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In 2004, a number of current Ultra-red members joined AIDS activists in Los Angeles to begin organizing a new chapter of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). In helping facilitate AIDS activist training workshops in Los Angeles, Ultra-red members have confronted not only the memory of a past activist moment, but its absence. Ultra-red's decision to occupy major American art institutions is tactical. SILENT|LISTEN reconnects the art world and AIDS activists with memories of when the arts served as a crucial arena - in some communities, the only public space - for open discussions about the pandemic. Despite the current absence of AIDS-related exhibitions the crisis continues, abetted as always by refusals to remember, refusals to mourn, and refusals to act. Central to this project is a reconsideration of the mission statement of ACT UP; "united in anger to end the AIDS crisis through direct action." In the current proto-fascist historical moment, SILENT|LISTEN invokes affective responses other than rage as constitutive of collective action. The alternative, waiting for anger, will prove politically disastrous in terms of AIDS and the larger political crisis.
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