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“AIDS Activist Video vs Media Queer Bashing”: Stuart Marshall and dialogues in HIV/AIDS and 2SLGBTQIA+ video activism in Vancouver, 1983-1993.
An archival exhibition curated by Conal McStravick.
Conal McStravick is a UK-based, queer, non-binary artist currently undertaking a collaborative PhD between Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK and the UK artists’ moving image organization LUX, London, UK. They are in Vancouver as a visiting researcher at the Crista Dahl Media Library and Archive.
The exhibit reflects on McStravick’s doctoral research on British media artist and AIDS activist Stuart Marshall (1949-1993). Marshall was an influential figure in UK artists’ video praxis and 2SLGBTQIA+ and AIDS activist networks in Canada and North America in the 1980s and early 1990s, before his untimely death of an AIDS-related illness. As well as helping to cultivate UK artists' video theory and practice in the 1970s, Marshall was a co-founder of the first UK-wide video distributor London Video Arts (LVA). LVA and its successor, LUX, had a long-standing relationship with VIVO through the periodic UK-Canada Video Exchange, which Marshall helped to establish.
“Learning in a fantastically public medium” explores and invites dialogue around the numerous ways that Stuart Marshall's participation in practices of collaboration and cultural exchange, through the UK and Canada's video networks, established new precedents for exploring HIV/AIDS and 2SLGBTQIA+ histories on screen.
The exhibit features archival materials related to Marshall’s relationship with the west coast. In 1983, Marshall traveled to Vancouver as a presenter at the SAW International Festival of Video. In 1989, he was invited as artist-in-residence at Video In and participated in the Deluding Documentary seminar. His time here led to the production of the AIDS activist video, Robert Marshall, (1991).
In addition to documents and ephemera, the exhibit includes a number of videos produced by and about Marshall’s activism and personal experience of AIDS. Works will be presented using projection and on monitors via a 1980s-era “Videotheque” viewing station.
McStravick’s research aims towards the first complete historical and critical account of Stuart Marshall’s sound, video and broadcast media praxis between 1968 and 1993. Building on research at key Canada 2SLGBTQIA+ and moving image archives over almost a decade, McStravick's research at VIVO traces Marshall's activities in Vancouver and Western Canada. Re-exploring the media available to Marshall in a transnational, web 2.0 context, McStravick's practice aims to develop new performance, workshop and text-based encounters with Marshall's media, and to recontextualise Marshall's collaborative praxis around current 2SLGBTQIA+ debates such as gender recognition and Feminist, 2SLGBTQIA+ and HIV/AIDS community care.
Do you remember, or were influenced, by Stuart Marshall? If so, Conal would appreciate speaking with you. Please contact VIVO.
VIVO is located in the homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples in a warehouse space at 2625 Kaslo Street south of East Broadway at the end of E 10th. Transit line 9 stops at Kaslo Street on Broadway. From the bus stop, the path is paved, curbless, and on a slight decline. The closest skytrain station is Renfrew Station, which is three blocks south-east of VIVO and has an elevator. From there, the path is paved, curbless, and on a slight incline. There is parking available at VIVO, including wheelchair access parking. There is a bike rack at the entrance. The front entrance leads indoors to a set of 7 stairs to the lobby.
A wheelchair ramp is located at the west side of the main entrance. The ramp has two runs: the first run is 20 feet long, and the second run is 26 feet. The ramp is 60 inches wide. The slope is 1:12. The ramp itself is concrete and has handrails on both sides. There is an outward swinging door (34 inch width) at the top of the ramp leading to a vestibule. A second outward swinging door (33 inch width) opens into the exhibition space. Buzzers and intercoms are located at both doors to notify staff during regular office hours or events to unlock the doors. Once unlocked, visitors can use automatic operators to open the doors.
There are two all-gender washrooms. One has a stall and is not wheelchair accessible. The other is a single room with a urinal and is wheelchair accessible: the door is 33 inches wide and inward swinging, without automation. The toilet has 11 inch clearance on the left side and a handrail.
To reach the bathrooms from the studio, exit through the double doors and proceed straight through the lobby and down the hall . Turn left, and the two bathrooms will be on your right side. The closest one has a stall and is not wheelchair accessible. The far bathroom is accessible.
Conal McStravick (b.1979, Lurgan, N. Ireland, based in Glasgow, Scotland) is a UK-based, queer, non-binary artist currently undertaking a collaborative PhD between Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK and the UK artists’ moving image organization LUX, London, UK.
In their practice McStravick makes solo and collaborative artworks, workshops and events with artists, non-artists and communities that engage LGBTQ+ and queer feminist activisms, cultures, histories and practices through interventions with moving image, performance, event and text. This foregrounds past and future communities and activisms of care through intersections in Feminist, 2SLGBTQIA+ and AIDS activist archives.
McStravick has exhibited in the UK and overseas with solo and collaborative exhibitions and events 2005-present, as well as extended collaborative research projects: Learning in a Public Medium in 2015-2018, Picturing a Pandemic in 2020-21, with LUX, Vtape and partners and Queer Care Camp at Studio Voltaire, London between 2020-2022.
They have appeared on panels and given presentations on Stuart Marshall, AIDS activism and broader cultural activisms at AMIF 2015, ICA London, BFI Flare, The Essay Film Festival, Birkbeck University, HIV/AIDS Community Lecture Series, Concordia University, Archive/Counter-Archive, Vtape, Toronto and for AIDS 2022/ Videographe, Montreal.
