"Even in the earliest moments of AIDS, and from deep within its swirling vortex, the outlines of its cultural meaning were detectable. Playing out as it did in the public sphere, it was impossible to overlook. So assumptions about it formed quickly in our shared spaces, and almost as immediately, they began to crystallize into canon.

All these years later, a new canon is rising. After decades of shell-shocked contemplation, those who were there are finally able to speak about it. A growing number of documentaries and gallery exhibitions have already been devoted to the topic, and these are just the first to the gate. There are major projects in the pipeline.

Why now? In cultural terms, we’ve been told it’s because of two corresponding anniversaries, the 30th anniversary of AIDS and the 25th anniversary of the AIDS activist coalition, ACT UP, the resistance movement that helped foreground the crisis in the American mind. But what does it mean that the 30th anniversary is a marker of the first New York Times article about AIDS, not the New York Native story that preceded it, or a 25th anniversary that overlooks the fact that ACT UP came well after the Denver Principles were forged?"

- From "AIDS 2.0 " by Avram Finkelstein , POZ, January 10, 2013