This was my first artists book. The Harmed Circle has one foot in the political arena and the other in the lyrical tradition. AIDS gives the book its political edge. A friend and I were at the point of collaborating when he took ill; the illness was at first a cold, then a flu, then pneumonia, then AIDS. The Harmed Circle was made in his memory.

At the time the commercial world had been scrambling for the pink $ and a number of the tipped in photomontages find their source in the advertising of the time: think of the Kouros and Anteus fragrances, the Fendi outfits and Sheridan bedsheets. The tipped in photomontages along with the brief, original aphoristic text give the book the feel of an album. The outsider status of the queer community became even more emphatic because of the virus, but the struggle against prejudice also had its Romanic edge, as the community united and kicked against the stupidity. It’s in the writing of Genet, Wilde, Rimbaud and Proust that the text and image map the book’s destination. (I want to see The Harmed Circle along with Industrial Woman, And This Little Man Went to Work, and The Products of Wealth as a tiny bit of time which mark this country’s attempt to grow out of its
adolescence.)

The Harmed Circle was part of the groundbreaking exhibition: Don’t Leave Me This Way – Art In The Age Of AIDS.