Close to the Knives
Page 12
“What do the anti-arts forces want? What they have always wanted in this century: political control over our culture, using moral outrage as the excuse.”—Douglas Davis, artist, critic, and teacher (Newsday)
Under Helms, words and pictures have gained a power they haven’t had in decades compared to television.
Alfonse D’Amato. More interested in lining his rich real estate friends’ pockets than saving people’s lives. With his eyes peeled for the camera he’s made an asshole of himself ripping the Mapplethorpe catalogue into tiny pieces; clear echoes of the Nazi era. Has been so busy voting for the Helms amendments denying AIDS education that he has never had a personal meeting with a gay or lesbian organization. It seems that you must be a BIG contributor to his campaign funds before you can get a foot in the door. Despite never meeting with a representative of the lesbian and gay community, he has voted consistently against us. Dismissive of gay issues. In the 1980 election, while running against Holtzman/Javits, he was quoted as saying, “Elizabeth Holtzman is part of the Ultra-Left Gay Rights Conspiracy that is out to destroy the middle class.” D’Amato clearly missed his calling; he could have increased his millions writing trash novels like Dannemeyer. If the feds ignore his wealth and move against him in the HUD scandals, seats in the courtroom will be filled to the max.
Frank Young. Has operated as a know-nothing bureaucrat who saw his job as obstruction. Young has headed a Food & Drug Administration totally unequipped to deal with the magnitude of a crisis like AIDS.
• Has refused to work actively to get treatments to people with the disease who might live and thrive.
• To him, red tape and procedure is more important than people.
• Doesn’t understand issues of access for the poor, or uneducated, or communities of color.
• In classic bureaucratese, people who were dying from AIDS were told until recently that they couldn’t try manageably safe, potentially effective drugs: Big Brother was protecting them from themselves. When the Commissioner finally woke up and smelled the bodies, the orders he issued might have inched the agency in the right direction. Trouble was, the bureaucracy never followed. Now that he’s been dumped upstairs, will the next FDA chief in fact effect the changes that AIDS demands, or simply let the bureaucracy go back to bed?
Additional Statistics and Facts
There has been a 40 percent increase in AIDS among teenagers in just the last two years. The Centers for Disease Control did a study of blood samples and found that as many as one in one hundred teens are HIV positive in new york.
One in every twenty-five babies born in brooklyn is HIV positive.
The vatican and the catholic church ignore scientific research that shows that if latex condoms are used properly they can prevent the transmission of HIV and other diseases. They make prehistoric statements such as: “Morality is the only prevention for AIDS …” and “Anyone who ignores the teachings of the catholic church and contracts AIDS has only himself to blame.” So, regardless of what religion you practice, you must heed the teachings of the catholic church; and if the church hires lobbyists to pressure politicians on the Hill to vote against AIDS education, and if the church is consistently allowed to be on AIDS advisory commissions in the Board of Education, somehow citizens of this country must turn a blind eye to this clear violation of the separation of church and state. We are supposed to rest assured that at least the church will take state and federal monies to house a handful of dying people who might have not contracted this disease had the church been willing to acknowledge that people do have sex, and have always had sex, and always will have sex, even in the face of centuries of the church’s attempts to force us to act otherwise. Certain religious and spiritual practices in history have involved human sacrifice; the government and most citizens would rally against any form of this type of practice if they knew of it occurring in their midst—why are people silent, why are the journalists silent about the vatican’s and the church’s activities that amount to the same thing? Denying all people information that could protect them in an epidemic is nothing more than wholesale murder regardless of the “moral” content of those actions.
This is a country of trains, planes, and automobiles. AIDS is accelerating in small towns and small cities because the inhabitants of those places believe a number of things:
one. That this virus has a sexual orientation and a moral code.
two. That the virus obeys borders and stays within large urban centers.
three. That if the person you fuck is sweet and kind and sexy, they could not possibly have AIDS or the HIV virus.
four. That only wild or reckless people get this disease.
One in every four people in the bronx is HIV positive.
During the years of the Reagan administration our president was completely silent about the spread of this epidemic. It took almost eight years just to have a few public posters dealing with AIDS and these posters were only printed in english, as opposed to spanish or any other language. The small AIDS campaign effected by city governments was so unimaginative that it could only state: DON’T ASK FOR AIDS; DON’T GET IT. One doesn’t get AIDS by “Asking for it.” One contracts AIDS through ignorance and the denial of pertinent information that could be used by people to safeguard their sexual activities. In the next ten years, when the american public wakes up and smells the bodies collecting in their midst—when they realize their children are dying and they themselves are dying from this disease—the politicians who are supposed to be representing us will be held accountable, as will the church for its interference in policy-making decisions of government. Journalists from coast to coast have been remiss in reporting truly the extent of this epidemic, mainly because they feel the people involved are expendable and because newspaper owners and publishers have a conservative agenda in mind when dealing with news and its dissemination. In certain religions in this country a part of the spiritual practice and belief is that medicine must be refused as a possible treatment for any infections or diseases. The u.s. government has prosecuted parents for failing to allow doctors to treat their children when those children have treatable infections. Those children can and do die. If you look at information as a preventative medicine, the archdiocese and government and media have consistently withheld that information (safer-sex possibilities) and thus ensured the ultimate infection, illness, and possible deaths of millions of citizens in this country. What makes the church exempt from criticism that is extended to the religions described earlier in this paragraph?
