Screening
BLUE
November 11, 2021
Walker Arts Center, MN
WWHIVDD created a series of artworks in conversation with Derek Jarman´s 1993 film, BLUE. As a collective we produced MOVEMENTS IN BLUE, an audio work; MOVEMENTS IN BLUE, a toolkit for the audio piece that includes a transcript of our audio, the prompts used to make the audio, and an outline of the audio in process; as well as an image, and two new texts.
The audio piece was played before the screening at the Walker Arts Center, and the two texts and the image were printed in a pamphlet, along with a link / QR code to the audio, and the tool kit. This pamphlet was given out to attendees. All of these works exist on the Walker´s website. And are also available at the links below.
MOVEMENTS IN BLUE - audio piece
MOVEMENTS IN BLUE - toolkit (transcript, prompts, process)
ON THE PANDEMONIUM OF IMAGE - text by David Oscar Harvey
FROM BLUE - image by Theodore (ted) Kerr
WHAT SOUNDS IS YOUR CITY MAKING? - text by Theodore (ted) Kerr
These artworks were created by Ben Evans, Cea (Constantine Jones), Dare Williams, David Oscar Harvey, Julie Tolentino, Nicholas D'Avella, Nick Melloan-Ruiz, Sur Rodney (Sur), Theodore (ted) Kerr.
EXHIBITION
METANOIA: TRANSFORMATION THROUGH AIDS ARCHIVES AND ACTIVISM
March 11-April 29, 2019
LGBT Center, NYC
Metanoia was an archival examination of community-based responses to the ongoing AIDS crisis in the USA. “Metanoia”, a Greek word referring to the possibility for transformation, demonstrated that HIV/AIDS is a powerful agent of change and that transformation happens through community, activism, words, sex, care and the materials that document these human efforts.
“Metanoia” was displayed over three floors of The LGBT Center in NYC and was curated from The Center Archive’s holdings, as well as those of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at USC Libraries. The show centered primarily on the contributions and experiences of Black women, who have always been at the forefront of movement work, but who are often found at the margins of AIDS archives, art shows and histories. Locating their words, images, stories and histories in these archives has been transformational for the curators and will be for audiences concerned with the ongoing impact of the AIDS crisis. A print guide book was created for the closing event (available upon request), and an online guide book will be released Summer 2019.
You can also visit: METANOIA ONLINE.
Metanoia was curated by Katherine Cheairs, Alexandra Juhasz, Theodore Kerr, and Jawanza James Williams for WWHIVDD.
WORKSHOP
THE PAST PREPARES US FOR A BETTER FUTURE
A Workshop Series with Timothy DuWhite
Writer, poet and WWHIVDD member Timothy DuWhite hosts a workshop / reading series where he brings together personal writing, contemporary conversations around HIV/AIDS, and research from the In the Life Archive at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. At the core of the workshop is the question: how can conversations from the past help us create new discussions in the present and prepare for a better future?
DuWhite first offered this workshop as a 5 part series for WWHIVDD in the spring of 2018 at The New School, with support from Poets & Writers. Each week he was joined by a guest writer whose practice is rooted in the ongoing response to HIV/AIDS: Steven G. Fullwood, Linda Villarosa, Michael Roberson, Kenyon Farrow and Pamela Sneed.
More information about THE PAST PREPARES US FOR A BETTER FUTURE is available upon request.
WORKSHOP
HIV WITH
A workshop series that brings together writers, care givers and others living with HIV and impacted by the epidemic to share experiences and skills. Some experience with HIV and a desire to write is all people need to participate.
HIV WTH was launched as a 5 part series in the spring of 2017 at various locations, sponsored by Poets and Writers. Workshops leaders and locations included: Jennifer Patterson + Michael Crumpler hosted HIV WITH...WRITING WITH TRAUMA At Judson Church; iele paloumpis + Timothy DuWhite hosted HIV WITH…THE SPIRIT AND THE STATE at The New School; Joe Osmundson + Lodz Joseph hosted HIV WITH… BEYOND PUBLIC HEALTH at Housing Works; Tamara Oyola Santiago hosted HIV WITH… El VIH Y Yo; and Cat Fitzpatrick and Ch. Christopher Jones hosted HIV WITH…WITNESS and at Union Theological Seminary. Read more about HIV WITH at Poets & Writers.
More information about HIV WITH is available upon request.
EVENT
AIDS VIDEO ACTIVISM: WOMEN AND INCARCERATION, A VIDEO PROGRAM FOR "METANOIA"
6-8 pm, April 8, 2019
LGBT Center, NYC
Spanning several generations within the AIDS activist and related video movements, this series focused upon the stories, activism and struggles of women, particularly Black women and women of color, who organized and become activists around injustices facing incarcerated women. At the heart of these videos is a deeply feminist commitment to freedom and a linked understanding that those on the inside are part of life on the outside, even if structural and penal forces work to deny them these connections. Questions of faith, race, gender, sexuality, what-could-be and the weight of systemic violence on all people permeate the work.
