Texts
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GREEN:
PORTRAIT OF AN ORAL HISTORY BETWEEN KARION LIU & THEODORE (ted) KERR A.He is an artist and I am a writer. We call each other Kai and Ted. We are both short, cis-gender, gay men. He has black hair. I don’t have hair. We are from different parts of the world. I am from Canada,…
Statement on Humans As Hosts and the artwork of Kairon Liu
Our DNA, the map of our genetic information (our growth, development, functioning, and reproduction), is 99.9% the same for each and every one of the 7+ billion people living on Earth.
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Coletivo Amem – São Paulo <> NYC
Coletivo Amem is a São Paulo-based artistic collective that promotes festivals, performances and debates focusing on race, class, gender, and public health.
“The Cure for AIDS is Kindness….”
My community mother, Darien Taylor, was one of the first women living with HIV to do direct action with AIDS ACTION NOW! in Toronto in the late 80s – she’s seen a lot.
Letter Report
Hi all this is a report that the musician that worked with me producing and thinking the music of my last completed worked named “Fantasia casi soneto después de una lectura de dan(c)e” sent me
AIDS 2018 Journal
As I have struggled at the many crossroads in my life, I have never thought one day I will embrace such thing that I used to disregard in my everyday life, and even carry it go on a journey for staying alive.
Luv ’til it Hurts
1. Across generations of continentsWhat do it mean to be haunted? by a virus. A bluegrassgrandma in Sparta, Tennessee died today; So did Ntozake Shange. I wonder is it was they knew each other?Ntozake and grandma? the yellow / the red / the Asian pacific islander /the poor poor white / the black /…
Luv Til It Hurts
I am grateful for community. For me, I find the most healing when I find community with others living with HIV. When I can share and hold space with another survivor (anyone still living with the virus is a survivor). It means the world to meet another person, who is a survivor of all the…
Chateau Truvada
I. When I was raped, first he bought me cigarettes. Both of us hilariously drunk, he followed me into the bathroom, came up behind, then yanked my pants down and pushed me into the tub. This was at some rich girl’s apartment downtown. When we were invited to the same wedding (years later) and I…
A Conversation with Artist Eric Rhein
New York based artist Eric Rhein speaks about his two exhibits, Lifelines, whichhave been on view in his home state of Kentucky.Lifelines is an exhibition at two locations in Lexington: at Institute 193 throughJuly 27 th , and the Lexington’s 21c Museum Hotel, through the end of August.Todd Lanier Lester, of the Luv ‘til it…
Venezuela, Bogotá
Luciérnagas Laboratorio: Arte | fronteras | VIH proyecto de arte por Daniel Santiago Salguero Querido Todd. Respondiendo a tus preguntas del último correo te cuento: Efectivamente la crisis Venezolana ha traído una cantidad inmensa de personas de Venezuela a Colombia. Es la migración interna más grande en la historia reciente de Sur América. Se habla de…
what’s the connection between Luv & CHAOS?
Hi Deza, Luv ’til it Hurts is a two-year project focused on HIV and Stigma. CHAOS is a campaign about mental health. As a person who has a chronic mental health condition as well as HIV, it is easy for me to consider and ‘internalize’ how my mental state and HIV ‘get along’ within me.…
The Gathering
Introduction In “A Conversation with Eric Rhein,” an interview on this website, Eric was asked about some writing he’d done: a text which corresponds with many of the themes in his recent exhibition, Lifelines. Eric followed-up with this memoir, written in 1998, and we are happy that he’s shared it with us here. The Gathering…
Think Twice Questions for Luv
My name is Todd Lanier Lester and I started the project, Luv ‘til it Hurts, a two-year project on HIV & stigma. The Think Twice Collective has agreed to join the LUV ‘coalition’ … I’ll explain what that is along the way, but just wanted to say thanks for being in an open-ended conversation with…
1st ‘About’ page: A discussion to be accountable to
A discussion to be accountable to … Luv ’til it Hurts is about HIV and stigma. Discussion, campaign, mechanism, agency. All of these words describe the vision for Luv ‘til it Hurts. Yet, if it becomes nothing more than a discussion to be accountable to, then it has succeeded. It should have this accountability first…
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Relatoría Sesión #1 – Contexto del cuerpo en las Artes
