For Day With(out) Art 2021, Visual AIDS will premiere eight short videos highlighting strategies of community care within the ongoing HIV epidemic. These video works will screen continuously for four days Dec. 1-4 in the Collections Study Area on the lower level.
For Day With(out) Art 2021, Visual AIDS presents ENDURING CARE, a video program highlighting strategies of community care within the ongoing HIV epidemic. The program features newly commissioned work by Katherine Cheairs, Cristóbal Guerra, Danny Kilbride, Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad and Uriah Bussey, Beto Pérez, Steed Taylor, and J Triangular and the Women’s Video Support Project.
From histories of harm reduction and prison activism to the long-term effects of HIV medication, ENDURING CARE centers stories of collective care, mutual aid, and solidarity while pointing to the negligence of governments and non-profits. The program’s title suggests a dual meaning, honoring the perseverance and commitment of care workers yet also addressing the potential for harm from medications and healthcare providers. ENDURING CARE disrupts the assumption that an epidemic can be solved with pharmaceuticals alone, recasting community work as a lasting form of medicine.
The artists in this year's program were selected through an open call process juried by Ivy Arce, Jean Carlomusto, Thomas Allen Harris, and Mathew Rodriguez.
Trailer: ENDURING CARE from Visual AIDS on Vimeo.
The videos will be available to view online beginning December 1 at visualaids.org/enduringcare.
Video Synopses
Katherine Cheairs, Voices at the Gate
Voices at the Gate is an experimental documentary video juxtaposing the bucolic landscapes inhabited by women’s prisons with archival and contemporary audio recordings of poems, essays and interviews by current and formerly incarcerated women of color living with HIV and AIDS.
Cristóbal Guerra, Palma Tilteá
Ser cuerpe y ritual en la simulación caribeña.
Being body and ritual inside the Caribbean simulation.
Danny Kilbride, The Mersey Model
Danny Kilbride interviews Professor John Ashton, a public health official who helped institute the Mersey Model of Harm Reduction in Liverpool in 1986, the first government-funded needle exchange program in the UK.
Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad and Uriah Bussey, #Medstrike: Confronting the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad chronicles their 2017 medication strike against the Mazzoni Center, an LGBT health clinic in Philadelphia, and the direct action campaign by the Black and Brown Workers Cooperative that preceded it.
Beto Pérez, In the Future
In the Future tells the stories of people living with HIV in Mexico who have been unable to access treatment because of government corruption and widespread theft and looting of medication.
Steed Taylor, I am... a Long-Term AIDS Survivor
Through a chorus of voices, Steed Taylor explores the difficulties of being a long-term AIDS survivor and the unexpected health problems facing many senior survivors.
J Triangular, The Women's Video Support Project
A collaborative video project made with women living in Taiwan who use their cameras to process stress and stigma, and to share their experiences living with HIV.
