Viral Video: AIDS, art and activism 1983-1994, LUX
2:00-5:00Pm | Sat 14 June | LUX
(Listening Time: 14 minutes)
Viral Video: Art, Activism and AIDS, 1983-1993 brings together early AIDS activist videos from the LUX and London Community Video Archive collections. This screening includes Stuart Marshall’s recently recovered seminal AIDS video ‘Kaposi’s Sarcoma (A Plague and its Symptoms)’ (1983), Andy Kirby & Gay Sweatshop’s ‘Compromised Immunity’ (1986) and Mark Harriott’s recently digitised OUTRAGE! queer activist video tapes (1993/94).
The event explores the coming together of “two communities” of video art and community video, described by Stuart Marshall in the context of pre-web 2.0, 1980s and 1990s community media and art activism.
Through archive video, historical materials and live conversation, this event centres first-wave UK HIV/AIDS community activism in forging a new kind of AIDS and LGBTQIA+ viral media. The event invites us to reflect on:
How did AIDS and LGBTQIA+ community, healthcare and media activism challenge the mainstream UK media’s moral panic around AIDS in Thatcher’s Britain?
How did the response to the homophobic Section 28 legislation spur a second decade of non-violent direct action through groups like LGBTQIA+ street, media activism of ACT UP and OUTRAGE!?
How can UK AIDS and LGBTQIA+ activist media histories, across generations and borders, relate to the queer, trans and feminist present?
By reactivating LGBTQIA+ and AIDS histories, the event seeks to engage, inform and re-shape current HIV/AIDS, LGBTQIA+ and intersecting archive activisms, rethinking past and future media constituencies, epistemologies and communities of care.
The event is co-presented by current Northumbria University-LUX PhD Stuart Marshall scholar Conal McStravick with UK community video historian and media activist Ed Webb-Ingall (LCVA co-founder), and Mark Harriott (OUTRAGE!).
Films in the programme:
“Gay T.V. in England”: Gayblevision interview with Stuart Marshall (1983), 7 mins 30 secs.
Filmed during the International Festival of Video at Video In, Vancouver, Stuart Marshall’s “Gay T.V. in England” interview was recorded for ‘Gayblevision’ on West End Channel 10, Vancouver in May 1983. The interview features Marshall, as “Representative for Great Britain” discussing a lack of gay representation on U.K. T.V., the early community response to AIDS, and ‘Kaposi’s Sarcoma (A Plague and its Symptoms)’, his new AIDS activist video, which was screened at the festival.
‘Kaposi’s Sarcoma (A Plague and its Symptoms)’ by Stuart Marshall (1983), 23 mins.
‘Kaposi’s Sarcoma (A Plague and its Symptoms)’ is a 1983 artist’s video on the subject of AIDS by the LGBTQIA+ and AIDS video artist and TV documentarian Stuart Marshall (1949-1993). Presumed lost and unseen for over 40 years, this 25-minute video (of the original 28 minutes) is likely to be the first AIDS activist video in the global AIDS media archive.
OUTRAGE! Tapes by Mark Harriott (1993/4), 20 min edit.
Filmmaker and OUTRAGE! member Mark Harriott began documenting the group’s radical, non-violent actions using a handheld video camera. At a time when OUTRAGE!’s work and struggles were largely ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream media, Harriott captured the broader homophobic mistreatment of the lesbian and gay community. His footage of OUTRAGE! remains a rare document of the wider social and political context of the fight for lesbian and gay rights during the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
‘Compromised Immunity’ by Phillip Timmins, (1987), Excerpt.
‘Compromised Immunity’ is a video adaptation of Andy Kirby’s play of the same name, produced by Gay Sweatshop for the Gay Times Festival in 1986. The film follows Peter Dennett, a heterosexual nurse and Jerry Griond, a gay man with AIDS who has lost his job, home and lover. With contrasting prejudices and assumptions about sexuality, AIDS and each other, the patient and nurse relationship is at first tense and terse. But as Peter continues to care for Jerry in his final weeks, Jerry’s disillusionment begins to soften, and a meaningful understanding emerges between them.