Laboratorio LuciérnagasRelatoría 15 junio sesión #1 Contexto del cuerpo en las Artes (para artistas y no artistas) Escuchamos la pieza sonora de John Cage “canción para Marcel Duchamp”. Hicimos cuadernos de notas para tomar anotaciones. ¿Por qué del laboratorio? Lineamientos. Cada uno habló de cómo se relaciona con los contenidos del laboratorio Contexto del cuerpo…
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Luv Letter, # complicated
A guy from Mexico contracted HIV. We had condomless sex. I remember this well. Some four years after our hook-up he contacted me because of Luv ’til it Hurts. He wanted to catch up. He wanted to know when I contracted HIV. He needed to dispel an idea that maybe he had carried HIV since…
Relatoría Sesión #3 – Arte / VIH
Laboratorio Luciérnagas Relatoría 13 Julio sesión #3 Arte / VIH Invitados: Fernando Arias José Fernando Serrano Juan Betancurth Relatoría: Fernando habló de su proyecto de residencias Más arte más acción. Dice que para el arte debe accionar. También habló de la importancia de la crítica En diálogo con José Fernando se tocaron los siguientes temas:…
HIV+ in São Paulo
You’ve all heard about the gay content shows being cancelled or censored all over Brasil. Maybe you heard of the Sexualities show at MASP a couple years back as well. MASP is a big institution. It gets big-named curators. And a lot of attention. Just now there is a theatre piece on HIV being censored in São Paulo. …
Relatoría Sesión #4 – Arte / Fronteras
Laboratorio Luciérnagas Relatoría 27 Julio sesión #4 Arte y fronteras políticas Invitadas: Melissa Guevara Artista Laura Echeverri Abogada derechos humanos Relatoría: Melisa Guevara es artista Salvadoreña. Habló del libro “Luciérnagas en el Mozote” que contiene narraciones y testimonios sobre la masacre (1981) mas grande que ha sucedió en américa latina, 900 muertos perpetrados por…
LUV is an Endorser of the HIV2020 Conference in Mexico City
HIV2020: Community Reclaiming the Global ResponseMexico City, July 6-8, 2020www.hiv2020.org —Background— Human rights conditions in the United States of America (U.S.) have worsened, since the presidential election of Donald Trump. This is especially true for immigrants from Muslim, African, Caribbean and Latin American countries, as well as for people of color, people who use drugs,…
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Character Development à la Proust
[*I totally misunderstood what you wanted me to do with the ‘Proust Questionnaire’ and just answered the original. I get it now … you’re gonna ask me these questions in a new fresh way. Is that it? Go ahead, and we’ll link my new fresh answers here!] hey ego sum frank (aka Dr. Prof. ego…
Relatoría Sesión #5 – Arte & Tecnología
Laboratorio Luciérnagas Relatoría Agosto 10 – 2019 sesión #5 grupo de estudio Invitada: Constanza González Relatoría: Constanza fue directora de la Lida Colombiana de Lucha contra el Sida hace unos 15 años. Ahora trabaja para la fundación Keralty – Colsánitas en temas relacionados a redes de cuidado en un programa llamado Ciudades compasivas que opera…
Eu tive Aids por 2 meses
_____________________________________ Support Marina Vergueiro’s crowdfunding for the PROJETO EXPOSTA _____________________________________ Eu tive Aids por dois meses.Há 7 anos, eu tive Aids por dois meses.AIDS.AIDS mesmo.Olha só.Não morri.Eu continuo aqui.A Aids não.Ela vazou.Evaporou de mimE sumiu.A Aids é coisa do meu passado,Desde que me tornei indetectável.Já o HIV sobreviveuAssim como eu.O HIV é um vírus que…
Relatoría Sesión #6 – Disidencia Sonora
Laboratorio Luciérnagas Relatoría 24 Agosto sesión #6 disidencia sonora artista invitado: Mauricio Rivera Henao lugar: Adorno – Liberia Relatoría: Mauricio Rivera es artista sonoro, también trabaja con video e instalaciones. Tiene una pregunta constante por el territorio. Disidencia = contra hegemónico Obra: un diálogo con el lago Titicaca Paisaje sonoro: retratar los paisajes en término…
Relatoría Sesión #7 – Cuerpos Fluidos
Laboratorio LuciérnagasRelatoría 7 septiembresesión #7cuerpos fluidosartista invitado: Juan Manuel Mosqueralugar: Jardín Botánico de Bogotá TallerExploración de las posibilidades expresivas del cuerpo a partir de un reconocimiento y una apertura del espacio sensible. ActividadesReconocer y explorar las tres llaves del espacio sensible: el peso del cuerpo, sentir y hacer consciente la respiración y permitir la consciencia…
Metamorphine Machine Furiosa XXX’s Psyche Pictorial Part I
For all responses, see: MetaMorphineMachineFuriosaXXX
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Metamorphine Machine Furiosa XXX’s Psyche Pictorial Part II
For all responses, see: MetaMorphineMachineFuriosaXXX