“Bigotry is ugly, but even more so when it poses as virtue.”—statement made by an individual giving testimony in support of legislation designed to protect all citizens in new york, including those of diverse sexual orientation. He was being heckled by a religious leader who didn’t stop short of calling for the death of homosexuals.
Cardinal O’Connor has been stating in the press recently that citizens should have love and compassion for people with AIDS. If you follow his dangerous reasoning in regards to his stance on safer-sex information (he will only condone abstinence), he would prefer all people remain at great risk and then when they contract AIDS he will shower them with love and compassion as they lie dying. I shudder to think of him prowling the halls and rooms of the archdiocese-run AIDS residences (more aptly called warehouses of death), falling to his knees to hold the hands of the dying men, women and teenagers and rolling his eyes heavenward. The church’s policies contribute to the promotion of murder and violence against lesbians and gays. Our public funds are endlessly spent tracking down serial killers; we at least know where this one lives—so why aren’t public officials and local police doing something about this man?
There have been statements made in the press that seem to use the fact that I have AIDS as an excuse for the tone of my writings—for my anger at these individuals. This is insulting to me. Anybody has the right to be outraged and the right to express these things. I have been writing about these issues in this �
��tone” well before my diagnosis with AIDS.
We as a society have been in this political climate before. It is cyclical, and similar bigots and extremists have reared their conservative/fascist heads before in order to conduct witch hunts. (Recently, in missouri, novelist and playwright Larry Kramer experienced another example of the repressive actions of this government. In a phone call I was told by a friend that local officials in missouri apparently tried to close down a production of Kramer’s play The Normal Heart, on the grounds that they deemed it obscene. The home of the student responsible for producing the play was later firebombed.) Years ago this kind of climate manifested itself in the public spectacle of the McCarthy hearings. McCarthy was able to conduct his deadly circus while the press and citizens witnessed the debacle in silence. McCarthy was only stopped when he was confronted by people of conscience in positions of power. Now is the time for politicians of conscience to come out on public record; now is the time for citizens of any persuasion to come out on record; now is the time for all journalists of conscience to come out on record in opposition to these men and women of politics and organized “religion” who are conducting the “moral” witch hunts and helping to insure the spread of this AIDS epidemic through denial of pertinent safer-sex information. Now is not the time for restraint to be shown in the form of our words and gestures, for men like Helms, Dannemeyer, or O’Connor show little restraint in their zeal to trample the Constitution.
DO NOT DOUBT THE DANGEROUSNESS OF THE 12-INCH-TALL POLITICIAN
(This essay was derived from talks delivered at Illinois State University at Normal, Illinois, and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1990.)
I was invited, in early 1990, to give a lecture at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, as a “visiting photographer,” which convinced me to accept the invitation because I have never called myself a “photographer.” If anyone ever asked me whether I was a photographer, I would say in return: “I sometimes make photographs.” I have never been comfortable calling myself anything that would label my acts of creativity because I don’t ever want to take myself so seriously that others would then pull out their magnifying glasses and hold me or my actions or the artifacts of those actions up to the ART WORLD criteria of any given medium. Anyway, I don’t even know how to operate a camera on anything other than automatic. That might have something to do with the makeup of my brain because I have a terrible time reading INSTRUCTION MANUALS. I read the manual as far as the page that explains how to turn the device or machine ON. Then I push and tug and shake the machine and learn it intuitively and enough to get it to do the things I want. After learning how to turn the damn thing on my brain gets a little dizzy and anxious if I try to read further. I woke up one night with the thought that the people in this society we call america who can read the instruction manuals from front to back and then follow them to the letter are probably the people in positions of power. This is not as silly as it sounds. The people who control the means of image production are the ones who are in power. Owners of newspapers and owners of tv stations are the ones who have the most power.
Years ago we would not know what lay beyond the bend in the road until we walked past it. Maybe there was an advantage to this way of learning because we would have to walk down the road and see things for ourselves in order to know what was going on. Now you wake up and turn on the television set or pick up a newspaper and suddenly you can find yourself thirty miles beneath the ocean or behind the front door of the WHITE HOUSE almost sitting in the president’s lap and all of us, to some extent, take it for granted that these representations of images are in some way an indication of real life. If this were true, then how come there are so few people of color on television? How come no lesbians or homosexual men? How come we get AIDS information that is eight years old?
