By his own admission, Canadian-born, New York-based artist AA Bronson's lived a pretty spectacular life. After studying architecture in Manitoba and founding a commune, a newspaper and a free store (among other things), Bronson moved to Toronto and joined forces with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal to form viral art collective, General Idea. From 1969 until Partz and Zontal's AIDS-related deaths in 1994, General Idea's work reappropriated and reconstructed cultural symbols and cliches to take on popular and mainstream society. As gay men, they were particularly concerned with the rise of the AIDS crisis and from 1987 through 1994, their work addressed the world's silence on AIDS - perhaps most famously through their reimagining of Robert Indiana's '60s "LOVE" square in which they replaced it with AIDS.

With Partz and Zontal's deaths, Bronson found himself in a whole new world of isolation, trauma and what he describes as "extraordinary depression". Despite those years, Bronson found a new life through healing workshops. Armed with the power of curative creation, Bronson's forged a new life by merging his artistic vision with his medicinal mission. In many way, Bronson's experiences led him to a second youth, making him a perfect addition to The Youth Issue.

Thus, editor Andrew Belonsky had a little sit down with Bronson to talk about General Idea, Bronson's rebirth, loss of virginity, childhood and so much other shit we had to split it into two interviews. Experience part one, after the jump and head on back Monday for the rousing conclusion.

Andrew Belonsky: Let’s talk about the founding of General Idea - how did you and Felix and Jorge come about forming this collective, rather than working as individuals.

AA Bronson: Totally by accident. We moved into a house together – there were about seven or eight of us who moved into an old house together. I was just out of school. We were all unemployed and bored and had nothing to do. [The] house had at some point been made into a storefront – had a store window blasted into the front wall, into the living room – [but] went back to being a house again. So we started raiding the garbage of the neighborhood businesses and started setting up fake stores in our window. We always had a little sign on the door that said, “Back in five minutes”. Some of the stores would last a day and some would last a month. They started to get more and more elaborate and started to turn into art installations.

AB: It just sort of happened…

AA: It just sort of happened, yeah. When we were invited to be in our first exhibition – which was about a year into that process – we dreamt up the name General Idea for that exhibition.

AB: And where did the name come from?

AA: I don’t remember. We could never remember. I think originally it was the title of the piece we did for the show, but people misunderstood and thought it was the name of the group, so we just left it at that.

AB: It stuck for years.

AA: It stuck for 25 years…

AB: How was it for you after Jorge and Felix died, removing yourself from that collective?

AA: The weird thing is that we lived and worked together for 25 years. I lost my domestic situation. I lost my domestic partners. I lost my professional life, in a sense, but I also lost my professional identity as General Idea. Just on the personal level of losing Jorge and Felix, it was extraordinarily difficult, of course. I didn’t make an artwork until 1999 and they died in 1994, so it was five years until I started to produce art again and then very slowly.

AB: It took a while for you to get over it.

AA: Really, it took ten years. Five years I was just frozen. The first piece I did was – I took a photograph I had taken of Felix on his deathbed and made it into a billboard. The first few pieces I did were about their deaths. It was all I could start from: it was the only thing I had in my head.

AB: But you’ve since moved past that.

AA: It was a gradual process. When I started producing art [again], I had to start with the only thing I could think of: their deaths. So, the first few works were really about death. From there I moved into ideas about trauma. I did a whole series of works on the subject of trauma, both in relation to the gay community and in relation to AIDS and in relation to Auschwitz. Jorge’s father had been a survivor of Auschwitz, which is one of the reasons I was aware of that.

And then I guess when they first got sick, I started taking all those [healing] workshops at Body Electric [in California] with the idea that I could sort of become midwife to their dying process, which is what happened. When they died – in fact, as it turned out, they died at home, I looked after them right through to their actual deaths. I felt I was really good at that process, so I had this idea that I would go and work in a hospice afterwards, which was stupid, because I was so burned out, I couldn’t possibly have done that.

Anyway, I kept it in the back of my mind that I was good at something like this and then about five years ago, Body Electric announced a new course for professional healers: a sort of refresher course. I decided to take it, because it was still in my head that I should do something with it. I did that – I took the course. It was an amazing, amazing course. I realized by the end of it that I was one of the best two or three people there and that I should be doing something with it.

I came back to New York and found three volunteers to come and see me once a week for six months. At the end of the six months, I let the word out in the grapevine that I was taking paying clients. The interview in BUTT appeared shortly thereafter and my reputation was sort of instant. I realized that if that reputation of AA Bronson, Healer – that persona, really – [had] such a draw to it, I should roll it into my art career, because I had no art identity anymore, really. So then I began to do this series of healing projects related to my art practice. And that’s where I am today – I’ve sort of combined the two.

AB: It’s a much more constant art than your work with General Idea, which was much more timely - reviving cultural symbols for the time. Do you feel like a different person because of it?

