Video excerpts and a discussion will highlight a presentation entitled “Read My Lips: Research and the ACT UP Oral History Project” at New York University on Thursday, April 14, at 6:30 p.m. Featuring Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard, cofounders of the Project, the event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at the NYU Bobst Library, Fales Collection (3rd floor), 70 Washington Square South. For further information call 212.998.2596.
The ACT UP Oral History Project is a collection of interviews with surviving members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, New York. Coordinated by Hubbard and Schulman, the Project includes camera work by James Wentzy (in New York) and S. Leo Chiang (on the West Coast).
The Project seeks to present comprehensive, complex, human, collective and individual portraits of the people who have comprised ACT UP/New York. These men and women of all races and classes transformed entrenched cultural ideas about homosexuality, sexuality, illness, health care, civil rights, art, media, and the rights of patients. They achieved concrete changes in medical and scientific research, insurance, law, and health care delivery, and introduced new and effective methods for political organizing. The interviews reveal what has motivated them to action and how they have organized complex endeavors.
The ACT UP Oral History Project is a rich web-based digital archive that provides a treasure trove of data for research not just about AIDS and queer history, but also in fields as disparate as literature, nutrition, holistic medicine, art, immigration, and immunology.
The unedited tapes of the interviews can be viewed at the San Francisco Public Library and at the New York Public Library.