AIDS at
The New School:
What is Remembered?
The New School Archives and Special Collections contain a robust collection of artifacts that speak to the history of HIV/AIDS at The New School. Importantly, there is an active community of witnesses, survivors, scholars, and artists within the university community who can speak to this history and help ground a crisis that has become abstract to too many people.
Juxtaposing the university’s artifacts with hearing memories spoken out loud, AIDS at The New School: What is Remembered? situates this sprawling crisis in a specific place, using it as a means to challenge the discourses that shape our perception of this school, its neighborhood, and the city whose “realities” we too often take at face value.
Visit the exhibit website here.
The photos on this page were taken by Jumana Mograbi.
Featured archival materials include student newspaper articles, as well as journals and sketchbooks from the Gustavo Ojeda (Parsons BFA ‘79) Collection.
Listening consoles, designed with reused materials by Scatter Practice, house new oral history recordings that ground the crisis in the community’s present.
Sheer curtains offer some privacy when listening to the oral histories, but also unexpected intimacies. They can be shifted according to occasion, such as a performance art event.
Exhibit visual identity across various media:
Wall texts were printed on linen — a nod to the fabric partitions, but also a move to avoid use of vinyl, a toxic material common in many exhibition spaces.