ABSTRACT
The Years Yet Yesterday series becomes the intralingual and intersemiotic translation of The Tragedy of Today's Gays: both share the same thoughts; however, the linear order of Kramer's verbal speech has now become another queer language through Smith's nonlinear, visual-art-as-activism medium. Years Yet Yesterday is a 2014 abecedary of 24 drawings, rooted in queer activism and completed to mark the ten-year anniversary of playwright and activist Larry Kramer's 2004 speech, The Tragedy of Today's Gays. While the viewer can parse apart the intralingual and intersemiotic translation modes depicted within the series, clear-cut distinctions between Jakobson's lenses ultimately do not matter within the Years Yet Yesterday drawing translations. In what Roman Jakobson refers to as intralingual translation, or rewording as applied here, the Years Yet Yesterday series partially functions by communicating antithetical statements about the past decade of the AIDS crisis depending on the reading order within each drawing's three words.
