The first collection of writings by a noted artist and activist whose work has focused on the AIDS epidemic.
The HIV epidemic animates this collection of essays by a noted artist, writer, and activist. "So total was the burden of illness―mine and others'―that the only viable response, other than to cease making art entirely, was to adjust to the gravity of the predicament by using the crisis as a lens," writes Gregg Bordowitz, a film- and video-maker whose best-known works, Fast Trip Long Drop (1993) and Habit (2001), address AIDS globally and personally. In The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous―the title essay is inspired by Charles Ludlam, founder of the Ridiculous Theater Company―Bordowitz follows in the tradition of artist-writers Robert Smithson and Yvonne Rainer by making writing an integral part of an artistic practice.
Bordowitz has left his earliest writings for the most part unchanged―to preserve, he says, "both the youthful exuberance and the palpable sense of fear" created by the early days of the AIDS crisis. After these early essays, the writing becomes more experimental, sometimes mixing fiction and fact; included here is a selection of Bordowitz's columns from the journal Documents, "New York Was Yesterday." Finally, in his newest essays he reformulates early themes, and, in "My Postmodernism" (written for Artforum's fortieth anniversary issue) and "More Operative Assumptions" (written especially for this book), he reexamines the underlying ideas of his practice and sums up his theoretical concerns.
In his mature work, Bordowitz seeks to join the subjective―the experience of having a disease―and the objective―the fact of the disease as a global problem. He believes that this conjunction is necessary for understanding and fighting the crisis. "If it can be written," he says, "then it can be realized."

AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous And Other Writings: 1986-2003

Arts & Photography

Bordowitz, Gregg

Individual Artists

Mit Pr

The first collection of writings by a noted artist and activist whose work has focused on the AIDS epidemic.The HIV epidemic animates this collection of essays by a noted artist, writer, and activist. "So total was the burden of illness―mine and others'―that the only viable response, other than to cease making art entirely, was to adjust to the gravity of the predicament by using the crisis as a lens," writes Gregg Bordowitz, a film- and video-maker whose best-known works, Fast Trip Long Drop (1993) and Habit (2001), address AIDS globally and personally. In The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous―the title essay is inspired by Charles Ludlam, founder of the Ridiculous Theater Company―Bordowitz follows in the tradition of artist-writers Robert Smithson and Yvonne Rainer by making writing an integral part of an artistic practice.Bordowitz has left his earliest writings for the most part unchanged―to preserve, he says, "both the youthful exuberance and the palpable sense of fear" created by the early days of the AIDS crisis. After these early essays, the writing becomes more experimental, sometimes mixing fiction and fact; included here is a selection of Bordowitz's columns from the journal Documents, "New York Was Yesterday." Finally, in his newest essays he reformulates early themes, and, in "My Postmodernism" (written for Artforum's fortieth anniversary issue) and "More Operative Assumptions" (written especially for this book), he reexamines the underlying ideas of his practice and sums up his theoretical concerns.In his mature work, Bordowitz seeks to join the subjective―the experience of having a disease―and the objective―the fact of the disease as a global problem. He believes that this conjunction is necessary for understanding and fighting the crisis. "If it can be written," he says, "then it can be realized."

The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986-2003 (Writing Art)

MIT Press]

Over a two-week period between December '06 to January '07, Amy Sillman and Gregg Bordowitz recorded approximately ten hours of conversation covering topics such as art, philosophy, their practices, their personal histories and their friendship. This edited transcript roughly follows the chronology of their discussions from beginning to end. The transcript starts where they consider the beliefs underlying their respective endeavors, what art can and cannot accomplish.

Amy Sillman / Gregg Bordowitz: Between Artists

Sillman, Amy

A.R.T. Pr

An intimate, urgent and riotous account of masculinity, whiteness, queerness and belief in America In winter 2018, Gregg Bordowitz performed a three-part lecture series at the New Museum as part of Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon. Each evening, he explored an avatar of masculinity that was formative to him as he came of age as an outer-borough child of Jewish immigrants, then as an artist-activist in Manhattan at the dawn of the AIDS crisis: the rock star, the rabbi and the comedian. He merged personal and political history, ribald humor and social criticism, performer and persona. Some Styles of Masculinity is a self-portrait and an essay on upheaval and plague, based on transcripts of the eponymous series, which Bordowitz has reimagined for the page. He asserts that gender can't be separated from ethnicity, sexuality, class or nationality, and he connects these aspects of himself through personal anecdotes as well as reflections on whiteness, diaspora, comedy and Jewish mysticism. Some Styles of Masculinity evokes David Antin's "talk poems," Maggie Nelson's "autotheory," David France's How to Survive a Plague and Wayne Koestenbaum's casually erudite criticism. This book is a winding, intimate, urgent, freewheeling account of thinking and enduring in difficult times. Gregg Bordowitz (born 1964) is the author of Glenn Ligon: Untitled (I Am a Man) (2018), General Idea: Imagevirus (Afterall Books, 2010) and The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986-2003 (2004). He was an early participant in ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), where he cofounded several video collectives.

