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Catalog Data

Interviewee:
Waters, Jack  Search this
Interviewer:
Fialho, Alex, 1989-  Search this
Names:
Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project  Search this
Extent:
4 Items (sound files (5 hr., 59 min.) Audio, digital, wav)
72 Pages (Transcript)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Pages
Interviews
Date:
2018 February 21-22
Scope and Contents:
An interview with Jack Waters, conducted 2018 February 21 and 22, by Alex Fialho, for the Archives of American Art's Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project, at the Visual AIDS office in New York, New York.
Waters speaks of his early exposure to the arts through his family and their frequent visitors and boarders; the beginnings of his political consciousness, race consciousness, sex consciousness, and self-identity during the 1960s; his dance education at the Miquon School in Philadelphia; teaching at Miquon after briefly dancing in California; his dance and choreography education at the Julliard School and the Ailey School; his experience of the Lower East Side in the 1980s; the genesis and development of the Performing On One Leg collective; the start of the AIDS epidemic; collaborations with Gordon Kurtti and Brian Taylor, and their AIDS-related deaths; the importance of art-making and documentary practice during the AIDS epidemic; the beginning and development of his film and video work; collaborating with Peter Cramer on Black and White Study as both film and performance; receiving his HIV-positive diagnosis; the beginning and development of his work as a writer and journalist; his involvement in AIDS activist and queer activist organizations; a formative period in Ibiza during the fall 1983; his films The Male GaYze and Short Memory/No History; changes in queer activism he has observed since the 1980s, and the lack of historical memory about them; his experience of intergenerational queer dialogue; his involvement with Visual AIDS; and his thoughts on the idea of artistic legacy, both generally and in his particular case.
Biographical / Historical:
Jack Waters (1954- ) is a visual artist in New York, New York. Alex Fialho (1989- ) is a curator and arts writer and works as Programs Director for Visual AIDS in New York, New York.
Related Materials:
The Archives of American Art also holds the papers of First name Last name.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Topic:
AIDS (Disease) and the arts  Search this
Filmmakers -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews  Search this
Performance artists -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews  Search this
Genre/Form:
Interviews
Identifier:
AAA.waters18
Archival Repository:
Archives of American Art
GUID:
https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/mw93959ab94-2a42-4116-84ce-cd4187eb6cec
EDAN-URL:
ead_collection:sova-aaa-waters18