24/ I Remember Dancing

2019
By Nguyen Tan Hoang
Duration: 5:15 min.
Recommended by Kyle Croft and Blake Paskal

How does this work investigate “hope?”
In this video, recollection and nostalgia become processing tools to find hope and meaning for the subjects of the work. Made for Visual AIDS annual Day With(out) Art action on World AIDS Day, it bridges an earlier era of the AIDS epidemic with the present day to show the long-term impact of the virus on people's everyday lives and how despite its ongoing presence people living with HIV continue to thrive and persevere.

About the work:
To make I Remember Dancing, Nguyen Tan Hoang invited a group of friends to share “memories about gaysian identity, HIV/AIDS, safe/unsafe sex, intimacy, desire, danger, risks, regrets, longings... from the past, in the present and the future.” Nguyen is an artist and scholar whose work examines the intersections of race, sexuality, and pornography, often focusing on the experiences of gay Asian American men. The emotionally charged collage of memories, fantasies, and faces that appear onscreen explores the desires, losses, and experiences of gay Asian men. The video challenges stereotypes and responds to a lack of Asian representation in cultural narratives of HIV. At one point the flow of recollections becomes overwhelming, forcing us to acknowledge the fact that the video does not provide a comprehensive or complete account.

The video’s form comes from I Remember, a memoir by poet and visual artist Joe Brainard about growing up in the Midwest and living in New York in the 1960s and 70s. (Brainard died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1994.)