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‘People in Trouble’ at Thirty: On Realism, Trump, and the AIDS Cataclysm
Thirty years after its completion, my novel People in Trouble has taken on resonance far beyond my original passions and intention. Its most notorious cultural eruptions: the uncredited derivations of the novel into the musical Rent, and the premonitional nightmare of Donald Trump as a world “leader”–are filled with meaning and have been fodder for speculation. Yet these later…
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Metamorphine Machine Furiosa XXX’s Psyche Pictorial Part III
For all responses, see: MetaMorphineMachineFuriosaXXX
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THE MORNING
This sorrowdoes not belong to you it belongs to the air that evaporates to the light that shatters like glass You take to the street with the crossbow tensed against the chiaroscuro of the city …
notes on starfucking (v.1, not to be confused with ‘resource fucking’)
I do luv this term: starfucking …. star (*) fucking. While it is not used (as such) it is something that is present in the Sontag biography I read. Like people considered whether she liked to know famous people. I was once at a church party with Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams, and to explain…
Continue Reading notes on starfucking (v.1, not to be confused with ‘resource fucking’)
Relatory Bogotá
Bodies containing Fireflies that wander through the nocturnal jungle, emitting calls and small sparks of light for courting and to find copulation. They remind us that in the jungle there are no limits or borders. Migrating, as many do out of necessity, or as a virus does from one body into another, is a fluid…
Wrap love in latex – Interview with Juan De La Mar
TL: Hi Juan, If memory serves this is a line in your film, De Gris a POSITHIVO … ‘wrap love in latex?’. I think it is when you are walking in the streets of Bogotá (all wrapped in plastic wrap). Juan, first, I really appreciate your film, and furthermore it was great to have it privately…
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puppy luv + cloth hearts
So George and I had this idea for an intervention in the São Paulo AIDS Walk, which happens on or around World AIDS Day, December 1 (yesterday). A group of us (somos) made a poetry, film and performance sarau, Somos (Mais) Sarau Transante was on Saturday evening, November 30 to get us in the mood for the intense day…
LUV game feedback from Grenoble + Ankh Association
The first public presentation of Exposition Points de Vie, organized by Ankh Association and dedicated to people living with HIV in Egypt, took place on October 26th in Grenoble, France. The exhibition gave light to their experiences, joys, and difficulties. It involved the interactive game by Luv ‘Til it Hurts, a Falafel party, and Karaoke.…
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LUV game feedback from Bogotá + Luciérnagas
As I detail in Relatory Bogotá, I got to take part in the final piece of Luciérnagas with artist Daniel Santiago Salguero, offering me up-close access to a performance intervention in Bogotá’s Botanical Gardens on a Friday night with thousands of people around enjoying the cool night.
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LUV game feedback from São Paulo + Somos Mais + AIDS Walk
About a month before the São Paulo AIDS Walk (now in its 3rd year), which was also on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2019, a group of positive folk and peers began meeting on Tuesday nights for a drink. The idea of a Sarau came quickly after the name of the motley group, Somos… or Somos Mais. We are visual artists,…
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New Toolkit by CLAC and MPact for Access to Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria
In order to facilitate access to funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, the Community Leadership and Action Collaborative (CLAC) created a toolkit for key population-led grassroots organizations, which can be downloaded for free online. Read more at: https://mpactglobal.org/new-global-fund-toolkit-by-clac-and-mpact-on-increasing-accessing-to-resources/ Download the toolkit here (English)
Using one ‘project’ to see another
This article is a field [luv] note to Luciérnagas and friends in Bogotá. I was there for a project by Daniel Santiago Salguero and his HIV+ peers. Fireflies, this is the word in Spanish for fireflies. Speaking of fireflies, I met some luminary folk while in Bogotá Like Jackie … as far as I know she is the only woman in Luciérnagas,…
No quiero una cinta roja en tu cacerola: Latinoamérica.
