As part of my studies in queer history, cultural memory, and HIV/AIDS, I met with James monthly in his basement apartment in the bowels of lower Manhattan. His apartment was filled with thousands of videotapes and pieces of AIDS activist ephemera that, at the time, you would never find in a museum. It wasn’t until this moment with James, however, that I began thinking through what it means to understand this history as a history of genocide. Retrospectives of AIDS activist art were suddenly in vogue. ShareRyan Conrad is a queer activist, artist, and educator living in the Ottawa Valley.