Visual AIDS

For the 2016 Day With(out) Art, Visual AIDS commissioned COMPULSIVE PRACTICE, a video compilation of compulsive, daily, and habitual practices by nine artists and activists who live with their cameras as one way to manage, reflect upon, and change how they are deeply affected by HIV/AIDS. This hour-long video program was distributed internationally to museums, art institutions, schools and AIDS organizations.

In evidence, Julie Tolentino’s naked, moving body articulates backward on her hands and knees, balancing a cluster of Asian medicine cups. The piece, originally made in 2010 in collaboration with Abigail Severance, was remixed for Visual AIDS in 2014. Tolentino's self-made sound piece was added and initiates the video with a queer list of loved ones living and lost, recognizable or not, as both invocation and provocation of individuals who deeply shifted her perspective. As the listed names blur and are archived in Tolentino's body, evidence opens up to the list's potency through a female, brown, artist/activist body in the unseen yet held spaces of relationship, memory, sex and loss. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2014 as part of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, a program of seven videos that bring together charged moments and personal memories amidst the public history of HIV/AIDS.

Through an experimental collage of video and pictographs, (eye, virus) explores how conversations around disclosure, stigma, and harm reduction shift across generations and from public to private realms. Combining street interviews with footage from a punk show and a mobile testing site, the video centers pleasure and community as it expands the conversation around HIV to include hepatitis C and the opioid epidemic. (eye, virus) extends from documentation of a 2017 public program titled AIDS OS Y Version 10.11.6, and is collaboratively produced with Nikki Sweet. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2019 as part of STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven short videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic.

A chronicle of Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad’s 2017 medication strike against the Mazzoni Center, a LGBT health clinic in Philadelphia, and the direct action campaign by the Black and Brown Workers Cooperative that preceded it Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2021 as part of ENDURING CARE, a program of seven new videos highlighting strategies of community care within the ongoing HIV epidemic.

Working with artists, curators, and art institutions on a national and international scale, Visual AIDS has never stopped commissioning and distributing projects at the intersections of art, AIDS and activism. Visual AIDS uses art to combat AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV-positive artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over. To introduce ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS, Visual AIDS reflects on its thirty years of fighting AIDS with the power of art. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2018 as part of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS, a program of short videos from six inspiring community organizations and collectives that highlights the impact of art in AIDS activism and advocacy today.

Tacoma Action Collective is a partnership of Black community organizers working in grassroots action and education. This video chronicles how the collective organized in response to the whitewashing of the exhibition Art, AIDS, America at the Tacoma Art Museum. The collective also reflects on their work at the 2016 International AIDS Conference in South Africa, responding to interconnected structural violences with the demand #StopErasingBlackPeople. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2018 as part of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS, a program of short videos from six inspiring community organizations and collectives that highlights the impact of art in AIDS activism and advocacy today.

The Lie is the latest in an ongoing series of short films by Carl George drawing on found footage and materials from the artist’s archive. Offering “ruminations on ruined nations,” the film aims to expose the links between war, AIDS, capitalism, and the persistent mythologies that bind them all. Commissioned in by Visual AIDS in 2019 as part of STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven short videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Me Cuido (I take care of myself/I’m careful) questions the relationship between colonial paradigms of health, religious guilt, and the stigmatization of people living with HIV in the context of Chile’s capitalist and neoliberal regime. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2020 as part of TRANSMISSIONS, a program of six new videos considering the impact of HIV and AIDS beyond the United States.

Positive Women’s Network – USA (PWN) is a national membership body of women living with HIV and allies that exists to strengthen the strategic power of all women living with HIV in the United States. In this video, women reflect on how collective creative projects have helped them create comfortable, intimate spaces where they can build community and provide support for each other while also working to advocate for changes that improve lives and uphold rights. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2018 as part of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS, a program of short videos from six inspiring community organizations and collectives that highlights the impact of art in AIDS activism and advocacy today.

Finding Purpose reflects on the experience of producing a film about the lives of teens born with HIV in Uganda and the pervasive stigma that surrounded the project. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2020 as part of TRANSMISSIONS, a program of six new videos considering the impact of HIV and AIDS beyond the United States.

