The Ross Laycock Initiative for the Exploration of Science, Art, AIDS

On the occasion of the archive’s transition and as part of our end-of-year fundraising campaign, Visual AIDS is launching a special initiative to honor Ross and reflect on the confluence of science, art, and AIDS that he embodied.

This web gallery features artwork from the Visual AIDS Artist Registry that explores the intersection of science, medicine, and art. Since the beginning of the crisis, art has been a way to make visible what has been hidden from view — not only the immense loss and pain that has been shrouded by stigma, but also the microscopic, viral, and immunological realities that are invisible to the naked eye. Artists have helped us visualize, understand, and communicate these invisible registers of our bodies, foregrounding our porousness and interconnectedness. 

Visual AIDS Artist Member Carl George shares more about Ross below:

Ross Laycock, my indomitable gay brother, the prankster, the exuberant athlete and opera buff, the very embodiment of a certain kind of Canadian sprezzatura, is the inspiration for this new and exciting project at Visual AIDS, a vital arts organization both Ross and his life partner Félix González Torres, supported.  

I met Ross in 1978 while we were students at McGill University – he a science major, and me, art history; then, in 1980, Ross moved to New York to study menswear design at the Fashion Institute of Technology but soon realized he’d rather buy clothes than design them. I arrived six months later. As different as two young gay men could be, I felt deeply bonded to Ross because he represented a kind of unfettered freedom I had never known or understood, and for him, I was the brother he never had. 

He eventually returned to Canada, became involved with the activist group Aids Action Now, and, in 1989, organized direct actions at the Fifth International AIDS Conference in Montreal, co-writing a manifesto of demands activists issued to the government of Canada. He then waited tables at one of Toronto’s finest restaurants and studied to become a licensed sommelier, all the while continuing his science studies at the University of Toronto. Ross died of AIDS related illnesses in 1991, just one credit short of his achieving a master’s degree in biochemistry. 

Ross met Félix González Torres in New York City 1983. They adored, inspired, and balanced each other in a love affair for the ages. Ross, with his training in science, explained to Félix the many complexities of HIV – deepening their bond and assuaging some of Félix’s fears about what we all knew was coming. In 1992, Félix, by then a celebrated artist, and armed with this knowledge, created a series of drawings based on his blood work results, a source of constant anxiety for all PWAs during those years before antiretrovirals.

"The image says the quiet, unspeakable thing: Brian's wasted, naked beauty caught between life and death, as he holds the port so tenderly between his thumb and forefinger. For me, it says the unspeakable: about death, about AIDS, about love." — Susan Salinger

Three folds of a neon tube erect a doorway.
We can stand in front of it but cannot cross it.

Olbers’ Paradox of 1823 challenged the notion
that the universe is infinite. If it were, at every 
point which we look, we would see the 
illumination of a star’s photosphere. 
There would be no light and no darkness.

TO BE SURE, 100%

Olbers theorized that the light from stars 
light-years away is swallowed up by the 
particles that drift through the galaxy. Perhaps
the light has faded before it has arrived.

TO BE UPBEAT, OPTIMISTIC

Lord Kelvin and Edgar Allan Poe thought that the 
oneness that is the genesis of the universe has
been fragmented and dispersed. 
The light of stars hasn’t yet crossed 
the universe to illuminate the world we see.

In the darkness, there may be endless suns. 
In 1964, they detected cosmic microwaves 
background. Waves, such as the mode of light, 
that ripple through, elongating as the reach out. 
It’s the most common light. We may have never 
seen actual darkness. Maybe we never will.

—————POSITIVE—————

For a neon light to illuminate, the electrons of some
gas atoms escape through immense currents of energy, 
power enough to become positively charged ions.

TO BE TESTED, INFECTED

These are compelled towards the negative 
electrode, while the negative electrons
are drawn to the positive electrodes.

TO BE DYING, 100%

They crash.
They collide.
They energize.
They slow.

They find their other, which helps them achieve a new 
neutral state, as close as they will be to stillness,
and they release photons. 
And that is when the neon illuminates.

Some astronomers state that the universe is finite but growing. 
There simply hasn’t been enough time for 
the light of the stars that are so far away to arrive.
We are waiting.

