Texts

[*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 sum frank), 

I want to commend you on your new pursuit. While I’ve not yet visited the offices of MetaMorphineMachineFuriosaXXX, I imagine it to be a hybrid pharmacy and yarn shop. I even heard you all make quilts there. But before I would normally digress, let me answer these 35 questions that Proust used to ‘size up’ a character. I would like to assume the character of the difficult artist. I suppose this is somehow the real me; I’ve been called it with great regularity since I began the Luv ’til it Hurts project just over a year ago. I am starting to believe it, and therefore I’m ready to answer this particular MMMFXXX inquest. 

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. 

I came up with the Queer City (or Cidade Queer) a project within Lanchonete.org as a response to contracting HIV in São Paulo a few years before. I am happy with how Cidade Queer performed as a project. During its span in 2015/16, research would have been done for the forthcoming Sexualities show at MASP. In 2017 we were still making programming with a strong Canadian partner. I had a part-time job with that organization, resulting from a ten-year grant-receiving relationship during which I also served as creative director to some major foundation programs. I deployed a 20-year global cultural network to each program I took on for the Canadian organization. I forgot my HIV meds on one of my many international trips in 2017 working for the foundation. I asked for a ‘cost of living allowance’ /COLA-related increase on my next contract near the end of 2017. It was related to the cost of international travel insurance that would cover medication replacement. I was pouting about this once over dinner with a friend, an HIV+ medical doctor. He responded that he’d lost his medical post the week after he presented ideas on a panel at the Queer City finale, an international ball and awareness-raising day on a range of ‘queer’ issues. In that I understood that I was not alone. I recently got to go to Egypt and on way back met an exiled Egyptian activist living with his partner in Paris. He raised his voice about the government stalling his HIV meds, and he was beaten up one night in his apartment. Other serious danger signals happened: threats. They left to Paris and began advocacy work on the situation in Egypt and Middle East. I spoke to a Mexican artist who moved to Berlin after falling blind due to lack of access to HIV meds. These stories pile up as I survey my peers on their regions and conditions in preparation for Luv ’til it Hurts. 

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 the night of our lovemaking. I needed to react with annoyance. I did not. I needed to allow this. Also. It seemed. I had allowed it before in fact. This inquisition into memory and desire and night and sex and lovemaking. It was in a graveyard, a detail I should probably leave out.

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 and foremost. And, thereby, remember the work (art and otherwise) that came before it.

As a porous container, it aspires to ‘hold’ people together long enough for essential introductions and exchange of ideas.

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 me. The last project I co-made, Lanchonete.org was a five-year investigation of the right to the city in São Paulo, and also took a collective form. I enjoy the pace and other characteristics of collective decision-making. freeDimensional, a 10-year project on free expression and artist shelter was the first of a three-project set that have spanned almost 20 years. What connects the three projects is that they are all durational, rights-focused and open to multiple stakeholders. 

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
by Eric Rhein
(1998)