Ticket Information:
Tickets: General – £10, Concession – £5
Concession tickets are offered for those who might experience barriers in attending. To make participation in the event as accessible as possible, you won’t be asked for any proof or ID – we just ask that you are honest.
Here are the questions to think about when planning to purchase a concession ticket:
I may stress about meeting my basic needs but still regularly achieve them.
I may have some debt but it does not prohibit attainment of basic needs.
I am able to afford non-essential expenses, such as dining out or entertainment activities.
I have very limited expendable income.
I rarely buy new items.
Biography of artists and contributors:
Conal McStravick is an artist, writer, curator and PhD researcher who makes collaborative artworks and events with artists, non-artists and queer communities. Mc Stravick’s collaborative doctoral research project Learning in a Fantastically Public Medium is located between Northumbria University and LUX. This aims towards the first complete historical and critical account of Stuart Marshall (1949-1993) and his post-’68 sound, video and broadcast media praxis as art and activist media. McStravick’s practice aims to develop new performance, workshop and text-based encounters with Marshall’s collective and collaborative media praxis to reframe current LGBTQIA+ debates such as gender recognition and feminist, LGBTQIA+ and HIV/AIDS community care.
Recent exhibitions, events and workshops include Living Trees and Stone Soups (Tricksters, Quacks and Queers), BFMAF (2025) ; Pedagogue and PDG X GRA at New Bridge Project, Newcastle & ongoing; Crossing/Crosser: Language, Borders and Generations; Learning in a Fantastically Public Medium, VIVO Media Arts Centre (2024) and Queer Care Camp, Studio Voltaire (2021) and LUX supported projects Learning in a Public Medium (2015-2018) and Picturing a Pandemic (2020). They have contributed to Art Monthly, British Art Studies, MIRAJ, Porn Studies, LUX and Vithéque, and they have presented on Marshall at AMIF, BFI, BFMAF, Birkbeck, Concordia University, Vidéographe, VIVO, and Vtape.
Ed Webb-Ingall is a filmmaker and researcher working with archival materials and methodologies drawn from community video. He collaborates with groups to explore under-represented historical moments and their relationship to contemporary life, developing modes of self-representation specific to the subject or the experiences of the participants. He is a co-founder and co-director of The London Community Video Archive and is currently writing a book with the title BFI Screen Stories: The Story of British Video Activism. Previous solo exhibitions include, Peer (2024), Grand Union, Devonshire Collective (both 2023) ; Focal Point (2018); and The Showroom Gallery (2015). Group exhibitions include Brent Biennial (2022); MK Gallery, Invisible Dust (both 2019).
Stuart Marshall was born in Manchester in 1949. From the late 1960s until his death in the early 1990s, Marshall was an early and influential UK sound and video artist, media art theorist, educator and curator. As a Senior Lecturer in Media at Newcastle Polytechnic Fine Art Department he established one of the first UK video departments. Marshall participated in key UK and international sound and video events, exhibitions and forums (including The Video Show, Video: Towards Defining an Aesthetic, Artists Video, Video 78, Music/Context Cross Currents and Sign of the Times and performed at Spencer Memorial Church, Wesleyan University, The Kitchen, Ayton Basement, 2B Butler’s Wharf, in the UK; and internationally at Tenth Paris Biennial, Difference: On Representation and Sexuality, and Documenta 8).
In 1976, Marshall co-founded London Video Arts, now LUX for the “promotion”, “distribution” and “exhibition” of video art. Within LVA, Marshall articulated early video art theory, through leading UK and international art publications and anthologies, including influential essays in Screen and Studio International. Marshall’s education at Hornsey and Newport Colleges of Art and Wesleyan University in the US brought him into ‘68 student activist and post-Cagean sound and performance vanguard that informed his innovative sound and video works (including An Exhibition on Three Hills and Usk, 1969-1970 and Idiophonics, 1971-1972) and early video works (the series Mouth Works and Sound Works, 1975-1977).
Access Information:
Auditory/Visual Access: We have hearing loops in the black box, a large print guide and magnifying glasses available in the space.
Sensory Access: Please note that the exhibition space is very dark, and the sound/noise volume is adjusted to a higher level.
You can find general access information here
If you have any access needs to attend our events please contact us at +44(0)20 3141 2960 or events@lux.org.uk