They Called it Love, But Was it Love? depicts scenes from the lives of kothis living in India. Reduced to a “risk group” by public health campaigns and misunderstood through Western notions of gender and sexuality, these protagonists have real lives and inhabit unique worlds with their own quests for fulfilment and love. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2020 as part of TRANSMISSIONS, a program of six new videos considering the impact of HIV and AIDS beyond the United States.

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. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2021 as part of ENDURING CARE, a program of seven new videos highlighting strategies of community care within the ongoing HIV epidemic.

The SPOT (Safe Place Over Time) is dedicated to providing services and opportunities for wellness, empowerment, and leadership to young men in Jackson, Mississippi. 40 percent of gay and bisexual men in Jackson, the majority of them black, are living with HIV—the nation’s highest rate. Housed in the Jackson Medical Mall among healthcare and service providers, The SPOT offers a place for young men to openly discuss issues and challenges, work to improve their quality of life, and to promote the concept of self-worth in a variety of ways, including dance and creative expression. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2018 as part of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS, a program of short videos from six inspiring community organizations and collectives that highlights the impact of art in AIDS activism and advocacy today.

I Remember Dancing brings together an intergenerational cast of "trans and queer gaysians" ruminating on the past and future of AIDS, activism, gay culture, love, and (un)safe sex. Inspired by Joe Brainard’s I Remember poems, these confessions illuminate perspectives of queer Asian communities often absent from whitewashed narratives of HIV and AIDS. Grief, regret, longing, risk, and pleasure surface as their memories and fantasies blur into one another. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2019 as part of STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven short videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic.

I'm Still Me explores how digital platforms have created community and connections for Sian, a Black woman living with HIV and navigating the stigma and misinformation that is prevalent in the American South. Through her blog, social media accounts and online video platforms, Sian connects with (predominately) heterosexual Black women that send her messages, ask questions, and share their experiences with stigma and fear, all the while creating community that may have previously only existed in the shadows. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2019 as part of STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven short videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic.

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. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2021 as part of ENDURING CARE, a program of seven new videos highlighting strategies of community care within the ongoing HIV epidemic.

VOCAL-NY (Voices Of Community Activists & Leaders) is a New York-based grassroots membership organization that builds power among low-income people in order to create healthy and just communities. VOCAL is intentional in drawing connections between homelessness and the HIV and AIDS epidemic, understanding that access to housing impacts access to medication and the ability to maintain a regimen. In this video, VOCAL explains how it uses political theater and direct action as creative tactics to address housing policies as part of their work to end the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Commissioned in 2018 as part of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS, a program of short videos from six inspiring community organizations and collectives that highlights the impact of art in AIDS activism and advocacy today.

Viva Ruiz invites transgender AIDS activist, artist, and beloved friend Chloe Dzubilo (1960–2011) to speak via never before seen Hi-8 footage filmed by Chloe's then-partner Kelly McGowan in the 1990s. The process triangulates mother (Chloe), lover (Kelly), and child (Viva) in a deliberate ritual to uplift the spirit and legacy of an ancestral teacher. Through artifacts from the moment when video first became accessible and before mobile phone cameras became ubiquitous, we witness Chloe declare herself and her sisters as leaders in art, advocacy and culture for evermore. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2019 as part of STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven short videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic.

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. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2021 as part of ENDURING CARE, a program of seven new videos highlighting strategies of community care within the ongoing HIV epidemic.

The Sero Project is a U.S.-based network of people living with HIV (PLHIV) and allies fighting for freedom from stigma and injustice. Sero is particularly focused on ending the inappropriate use of one's HIV status in criminal prosecutions of PLHIV, including for non-disclosure, potential or perceived HIV exposure or HIV transmission. The 2018 conference, co-produced with Positive Women’s Network-USA, included a showcase of visual art and poetry made by advocates working against HIV criminalization. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2018 as part of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS, a program of short videos from six inspiring community organizations and collectives that highlights the impact of art in AIDS activism and advocacy today.