Description:
This publication investigates an extraordinary moment in the histories of both activist media and AIDS activism: the creation of a community-driven video series about HIV/AIDS for public-access cable television in Toronto at the beginning of the 1990s.
Researcher Ryan Conrad has done detailed historical work on the Toronto Living With AIDS series, its creators, public reception, circulation, and censorship by Rogers Cable. The book includes interviews with Debbie Douglas, Richard Fung, John Greyson, Colman Jones, Glace Lawrence, James MacSwain, Ted Myerscough, Ian Rashid, Kaspar Saxena, and Darien Taylor; and contemporary reflections on these seminal videos by Chase Joynt, Alison Duke, Andil Gosine, Peter Knegt, Kiera Boult, Kristin Li, Alexander McClelland, Mikki Burino, Jamie Whitecrow, Jon Davies, and Jessica Whitbread. Toronto Living With AIDS is published by PUBLIC Books and distributed by Wilfrid Laurier University PressBrief description:
Ryan Conrad is an activist and video maker based in the Ottawa Valley. He is also an Adjunct Research Faculty member at the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation at Carleton University. From 2019-2022 he was a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in Cinema and Media Studies at York University where he led the AIDS Activist Media case study for Archive/Counter-Archive.