Our History:
The ICI was formed in 1990 as an organizing principal behind the AIDS Bottle Project. Formed urgently for urgent times, over the next five years the ICI nurtured and produced tactical responses to the AIDS pandemic, initially through the Bottle Project and since 1992, through the AIDS Chronicles. By the mid-1990s, interest in the cultural response to AIDS waned. Even though the ICI remained committed to highlighting the AIDS pandemic through the AIDS Chronicles, a project that continues to this day, the ICI began to respond to other cultural exigencies resulting in a host of new projects. Drawn to the lacuna between word and image in publications that chronicle and write culture and to the gap(s) that exist between those who produce works in that grey zone and those who write theory about those practices, in 1995 the ICI launched an ambitious publishing project to explore this terrain. To date, three books have been produced. From 2009 – 2011, the ICI suspended all projects and entered into an 18 month “sabbatical,” to consider the historical trajectories and the possible futures for the organization. On January 31, 2011 the ICI re-opened its doors with a number of ICI projects that enact the organization’s commitment to exploring visual culture.
Institute Research and Curatorial Projects
100/10 Between Flesh and Blood
ICI AIDS Projects
Forget Foucault AIDS Chronicles AIDS Bottle Project
Associate Projects
Traumbagger Museum of Forgery Honey Gatherers
Visualist-in-Residence Projects
