Interview with Hugh O'Rourke and Joe Mondello -
14 December 2012
My first interview was with Hugh O'Rourke, preparator at NYU Steinhardt Gallery, which hosted the Gran Fury show. Hugh was instrumental in setting up the gallery space and helping to digitally re-create art objects, including The New York Crimes. My friend, Joe Mondello, an artistic photographer and former activist artist during the AIDS crisis, was gracious enough to come with me, take a few pictures and contribute first-hand knowledge. Below are some quips from our interview:
Did you make a bid to
Gran Fury to have this show here, or how did it come to this space?
Michael [Cohen] deserves a lot of credit in the preliminary
aspects of getting that all set up and once the show was scheduled and the
budget was approved, then Gran Fury took over. Michael really made a case for
having the show and having the budget that it had and all those type of aspects
before it was solidified, and then once it was known that they had the slot and
they were going to be here, then Gran Fury really took over with the planning
of the show.
He was the one who
told me that most of the content was digitally recreated, which is one of the
huge things that I find fascinating.
They all had kind of
a specific specialty or role – I found that interesting because they’re working
as a collective and it’s under Gran Fury, but the way in which they specialized
and broke up the tasks is very interesting.
If I remember correctly, John Lindell also did most of the
printing onto the adhesive paper, so there was also very detailed things going
on like what kind of adhesive goes on the back of these wall decals. We put a
bunch of those decals up and then a few of them fell off the wall within a few
days, so then they had to be reprinted on a stronger adhesive, but John really
took that over, where in other cases for other shows, I would do that. They
were very hands-on, doing the printing themselves, and I feel like in a way
that harkens back to their original practice because they were doing everything
themselves. I think they wanted to keep that going, but it’s also interesting
to note that almost the entire show is gone because all that stuff was just for
the show and there’s no way to save any of the vinyls or the wall adhesives
because the only way to get them off the wall was to basically destroy them.
I didn’t know that
about the vinyls.
If the show was to travel then everything would have been
reprinted anyway. So very few things, except for the Riot painting and Control, which were in the back of the gallery, those were the original
pieces, but I would say almost 80% of the show was created from digital files
printed and at the end of the show was destroyed. It was all basically for
one-time use. Which is interesting, I think.
Yes. So, when you’re
talking about working from the digital files, did they just have scans or did
they have to recreate? I know that Edward mentioned that for the handout of The New York Crimes, they took the new format of The New York Times. Why did
they do that? Why didn't they just go back to the original format?
That’s an interesting question. The reason – a lot of things
when you’re doing any sort of production end up being for very logical reasons.
So the reason for that was that the new New York Times is a different format,
so if we were sticking new papers into those – if we would have went with the
old format, the paper would have been too big, because the old New York Times
was a smaller version and now the new version had to match. There was no other
way of getting around it because no one saved the old newspapers.
So [to print] the
papers and the stickers, Men Use Condoms Or Beat It, did you go through the
Albany studio as well or was that local?
That was done locally. We had a color test done. There was a
proof – with everything, there [were] proofs, so we could check and make sure
they were as exact as they could possibly be, and then we printed the stickers
locally. I was going to say I think another interesting story would be to talk
to Melitte Buchmann because some of the things were too big, and she actually
ended up taking a high res photograph of one of the pieces. I think that was
the Kissing Doesn’t Kill poster, so that, the vinyl, large blown-up version
was actually taken from a photo and not even from a scan, if I’m remembering
correctly. She was someone that Ted and I had both known, and she works at NYU,
too. So you start all these avenues that you know – you trust people.
***
Do you think the
pieces remain relevant today, and how so? Obviously, I’m coming in with an idea
that they do, but I would like to know your opinion.
I think something like Kissing Doesn’t Kill is an
interesting one because I think they had a very instrumental role with that
piece, specifically, because thru learning about the show, that piece seemed
like it was one of their most visible and successful and thought-provoking
pieces. I think when AIDS was in its infancy, people didn’t know the details of
how it was contracted, and I think people didn’t realize that kissing and
saliva contact wasn’t a way transfer. So I would say that that piece was their
most successful as a historical piece. But then I think even the large baby
[Welcome to America] – I feel that really held up. I think they said now South
Africa does have health care, so we’re still the only country that doesn’t have
[government-provided] health care. I think when you put something in that
context on a billboard-sized piece, you really have to recognize.
