exhibition – Urban Equity

Promoting new ways to respond to the challenge of making the environments we occupy more inclusive and equitable.

Alien Sex Club

Using Art and Design to Educate Audiences about Continuing Rates of HIV Transmission

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John Walter

PhD Architecture

John Walter’s practice-based PhD Alien Sex Club addressed contemporary modes of representation of HIV in art. It grew out of the minimalist aesthetic developed by artists such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres during the earlier part of the AIDS crisis. Today, however, it is acknowledged that HIV is an interconnected web of problems that should be represented in a holistic way. Rates of HIV transmission are increasing among gay men in the West. Although the availability of highly effective antiretroviral drugs means HIV is no longer a life-threatening illness, a resulting decrease in the perception of risk – leading to condom fatigue, unprotected sex and recreational drug use – may be some of a number of factors that are contributing to the increase in transmissions.

Despite changes in the cultural, social and scientific context of HIV, artistic representations of the subject have remained the same as those originated before effective treatment was available. Through his PhD, Walter sought to re-politicise art as an arena for addressing HIV by mobilising a range of visual and aesthetic genres in a curated installation.

Alien Sex Club used art and architecture, and drew from contemporary scientific and political approaches, to raise new questions about HIV in ways that differed from previous modes of representation, and apply them within an academic context. Taking the form of a cruise maze, the installation (first at Ambika P3, London and later the Wellcome Collection, London) made use of spatial design and a maximalist aesthetic to update the representation of HIV and transpose knowledge about HIV from science, sociology and philosophy into a visual art practice.

The installation invited audiences to consider HIV in new ways through the interactive nature of the gallery experience. It acted as a test site to gather data of audience responses which were then subjected to textual analysis. The multi-layered nature of Alien Sex Club allowed it to operate as a counter discourse to the prevailing minimalist representations of HIV. The PhD both generated knowledge on audience education about continuing rates of HIV transmission, and extended understandings of the nature of the artist as activist.

[supervisors: Prof. Lindsay Bremner, Dr Victoria Watson, Dr Francis White]