This is Not an Art Event
Day Without Art / World AIDS Day
New Langton Arts, December 1, 1996
Created, installed and performed by Niloufar Talebi
Commissioned by Visual Aid
Per Wikipedia: Day Without Art (DWA) began on December 1, 1989 as a national day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis that has taken the lives of many artists. In 1997, it was suggested Day Without Art become a Day With Art, to recognize and promote increased programming of cultural events that draw attention to the continuing pandemic. Though "the name was retained as a metaphor for the chilling possibility of a future day without art or artists", we added parentheses to the program title, Day With(out) Art, to highlight the proactive programming of art projects by artists living with HIV/AIDS, and art about AIDS, that were taking place around the world.
The title of my public art piece, This is Not an Art Event, created in 1996, when December 1 was still called ‘Day Without Art,’ was inspired with René Magritte’s The Treason of Images (La Trahison des Images), which is an image of a pipe, with the words, ‘Çeci n’est pas une pipe’ (meaning, ‘This is not a pipe’) written below it, referencing that the image of the pipe is not the pipe itself, but a representation of it. In creating an art event on a day that was supposed to be marked without art, I perfofrmed a non-art non-event, on Folsom street in San Francisco, a represention of, and symbolic act towards commemorting the sick and the dying. We occupied and quadroned off part of the street and sidewalk, and ritualistically folded and unfolded a white cloth, acting as a funerary flag. A remarkable coincidence was revealed after the banner was dismanlted: the headline of the newspaper fastened to the back of the banner cloth read, ‘Love and Death.’