"Placebo" is the first-person singular future form of the Latin verb placeō, meaning "to please" or "to be acceptable". Encountering an enormous pile of sparkling gold foil-wrapped candy would surely bring delight to anyone who sees it. And to be encouraged to activate the artwork, dedicated to Felix’s art world colleague and friend Roni Horn, by taking a piece of candy and eating it makes the experience even more pleasurable. But Felix was also aware of another use of the word placebo, especially during the first 15 years of the AIDS crisis, and that was as a double-blind, placebo-controlled study—a research method where neither the participants nor the researchers know who is receiving the actual treatment and who is receiving an inactive placebo. This process helps prevent bias, such as observer bias, or the placebo effect, ensuring that the results are more objectively measured and reliable. Participants are randomly assigned to the control (placebo) or experimental drug group, and the results are compared after the study concludes and the "blinding" is lifted. 

There are four considerations for participation in a double blind placebo controlled study.

Option One: To not take part in the study thereby insuring a highly probable death from AIDS related opportunistic infections. Prior to 1996 and the release of antiretroviral drugs, AIDS had a nearly 100% death rate—higher than the Ebola virus. 

Option Two: To take part in the study thereby insuring a 50% chance participant will receive the experimental drug treatment, which may or may not be effective in abating the progression of a targeted opportunistic infection, or of HIV in the body.

Option Three: To take part and get the experimental drug, not a placebo, thereby increasing the chance that there may be beneficial effects on a targeted opportunistic infection, or the progression of HIV in the body.

Option Four: To take part and get a placebo treatment (a gold wrapped candy or sugar pill) and experience no possible beneficial effects from the experimental drug treatment study, thereby resulting in almost certain death—see option one. 

“When do you start thinking of your siblings as people?” 

Georgia Title: For me Ross was my bratty brother who was 6 years younger and who I really didn’t know that well until we were both adults.  When do you start thinking of your siblings as people?  

He was interested in so many things: literature, science, and maybe medical research as a career. The minute he found out he was sick, the world changed. Thankfully he met Felix. The two of them were a so cute together. I treasure the memories of our times together.

When I think of Ross and Felix, if they had lived, where would they be now? I see them relaxing, reading, writing, discussing art, science, and world politics, teasing each other and gossiping. They would be present in the lives of our families and so many others, and probably involved in service in some way. For them, it is a different future than we now endure. A future where all of those, beautiful, bright lights were not snuffed out by the plague. They would now be our leaders and in my view, we would be in a much better, socially conscious, empathetic, and equitable world.

Janice Laycock: When I read descriptions of Ross, something important is missing.  I think family was really important to him, as the youngest and the only boy he was afforded a special status in our family. Losing our Dad when Ross was nine years old, and attending residential school in Inuvik, must have had a big impact on him. As the only non-indigenous kid at the Catholic school, I know he was bullied and abused by other students.  I think his confidence, resilience, and charm, helped him survive. When you think about it, Felix and Ross both shared a pretty disrupted youth and thrived, despite their experience. 

Your request also made me think about what has happened since Ross died, I was pregnant with my son Angus, who is now 34, a scientist and PhD candidate. My daughter, Emily, 31, works for Northern Mosaic Network, a non-profit that supports and advocates for 2SLGBTQIA+ people in the North West Territories. I know Ross and Felix would have delighted in both of them. 

Carl George: Thank you both for these thoughts and remembrances. Janice, it's interesting that you make the comparison between the two of them. My documentary film proposal, Remember To Tell Them, based on a type-written letter sent to me from Felix, is exactly that—that they were somehow the most unlikely / likely pair. Ross, from his youth in the North West Territories of Canada, the youngest, and only, spoiled brother, the residential school nightmare, and Felix, being born and raised in Guaimaro, Cuba—the birthplace of the Cuban independence movement, separated from his parents in their decision to get him and his siblings out of Cuba as Castro swept into power, and his aloneness and wanderings until he eventually landed in New York City and found a sense of home. The idea of HOME is what was most important to both of them, and they found it with each other. I want to film in both locations to make the stark differences clear, and to highlight the uncanny, almost impossibility of them finding each other. 

We can never underestimate the importance of any of this. To the global art world and arts education, to the history of AIDS and the activist movement, and to queer culture everywhere - Felix and his love partnership with your brother Ross, his “audience of one”, is renowned and deeply resonant.