Archive

I launched Luv ’til it Hurts, a long-considered project on HIV and stigma in July 2018. The project goes through the middle of 2020 officially, and yet I’m also quite interested in the afterlife of projects. DURATION is important to me for reasons I’ll explain later, and based on specific methods drawn from the community organizing field. Luv ’til it Hurts follows a five-year project on the right to the city, site-specific to the center of São Paulo called Lanchonete.org and a ten-year project, freeDimensional on free expression and artist safety (and shelter) in pre-existing artist residencies around the world. Given that an afterlife is expected and having experimented with different forms of archiving (or the project reporting on itself) with both freeDimensional and Lanchonete.org, Luv ’til it Hurts attempts to externalize a ‘record’ of the two-year process in various ways, such as the project’s website as ‘scrapbook’… and even an annual report. 

See also:

Luv ‘Til It Hurts: the Launch, by Brad Walrond

Luv ‘Til It Hurts was formally launched October 27, 2018 at the historic LGBTQ Center in New York City. In keeping with Luv ‘til it Hurts stated mission, 

‘’to be a porous container, it aspires to ‘hold’ people together 

long enough for essential introductions and exchange ideas’’

for me at the time of this writing, April 2019 it has already been a ravishing success. I launched Every Where Alien [my arts culture and content producing brand and company] in January 2019. My first project is in the form of a narrative documentary and requires travel to São Paulo. I’m thrilled Luv ‘Til It Hurts, found Every Where Alien’s project worthy of support. 

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 told the groom why I didn’t want
to see him again, same boy texted me about
“what you think happened that night” because
he never realized what he did, maybe, scarily
easy to believe how obliviousness works.
But I remember: days later, going to the clinic,
telling them I was assaulted, getting tested.
“Oh honey, why didn’t you go to the police?”
Back then I didn’t fuck sober and loathed my body.
In 2012 the FDA approved Truvada as PrEP.
Antiretroviral medicines were used as post-exposure
prophylaxis on an “occupational” basis for nurses
stuck with needles, risked by strange blood. Now
taking pills as prevention was becoming a thing.
I researched the drug and went to Callen-Lorde
where a tidy doctor shot me down, denying the script
because “you’re not a sex worker” and telling me,
“Just try not to hook up with guys when you drink.”
I thought I’d hate him when I seroconverted.
There was an unreasonable terror situated bone- deep that belied comprehension, the magical
thinking convincing me a virus could possibly
render you less worthy of love. What a fucking lie.
I realize that stories about HIV don’t have to be
couched in medical concern or whited moralization.
Nothing othering will gain subsists reputedly,
as a game tide of men turns on the axis of knowing.

We do not tread the way that is conducted by reason!

The white-born reason, from white Greece… So pale and thirsting for blood…

Reason built insane asylums and raised prisons…

It is necessary to be very rational to calculate punishments, as long as productivity does not decline, and faith remains… Yes, even faith becomes inebriated by rationality, to collect awards in the gelid and quiet sky…

Reason divided us between the superior (those gifted by reason) and the inferior (those lacking in reason)… In this hierarchy the one who occupies the top dictates who can live and who must die…

By Ayu Oktariani

I was living with HIV for 8 years when I decide to pregnant. It’s been a long journey to make that decision. Waiting for the man who understand each other and want to take responsibility of having a child free from HIV. My husband is HIV Negative, so of course it’s easier for me to planning the pregnancy. I’m very nervous. It’s been 10 years after my first born. We have sex, no condom this time. But before planning to get pregnant, we always used the condom. I feel uncomfortable if we don’t use it, yeah you know… because of the HIV.

Joyce McDonald is an artist in many senses of the word. She is, of course, a literal artist: a talented painter and sculptor whose works often capture in stark relief the gamut of emotions she’s experienced throughout her colorful life. Joyce is also a weaver of words: not just as a poet or a songwriter (she is both), but also as speaker for her church’s AIDS ministry and assistant director of its children’s choir. We are celebrating her for Love Positive Women 2019.