The outbreak of the HIV virus in New York in the 1980s provoked a large social crisis. The extent of the growing epidemic (41'589 registered cases in 1992) revealed the catastrophic management of the disease by the establishment and media. As a reaction against the stigmatization, discrimination and abandonment of the most affected communities, as well as the general censorship of preventive information, strategies for resistance were established at every level of civil society.

AIDS RIOT focuses on the series of particular counter-attack strategies coming from the contemporary art field, put into action by artist collectives :
- the detournement of advertising campaigns by GRAN FURY.
- media and public space infiltration of viral circulation modes by General Idea.
- AIDS Timeline exhibitions by Group Material.
- video documenting emerging activism by Testing the limits and Diva TV.

AIDS RIOT is a bilingual publication (English and French) which presents the positions of these collectives, as well as the reactions of intellectuals towards the crisis to the reader.
It consists of :
- new interviews conducted by the 12th Session, with some of the protagonists of the collectives: Marlene McCarty, Donald Moffett, AA Bronson, Julie Ault, Gregg Bordowitz.
- Douglas Crimp's text selection, introductory section analyzing the power of representation and the notions of cultural activism, based on texts by Craig Owens, Lucy Lippard, David Deitcher
-Timeline and bibliography.

AIDS RIOT is a project conducted by Benedetta di Loreto, Caroline Engel, Nicolas Fenouillat, Aurelie Guiffon, Flora Loyau, Ivana Mestrov, Ana Olszewska, participants of the 12th session of curatorial training program at L'Ecole du Magasin. It was initiated and supervised by Fabrice Stroun, external associate, independent curator and art critic based in Geneva.