scene that centered around Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille. Through Theatre Passe Muraille, Bronson apprenticed with Coach House Press (he also did graphic design for Passe Muraille). General Idea The General Idea artists group, initially a loose collective of five to seven people, was founded in 1969 by Bronson, Jorge Zontal and Felix Partz, Partz's then-girlfriend Mimi Paige, and Granada Gazelle (a.k.a. Sharon Venne). Among the group's various activities, The trio founded FILE Megazine, a visual magazine, which they edited and published from 1972 until 1989. In 1974 they founded Art Metropole, an international publisher, distributor and archive of artists' books, video and multiples, which they conceived as an extension of the self-mythologization of General Idea. AA Bronson was the director of Art Metropole from 1974 through 1984, and again from 1996 through 1998. The three worked and lived together for 25 years, until their collaboration was terminated with the death of both Zontal and Partz in 1994. General Idea continues to exhibit internationally in private galleries and museums, as well as undertaking countless temporary public art projects around the world. Bronson has been working independently since that time. He is currently represented by Esther Schipper, Berlin and Maureen Paley, London. Solo career Bronson's solo artwork has dealt with trauma, loss, death and healing. While caring for friends coping with their AIDS-related illnesses, Bronson began to participate in Body Electric (and related) therapeutic massage and healing workshops and seminars in California (he partook in the first of such seminars in 1989). His initial motivation for this was to become a midwife to the dying. Over the course of the next eleven years, he would return to California to continue to take part in, and deepen his knowledge of, alternative healing and therapeutic bodywork practices. After the deaths of Partz and Zontal, an aspect of Bronson's grief manifested as a creative crisis. His first works are, in fact, elegies both to his General Idea partners and his own identity as part of the group: a deathbed portrait of Felix Partz (Felix, June 5, 1994, 1994–99), a triptych of Zontal shortly before his death (Jorge, February 3, 1994, 2000) and a full-body nude self-portrait in the shape of a coffin (AA Bronson, August 22, 2000, 2000). He began working professionally as a healer initially out of personal calling, and this professional identity as a healer was soon integrated into his artistic identity. Bronson