AA: Not exactly a different person. I recognize in myself today what I was when I was seven or eight years old, that’s the weird thing: I feel a really strong connection to my childhood. If I look back to that little boy, I can see myself very, very clearly. It’s almost as if General Idea were an aside – but it’s an aside whereby I learned and gained an awful lot of experience, especially in the art world. But what I’m doing now feels connected vitally to my existence as a child.

AB: How so?

AA: I was always fascinated as a child – we’re talking early fifties – I was completely fascinated by yoga, astrology, ancient mythologies, along with science fiction writing, as well as art and architecture. I used to devour whole sections of libraries. There was this hunger for something I could sort of identify vaguely as new ageish. In 1952, 1953, that was a pretty weird thing to be looking at.

AB: Especially for a seven year old…

AA: [Laughs] That’s true. Some of it was really dumb stuff and some of it was really smart stuff – a strange mix.

AB: Do you feel more connected to Michael Tims now [Note: Michael Tims is Bronson's legal name]?

AA: I hear the name as if it’s somebody else. I’m not used to having the name of Michael Tims. I don’t really identify with Michael Tims. I feel that as a little boy I was already AA Bronson.

AB: Where did the name AA Bronson come from?

AA: It’s actually a sort of amusing story: when I was just out of school – actually ’69, I’d been out of school a couple of years – ’69 was a time when pornography was suddenly big business in a way it hadn’t been before. With a friend, we decided to write a pornographic novel, which we did and we sold it outright to a small publisher in Toronto. There were a lot of small pornography publishers in Toronto – they were really outposts for American companies because they had more freedom to do what they wanted to do, so they opened office in Canada and shipped the books back to the US. Anyway, our book was sold to this little publisher and we sold it with the copyright, so we had no control over it. They didn’t change anything in the manuscript, but they changed the name of the author and made it AA Bronson.

AB: So it’s not even your name!

AA: It’s not even my name, no. It’s a name that was given to me. [The book] was extremely successful in the market place. [It] sold like hotcakes and then it was banned.

AB: What was it called?

AA: It was called Lena. It was totally politically incorrect – it was the story of a 14-year old black girl. Through the course of the book, she goes through every single sexual experience one can dream of, most of which I had never experienced at the time [laughs].

AB: When did you lose your virginity?

AA: My virginity? God. I’m not really sure, to tell you the truth. Quite late, I would say. Virginity in what sense? Which layer?

AB: The first time you had anal sex.

AA: I don’t actually remember. I would have been well into my twenties.

AB: Did you have sex with women before that?

AA: I had sex with women and men simultaneously. I got into sex with both at once. Not in bed at the same time – well, actually, in bed at the same time, yeah… It sort of happened simultaneously and it took me a while to figure it out.

AB: Have you had sex with a woman in the past twenty years?

AA: Nope, not since I was 35 probably, and I’m 60. It’s been a while, but I wouldn’t say no to the right woman.

AB: Let’s go back to you pillaging the library as a kid – what was your childhood like? Do you have siblings? Were you isolated?

AA: I have one brother who was born when I was eight, so my first eight years were as an only child. My father was a pilot in the Air Force, so we moved every two or three years. I was very shy and over-sensitive so I made friends rather slowly – just as I was beginning to make friends, we would move again. I was extremely isolated. Pillaging the library was my way of keeping myself entertained. I would sit in my bedroom, these heaps of books around my bed and read non-stop. That’s mostly how I entertained myself.

AB: Can we talk about that dream: that August 6, 2000 dream? [Bronson dreamt of finding a body - which turned out to be his – and buried it in the Earth] You said that this was really the breaking point for you – you embraced your identity as a survivor. Survivor of what? Survivor of HIV, survivor of trauma –

AA: All those things, in a way. Somehow they were all wrapped up together. I mean, obviously that era of AIDS – before we had the medications we have today – that was quite something to live through. I’m amazed that I lived through it. I’d had such an intense sort of life with General Idea. We had an extraordinary life. We were always involved in ten projects at any different moment and we were traveling all the time and publishing our magazine and doing exhibitions and making art. Suddenly all of that was gone. In a sense, survivor just of that life – that I had come through that extraordinary life and come through the other end. It was as if I should be dead – not only because of AIDS, but because I had had such an extraordinary, full life. It was enough that it could be over. I always say that if I were to die when they did, I would have had a complete life. It would have been enough. But somehow I came out the other side.

AB: You got a whole new life.

AA: Yeah, I got a whole new life, whether I wanted it or not.

AB: Do you ever feel guilty?

AA: I think I must because it’s so hard for me to produce art. Every time I make art, it’s like pulling teeth. It’s really hard to do. It was never really all that hard before. It must be guilt – it’s the only thing I can think of. I’m constantly sabotaging myself.

Images:
AA Bronson, "Hand", (Mirror Series), 1968
AA Bronson, "Felix, June 5, 1994", 1995
General Idea, "Nazi Milk", 1979
General Idea, "AIDS," 1987
General Idea, "General Idea, One Year of AZT and One Day of AZT", 1991