Holding Patterns: An Installation by Alexandra Juhasz

How is research and study a critical component of AIDS activism? How do we learn, remember, and grieve differently on paper, screens, fabrics, and video? How do computers and magazines, sweaters and scarves, videotapes and queer bars hold ghosts?

How do we let them go?

The Holding Patterns installation considers how Zoom and other pandemic technologies, composite onto screens, and also into rooms, flattening and deepening attention, connection, and care. A meditation on technologies of memory, with close attention paid to medium specificity, the installation comprises four hour-long interviews and their paper transcripts—remarkable conversations between friends and “AIDS workers”—two death-bed/legacy videos shot by Alexandra Juhasz on her friends’ request (in the 1990s and 2020s), as well as some of the things and photos shared in the process of remembering, celebrating, and fighting inside queer communities of care.

Audience members are invited to interact with the installation including viewing the legacy videos of Jim Lamb, a gay white male downtown performer who died painfully before there were meds at 29 in 1993 and Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski, a Black disabled queer feminist media activist who died in 2022 on her own terms, in her sixties, and due largely to inequities in the American healthcare system and COVID in addition to their cherished effects.

Presented concurrently with the ONE Archives in LA. On view within the Library/Archive space on the 4th floor. This space is open with limited hours: Thursdays 6-8 p.m., and Sundays 12-4 p.m. You’re welcome to stop by the fourth floor at other times and give the door a knock if we are in!

Related Events

Wednesday, October 15 from 6-8pm at The Center: Opening Reception

Thursday, October 23 from 6-8pm at The Center: Connecting Across Queer Memories

Wednesday, December 3 from 6-8pm at The Center: Closing Screening

Cast & Crew

Alexandra Juhasz

Dr. Juhasz is Distinguished Professor of Film at Brooklyn College, CUNY. Alex is the producer of the feature films The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1997) and The Owls (Dunye, 2010). She is the author/editor of AIDS TV (Duke, 1995), AIDS and the Distribution of Crises, with Jih-Fei Cheng and Nishant Shahani (Duke, 2020), We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production, with Theodore Kerr (Duke University Press, 2022), and scores of articles and activist videos about AIDS, including the legacy videos: Video Remains (with Jim Lamb, 2005) and I Want to Leave a Legacy: the video/activism of Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski (2024). 

James Robert Lamb (1963-1993) was a member of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company in the late 80s and early 90s.

Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski (1957–2022) was a prolific AIDS activist videomaker and an active member of WAVE, The Women’s AIDS Video Enterprise, in 1989.

Jih-Fei Cheng is Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Scripps College, a media and arts organizer, and former HIV/AIDS social service provider.

Marty Fink is the author of Forget Burial: HIV Kinship, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care, bringing together HIV narratives past and present toward prison abolition, trans activism, and a free Palestine.

Pato Hebert is an artist, teacher, and organizer living with Long COVID.

Theodore (Ted) Kerr is a writer, organizer, and founding member of What Would an HIV Doula Do?

Read more here: pleaseholdvideo.com