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.

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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