Three years after AIDS Garden Chicago opened to the public, the digital Story Archive has announced an expansion to its digital storytelling to educate people about the HIV/AIDS epidemic via community memories and experiences.
The genesis for this Story Archive came from Chicago Parks Foundation Executive Director Willa Lang, who said she wasn’t educated about or “connected to the pain and suffering that was occurring during the AIDS epidemic” and wanted to learn more through the power of storytelling.
On Lang’s routine visits to the AIDS Garden during the construction period, she would encounter people who asked what was happening in that spot. When Lang would explain that a garden, not a memorial, would come to fruition once the construction process was finished, “the story floodgates would open up.” These “everyday park visitors, just passing by” shared their stories with Lang about their time at that spot when it was then called the Belmont Rocks. They told Lang of their loves, losses, the friends they made and how they met their husbands there.
Lang shared that the garden would be a “celebration and a tribute to all who fought and died, those who loved them and those who lived on.”
AIDS Garden Chicago’s former Board Chair Yoni Pizer said that the Story Archive was “an integral part of the garden from the very beginning. We felt that for the Garden, a ‘park with a purpose’ as we like to say, to truly honor, respect, remember, educate and celebrate those affected by HIV/AIDS, we needed an online presence, accessible to people wherever in the world they are.”
For the online Story Archive, Lang hired videographer Tim Morris with whom she has worked with in the past. The two of them spent hours recording the first interviews at the Belmont Yacht Club. Lang had signs with QR codes put up in various locations in the AIDS Garden that take people to the storytelling page of the website so they can view the interviews that have already been completed.
Pizer said the “digital quilt” has stories from community members, care givers, doctors, activists and others who have been directly affected by HIV/AIDS. He added that the people chosen for the inaugural story group “represented a diverse viewpoint of Chicagoans affected by HIV/AIDS … who spoke of their experiences in a personal, compelling way.” Pizer said this oral quilt will grow over time and anyone with a story of their personal experience with HIV/AIDS is invited to submit it for consideration on the website.
AIDS Garden Chicago Digital Archivist Matt Dershowitz said that his team is proactively collecting/recording more stories of Chicagoans affected by HIV/AIDS. Dershowitz added that after people submit their story proposal a minor vetting process takes place. He hopes that these preserved first-hand accounts will help memorialize past experiences and connect them to struggles the HIV/AIDS community faces today.
“As a Gen-Z queer person, I’ve always had immense respect and gratitude for those who’ve paved the way for queer liberation in decades previous,” said Dershowitz. “At the same time, I’ve often felt a sense of distance from the experiences of my elders—something that’s only deepened by the lack of LGBTQ+ history in mainstream U.S. education.
“That absence has made me seek out intergenerational connections with intention, and those relationships have been incredibly meaningful to me. Through this project, my hope is to help bridge that generational gap. I want to make the wisdom, insight and lived experiences of those affected by HIV/AIDS more accessible—especially to younger people like me.”
Dershowitz added that every person he has spoken to for this project has carried the “grief of a generation lost” and his goal is to have others take on some of that burden alongside the storytellers. He wants the project to have many diverse voices share their experiences. Another goal of Dershowitz’s is to make the website more user friendly.
For Pizer, the Story Archive project is also important to the LGBTQ+ community to be able to “remember the many lives lost” and as an “enduring symbol of strength, perseverance and unity of a determined community and our allies in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
Pizer added that the project also serves as a reminder to “never forget the forces of hate and indifference which decimated our community “ as well as a reminder of the people “who cared for our friends and family when they were abandoned by their families and their government and never forget those brave individuals who acted up.
“The Story Archive will also serve as a symbol of the hope and resilience of the LGBTQ+ community and our allies—and of the will power, and perseverance of any community under siege, even in the face of a horrific global pandemic.”
Lang said, “My goal has always been that this should be a storytelling place. The next generation should embrace it, own it and share the stories and experiences that they have enjoyed and endured.”
AIDS Garden Story Archive Committee Member David Fink hopes that “people can learn from personal narrative what was like and what it is like regarding AIDS. We can take inspiration, feel empathy and learn about the human condition. The past can impact the present.”
