Screenings: Please Hold
The New School, Manhattan, NY, November 10, 2025, 6:30 pm
Hosted by Professor Mev Luna. Parsons School of Design, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue, room N101. Co-sponsored by the Pat Parker/Vito Russo Library and The New School’s Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute.
The screening will be followed by a conversation between Alexandra Juhasz and the co-creators of the learning guide accompanying the installation, Chloe Buergenthal and Shwe Ye Shoon Myat; moderated by Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art Practice and Theory, Mev Luna. Intergenerational exchange—between those alive and eager to learn from each other; and those who we can only meet and learn to love in the archive—is at the heart of the video, and its installation, HOLDING PATTERNS.
Yale University, November 11, 2025. Hosted by Professor Neta Alexander.
Amherst College, November 13, 2025. 4pm at Pruyne Auditorium. Hosted by Professor Pooja Rangan.
Installation: HOLDING PATTERNS (NY/LA 2025)
How is research and study a critical component of AIDS activism? How do we learn, remember, and grieve differently on paper, screens, fabrics, and video? How do computers and magazines, sweaters and scarves, videotapes and queer bars hold ghosts?
How do we let them go?
The Holding Patterns installation considers how Zoom and other pandemic technologies, composite onto screens, and also into rooms, flattening and deepening attention, connection, and care. A meditation on technologies of memory, with close attention paid to medium specificity, the installation comprises four hour-long interviews and their paper transcripts—remarkable conversations between friends and “AIDS workers”—two death-bed/legacy videos shot by Alexandra Juhasz on her friends’ request (in the 1990s and 2020s), as well as some of the things and photos shared in the process of remembering, celebrating, and fighting inside queer communities of care.
The One Archives, Los Angeles. 909 W Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Opens October 3, 6-9 pm, with related programming through December. More here.
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, 208 W 13th St, New York, NY 10011.
Opens October 15, 6-8 PM. 4th floor/room 301. More here.
Join us for the opening night of the Holding Patterns installation at the Center’s Library and Archive. For this special opening event, we invite you to bring a precious object, something that holds a memory of someone or something lost to HIV/AIDS to share, informally, with opening participants. Then, if you so choose, you can add this to the installation’s holdings to display at the archive. If you decide to archive your precious object, we will request a brief description for the display and we will let you know when the object can be retrieved.
This installation was supported, in part, by a PSC CUNY Research Award.
Upcoming Events: Conferences, Gatherings
Connecting Across Queer Memory Work, October 23, 2025, 6:00 PM. The Center, 208 W 13th St, New York. More info and register here.
Join Alexandra Juhasz (AIDS activist, scholar, and media artist), Alexis Bard Johnson (Curator and Interim Director, ONE Archive at the USC Libraries), Lou McCarthy (Director of Archives, The Center), Mev Luna (Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art Practice and Theory, Parsons & PP/VR Library Steering Committee member), and Liza Minno (American Studies, NYU & PP/VR Library Steering Committee member) for an intimate conversation on these and your own questions.
This evening is meant for archivists, curators, scholars, and anyone interested in the work of queer and trans archives particularly in a time of defunding and other setbacks. We welcome archivists, curators, artists, scholars, and community members to join this discussion prompted by Holding Patterns, on view at the Center and at the ONE Archives in Los Angeles. More here and registration.
American Studies Association meetings, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Panel concerning Please Hold and AIDS memories, November 19. With Marika Cifor, University of Washington, Alexandra Juhasz, Brooklyn College, CUNY, Jeanne Vaccaro, University of Kansas, Ricardo Montez, Rutgers University, Marty Fink, Toronto Metropolitan University
American Historical Association meetings. Philadelphia. Spring 2026. With Swarthmore College Professors Jamal Batts and Patty White.
Past Screenings
In Person Premier: March 2, 2025, The Parkside Lounge on the Lower East Side, 317 E. Houston St., New York. Screening and performance 5-7 p.m. EST. Community gathering 3-5 p.m. See pix here!
Online Webinar Premier: March 8, 2025, 3-5 pm EST, featuring authors and editors from “AIDS and the Distribution of Crises” (Duke 2020): Cecilia Aldarando, Pablo Alvarez, Jih-Fei Cheng, Pato Hebert, Alexandra Juhasz, Nishant Shahani. Pix and reflections here.
Williams College, Documentary class screening with Cecilia Aldorando, March 2025.
Picture Lock Film Series, March 22, 2025, 7 pm CST, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH. In person. More info here.
Knowledge of AIDS Network meetings, March 28, 2025, Galveston TX, UTMB.
SCMS, April 3, 2025, 7 pm CST: Northwestern University Downtown, Chicago, IL. Hosted by Dr. Aymar Jean Christian.
Occidental College. Documentary class screening with Dr. Brody Fox, April 14.
Columbia Teacher’s College, video art class with Katherine Cheairs. April 16.
VISIBLE EVIDENCE DOCUMENTARY CONFERENCE, Wednesday, August 6, Temple University, Philadelphia. Reflections from scholar/makers Marty Lucas and Jeffrey Skoller here.
THE CINEMA OF GENDER TRANSGRESSION, Anthology Film Archives, August 7 – August 13. Reflections from co-curator, Joey Carducci, here.
Please Hold is an extended conversation. Join us!
What does it mean to hold the legacy of beloveds on changing formats? How do mourning and memory change across time and tech? Whatever could it mean that twice in my life (in my late 20s and then in my late 50s), two friends (so different from each other) asked me to tape them—as AIDS activists and collaborators—as they were nearing death?