Carl George, The Lie, 2019

For the thirtieth annual Day With(out) Art on December 1, 2019, Visual AIDS presented STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven newly commissioned videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic by Shanti Avirgan, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Carl George, Viva Ruiz, Iman Shervington, Jack Waters/Victor F.M. Torres, and Derrick Woods-Morrow. Recalling Gregg Bordowitz’s reminder that “THE AIDS CRISIS IS STILL BEGINNING,” the video program resists narratives of resolution or conclusion, considering the continued urgency of HIV/AIDS in the contemporary moment while revisiting resonant cultural histories from the past three decades. STILL BEGINNING screened at 110 venues worldwide, premiering at the Whitney Museum of American Art on December 1, with additional marquee screenings at the Brooklyn Museum in collaboration with The Studio Museum in Harlem, as well as the MCA Chicago and MOCA LA.

The Lie is the latest in an ongoing series of short films drawing on found footage and materials from the artist’s archive. Offering “ruminations on ruined nations,” the film aims to expose the links between war, AIDS, capitalism, and the persistent mythologies that bind them all.

Commissioned by Visual AIDS for STILL BEGINNING: The 30th Annual Day With(out) Art
visualaids.org/projects/day-without-art-2019

Carl George is an artist and activist working in experimental film, painting and collage. His short experimental films have shown in festivals internationally and are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Guggenheim Museum and the New York Public Library. His 1989 film DHPG Mon Amour, documenting the radical advances made by people with AIDS in developing their own health care, is a classic of AIDS activist filmmaking and was incorporated into the Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague (2012).