An interview with Alexandra Juhasz conducted 2017 December 19 and 21, by Theodore Kerr, for the Archives of American Art's Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project, at Juhasz's home in Brooklyn, New York.
Juhasz speaks of her commitment to AIDS activism; her intellectual, bohemian, culturally Jewish upbringing; developing her feminism, political consciousness and activism in high school and college; her relationship with James "Jim" Robert Lamb; moving to New York for graduate school in 1986; the beginning of her AIDS activism and video-making practice in the late '80s; reflecting on her privilege and positionality in her activist work; her commitment to making marginal work; Jim Lamb's role in Video Remains, followed by his death and enduring inspiration for her work; the striking and surprising aspects of participating in an oral history; historical and theoretical underpinnings of video-making as an activist strategy and process; making activist video with the WAVE collective; the stakes, challenges, and costs of marginalized communities fighting for self-representation; making activist video with Swarthmore college students; the artistic milieu of New Queer Cinema; producing The Watermelon Woman and recently re-releasing it; moving to Los Angeles and having a period of silence in AIDS activism; returning to AIDS activism by making Video Remains; her ongoing collaborative writing about AIDS with Theodore Kerr; and her most recent projects. Juhasz also recalls Eve Sedgwick, Joe Guimento, Jon Engebretson, Jean Carlomusto, Tom Kalin, Avram Finkelstein, Amber Hollibaugh, Maxine Wolfe, Miguel Prieto, Robert Vasquez-Pacheco, Charles Ludlam, Everett Quinton, Carolyn Lesjak, Yannick Durand, Juanita Mohammed, Sharon Penceal, Aida Matta, Glenda Hasty, Marcia Edwards, Kenrick Cato, Megan Cunningham, Cheryl Dunye, Zoe Leonard, Pato Hebert, Alisa Lebow, Sarah Schulman, Todd Haynes, Ellen Spiro, and others.
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Alexandra Juhasz, 2017 December 19-21. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Additional Forms:
Transcript is available on the Archives of American Art's website.
Funding:
Funded by the Keith Haring Foundation.
Biography Note:
Alexandra Juhasz (1964- ) is an AIDS activist, media maker, and scholar in New York, New York. Theodore Kerr (1979- ) is a writer and organizer in New York, New York.
Language Note:
English .
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.
Location Note:
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 750 9th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001
