Lloyd Wong, Unfinished

Videotapes are entrusted to a filmmaker—Richard Fung. He later donates them to The ArQuives, the world's largest independent archive dedicated to 2SLGBTQIA+ people. On these tapes, we see Lloyd Wong, a Toronto-based artist, writer, and activist who died of AIDS-related complications. He films himself preparing an intravenous infusion of antiviral medication, with a cooking show playing in the background. A guide in self-defense for people living with HIV; a lesson in self-determination and autonomy in care.

Once lost, the tapes are rediscovered and digitized by a historian… before ending up in the hands of an artist, Lesley Loksi Chan, who feels called to bring Wong's testimony back into the world. Chan never knew him; a strange interplay of chance and connections ultimately assigned her this mission.

How does one think through such a testimony? How does one honor this raw, clear-sighted voice that exposes the invisible realities of people living with AIDS? Chan opts for restraint and reflects on incompleteness. For the task is perpetual—an ongoing process, an attempt to give form to the ghosts of the struggle, to the actors of that era who fought so hard for care and research. The film is as much about Wong's fight as it is about the perpetual processes of memory: a constant dialogue, an endless reactivation of traces from the past within present-day struggles.

While AIDS-related battles have been relegated—like so many other aspects of our lives—to the individual sphere since the advent of treatment, the stigma, the invisibility, and the profound trauma generated by this epidemic have not disappeared. The resurgence of memorial works, the publication of collective volumes, and the gathering of testimonies from people affected by the disease now allow us to reaffirm the social and public nature of health, and the contribution of grassroots activism to the evolution of treatments. For the fight remains, as ever, unfinished.

Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk's Artistic Director