The event featured the following films:
I’m You, You’re Me: Women Surviving Prison, Living with AIDS
Catherine Saalfield-Gund and Debra Levine, 1992, 28 mins
Blind Eye to Justice
Directed and Edited by Carol Leigh, Produced by Cynthia Chandler (Women’s Positive Legal Action Network/ Justice NOW), 1998, 35 mins
Digital Stories
From the Center/ Margaret Rhee, Isela Ford, and Allyse Gray, 2011, 15 mins
The screening was bookended by comments from Deb Levine, Judy Greenspan and Carol Leigh, and followed by a panel discussion moderated by Margaret Rhee featuring Catherine Saalfield-Gund, Isela Ford, and Allyse Gray.
Documentation of the event is available upon request.
Programmed by Katherine Cheairs & Alexandra Juhasz for WWHIVDD.
SERIES
UNEASY MEDICINE: AIDS PHARMACEUTICALS & OTHER WAYS OF CARING
October 2018 - July 2019
Abrons Arts Center
UNEASY MEDICINE, is an annual monthly series that uses documentary film and scholarly writing to consider HIV in relationship to the pharmaceutical industry, colonization, and forms of care that fall beyond biomedicine, with a particular focus on life outside the U.S. and Western Europe.Through a collective practice of knowledge sharing we will consider the following questions:
- How does the pharmaceutical industry craft profit from illness?
- What might happen if we honored, acknowledged and communicated the fact that drug discovery frequently draws from botanical knowledge drawn from indigenous peoples?
- How are western medicinal treatments combined and remixed with healing practices different from those recognized as effective by modern science?
- How can we form political alliances across practices of care to build better worlds together?
During film weeks, the film will be shown in session and discussed afterwards. During reading weeks, the readings will be completed at home and discussed collectively. Together we will create a welcoming space of wonder that can hold and explore a breadth of feelings, attitudes and awareness we may have around medicine of all sorts. We will consider ideas of health and treatment that include gratefulness, distrust, confusion, fatigue, joy, melancholy and unease (as well as those we may not have words for yet).
Readings are available upon request.
Poster by Emilio Martinez Poppe: www.emilio.click
Curated by Shanti Avirgan, Nicholas D'Avella, and Theodore (ted) Kerr for WWHIVDD
SCREENING
PAST PRESENT FUTURE: The Ongoing AIDS Epidemic in Four Documents
Jan 11, 2018
Union Docs
From the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the US, production of moving images has been vital to the response. At this screening, at Union Docs, four documents from various moments of the epidemic explored how ideas of activism, care, community, gender, history, identity, loss, race, representation and sexuality intersect within the epidemic, and continue to shape its effects to this day. Screened films: Ending, Silence, Shame, Stigma: HIV/AIDS in the African American Family, Katherine Cheairs; We Care: A Video for Care Providers of People Affected by AIDS, Women's AIDS Video Enterprise; Villanelle, Hayat Hyatt; Jawanza James Williams NYC Hearing Testimony, NYC.gov. The screening was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Hari Ziyad with Katherine Cheairs, Alexandra Juhasz, and Jawanza Williams.
Transcript of the discussion available upon request.
The event was curated by Virgil Taylor and Theodore (ted) Kerr
WORKSHOP
PUTTING THE TEST TO THE TEST
For people with some knowledge of the current epidemic, this workshop provides an opportunity to consider the relationship between HIV criminalization, privacy, and HIV testing. A series of discussion questions and prompts allow for a safe and dynamic enviroment when particpents have a chance to challange what they think they know about HIV, while centering people with HIV and those impacted.
This workshop was created by Elizabeth Koke and Theodore (ted) Kerr for Housing Works 2018 World AIDS Day Event.
More information about PUTTING THE TEST TO THE TEST is available upon request.
WORKSHOP
RAGE IS ONLY SUSTAINABLE WHEN SHARED
This workshop asked the questions: Were you angry way before election day? Are you tired of people telling you to calm down / Save your energy / Pace yourself? Do you feel guided by the sonic chants of those who came before you and charged by the spirits of those who will come after? During RAGE IS ONLY SUSTAINABLE WHEN SHARED participants have the opportunity to consider theses questions and then learn how to own, share, and SUSTAIN rage. The workshop is rooted in the understanding that for many of us rage is not a choice—but learning how to live with it can be.
WWHIVDD members Charles Long and Theodore (ted) Kerr first delivered this workshop as part of OPEN ENGAGEMENT 2018 and have since delivered it at Northwestern University.
