-based artist Fawn Rogers gives us a personal tour of her adopted city as it hosts its sixth edition of Frieze
-
'We need to be constantly reminded of our similarities' – Jonathan Baldock challenges the patriarchal roots of a former Roman temple in LondonThrough use of ceramics and textiles, British artist Jonathan Baldock creates a magical and immersive exhibition at ‘0.1%’ at London's Mithraum Bloomberg Space
-
Discover Rotimi Fani-Kayode's fluid photographs of the queer male body, on show in London‘Rotimi-Fani Kayode: The Studio – Staging Desire’ at Autograph ABP celebrates the work of the Nigerian-born photographer
-
Saatchi Gallery is in full bloom with floral works from Vivienne Westwood, Marimekko, Buccellati and more‘Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture’ at Saatchi Gallery, London, explores the relationship between creatives and their floral muses, and spans from fashion and jewellery to tattoos
-
'I want to get into these images and perfume them': Linder's retrospective opens at the Hayward Gallery'Linder: Danger Came Smiling' gathers fifty years of the artist's work at the Hayward Gallery. We meet the punk provocateur ahead of her first retrospective
-
Tasneem Sarkez's heady mix of kitsch, Arabic and Americana hits LondonArtist Tasneem Sarkez draws on an eclectic range of references for her debut solo show, 'White-Knuckle' at Rose Easton
-
‘A call to action for more authentic expressions of working-class life’: a London show reframes working-class BritainLondon exhibition ‘Lives Less Ordinary’, at Two Temple Place, challenges age-old stereotypes
-
‘Dr Tetris’ on the biggest ever iteration of the puzzle in LondonTetris comes to 360-degree, 23,000 sq ft, 16k LED screens in London; Craig McLean speaks to Henk Rogers, the man who’s kept the game alive
-
Never-before-seen Barbara Hepworth works go on show in landmark exhibitionIn ‘Barbara Hepworth: Strings’, various Hepworth sculptures will be exhibited in public for the first time, at Piano Nobile, London
