Commemorating World AIDS Day

Every December 1st since 1988 we commemorate the fight against HIV/AIDS disease and the social stigmatization suffered by HIV+ people. Coinciding with this date we visit three archival cases on documenting and recovering the memory of this health and social crisis started in 1981.

The first experience leads us to Sweden. The Face of AIDS Film Archive is an online film archive consisting of almost 800 hours of documentary film material about the global HIV and AIDS epidemic. The archive is based at Karolinska Institutet University Library in Stockholm, Sweden. The largest part of the collection consists of film director Staffan Hildebrand’s documentation of the AIDS epidemic 1986-2021. The archive also contains contributions from researchers, activists and others involved in the HIV response. Online exhibitions with essays and selected films on specific themes are regularly published on the website. The “Face of AIDS Timeline 1981-2017” contains a collection of stories from the archive, that puts an emphasis on certain historic milestones. It is suitable for use in an educational setting.

Now we go to the UK to visit the post New ways of seeing: independent HIV and AIDS web-based archives by Chris Olver at the blog of West Sussex Record Office last year. In it, Olver, project archivist documenting HIV and AIDS archives in Britain, gives a short tour of some of the online HIV/AIDS archives in the country. We can learn more about some interesting examples of web-based archives created by private individuals. These archives are often self-funded and voluntarily run and may differ from professional archive services in how they present and describe items, but this differing approach is not necessarily one which is detrimental to the subject. Often these collections highlight new ways of viewing historical material or enrich the meaning behind digital objects by revealing personal stories or memories about them. Olver tells us about the UK HIV Graphic Communication Archive; Queer Heritage South / The Brighton AIDS Memorial; the AIDS Archive at YouTube by Martin Weaver; West Yorkshire Queer Stories; and The MayDay Rooms / London Lighthouse.

To close this post we go to Louisiana in the USA to know more about the New Orleans AIDS Memory Project (NOAMP) led by the LGBT+ Archives of Lousiana. The LGBT+ Archives Project’s programming focus this year is the history of HIV/AIDS in New Orleans. The New Orleans AIDS Memory Project (NOAMP) will consist of a series of monthly events from June through December as well as a historical exhibition opening in October and running through March 2025. The exhibit is being produced in collaboration with the Stonewall National Museum Archives & Library in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. New Orleans Panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be featured in the exhibit. The history of the AIDS epidemic in New Orleans has yet to be fully documented and represents a significant gap in the historical record, so this project will be a significant first step in filling that gap.

As said at NOAMP`s website, by remembering, we honor those we lost.