No solo un día al año, no solo el primero de diciembre necesitamos que pongas en tus perfiles cintas rojas y recuerdes todos los grandes personajes que nos ha arrebatado este virus, que nos ha arrebatado el silencio, que nos ha arrebatado la complicidad del Estado y de la industria farmacéutica. No solo necesitamos una…
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drugs
We take drugs. A colleague of mine, Carué Contreiras gives away spices and herbs in his HIV med bottles. Artist Kairon Liu ( 劉仁凱 ) makes portraits in which he asks pill bottles to be among other memorabilia (signs of life). I luv mine. But actually I’m talking about party drugs and entrée to harder ones. George and I were…
What do a Sudanese Mom Search the Internet for?
Sudanese like other people of this planet, search for many things, some are really important researches and of course there are other things that are also important, …,etc!For me I am a Sudanese, I search every day about jobs for Home Based or Remote Arabic Web Content Writers. Secondly in order come searches for guides,…
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اكيد فى امل (THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE)
[Abazar Hamid was forced to leave Sudan for singing peace songs during its civil war and the Darfur conflict. I met him when I was working for freeDimensional in Cairo (Egypt) through a collaboration with the Townhouse Gallery called TADAMON (solidarity) that organized with Cairo’s various refugee communities. Cairo is where Abazar first went into…
1001+ Japanese fighter pilots
I vomited tonight … earlier today.I had taken an ecstasy pill. I may have used a couple other things as well. I’m a Taurus ‘control freak’, I’m told. So, while the idea of drugging up for going out may seem a bit careless, I also monitor my anti-depression medication, and not so long ago decided…
Capitalismo Viral
[*Bruno Mendonça e Felipe Caprestano – Terra Falsa (parte do projeto “Nenhuma Intenção Revolucionária”)] O uso da palavra vírus para além do campo das ciências biológicas teve início a partir da década de 1980 com o desenvolvimento da cultura hacker, assim como ao longo da mesma década foi sendo assumido por outras áreas.Essa passagem conceitual…
How LUV is research, in part (part 1)
[* For the LUV site, this is part one of a set. Let’s call it the Elpenor Set. See part two, here.] The purpose of this ‘entry’ is to introduce Ismar Tirelli Neto. I’m writing a book right now. It’s called Variations in Worldmaking. I can’t wait until it’s finished because it might be driving me…
Some tenets of Elpenor thought (part 2)
[* For the LUV site, this is part two of a set. Let’s call it the Elpenor Set. See part one, here.] 1) It never ceases to baffle and amaze me whenever an association between Elpenor – a decidedly minor character in Homer’s Odyssey – and an idea of methodology crops up in my presence.…
Dora Não Cansou de Viver… [A film in the making]
[Emanuel Brauna-Lechat is a filmmaker from Maceió. ‘Dora Não Cansou de Viver…’ is a short film about many things, including access to healthcare and the precarity of daily life in Brasil. Manu needs some help finishing the film before April 7th, World Health Day 2020. One simple way to share holiday cheer (and some dough)…
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hiv / art / establishment (#1)
[*The pink elephant image is borrowed from a Facebook intervention made by Niki Singleton and Todd Lanier Lester several years ago called Coming out of the Web 2.0 Closet.] There is definitely an HIV art establishment. I have met it in a few forms over the first 3/4 of Luv ’til it Hurts, a two-year…
#movingtarget
alvos desde sempre porque não hegemônicos corpos reclassificados incômodos inconformes marginais seculares preto feminino não-binário trans intersexual refugiado positivo imigrado expulso indígena . sacrificado . Mas em movimento! . Body Work and conception: Alberto Pereira Jr. @albertopereirajrBody Art: DIG Ferreira @digferreiraImages: Flavio Melgarejo @ffmelgarejo See also, by Alberto Pereira Jr: #ELE Please, touch me (PT/EN)
remembering my first AIDS work
I cannot remember what was my first AIDS work. It was either flying from Cameroon to South Africa with my wife (at the time) to attend and volunteer at the Durban AIDS Conference in 2000, or walking with Minette and ‘her girls’ on International AIDS Day (1999 or 2000?) on the dirt roads of Batouri in…
considering attach-ability (#2)
hi guys,So, I’ve had an idea for you both for around 6 months now and have regrettably failed to share it in a robust form. I would like to do so now. We may thank Brad Walrond for texting with me overnight (why he was awake, I do not know:). Jonathan, Brad archives Pony’s work and/or…
