Fin Again(s) Wake

Fin Again(s) Wake
Intersection for the Arts
1989

The original project was a series of graphite on paper drawings.
This series was recreated as a book for A Day Without Art 1992

Introduction

The words in this book were borrowed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. They were positioned to construct a series of texts using names of AIDS drugs as a central axis. The idea for Fin Again(s)Wake came from a work by John Cage called The First Meeting of the Eric Satie Society. In that piece random configurations of Joyce’s text were generated using a computer program modeled after the Chinese fortune telling book, the I Ching. Although there was nothing random about my intentions, I do credit Cage’s work for its inspiration and Joyce for the beauty of the individual words. Fin Again(s)Wake was originally created as a series of graphite on paper drawings in 1989. After Cage’s death earlier this year (1992) I decided to redesign this work as an artist’s-book and distribute it for A Day Without Art. The life’s work of John Cage and the enormous legacy he left with us is an inspiration. It is also a painful reminder of the lives of artists cut short by AIDS and their creative legacies that we will never share. (rl1992)

Fin Again(s) Wake
December 1, 1992
World AIDS Day / A Day Without Art

1998. Foscarnet was included in Difference /Indifference by Moira Roth and Jonathan Katz.

Roth, Moira. Difference/ Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, commentary by Jonathan D. Katz, Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishing Group, 1998, 142.

2015. Foscarnet (and The Uninvited) were included in the exhibition, Art AIDS America curated by Jonathan Katz and Rock Huska.

2015. AZT drawing was used for the announcement of the Lecture on Art AIDS America at Mills College, Oakland.