Gene’s Place: A roomscale VR experience exploring the use of space as a narrative driver
Gene is part of a generation that went through the AIDS epidemic in New York City. After his partner John died of AIDS in the early 90s, Gene started collecting art in the loft they shared. Gene's Place is a magical, space, part art gallery and part sanctuary, memorializing the lives lost to AIDS. In this experience, visitors are immersed in Gene's world by exploring his 2000 sq. ft. loft in downtown Manhattan, interacting with the art, and listening to Gene's stories of almost five decades of living in New York City.
Gene Fedorko participated in his first Civil Rights protest in 1963. In the early 1980s, he co-founded HEAL, a grass-roots community-based organization that served free vegetarian and macrobiotic meals to people sick with AIDS and was an ardent member of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), an international, grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. He is a medical professional, caregiver, art collector, curator, sexual explorer and Downtown New York fixture. He has kept a meticulous list, THE BOOK OF THE DEAD, of his loved ones, friends, acquaintances, comrades, who have died of AIDS over the decades, with approximately 1,100 names on it.