Less than half the people who are eligible to vote in this country even bother to do so. Tell me: What does that mean? Who does this benefit? And those who bother to vote base their decision on little pictures that come through a box we call television. People trust their lives to a little man no bigger than twelve inches tall who is transmitted from a satellite in outer space into the antennae of their tv screens. This man appears now and then to sell his image to those who go to the polling booths. Why on earth would any of us believe that this man who appears on tv is not dangerous? How on earth could we truly believe he would not do us harm once he is elected? Is it because he is only a maximum of twelve inches tall and we think we can handle him if he gets out of line? Maybe give him a little kick in the little butt if he proves to be a liar and a thief and a borderline fascist? What if the owners of tv stations and the owners of newspapers prevent that information from being shown, printed, talked about? I rarely watch tv anymore because I have a problem with believing the images that get pumped out of that little box in the corner of the room. Instead I just look out my window and pretend it’s the television set or the newspaper I used to watch or read. No one can edit these images before I see them, so they tend to be more honest.
In the art world, photography is one of the most misunderstood mediums because the camera is accessible to almost everybody. A good portion of the population in america owns cameras. Last year Burger King was giving away a tiny plastic camera FREE WITH A PURCHASE OF TWO WHOPPERS. This camera was no larger than the roll of film that fit into it. After five rolls of film the camera fell apart. By that time you were conceivably hungry again and would go back to buy more Whoppers.
The nature of the camera’s mechanisms makes it possible to never take a “bad” photograph. You can always get something on film and if it is blurry and out of focus or “badly” lit you only have to claim INTENT and the art world will consider it. Photography is one of the most misunderstood mediums because no one can really explain in a rational way what makes a good or bad photograph other than the artist’s intent. This is why the art world will not throw billions of dollars at photography the way it has at painting; and that is what makes it an exciting medium. You can do anything or everything you want and there is no precise criteria with which the art world can dismiss it or kill it.
I used to wonder where the urge to photograph came from. I mean, there are literally billions of photographs of the eiffel tower spread all over the world by tourists with cameras. I imagine people sleep better at night having these tiny proofs of the existence of the eiffel tower in boxes underneath their beds.
My first camera was a stolen camera. I was living on the streets of new york city and a street buddy and I were staying at some guy’s house for a while. This guy was a forty-eight-year-old acid head who’d been doing the drug for five years on a daily basis. He lived on a stipend from his rich dad. He was part hippie, and he let us stay with him and didn’t ask for rent. One day his dad cut off his stipend and he went into withdrawal from all the acid he’d been consuming. My buddy and I carried him to a hospital and while he was recuperating, we decided to clean his house for him. His house was a horrifying mess: ceiling to floor piles of brown newspapers and sacks of garbage and what appeared to be useless pieces of cardboard. We threw out anything that appeared to be without value or sentiment. When the guy came home from the hospital he went into a fit screaming that we had robbed him. He called the police and asked them to come and arrest us for theft. We had to run out the door before the cops got there. My buddy stole the guy’s small thirty-five millimeter camera because he figured if the guy was going to call us thieves, we might as well steal something. My buddy gave the camera to me and for months afterward I’d steal rolls of film from drugstores and take photographs of the gang of ex-con transvestites we hung around with on West Street. I never had any money so I couldn’t get the photographs developed. I’d put all the rolls of film in whatever bus station locker we left our meager belongings in and the first day that we forgot to put in the daily-required quarter, all our belongings were confiscated and taken to a lost and found in the outer reaches of brooklyn.
After getting off the streets at age eighteen, I began taking pictures with that same camera and for the first time I was able to see what the camera saw when I pointed it at something and snapped the shutter. I began to learn something about representation and what that meant to me. I learned something about defining ones impulses and desires and ideas about the world. If you look at newspapers you rarely see a representation of anything you believe to be the world you inhabit. This is called information control. This is distortion by unseen hands belonging to faceless people. As a person who owns a camera, I am in direct competition with the owners of television stations and newspapers; though my gestures of communication have less of a reverberation than a newspaper photograph has because of the amount of copies the newspaper owner can circulate among the populations coast to coast. The only difference between a newspaper owner and myself is that I believe I represent a different intention in what I point my camera toward. I have a desire to open up certain boundaries and release information that unties the psychic ropes that bind the ONE-TRIBE NATION. I can speak with photographs about many different things that the newspaper owner is afraid to address because of agenda or political pressure, or because of the power of advertisers dollars. I can make photographs dealing with my sexuality and I do because I know my sexuality is purposefully made invisible by the owners of various media.