Socket Wrench
[*A few years ago (2013), graphic artist Beldan Sezen was in the Netherlands and needed some quick photos of a historic scene. The graphic short she was making is called HOMOE, set in 1964 pre-Stonewall NYC, about a man remembering the homophobic murder of his neighbor “back in the day.” We decided to trade my…
ELE
I. Levantou-se. Dentro da privada, mescla de prazer e necessidade. A. se viu refletido no espelho pela primeira vez. Olhos ainda vermelhos, cabelo desgrenhado, suor na face e no torso nu. Ela abriu o chuveiro e, dessa vez, foi ágil ao manejar a temperatura da água. Sorriu. Pegou a primeira toalha disponível. Macia. Enxugou-se sem…
Democracia é o tema da Parada do Orgulho LGBT de São Paulo em 2020 e HIV/AIDS é o tema de 2021
A Associação da Parada do Orgulho LGBT de São Paulo, ONG responsável pela maior Parada LGBT do Mundo, vem comunicar que após reuniões realizadas nos meses de Novembro e Dezembro/2019, com a participação da Sociedade Civil (mediante convite e inscrição prévia) e das Pessoas Associadas, onde resultaram na sugestão e seleção de dois temas como…
Astraea’s Multi-Gendered Work (repost from 2011)
WHERE: USA – New York I first encountered the work of Astraea in 2007. I was living in Egypt and met some of the sexuality rights movement-builders from the Arab region when they passed through Cairo. One such pioneer, Rauda Marcos, co-founded Aswat, a Palestinian Lesbian Women’s organization. She told me about Aswat’s work, which…
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Instructions from next-LUV designer for NYC mtg
[*Polish artist and architect, Jakub Szczęsny is helping to lead ACT III. LUV’s denouement is gonna be a blast! Stay tuned!!]
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Please, touch me (PT/EN)
[*Alberto Pereira Jr. first made ‘Please, touch me’ for a 2019 workshop in São Paulo. His production notes are the third in a series that also includes a project abstract #movingtarget and creative writing, ELE. xo, Todd] PT Instigado por um workshop realizado no instituto Itaú Cultural, sobre estigma e produção artística contemporânea em relação…
What Does a Queer Urban Future Look Like?
[ *Back during the making of Cidade Queer (an inquiry opened by Lanchonete.org), I got the chance to ask some colleagues their views on queerness and a right to the city. I asked Sarah Schulman if ‘the urban’—yes, cities as well as urban encounters…but also the space and right(s) to live in, work in, and…
INGABIRE “Gift” (2005); #LPW2020, pre-A
Watch: INGABIRE “Gift” (2005), by Jesse Hawkes. For its first Rwandan Film Festival in 2005, the Rwanda Cinema Centre helped several young directors and groups of actors to make films on important issues in Rwanda. The film “Ingabire” was based on an original musical theatre piece that was created by a group of high school…
Cidade Queer, a film
Watch: Queer City / Cicade Queer, by Danila Bustamante. Bodies that listen, dance, resist, manifest and become visible in our contemporary city. Bodies that dance the sounds of funk music, rap, samba, voguing, waacking, among other sonic styles of contestation, resistance and struggle. Through talks, dinners, experiences and exchanges, a city seeks to discuss how…
What I’m learning about participatory art; #LPW2020, pre-B & Elpenor method, #2
This year Love Positive Women is so big for us it constitutes an ACT … Act 1.5 to be exact. The acts are dramaturgically useful for steering Luv ’til it Hurts toward its endpoint in mid-2020, and in that way reveal various ‘assemblages’ (or intense clusters) along the two-year course. While the ‘business plan’ of ACT II is…
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A series for LovePositiveWomen2020; #LPW2020, pre-C
Image: $oropositiva, by Micaela Cyrino for LovePositiveWomen2019Collage on greaseproof paper and serigraphy30 x 40cm In some ways the whole LUV experience has geared us up for Love Positive Women 2020. In March 2019 I visited Egypt and afterwards, Paris where I met the Ankh (Arab Network for Knowledge on Human Rights) Association. The Ankh guys moved to…
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Love Positive Women in AR/PT/ES
[*It is very exciting (and an honor) to get to imagine and implement ideas for Love Positive Women 2020 in Khartoum (Sudan), New York City (US), São Paulo (Brasil) and other places in South America. Designer Adham Bakry (Port Said/Cairo) came up with a version of the Love Positive Women insignia in Arabic and Gustavo Marcasse in both Portuguese and…
Feasting with Panthers (and Palestine): Edmund White’s Jean Genet #LPW2020
