Texts

[*In Some remarks before I make the video, I say I’ll make a video for the launch of E&H Lab’s CHAOS project. Instead I decided to reconsider some ‘grant language’ from the recent Luv ’til it Hurts process. – xo Todd]

Perhaps this piece should be termed ‘denouement to funders’ or ‘divorce in funder-land’, but these thoughts were gathered originally for a short ‘video letter’ to the CHAOS project (Paris) on mental health … which I never made. What eventually brought these two themes of ‘funding’ and ‘mental health’ together was a question on a grant application for the LUV project in which I was asked if I’m ‘handicapped’ and if I’m ’neurodivergent’. I reluctantly checked one or both in that instance, but didn’t get the money. This is beside the point. I deeply considered whether having HIV rendered me handicap, whether being manic-depressive rendered me neurodivergent, and whether HIV cross-pollinated to compound neurodivergence. 

As is stated prominently, LUV is an HIV ‘scrapbook of sorts’ and as such influenced by my stream of consciousness, as well as that of other key participants. Basically anything that happened within the past three years is fair game to consider HIV against. 

Back during Cidade Queer we worked on HIV issues, trans issues and issues that cut across both. One might ask if HIV is a trans issue, and I would argue that it is…and that public health systems must urgently advance in ways to address this overlap. However, explaining that connection is not what this article is about.  Recently I was thinking how important and fun the 2016 ATAQUE ball was to co-organize and how impressive the ballroom community is in São Paulo.  There are many things I’m excited to do after COVID lifts, and one of them is to produce another party, festa or ball. In fact, I have a nascent concept in mind (codeword ‘Bienal Party’).

“Initiated by Lanchonete.org and ArtsEverywhere/Musagetes, the Cidade Queer program was a broad collective inquiry into how can we understand the contemporary city through a queer, intersectional, non-normative lens. The program included a series of encounters, dinners, residencies, and performances, and “Cidade Queer, uma Leitora” reconfigures these moments into a new form, extending the inquiry trans-nationally.”

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On the same color wheel as WHITE and RED, BLACK symbolizes strength. 

The above-language is precursor to an essay on the ArtsEverywhere website, entitled Can a mestizo asshole speak? loaned by Jota Mombaça (as well as others) during Cidade Queer, an episode of Lanchonete.org. 

A collection of essays, artistic contributions, and two inserted zines, “Cidade Queer, uma Leitora” was developed as part of an 18-month inquiry in São Paulo. Initiated by Lanchonete.org and ArtsEverywhere/Musagetes, the Cidade Queer program was a broad collective inquiry into how can we understand the contemporary city through a queer, intersectional, non-normative lens. The program included a series of encounters, dinners, residencies, and performances, and “Cidade Queer, uma Leitora” reconfigures these moments into a new form, extending the inquiry trans-nationally. The Reader was edited by Júlia Ayerbe and designed by Laura Daviña of Edições Aurora/Publication Studio São Paulo. Order a copy in Portuguese or English online. The following essay is a complementary, web-only contribution by one of the authors in the Reader.

Cruising Quito was a project that I developed in the framework of Cidade Queer Quito, from June 28 to July 8, 2017.

The project included a residency at No Lugar, along with an experiential research and reflection on the different spaces and technologies of gay cruising in the city of Quito, following the distinction that I have proposed between analog cruising and digital cruising, that is, between the cruising modalities that go from places like parks, public baths, or video venues, to computer technologies such as the Grindr or Hornet applications.

In WHITE I exclaimed how nice it was nice to put the final touches on the LUV archive in December only 6 months after the ‘official’ closing in July 2020, but three months have now passed and this one particular RED piece resists being finished … perhaps because it’s the only outstanding element on the entire RED site [**a new LUV site was erected on World AIDS Day, December 1 2020. During the 2010 ResArtis general assembly at Tokyo Wonder Site the Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen said something to the effect that ‘artists are concerned with starting things, and their closure is not something the artist must always consider’. In the context of his speech, this notion made perfect sense to me. Perhaps because I was looking for additional justification for moving on from a ten-year pursuit providing safety measures for artists-in-distress to a five-year site-specific endeavor in São Paulo called Lanchonete.org.  I don’t make works that a collector can purchase, so the idea of finishing a work isn’t so much about its monetization for me. I suspect however that this ‘knowing when it’s finished’ is common across artistic mediums regardless of their commodity.  

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at.
– Oscar Wilde[1]

Words by Horacio N. Roque Ramírez (1969-2015); presented as part of Cidade Queer and the Deviant Quito Graphics Lab, Edições Aurora, 2017.

Since 2013, artists and activists have been invited to participate in an arts showcase as part of the cultural activities during the LGBTIQ+ Pride month in Quito, Ecuador. Last year, the show was entitled SOY PAISAJE and took place at Quito’s Center for Contemporary Art in July 2017. With this exhibition we sought to structure and represent the local, regional, or national memories and histories of the LGBTIQ+ community. This exhibition was a part of the Cidade Queer gathering, where artists, activists, and curators explore the relationship between queer, cuyr, kuir, and life in the contemporary city. Cidade Queer started as an organizing project in São Paulo, Brazil, (2015, 2016) and moved to the city of Quito for its second edition.

The first thing I want to say is ’thank you’ to all the people–artists, non-artists, poz and negative folks–who took part in Luv ’til it Hurts for the past two-plus-years. While I’m still putting final touches on both RED & BLACK, I would like the last words on the site (and perhaps the first to be read) to be these: THANK YOU !!!

A simple color wheel confirms that WHITE is a symbol of ‘hope.’  Given 2020 and COVID-19, hope is in high demand. Sometimes white does not offer hard borders, and that is one way of imagining hope … just knowing that something hard to reach is also impossible to touch may neutralize a certain strain of fear. 

Institute 193, the innovative gallery and publisher, has announced the publication of Eric Rhein: Lifelines 

This is the first book from artist Eric Rhein: a unique monograph-memoir spanning three decades of his life and artwork. It features intimate photographs taken between 1989 and 2012—including self-portraits and images of friends and lovers from the period between Rhein’s HIV diagnosis, his near death, and the returning vitality that new medications would afford him. As a personal response to the AIDS crisis, these compelling portraits highlight tenderness and care as life-saving forces. 

Luv ’til it Hurts was at first a two-year project, and is now something much more. I admit that I don’t want to limit its future potential by saying what it is/isn’t or what it’s become. However, there are three ways to clearly ‘see it’. In a recent grant application, I described our group of three coordinators (Brad Walrond, Paula Nishijima & myself) as a ‘working group’. Brad suggested ‘The Work Group’ instead, and the name seems to have stuck. A traveling group show called EXQUISITE CORPSE has been conceived by The Work Group. And, I continue to develop the LUV Fund, an apparatus to deliver faster resources to HIV-related cultural activism, as well as to acknowledge the role of the artist in public health & social movements pertaining to HIV/AIDS. With such a lofty title as The Work Group, it is incumbent on us to say what we do. Our new website is forthcoming, and that explains us rather well. In the meantime, I’ve taken ‘a stab’ at explaining who we are and what we do: