AA Bronson + General Idea: Going Viral
Written by Jack King

It’s 1986. New York’s HIV epidemic, the epicentre of a health crisis of which fires burn in most-all corners of the globe, has raged exponentially for five years. Thousands, disproportionately gay men, have already died; the state is, as will become its damning legacy, criminally negligent to the burgeoning disease, with President Ronald Reagan had not publicly uttered the acronym AIDS until the year prior. The broader public is callous. A trio of Canadian artists known by the collective moniker General Idea – formed of Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson, all enigmatic pseudonyms – relocate to the city, where the art scene has suffered acutely.
It was the year following, in 1987 – also, coincidentally, when the direct action group AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was formed by a handful of activists, including the mercurial playwright Larry Kramer – that General Idea first put brush to paper on their AIDS image. Later turned into the Imagevirus poster campaign, it appropriated Robert Indiana’s Love, a characteristically bold pop art piece which has been formally replicated, homaged and parodied on everything from stamps to book and album covers.