If writing is a committed utopian action, then the Jean Genet of Edmund White’s engaging, impressive, transformative Genet: A Biography was the epitome of manic depression. Genet wrote his five novels in five years, from 1942-47. After seven years of sadness and silence, he wrote his three best known plays in two years. The subsequent…
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Emanuel Brauna-Lechat interviews Momô de Oliveira #LPW2020
EBL: Momô, qual a sua avaliação sobre o cenário cinematográfico de um modo geral no Brasil?MO: Vejo o cenário cinematográfico no Brasil com muitas incertezas, apesar de sabermos recentemente que para o ano de 2020 grandes nomes do STREAM irão injetar alguns milhões no setor, o que é muito positivo, não teremos, por outros lado, políticas…
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Interview with Cadu Oliveira on LGBTQIA+ organizing in São Paulo #LPW2020
LTIH: You have been involved with LGBT and HIV activism for some time now. How long have you been doing this in São Paulo? CO: My trajectory with activism began from 1996 to 2007, in Jundiaí, with people who have lost their homes. At this point, matters such as HIV/Aids and drug abuse were already…
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Behind the Curtain #LPW2020
Behind the curtain “أنا مريضة إيدز ونفسى أتعامل كبنى آدمة، معملتش حاجة غلط علشان المجتمع ينبذنى ولما بمرض مش بلاقى دكتور يعاملنى كويس، وبقيت أخاف من الناس فاضطرت لارتداء النقاب خوفا من تعرف الناس على شخصيتى عند اللجوء لتلقى العلاج. ” “فى عام 2006 ظهرت الأعراض الأولية كإسهال وترجيع وسخونية، وفقدت الكثير من وزنى فبعد…
Viral Love #LPW2020
[*I first met Oma working in the legal aid clinic for Iraqi refugees in Cairo set up by Barbara Harrell-Bond back in 2007. To read more about our background, check out A series for LovePositiveWomen2020 and What do a Sudanese Mom Search the Internet for?, as well as a description of LUV’s ACT 1.5 (LovePositiveWomen2020). Thanks for being there, Oma!…
Daniel Santiago Salguero interviews Jacqueline Sanchez for Luciérnagas #LPW2020
DSS: Buenas tarde, Jaque, gracias por estar aquí y colaborar con esta entrevista. Te voy a hacer unas preguntas que ya conoces. Si no quieres responder o te sientes incómoda podemos parar y no hay problema. ¿Hace cuánto descubriste que tienes VIH? ¿Cómo ha sido todo desde entonces? JS: Bueno, yo descubrí que tengo el…
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Certain Things between stigma and love #LPW2020
About fifteen years ago, my friend Dani called me to help her with the costume for a short film. She asked me for red clothes and accessories—specifically, an old brooch of fake ruby she knew I had. “Why red?” I asked. “Because this is a story about HIV,” she justified and quickly briefed me about…
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Relatoría última sesión Luciérnagas – Last Luciérnagas Session Report
Image taken at Oct 25 (2019) Luciérnagas performance Before the presentation we did some in situ rehearsals, although they were never enough, we did them. The Botanical Garden is a very bureaucratic institution and it was difficult to manage the space for more preparations. For these last sessions we got together Eudes Toncel, a Guajiro Colombian…
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artHIVism, Condom Art & a lifetime of caring
[*A longer EN language interview is available below for download; Todd Lanier Lester interviews Adriana Bertini for LUV.]TLL: We met first in Barcelona at the 14th International AIDS Conference in 2002. I don’t remember too much about the trip, except that I was presenting a poster with a colleague on community sensitization work on HIV/AIDS we’d done…
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Steal This Game
‘Stealing’ the LUV Game is a bit easier than Hoffman’s book. It is free to begin with. I tell the story of how the LUV Game came about first as an idea from a young Egyptian designer in a description of ACT I, considering how one might discuss (or signal a safe discussion on) HIV in a place like…
ART, POLICY, AND WELLNESS (1 of 2)
[*A few years back, I created a meeting concept called Artist Roundtable (or A.RT) … I want to resuscitate this particular discussion on health and wellness in order to share a unique policy paper that came thereafter as byproduct. This article was originally published by the World Policy Journal on June 9th, 2015. xo Todd]…
A Re-imagination of Policy and Health (2 of 2)
[*The Arts-Policy Nexus, a Health-Focused Artist Roundtable (A.RT), and this policy paper are all ideas – a program and two of its byproducts – I came up with as an artist and then found institutions with the capacity to help me realize. The goal of this policy paper (originally published by the World Policy Journal…
