Texts

“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 Hurts, has been selected for the “Media Library 2020 - Visions Du Réel, Festival Internacional de Cine de Nyon.”

Eric Rhein
Communion 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 in the United States and abroad, and has been reviewed in the New York Times, Huffington Post, ARTnews, Vanity Fair, and Art in America. He is included in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art’s Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project. He is a founding member of Visual AIDS Archive Project, and more of his work can be found on his Artist+ Registry page.

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 of the drawings helped to describe such transcendence in the LTIH project. (more about it later)

[*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 ‘aesthetics’. His initial interview took place before COVID19, and I asked for clarification on his idea for getting people together a few days ago. xo Todd]

[*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 on June 27th, 2017) is to keep artists central to the policymaking process. xo Todd]

Citizen voices are increasingly recognized as essential to forming policies and promoting health in inclusive, holistic ways. Health policies are starting to incorporate a broader set of factors that contribute to health, while health-care providers are embracing active participation on the part of their clients. As the scope of policy and health expand, artistic practice and thought are ideally situated to become tools to help us embrace broader notions of individual and community health, along with our (perceived and actual) ability to take action on behalf of ourselves and our communities—allowing us to re-imagine approaches to health and policymaking in the process.

[*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]_

What would a policy that incorporates our ideas of medicine look like?

On Friday, May 1, Artist Roundtable (A.RT) sought to answer this question during its third event, hosted by the World Policy Institute’s Arts-Policy Nexus. Developed by Todd Lester, director of Arts-Policy Nexus, A.RT is an approach to bridging different disciplines in creative work and policy-making as well as addressing crucial issues from varied directions.

‘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 Cairo … starting with a sticker of a game tile he envisioned on the back of a laptop…something that would ‘call out’ to someone entering a busy cafe. Something iconic (a brand of sorts) but coded…like something one learns about on social media but that isn’t explicit in form or words. From the original idea had in Port Said along the edge of the Suez Canal, the game spilled out and its pieces (or tiles) and simple instructions in 10 different languages are available online for download and printing in B/W or color. The game has been test-played in São Paulo during the December 1st (2019) AIDS Walk in Portuguese; in Grenoble with Ankh Association in French and Arabic; and in Bogotá at the culmination of the Luciérnagas Laboratory in Spanish.

[*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 together in the East Province of Cameroon as US Peace Corps volunteers. Again, a very long time ago.

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 artist, writer, and anthropologist, with special interest in the themes of gender and afro cultures. Almost all of us arrived in time for the presentation. Laura Figueroan, a very good friend of mine, came over to help us with the details, and brought us ski masks, which were intervened upon with fancy black stones, which went really well with the costumes. We had been cooking up the LED lights in the last weeks, with the help of Duvan Puerto, who arrived in the project thanks to Juan Sebastián Jaramillo and the creativity and technology agency that they worked at. Megan Cross Star, a member of the laboratory, was one of the people who had the most interest in the process, and especially in her costume for this night. She brought jewelry, make up, and was truly very elegant. As it was the night at the Botanical Garden that is open and free, many people came. More than we expected. After 6 months of planning and speculation , the day had arrived. It rained a lot that week, but luckily this day was clear, and both the members of the lab, as well as the visitors, were all able to calmly visit the Botanical Garden.

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 the project, called Certas Coisas (Certain Things). Here is the synopsis: the protagonist, who just found out he was HIV+, dives into a feeling of loneliness and isolation. It was like his individual timeline had been drastically interrupted, and he couldn’t go forward or take the path back. Instead, he would have to forge his own way, apart from the others—or, the ‘other’ was now him. The frustration of the perspective of a solitary life takes him on a daydream in which, through the lens of special glasses, he can identify HIV+ people by a red mark on their faces.