The HIV/AIDS crisis is devasting. Many artistic works dealing with the pandemic since 1981 centre on grief and stigma, showing how HIV/AIDS was intensified by public fear and its association with queerness, especially gay communities. In 1987, General Idea—a Canadian artistic trio—confronted this stigma more directly with their AIDS projects, criticizing the cultural and political response to HIV/AIDS. For instance, AIDS (1987), a painting which mimics Robert Indiana’s work LOVE (1966), renders the word “AIDS” into an “AIDS logo” with colourful bold red lettering. Both Felix Partz (b. Ronald Gabe) and Jorge Zontal (b. Slobodan Saia-Levy) were diagnosed with HIV; both died of AIDS-related complications in 1994. In 2012, the surviving member of General Idea, AA Bronson (b. Michael Tims), presented a portrait entitled Felix, June, 1994, showing Partz hours after death and surrounded by objects he loved. The image is intimate, but difficult to look at: his sunken eye sockets and extreme wasting is in full display.

Some works operate as large-scale memorials, such as the AIDS Memorial Quilt; other are intimate elegies, like Mark Doty’s poem “The Embrace,” where the diseased lover’s return signals closeness without treating happiness as a betrayal of grief. My favourite work dealing with HIV/AIDS is Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991). In the gallery, a mound of candy weighting 175 lbs—matching the body weight of the average man, while also signalling the artist’s partner, Ross Laycock—is piled in a corner. Visitors are invited to take a piece of candy, so the mound gradually diminishes over time, mirroring Laycock’s withering body as he died of AIDS-related complications.

All of the aforementioned works deal with loss, and they are difficult—at times, heartbreaking—to sit with. I don’t think we can look past that grief, nor should we—but the period also produced materials the virus did not extinguish. These artifacts and primary sources—objects, images, interviews, posters, pamphlets, letters—are what I decided to focus on.

An archive in triads renders artifacts and other primary sources from HIV/AIDS activism into sound. The material is largely pulled from AIDS Activist History, a Canadian lead initiative archiving AIDS activism from 1986 to 1996. Their collection—ranging from artifacts and interviews to pamphlets and magazine articles—explores organizing and community responses in Halifax, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. Various techniques are used to transform these materials into soundwaves, such as image to WAV, text to MIDI, and audio sampling and distortion.

The performance is emitted through three speakers arranged in a triangle cycling through 1,728 pitch combinations (all of the possible three note combination spanning a 12-note octave). The work is shaped by the listener’s position in the space since each speaker occupies a different location, certain frequencies come forward depending on where one stands, and only from the centre is the work perceived as balanced. As visitors move—and especially when they leave—the piece continues to “recompose” itself through partial listening, with some tones lingering while others recede. Across its 175-minute duration, this spatialized progression makes the archive perceptible not as a set of static documents, but as a field that surrounds and moves the listener.

The aim is not to produce an acousmatic piece that separates the sound from the archive and individuals, nor am I merely appropriating HIV/AIDS history and activism. An archive in triads uses sound to direct attention back to the archive itself. It does not undermine the individuals affected by the virus, nor does it magnifies suffering. Triads celebrates the efforts made by the activists and their enduring material legacy while also exploring sound/music’s ability to communicate visual material.