More information about RAGE IS ONLY SUSTAINABLE WHEN SHARED is available upon request.
EVENT
A ST. LOUIS COMMUNITY DISCUSSION
June 9, 2018
Urb Arts
The inaugural St. Louis WWHIVDD discussion was an opportunity for the local community to talk about the relationships between art, social work, and public health, exploring the following question:
- Where are the similarities across disciplines? The differences?
- Where are the points of possible and established collaboration?
- How do we define “care”? What does care look like in practice?
- What are the ways that people use community, culture, and care to improve their own lives?
The discussion included voices from STL's social justice and HIV responding communities, as well as local artists, activists, care-givers and others.
The image is Shabez Jamal, a self portrait from the DuRags Succulents and Gold series.
EVENT
WHAT WOULD AN HIV-INFORMED CULTURE WORKER DO?
October 14, 2018
Triple Canopy
As part of a day long symposium entitled How We Do Illness connected to Triple Canopy’s Risk Pool issue, WWHIVDD co-hosted a public conversation that asked, How might cultural workers and institutions better equip themselves to meaningfully consider HIV/AIDS in exhibitions, films, texts, and performances?
The event was an open, informal, discussion in which members of the public, and cultural workers in particular, were invited to listen and to exchange ideas about how we can best reflect the intersectional legacy and lived reality of the ongoing response to HIV/AIDS.
The result was the creation of Twenty-One Questions to Consider When Embarking on AIDS Related Cultural Production.
EVENT
WE DO NOT MOURN GEORGE
December 5, 2018
Various Locations
In the days following World AIDS Day / Day With(out) Art, once President of the United States, George Bush, lied in State, and a national Day of Mourning was called. In response, members of WWHIVDD gathered to mourned our loved ones and members of other communities who died and suffered under Bush’s reign, including people living with HIV. #ourdayofmourning
SCREENING
CONSENT: HIV Non-Disclosure and Sexual Assault Law
July 2017
The Copper Union
WWHIVDD worked with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network to co-host a screening of Consent: HIV Non-Disclosure and Sexual Assault Law, hosted at The Copper Union. WWHIVDD prepared a guide to help facilitate questions.
SERIES
WISH YOU WERE HERE: Holiday Card Letter Writing
Annually
Various Locations
WISH YOU WERE HERE started off as a letter writing event in St. Louis for Michael Johnson, incarcerated under unjust HIV Criminalization laws; Michael Brown, who was murdered by police; and Robert Rayford, a 16 year old who died with HIV in 1969. In that tradition WWHIVDD partners annually with the Sero Project to write holiday cards to people incarcerated due to unjust HIV criminalization laws, across the USA.
SCREENING
ENDING SILENCE, SHAME & STIGMA: HIV/AIDS in the African American Family
Presented by Video Revival as part of the Theirs/ours/yours: Queer Art & Film Fest
October 2017
Ending Silence, a documentary produced, directed and edited by filmmaker, educator, and WWHIVDD member Katherine Cheairs acts as a catalyst for people to talk about the virus and the related impacts within our families and communities. The screening was followed by a discussion with the director, presented by WWHIVDD.
ACTIVISM
ART AIDS AMERICA
Fall 2016
Bronx Museum
Inspired by the Tacoma Action Collective who protested the lack of meaningful Black inclusion within the Tacoma installation of Art AIDS America, WWHIVDD held a series of events around the Bronx installation of Art AIDS America. We hosted two community meetings that invited people to share their thoughts and feelings about the exhibition, and held two interventions within the exhibition, one in which we engaged visitors in conversation about what was present and lacking within the exhibition, and another intervention (inspired by Julie Tolentino and Jawanza Williams) in which we used our bodies to support the art and artists in the exhibition. In the photo above, WWHIVDD members create the image from the missing part of the diptych that was not included in the exhibition. For more information, download our report: How Do You Feel In This Place?. Photo: Elijah C Stevens.
WORKSHOP
WHAT IS AN HIV/AIDS TIMELINE?
Often books, films and exhibitions will make use of an AIDS timeline to place the epidemic within context or highlight important related dates and moments. In this workshop, participants have an opportunity to create their own timeline, and along the way learn how timelines can be political. Using a room as a canvas, members of WWHIVDD work with participants to bring together important dates within AIDS and world history, and personal narratives to create a unique, specific and interactive AIDS timeline. At the end of the workshop, memories will have been shared, history considered, and a community sense of the crisis will have emerged.
This workshop was designed by Virgil Taylor with input from other members of WWHIVDD and has been offered with CLAGS at the The Graduate Center, CUNY and as part of NEW YORK LIVE ARTS and Squeaky Wheel.
More information about WHAT IS AN HIV?AIDS TIMELINE is available upon request.