A call to reality.
Yeah, a call to reality. Or sometimes people in America,
because America’s so large, start to lose perspective on what the rest of the
world does.
Absolutely.
Sometimes just putting it in a sentence like that helps
people realize in a lot of ways, a lot of the rest of the world has moved on
and developed ways to address health issues that America either ignores or
chooses not to follow.
Working with the
group, obviously you got a lot of anecdotal information, or did you?
Yeah; hearing about the controversy in the Venice Biennale –
the piece was held at customs. And then seeing some of the other materials,
like the graffitied (sic.) piece, Kissing Doesn’t Kill in Chicago. I think it
just gives you a really broad understanding of the time period and how people
felt about this imagery. It gives it a little context.
I think also the
nature of the imagery behind the images, if that makes any sense [is
important]. For example, the reason there are three female versions of Read My
Lips is because those lesbians in ACT UP felt they weren’t being properly
represented and that it wasn’t equivalent [to the male version]. And the male Read My Lips [image] is a porno shot from San Francisco. I think that’s
hysterical.
I think also just being at the opening and seeing a lot of
the group who [were] still alive show up and seeing the community that was
created through making all these pieces – and then realizing that a lot of
these people who were in these pieces have died. So, seeing people come
together and celebrate what was done and remembering people that weren’t here.
Absolutely. Did they
bring up Mark Simpson?
They brought up Mark Simpson and talked about him a few
times. He was featured in some of the didactic material.
Joe Mondello: I was
just curious. You said you were 8 or 9 when the Magic Johnson thing happened.
Are you about 28?
I’m 31.
Joe Mondello: I’m just
trying to place you in my own historical context. But I’m just curious as to –
Karen said the other day that she’s not sure that she’s met anybody with HIV.
Do you know of people who’ve died of AIDS or have HIV?
To be honest, no.
Joe Mondello: How
different a world it is. When HIV hit, it didn’t have that name, but it was
1981 and I was 30. And it was like what? A cancer that only strikes gay people?
That’s pretty interesting. And then years went by and it just got worse. It’s
very strange. Imagine something like that happening now – just some weird
disease coming out of nowhere and all of sudden people are wasting away and
dying in six months.
Traumatic, too.
Hugh provided great detail about how the exhibition was designed and the detail with which the space was engineered, factors which the collective couldn't control originally, since the posters were posted in open, public spaces.
As far as the digitization of the posters and the implications this holds, Hugh argued that the magnification of some of the pieces and their re-creation served the space and public education/experience:
Thinking about it, that
[the posters] were made in an obviously very different way in the 80s, early
90s, and the way they were remade, what implication, if any, do you think that
has?
For me, it starts with a grassroots effort and the physical
nature of either replacing a newspaper with your own cover page or putting up
posters around town (wheat-pasting). And then once it gets to the art gallery –
you know, these things are historicized, but they’re also blown up. I feel like
they’re synonymous. One, you’re putting the pieces in a widespread manner and
then here, you’re in a gallery and it’s very focused, so the pieces are blown
up to a larger size. But both have this kind of awareness factor – we have a
lot of windows, so people could see in, and for people to see in and recognize
what those things were, they had to be blown up. So to address the public, I
think that’s one of the reasons to blow these up, so they can see them out of
the corner of their eye. They don’t even have to come into the art gallery.
They can look through the window and read the text – and that’s part of the
kind of advertising component that these things had. They were super readable
and catchy, in a way. So, instead of having hundreds of small posters, they’re
almost being combined into one giant [piece].
So, there’s kind of a
balance?
Yeah, to me, there seems like there’s a balance. I think the
idea was to blow them up to have the same impact that they would have had.
In this case, he feels, the high-quality replication of both the posters and art objects served to provide pieces that were incredibly similar, if not identical, to the originals.
*Thanks again to Hugh and Joe for their generosity of time and openness in conversation.**Photographs of Gran Fury pieces courtesy of cyborgyoryie, NYTimes
