Emotional record of voices raised in unison
Exhibition's focus is a group that protested the AIDS crisis.

By Stacie Stukin, Special to The Los Angeles Times

June 14, 2007

IN June 1988, Chuck Stallard showed up to photograph a demonstration by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, on Copa De Oro Road in Bel-Air. The activist group, which became known for theatrical street protests that were infused with wit but fueled by anger, had gathered 70 protesters in front of a house where then Vice President George H.W. Bush was attending a fundraiser to demand that the presidential candidate make AIDS a priority campaign issue.
Stallard, a member of the group, stood on the sidelines taking pictures, and when he got too close to the police line, he was met with a baton blow to the chest. "I was certainly surprised," Stallard recalled. "I had never really thought that I would be in danger, but now it became pretty clear that something like that could happen at any time."

Stallard's images documenting the heyday of the Los Angeles chapter of ACT UP are the subject of a show at the Drkrm Gallery that opens Saturday. Titled "Silence = Death: Los Angeles AIDS Activism 1987-2007," the show also celebrates the 20th anniversary of ACT UP, which was founded in New York and at its zenith had 100 chapters around the world.
Trained as a fine art photographer, Stallard never considered these images art per se. Instead he was more concerned with creating an archive of ACT UP's mission to ensure healthcare and fast-track drug access for those who were dying of this new, mysterious illness. "I wanted our own history, our own record so our story couldn't be rewritten by the mainstream media or the government," Stallard, 47, said. His insider status granted him a perspective that meant, like other ACT UP members, he got arrested (and had film confiscated by law enforcement) and watched friends die.

Stallard's shy, soft-spoken demeanor is a stark contrast to his bold images. But everything about ACT UP was bold. It worked in the tradition of agitprop, using the artistic and creative talents of its members to stage protests that incorporated props, pithy signage and graphics, theatrical stunts and a large dose of gallows humor. "We very consciously approached our campaigns and actions with an eye toward the media," explained Peter Cashman, one of the founders of the Los Angeles ACT UP organization, who has a background in television and radio. "We knew that we lived in a visual age of competing images and that we had to do something that had never been seen before. It was political satire, but I also think we were able to channel the urgency and fear and anger we all felt into this incredible creative surge."

Many of these actions are captured at Drkrm. There's the image of ACT UP members halting the Rose Parade in 1990 by leaping into the parade line and creating their own human float while holding a sign that said, "Emergency. Stop the parade. 70,000 dead of AIDS." Or the time in 1989 when ACT UP set up a mock hospital ward outside County-USC Medical Center to urge the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to open an AIDS ward. The protesters stayed for a week, and activists, some of whom were ill with AIDS, lay on cots. Some dressed as doctors and nurses while others, such as performance artist Tim Miller and playwright-actor Michael Kearns, staged performances.

Then there were "The Altered Boys," a group of mock choirboys with tinsel halos who appeared at five L.A.-area churches on a Sunday in December 1989 to protest then-Archbishop Roger M. Mahony's refusal to support safe sex or condom use. The campaign, called "Slice Mahony's Baloney," included a serenade of parishioners with their version of "We Three Kings" that featured the lyrics "We gay queens of Hollywood are / Bearing condoms, O yes we are." Though this behavior may have been viewed as outlandish, it did garner the media attention the group wanted to get its message out. In fact, a state-of-the-art AIDS ward was established at County-USC in 1989.

Stuart Timmons, the show's curator who is an ACT UP member andcoauthor of "Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians," explained ACT UP's in-your-face aesthetic: "In the late '80s and '90s, people were having friends die on a monthly if not a weekly basis. I remember feeling like there was a killer stalking the town and no one cared because it was gay men who were dying. The feeling was, what's the worst that can happen? We've gone through so much death we cannot be silent. And if the most effective way to do it was get arrested, that's what we did."

One of the legacies of ACT UP, according to Richard Meyer, an associate professor of art history at USC and author of "Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art," was lifting the stigma toward people with AIDS/HIV by using images that were not about suffering and pathos but about political rage and action.

"Today there continues to be an ongoing dialogue about art and activism, and you can't talk about those things without taking into consideration ACT UP," Meyer said. "ACT UP really exploded the distinction between art and activism. And even now it's like a time-release medication. You may not be feeling the direct work of ACT UP working right now, but it still does, it's still influencing street activism — especially since many of the issues they were talking about in the past are still issues today."

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`Silence = Death'
Where: Drkrm Gallery, 2121 San Fernando Road, Suite 3, L.A.
When: Opening reception, 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday. Regular hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays
Ends: July 21

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drkrm. gallery :: 2121 San Fernando Road :: Suite 3
Los Angeles, CA 90065
323.223.6867 :: www.drkrm.com :: drkrmgallery@gmail.com