Bonus: Nan Goldin and P.A.I.N -- Transcript
Bonus series on artists resisting today
“Sacklers Lie, Thousands Die:” The Art of Nan Goldin and P.A.I.N.
This is a special bonus episode of The Art of Resistance, focusing on modern artists creating writing, music, and more to resist the status quo.
Clip: Profiting off pain
Nan Goldin is an artist, photographer, and activist. She’s known for deeply honest personal photography, and stunning portraits of drag queens, chosen families, and her friends who died from AIDS.
And in 2017, at 62 years old, she was prescribed oxycontin after an injury. And she became addicted.
Clip: Withdrawal
She wasn’t alone. If you’ve seen the Hulu series Dopesick or read the book, you know the story. Starting in 1996, Purdue Pharma introduced a new drug that was promised to end pain. It was a drug derived from opoids, as in the same substance in heroin. But Purdue Pharma told doctors that less than 1% of users became addicted to the drug oxycontin.
It was all lies. Purdue Pharma, led by the billionaire Sackler family, made up studies, paid off big-name doctors for testimonials, sent aggressive sales reps to woo rural doctors, and created an international story about a solution for pain. But the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma knew: the drug, just like all opoids, was actually extremely addictive.
People in pain across the country took this medicine and got their brains rewired by the opoids. Then they had to take more and more just to fend off the debilitating withdrawal. They went to their doctors, other doctors, pill mills, or dealers, desperate to stay well. And when they couldn’t get oxy, heroin was a cheaper and quicker way to survive.
Since then, nearly a million people have died from opoid overdoses. And addiction? Probably impossible to measure.
It’s horrific. Nan Goldin was part of it all, experiencing addiction, and seeing communities ravaged and friends killed. She knew that Purdue was peddling significantly more pain.
But it was only in 2017, when an article by Patrick Radden Keefe came out, that Nan and the world found out the truth about the Sacklers, the fact that they knew what was happening – and didn’t care.
Nan was an artist. And she looked around the museums of New York and elsewhere, and saw the Sackler name everywhere. She saw how this family had spent millions, billions, plastering their name on the Met, the Guggenheim, the Louvre. They were art washing, giving the image of philanthropic good guys, and hiding their crimes.
Nan remembered ACT UP, powered by the artist collective Gran Fury. She remembered how it fought against a plague, but also government inaction, and blaming of victims. She remembered their tactic of the die-in, where groups of activists would disrupt business and create media moments by simulating death.
And she created Prescription Addiction Intervention Now, or P.A.I.N.
Clip: I wanted to shame them
On February 9, 2019, Nan and her group of artists, activists, and survivors milled around in the crowd at the Guggenheim. Suddenly, massive banners unfurled in the upper level stairs, saying “400,000 Dead,” and “Shame on Sackler.”
Members of P.A.I.N. laid down on the ground in a die-in . And prescription forms rained down into the atrium, fake-signed by Richard Sackler, CEO of Purdue Pharma.
Clip: Prescriptions
This protest, and others, were widely broadcast. They made the media a powerful tool to educate others.
P.A.I.N. wasn’t done. They did similar demonstrations, with more fake prescriptions and pill bottles, at the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Harvard Art Museum. Nan and her group also got 77 major-name artists to sign a letter directly to museums, presenting their case for removing the Sackler name and ceasing accepting their money.
The Sackler name has been removed from nearly all of these p laces, and they’ve pledged to no longer accept Sackler funds. There’s still more to go.
Nan Goldin saw a massive, sprawling problem. She saw an ultra-powerful and wealthy family doing wrong, with no repercussions. And she found a way to use her art, her experiences, her community, and creativity to fight back.
And it’s working.
Clip: Resist with what you know
It’s true: The opoid epidemic continues. The Sacklers continue, unfazed by numerous trials and verdicts. But they can’t art wash anymore. Their lies have been exposed.
And more than anything, opoid survivors have a way to turn their rage and pain into art and action. That’s life-saving.
That’s the power of art as resistance.
Clip: I’m a survivor
The Art of Resistance is a podcast from Rebel Yell Creative. Season 1 told the full stories of artists in the past, like Gran Fury, Emory Douglas, and Zitkala-Sa. This bonus series tells mini stories of modern art working as resistance.
Sign up at theartofresistancepodcast.com for full episode transcripts, art, music, and more. Plus, get a weekly newsletter full of reading, watching, listening, and acting.
This is Amy Lee Lillard, and I created, wrote and produced this show.
Thanks for listening. And see you next time.
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING / WATCHING
“‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’ chronicles Nan Goldin’s career of art and activism”, NPR.
“Nan Goldin’s P.A.I.N. Group Takes Its Anti-Sackler Protests to Harvard’s Art Museums, Again,” ArtNews.
“‘Sacklers Lie, Thousands Die’: P.A.I.N. Against Big Pharma,” Pioneer Works.
Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (P.A.I.N.)
“Nan Goldin on losing her sister, taking down a billionaire family, and friendship,” Brief But Spectacular:
‘All the Beauty and Bloodshed’ trailer:
Why the Sackler Name Is Being Removed From The Met, Now This Impact:
Nan Goldin: The woman who took on Big Pharma and won, Channel 4 News:
Nan Goldin ‘Blizzard of Prescriptions’ Sackler Pain Guggenheim Protest:
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