Uploaded February 2019 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Please like this video and subscribe to support the arts in Canada.
Stephen Andrews is a 2019 winner of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Directed by Lucius Dechausay.
Production of the Canada Council for the Arts. Presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance.
The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arm's-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 (Canada Council for the Arts Act) "to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts."
For more information, visit: ggavma.canadacouncil.ca
****
Transcript:
Stephen: You know, having a camera pointed at you and lights, the artificialness of it all makes me slightly nervous, but…
Filmmaker: It’s going to be 2 minutes.
[both laughing]
Stephen: Yeah. So, certainly I have said something two minutes’ worth in all of this.
Filmmaker: I think we have at least a minute ten.
[Both laughing]
Stephen: Even though we’ve been talking for an hour.
[Filmmaker laughs]
You know, hey? That’s the way people shoot photographs, right? Shoot 5,000 photographs for one.
Filmmaker: Exactly.
I’ve been HIV positive for 30 years. When I was 28, I figured it out and... For the first part of the 80s, people didn’t really know what was going on. There was this kind of… rumours about what was claiming the lives of a lot of young gay men. It was our war. And like all wars, it’s a fire and it hardens you. And it really just made me realize that you have to live every day like it’s your last.
That’s what happened with my diagnosis and the work that followed from it. It was a kind of way to speak with authority from a position of my own subjectivity and address larger issues that were bigger than myself.
There is this moment when you start a new body of work or do something that you haven’t done before and you don’t quite know what you’re doing, but in that moment, there is an energy. Somehow, the thing itself contains that energy, excitement… the newness, and you can see it in the work itself.
Working is being and doing at the same time. It’s kind of a philosophical thing. I can’t imagine ever stopping working. I think it’s the only reason I’m here, in some ways. Somehow, I think in these portraits there’s the kernel of these ideas that is developing. And I’m just going to trust that it’s going to reveal itself eventually.
Please like this video and subscribe to support the arts in Canada.
Stephen Andrews is a 2019 winner of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Directed by Lucius Dechausay.
Production of the Canada Council for the Arts. Presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance.
The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arm's-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 (Canada Council for the Arts Act) "to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts."
For more information, visit: ggavma.canadacouncil.ca
****
Transcript:
Stephen: You know, having a camera pointed at you and lights, the artificialness of it all makes me slightly nervous, but…
Filmmaker: It’s going to be 2 minutes.
[both laughing]
Stephen: Yeah. So, certainly I have said something two minutes’ worth in all of this.
Filmmaker: I think we have at least a minute ten.
[Both laughing]
Stephen: Even though we’ve been talking for an hour.
[Filmmaker laughs]
You know, hey? That’s the way people shoot photographs, right? Shoot 5,000 photographs for one.
Filmmaker: Exactly.
I’ve been HIV positive for 30 years. When I was 28, I figured it out and... For the first part of the 80s, people didn’t really know what was going on. There was this kind of… rumours about what was claiming the lives of a lot of young gay men. It was our war. And like all wars, it’s a fire and it hardens you. And it really just made me realize that you have to live every day like it’s your last.
That’s what happened with my diagnosis and the work that followed from it. It was a kind of way to speak with authority from a position of my own subjectivity and address larger issues that were bigger than myself.
There is this moment when you start a new body of work or do something that you haven’t done before and you don’t quite know what you’re doing, but in that moment, there is an energy. Somehow, the thing itself contains that energy, excitement… the newness, and you can see it in the work itself.
Working is being and doing at the same time. It’s kind of a philosophical thing. I can’t imagine ever stopping working. I think it’s the only reason I’m here, in some ways. Somehow, I think in these portraits there’s the kernel of these ideas that is developing. And I’m just going to trust that it’s going to reveal itself eventually.
