Last Address Tribute Walk: Chelsea

LAST ADDRESS TRIBUTE WALK
3:00 - 5:00 PM, Saturday August 29 2015
Starting at SVA Theatre, 333 W 23rd St

IN TRIBUTE TO ARTISTS WHO DIED OF HIV/AIDS AT THEIR LAST ADDRESSES.
Starting with a screening of Ira Sachs’ touching Last Address (2010, 9 min.) at SVA Theatre, the event moved to the streets of Chelsea where Visual AIDS Programs Manager Alex Fialho led a tribute walk honoring artists lost to AIDS. At each stop of an artist's last residential address, a drawing by Win Mixter and rose was left in tribute, and special guests close to or influenced by the artists shared a related reading. Audio clips from Félix González-Torres, Vito Russo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Tseng Kwong Chi, and Chloe Dzubilo were also played at SVA Theatre to bring each artist's presence into the room.

In a spirit of lively remembrance, Alejandro Cesarco read at the last address of Félix González-Torres (London Terrace, 405-465 W 23rd St); Larry Mass read at the last address of Vito Russo (401 W 24th St); Pamela Sneed read at the last address of Assotto Saint (360 W 22nd St); Kristoffer Haynes read at the former address of Tseng Kwong Chi (162 W 21 St); Carl George read at the last address of Hugh Steers (208 W 23rd St); Jack Walls read at the last address of Robert Mapplethorpe (35 W 23rd St); and Kelly McGowan read at the last address of Chloe Dzubilo (Prince George Ballroom).

Though these may be the last addresses where each artist lived, the life of their work continues to address, inspire, and live with a new generation today. The constellation of readings and roses, drawings and doorsteps of the tribute walks is a site for community based on both remembrance and response.

Artist Member pages for those we read in tribute: Félix González-Torres, Robert Mapplethorpe, Tseng Kwong Chi, Hugh Steers and Chloe Dzubilo

View photos by Lyle Ashton Harris of the 2014 Last Address Tribute Walk.

Read a reflection by Alex Fialho about the 2013 Last Address Tribute Walk.

READER'S BIOGRAPHIES

Jack Walls, Artist, Poet lived at 35 West 23rd street with Robert Mapplethorpe until the photographer’s death on March 9, 1989

Carl George is a collagist, filmmaker and curator. Hugh and Carl were best friends, art collaborators, sisters on the dancefloor and brothers in arms in the war on AIDS.

Alejandro Cesarco is an artist whose work addresses, through different formats and strategies, his recurrent interests in repetition, narrative, and the practices of reading and translating. Cesarco's ongoing involvement and fascination with the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres led him to curate "Felix Gonzalez-Torres" at the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay (2000) and edit "A Selection of Snapshots Taken by Felix Gonzalez-Torres" (New York: A.R.T. Press, 2010).

Robert-Kristoffer Haynes was Tseng Kwong Chi's domestic partner and assistant/ frequent trusted collaborator from 1983 until his passing in 1990.

Lawrence D. Mass, M.D., was the first to write about AIDS for the press and is a co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis. He has written widely on AIDS, gay health, medicine and culture. He is the author of a memoir, Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite; Being Gay and Jewish in America, and the editor of an anthology, We Must Love One Another or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer. He works in addiction medicine in New York City, where he lives with his life partner, Arnie Kantrowitz, who was Vito Russo's closest friend. Together with their other closest friend, Jim Owles, Arnie, Vito and Larry became an extended family as the AIDS epidemic unfolded.

Kelly McGowan has lived in the Lower East Side since moving into the Rock Against Racism squat in 1985. She directed the 'Guerilla Housing Program' during Housing Works founding years and was Chloe's partner in the 90s when Chloe was the lead singer of Transisters. Together they led the Transgender Initiative at Positive Health Project in midtown Manhattan and continued to be co-conspirators until Chloe's ascension.

Pamela Sneed is a New York based poet, performer, writer and actress whose work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Source, Time Out, Bomb, Next, MetroSource, Blue, VIBE, HX, and on the cover of New York Magazine. "A six-foot-three-inch-tall black woman with a shaved head, a big smile, and a wily sense of humor, Sneed began making a name for herself in New York in the early nineties as a writer at poetry slams and other performance-art venues while teaching at Hetrick-Martin, an organization for gay, lesbian, and transgendered youth. There and elsewhere, Sneed gave voice to the fraction of the city’s population suffering from AIDS, poverty, and bias-related crimes." -Hilton Als, The New Yorker