Negative Thoughts is a raw memoir by the survivor of a three-man artists’ collective, General Idea, who lived and worked together for 25 years. From 1969 to 1994 AA Bronson lived and worked as a member of the artists collective General Idea with Jorge Zontal and Felix Partz. During their 25 years together they produced an internationally acclaimed body of work that was witty, conceptual and flagrantly gay. In their last seven years together, their work dealt almost entirely with the subject of AIDS. Both Zontal and Partz died of AIDS-related causes in 1994.
The book is woven of fragments of memories: a fall down the stairs, a church for psychics, group therapy in the ‘60s, a motorbike accident, spreading ashes, a new age workshop for men, and the series of deaths which lie at the heart of the story. A selection of 36 color photographs divide chapters of text, and give the book an extraordinary visual richness.
In the book Bronson begins: “When I was younger, I considered myself 100% optimistic. But now, at the age of 53, I find myself cynical, judgmental, and depressed.” This memoir weaves together moments of trauma and intimacy, from early childhood to the recent past, to form a memoir that is “dark and deeply upsetting” as described in The Advocate Magazine. According to Stephen Holden the book is “…beautifully written, the language exquisitely precise, the imagery scarily evocative, but it is so, so sad.”
Negative Thoughts was published by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, to accompany an exhibition of the same name that opened January 27 and continued through April 22, 2001.