The New York City AIDS Memorial will launch Hear Me: Voices of the Epidemic, an original, sound-based installation in recognition of World AIDS Day. The approximately 45-minute long soundtrack is composed of historical texts, poetry, speeches, music, and more that capture the history of the epidemic. Examples include a powerful speech by Vito Russo (1946-90), a song composed by Michael Callen (1955-93), historic recordings of an ACT UP-led protest made by artist David Wojnarowicz (1954-92), and poems by Melvin Dixon (1950-92) and Kia LaBeija, who was born in 1990 at St. Vincent’s Hospital, on whose former site the Memorial sits today. Visitors are welcome to hear the program, accompanied by a distinctive lighting installation, nightly at 7 p.m. through December. Hear Me will be preceded each day, beginning at 10 a.m., by a recording featuring the names of over 2,000 New Yorkers, representing a fraction of the 100,000+ lost to AIDS, and read by What Would an HIV Doula Do?, a group of activists, caregivers, friends, long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS, and people living with HIV today.

Hear Me will invite audiences to experience both the transformation of the permanent structure of the New York City AIDS Memorial by using state-of-the-art speakers and advanced lighting systems designed by leading engineering firm Arup. This program will be free and open to the public and can easily be experienced while maintaining all advised social distancing protocols. Hear Me is the third exhibition under the NYC AIDS Memorial Arts and Education Initiative. This initiative supports interactive, experiential, digital, and site-specific educational and arts programming and furthers the Memorial’s aim throughout the world.

Hear Me is supported by a new, online conversation series called A Time To Listen. This six-episode recorded series features a wide breadth of thought leaders, artists, and activists sharing current experiences and knowledge of AIDS history connected to New York City and beyond through a discussion of media, including speeches, songs, poems, plays, and oral histories. Episodes were published on Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout November, beginning November 5, in the lead up to the launch of Hear Me at the New York City AIDS Memorial. For more information and a full list of participants, please visit the project page, or explore our mini-site at www.atimetolisten.org.

About The NYC AIDS Memorial:

The New York City AIDS Memorial honors the more than 100,000 New Yorkers who have died of AIDS and acknowledges the contributions of caregivers and activists who mobilized to provide care for the ill, fight discrimination, lobby for medical research, and alter the drug approval process. The Memorial aims to inspire visitors to remember and reflect as well as empower current and future activists, health professionals, and people living with HIV in the continuing mission to to eradicate the disease through the maintenance of our permanent, architecturally significant Memorial as well as through educational and cultural programming. For more info, visit nycaidsmemorial.org