May 2000-The Estate Project's (http://www.artistswithAIDS.org) announces
the launch of an important new addition to its website - Artery: The
AIDS-Arts Forum. Artery's mission is to examine both the history of the
AIDS crisis and its changing face as reflected in the arts. Artery is
also the interpretive arm of The Estate Project which, for several
years, has been preserving visual artworks, film, dance and activist
video created during the AIDS crisis,

This week Artery launches. The spring theme is "In Motion". Features
include a reunion (via email) of the NEA 4, a Symposium about the
unfashionability of AIDS-arts today, an Artist in the Archives interview
with Jack Waters, the film program's first living (and African-American)
artist, a memoir by Philip Lopate about filmmaker Warren Sonbert, never-
before-published images of dancer Bill T. Jones, a look at recent AIDS-
photo books, and an essay about the landmark, San Francisco AIDS-
theatrework "The AIDS Show" (1984), among other features.

It is expected that the International Events Calendar will help make
Artery a global center for AIDS discourse, and one which is unique for
its focus on the intersection of AIDS and the arts. (Information about
programscan be submitted on the site's calendar section or emailed to
artery@allianceforarts.org.) Another unique element of Artery is its
AIDS-Arts Timeline. This searchable, double timeline will chronicle both
AIDS events and AIDS-arts events of the past two decades. Rudimentary
information is already visible on the site and audiences around the
world are asked to contribute information to it (in the form of text,
image and sound files) about events with which they are familiar. Just
as every locale and society has its own AIDS epidemic, so too does every
locale have its own history of the epidemic. This "people's history" is
expected to debut next fall, prior to December 1st, Day Without
Art/World AIDS Day.

"Artery has grown organically out of The Estate Project's work
preserving artworks created during the AIDS crisis," Patrick Moore, its
director noted. "Artery can help us examine important issues raised by
the artworks we preserve: What have we learned from AIDS? What do
today's artistic responses, and yesterday's, tell us about the epidemic
and ourselves? How do artists respond to crisis?" Atkins also believes
that the epidemic remains a wellspring of unresolved emotion-on all
sides. "As one of the participants in Artery's first symposium observed:
'The influence of AIDS-related art is huge - too large to see clearly
and yet pervasive.' It's the Vietnam of the eighties," he said. "We need
places to discuss such issues and express those feelings."