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Conversa com Vinicius Couto (PT/EN)
[*Early this year I got the chance to talk to Vinicius Couto in São Paulo about three strands of his work. The article contains images from a performance he made in São Paulo, Rio and Cairo. I was particularly interested in his idea of getting HIV+ people together, as well as what he says on…
I wanted to elaborate more on the concept of ‘transcendence’
Image: ‘Hummingbirds’ (Installation of 6), 2016, by artist Eric Rhein I wanted to elaborate more on the concept of ’transcendence’, mostly because I have some reservations about it. BUT, the fact that HIV is a disease that you live with took me to the place of transcendence. I departed from Eric’s work and paid especial attention to it. The aesthetics…
Continue Reading I wanted to elaborate more on the concept of ‘transcendence’
Still
Eric RheinCommunion with Oak (self-portrait)1998, gelatin silver print, 20”x16” I walk with the shadows of the men I’ve known, and loved, and tasted, and feel, even still, the warmth of their breath against my skin. Eric Rhein 1992 _____________________ Eric Rhein is an artist living and working in New York. He has exhibited widely…
A pre-Covid 19 estimation of LUV
Brainstorming in New York at the Goethe Institut [*From February 9-11, 2020, Luv ’til it Hurts was busy in NYC. LUV participated in Love Positive Women (a project by Jessica Lynn Whitbread) with a poetry and food-inspired event ‘LUV YEMANJÁ’. Food and a series of handmade porcelain candles were offered by artist Thiago Gonçalves and…
What would you do tomorrow if it was the last day of your life (VIHda)?
“De Gris a POSITHIVO” Documental Autobiográfico de Juan De La Mar que hace parte de Luv ’til it Hurts, se encuentra seleccionado para “Media Library 2020 – Visions Du Réel, Festival Internacional de Cine de Nyon”. “De Gris a POSITHIVO,” an Autobiographical Documentary by Juan De La Mar, who is part of Luv ’til it…
Continue Reading What would you do tomorrow if it was the last day of your life (VIHda)?
A preamble for shifting gears
[*After some meetings in NYC in February (2020), the LUV team set about a visioning process that should yield the project’s next phase–with a new level of clarity–by the middle of the year. We asked Brad Walrond to help us come up with a new introductory text (something like an artist statement), and we are…
A Visit With El Santo Taller de Cerámica (Bogotá)
*Spanish below EN LTIH: Do you prefer being called Sergio or El Santo? ES: You can call me anything, I like both, Sergio is the name that my parents gave me, and El Santo is the name that I gave to my work, I’ll tell you a little bit more about the story of El…
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More instructions for afterlife (next-LUV) designer
[*In February and back before Covid19 suspended travel (and life as we knew it) a group of LUV peeps met in NYC to work on the ‘next-LUV’ or an afterlife for Luv ’til it Hurts, a project that I originally charted for only two years. Those two years are almost up. We received some instruction/planning questions…
Continue Reading More instructions for afterlife (next-LUV) designer
1986: An Elegy for Our Coldest War
Could Be The Ballroom was always our Nuclear optionA rock scrabble bunker become a threshing floorHow we survived our Coldest War A Mother a Father an entire house full of babiestucked into mangers woven out of street corner filamentlimber enough to parent those of us: born with and with out parentswith and without islands begat…
Game of Swarms descends upon LUV
Game of Swarms will be thus a communication device as well as a register of the artistic research upon how dynamics of networks in nature can be used as a tool to understand new ways of relationality among humans and non-humans—based on the distribution of agency, rather than the centralisation of powers. *** Collaboration is…
Codename: Exquisite Corpse
[*When the project began, I wrote a piece entitled Why Make an Open Work? where I used some borrowed ‘game storming’ graphics to show the chaos needed within a project before it comes to a point. This logic showed up again when Adham Bakry made LUV’s first design elements (see image). While I don’t imagine…
luv rules
When I first put out tent pegs for Luv ’til it Hurts (LUV), I framed it as a two-year period of R&D. The duration of the R&D is the (art) work. This is because I could guarantee to perform ‘research and development’ for a period that I determine duration. I aimed the process at a…
