Nostalgia and Chronicity: Two Temporalities in the Restaging of AIDS

Two recent performances, Demian DinéYazhí’s An Infected Sunset (2018) and Karen Finley’s Written in Sand (1992–ongoing), address issues related to HIV/AIDS from the perspective of an ongoing pandemic that is interconnected with other forms of structural negligence and personal mourning. Whereas a growing number of early AIDS crisis revivals and restagings have mythologized the climate of crisis that shaped AIDS during the 1980s and ’90s, this essay considers how these two artists navigate tensions between the past and ongoing AIDS crisis through the lens of chronicity, a theory taken up in conversation with Elizabeth Freeman and other scholars of performance and temporality. Through close readings of both performances, the author brings new light to the linear histories that structure our understanding of the AIDS pandemic, and the crucial role that theatre and performance play in reconfiguring its narrative arc.