When the Fassbinder actor Kurt Raab recited in the TV documentary “Warten auf Sodom” from 1989 “I want to creep into the virus throat”, he turned around the positions: not the virus is the intruder anymore. Raab wanted to be the invasion on the virus.
The documentation “Warten auf Sodom” is about the last months of Kurt Raab before he died on the implications of AIDS. Signed by the side effects of AZT, the first drug against the HI-virus which was wrong dosed in the late 80s, he doesn't want to be only the victim, who is stigmatised and by that silenced. He used his publicity to embody a self-determined person with AIDS to point out the social exclusion and segregation against them and homosexuals as the other. It's not only us looking at him suffering, we and our handling with the new infection are being watched and exposed by Raab. This has a similar logic when he is the intruder of the virus, a perturbation. This was made in “Warten auf Sodom” for me most clear when Raab played his own doctor, mimic how people with AIDS are objectified: “I have to tell you something. To my opinion Mr. Raab is mentally not hundred percent sane. What is of course related to his illness, which is also attacking his brain. I have to protect the patients, just like Mr. Raab, of whom I'm thinking he is not able to decide if he wants to make a film or not.”
PG / April 2014
