Texts

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. As an artist who makes public, multi-stakeholder projects, I would like to ’externalize’ a range of topics that pertain to HIV and stigma. I am using my own experience to ask how others contend with the two ‘co-morbidities’ (as the doctors call them) of HIV and depression. 

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 hasta cuatro millones de venezolanos que están ahora en Colombia. Esto ha transformando el territorio cultural. Han llegado a asentarse en todas las ciudades de Colombia, inclusive en las islas del Caribe o en territorios rurales distantes de las ciudades. Muchos vinieron en una primera ola, quizás donde hubo más oportunidades o eran personas con preparación profesional. Ahora no es así, vienen las personas más pobres y en las situaciones más difíciles. Vienen inclusive hasta Bogotá caminando desde Venezuela. Atraviesan páramos y se enfrentan con la actitud xenófoba de muchos colombianos que no toleran su situación. No recuerdan por ejemplo que fueron los colombianos lo que emigraron a Venezuela en nuestra crisis económica y de violencia en los años noventas. Se dice que han regresado más de 300.000 colombianos que vivían en Venezuela. También se dice que la situación acá para los Venezolanos está tan difícil que muchos se están regresando a su país, se dice que se ven personas caminando por las carreteras hacia Colombia y otras ya regresandose a Venezuela. La relación específica y que interesa con respecto al VIH es que en Venezuela ya no hay medicinas para atender el virus. Así que quienes tienen VIH en Venezuela deben salir del país en una situación aún más vulnerable que las de los otros migrantes. Deben además de buscar techo, trabajo, arraigo, buscar su medicina, que es muy costosa y que el gobierno colombiano solo suministra a personas nacidas en el país a través del sistema de salud público. La situación está desbordada por muchos lados. Por ejemplo hasta la semana pasada se dio nacionalidad colombiana a más de 24.000 niños que habían nacido de padres venezolanos en territorio colombiano y que hasta ahora no tenían nacionalidad, ya que los consulados venezolanos están cerrados o no existen mas. Cómo vez, son muchas las aristas y hechos por analizar en medio de la debacle. Se dice que esto traerá muchos cambios sociales, y culturales, como se ha visto que ha sucedido en las grandes migraciones a nivel mundial y local. Ayer oí en la radio, están entrando alrededor de cincuenta mil venezolanos diariamente por la frontera a Colombia. A través del laboratorio estamos desentrañado estas historias, informaciones, estadísticas, subjetividades. Entender y encontrar información nos ayuda a situarnos en el territorio que habitamos. Desde el laboratorio intentaremos dar voz y espacio para reflexionar sobre estas urgentes temáticas.

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.

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 shame, guilt, and trauma that comes with being HIV positive. Healing happens when you find another person who is willing to trust you, and share that they are HIV positive. I find healing when I can share, hold space, and facilitate a discussion with 3 other young people living with HIV. I find healing when we can talk about our shared struggles, and support one another without any filters, without any judgement, or without any shame or stigma in the room. When I am in this kind of space, I don’t need to explain to anyone what it’s like to be living with HIV. Everyone in the room just gets it already, no explanations necessary. A space that is affirming, and truly free from the feeling of: “sometimes it feels like HIV negative people will never get it.” That is a very rare space to find.

   1.

Across generations of continents
What do it mean to be haunted?

by a virus. A bluegrass
grandma 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 / the trans girl /
the doula / the woman / the social worker / the rich /
the nuyorican / the new yawker /the southern belle /
the global south /Brasil / the brown-black / AMEM
and thank you /the activist / the artivist / the Zion / the poet /
the visual artist / the scholar / the writer / the shunned /
the convener / the  loved / the forsaken

“It is just another coin in the pouch. Sometimes it comes out heads; it’s a blessing. Sometimes it comes out tails; it’s a curse”. — Frederick Weston.

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. To continue my research on HIV/ AIDS, I traveled to the city which is 12 hours different from my motherland, selling myself to explain my story and my project often and often, like the endless stage. There were happiness and disappointment in this unpredictable magical script; sometimes I even feel like I might have already seen it all, but of course, I have not, since I am merely a human being who is trying to find the connection as the lifeline to keep going. It seems like the world did hear my hunger, once again I had the opportunity to visit a new land where I have never been, I flew to Amsterdam for the 2018 International AIDS Conference from the surreal life in New York.

The Social Practice of Jessica Lynn Whitbread

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. Darien said that I was a love warrior, and what I advocate for was people being and feeling loved. Which I guess is different than people being accepted because being loved, feeling sexy, being desired, or getting fucked ultimately come with a sense of feeling good and at a deeper level change our quality of life. I had a conversation with a taxi driver in Johannesburg once who asked me if there was a cure for AIDS, I told him yes – kindness. For many people living with HIV and those who are marginalized by ability, age, class, and so on life really sucks sometime and through my projects such as LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN, Tea Time, and No Pants No Problem I aim to change people’s sense of wellbeing at both the micro and macro levels. I believe that role modeling how to be a good friend, lover, family member or service provider has effects that ripple through our communities. People notice. People feel it. I feel it.

Coletivo Amem is a São Paulo-based artistic collective that promotes festivals, performances and debates focusing on race, class, gender, and public health. 

Coletivo Amem ‘occupies’ São Paulo’s Container Theatre during Virada Cultural 2018.

https://youtu.be/B4iXEe_PNFg

For the last two years Coletivo Amem and House of Zion (Brasil) have visited NYC during Black Pride and #HouseLivesMatter.

The House of Zion in Brasil came about during a 2016 visit to São Paulo by New York’s Pony Zion.

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, he is from Taiwan.  But we both grew up in complicated families where violence was present and we both like cinnamon raisin bagels topped with vegetables. We are about a decade apart in age, with Kai being born after me.