When does an epidemic become a ‘crisis’? Analogies between Covid-19 and HIV/AIDS in American public memory

This article critically interrogates historical analogies made between the Covid-19 pandemic and HIV/AIDS epidemic in American public discourse, highlighting the role of cultural memory and normative frameworks of ‘crisis’ and its temporalities in shaping collective responses. It situates the Covid-19 pandemic in a multidirectional mnemonic frame by analysing borrowings from other usable pasts, particularly the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, which in turn drew upon memory of the Holocaust. A reading of Susan Sontag’s ‘The Way We Live Now’ affirms the value of multidirectional cultural borrowing while also revealing its limits. Notably, the ever-growing AIDS Memorial Quilt may serve as a model for memorializing victims of Covid-19. While analogies between pandemics may be comforting or mobilizing, their meaning must remain open to contestation and also preserve particularities and differences. The history of HIV/AIDS centres the question, ‘crisis for whom?’ and cautions against prematurely declaring the ‘end’ of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Affordances, remediation, and digital mourning: A comparative case study of two AIDS memorials

The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt is a collaborative project that memorializes individuals who have died of AIDS-related causes. Since its inception, it has become the world’s largest public folk art project. Scholars have noted the Quilt’s materiality, scope, and cultural importance to collective memory processes related to HIV/AIDS. More recently, discussions of collective memory in the digital public sphere have attracted attention from new media theorists and memory scholars alike. @theAIDSmemorial (TAM) is an Instagram account that serves as a digital repository for a new form of connective memory. By assessing two AIDS memorials as comparative cases, this research argues that TAM’s digital affordances of interactivity and reach are evident, although in assessing the digital remediation of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, the materiality, metaphoric origins, and scope of the Quilt cannot be rendered on digital platforms, representing a loss in affective engagement.

Co-existence and collaboration: Australian AIDS quilts in public museums and community collections

The Australian AIDS Memorial Quilt is arguably the most recognizable artefact of the AIDS Crisis in Australia. Consisting of over 800 panels, most of the quilt is now divided between a public museum (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney) and a community organization (AIDS Memorial Candlelight Vigil & Quilt Project, Melbourne). This paper compares the accessibility and meaning of the quilt depending on its location. In doing so, it argues that neither is a ‘better’ custodian for these objects as their differences are also the source of their unique contribution to the care and interpretation of the quilts. The tensions that exist between museums and LGBTIQ communities were exposed when the proper residence of one of the panels was disputed. I use this case to suggest that equitable collaboration can only occur if museums take more cues from communities.

Absent Bodies: The AIDS Memorial Quilt as Social Melancholia

Far from being apolitical, self-indulgent or ineffective, as was suggested by some in the activist community, the NAMES Project Quilt became a symbol of the decimation of AIDS and a beacon for those in the AIDS-affected community, and challenged and transformed public attitudes towards people with AIDS. The NAMES Project Quilt risked sanitizing and homogenizing the particularities of the deceased, but I shall argue that the spectacle of the quilt changed public opinion through its mechanisms of publicity and meaning-making. Building on Michael Warner's notion of the ‘Mass Subject’, the quilt, I will suggest, transformed the mainstream, effectively forcing the formerly abject AIDS-affected community into public consciousness through the mechanisms of mass media.