Some Styles of Masculinity

History & Criticism

Triple Canopy

General Idea: Imagevirus (One Work)

In the mid-1980s, the Canadian art group General Idea (AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge Zontal) created a symbol using the acronym AIDS, arranging the letters in a manner that resembled Robert Indiana's famous LOVE logo. This launched Imagevirus, a project of paintings, sculptures, videos, posters, and exhibitions that investigated the term AIDS as both word and image, using the mechanism of viral transmission. The Imagevirus spread like a virus, producing an image epidemic in urban spaces from Manhattan to Sydney. It was displayed as, among other things, a Spectacolor sign in Times Square, a sculpture on a street in Hamburg, and a poster in the New York subway system. In this detailed study of the Imagevirus project, artist and writer Gregg Bordowitz analyzes the work from the perspective of his own involvement with activist art initiatives in New York during the 1980s and 1990s. Bordowitz explores the virus as idea, as tactic, and as identity. General Idea felt compelled to make Imagevirus at a time when AIDS was emerging as a global epidemic affecting gay men disproportionately; when homophobia seemed to drive U.S. AIDS policy; and when the exigencies of AIDS activism created a demand for agit-prop and direct action. General Idea adapted their methods to the new situation, using the threat of viral infection and a poetic understanding of language as their model for artistic production and ideological struggle.

Afterall Books

An art project that spread AIDS consciousness like a virus, examined by an artist-activist.
In the mid-1980s, the Canadian art group General Idea (AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge Zontal) created a symbol using the acronym AIDS, arranging the letters in a manner that resembled Robert Indiana's famous LOVE logo. This launched Imagevirus, a project of paintings, sculptures, videos, posters, and exhibitions that investigated the term AIDS as both word and image, using the mechanism of viral transmission. The Imagevirus spread like a virus, producing an image epidemic in urban spaces from Manhattan to Sydney. It was displayed as, among other things, a Spectacolor sign in Times Square, a sculpture on a street in Hamburg, and a poster in the New York subway system. In this detailed study of the Imagevirus project, artist and writer Gregg Bordowitz analyzes the work from the perspective of his own involvement with activist art initiatives in New York during the 1980s and 1990s. Bordowitz explores the virus as idea, as tactic, and as identity. General Idea felt compelled to make Imagevirus at a time when AIDS was emerging as a global epidemic affecting gay men disproportionately; when homophobia seemed to drive U.S. AIDS policy; and when the exigencies of AIDS activism created a demand for agit-prop and direct action. General Idea adapted their methods to the new situation, using the threat of viral infection and a poetic understanding of language as their model for artistic production and ideological struggle.

An illustrated examination of Glenn Ligon's iconic Untitled (I Am a Man) (1988)―a quotation, an appropriated text turned into an artifact.The iconic work Untitled (I Am a Man) (1988) by the important contemporary American artist Glenn Ligon is a quotation, an appropriated text turned into an artifact. The National Gallery of Art in Washington presents the work as a “representation―a signifier―of the actual signs carried by 1,300 striking African American sanitation workers in Memphis, made famous by Ernest Withers' 1968 photographs.” In this illustrated study of the work, Gregg Bordowitz takes the National Gallery's presentation as his starting point, considering the museum's juxtaposition of Untitled (I Am a Man) and the ca. 1935 sculpture, Schoolteacher, by William Edmondson, and the relation of the two terms, “markers” and “signs.”After closely examining the canvas itself, its textures, brushwork, and structure, Bordowitz presents a theoretical framework that draws on the work of American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce and his theory of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. He makes a case for Thirdness as a function, operation, or law of meaning-making, not limited by the gender, age, ethnicity, race, class, or personal history of the viewer. Bordowitz goes on to examine Ligon's work in terms of the representation of self, race, and gender, focusing on three series: Profile Series (1990–91), Narratives, and Runaways (both 1993). He cites such historical figures as Sojourner Truth and her famous 1851 speech, “Ain't I a Woman?” as well as influences ranging from Bo Diddley's 1955 song, “I'm a Man” to the cultural theories of Stuart Hall.

Glenn Ligon: Untitled (I Am a Man) (Afterall Books / One Work)

Over the past ten years, Los Angeles–based artist Andrea Fraser (born 1965) has built a practice around critiques of art-world economics, which she has presented in essays, performances and videos. This book brings together for the first time a selection of Fraser’s recent texts.

Andrea Fraser: Texts, Scripts, Transcripts

Engelbach, Barbara

Walther König, Köln

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Books by Bordowitz, Gregg

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bordowitz, Gregg. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous And Other Writings: 1986-2003

The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986-2003 (Writing Art)

Amy Sillman / Gregg Bordowitz: Between Artists

Some Styles of Masculinity

General Idea: Imagevirus (One Work)

General Idea: Imagevirus (One Work)

Glenn Ligon: Untitled (I Am a Man) (Afterall Books / One Work)

Andrea Fraser: Texts, Scripts, Transcripts