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 nonprofits. The program’s title suggests a dual meaning that honors the perseverance and commitment of care workers yet also addresses the potential for harm from medications and healthcare providers. ENDURING CARE disrupts the assumption that an epidemic can be solved with pharmaceuticals alone and recasts community work as a lasting form of medicine.
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 audio recordings of poems, essays, and interviews by current and formerly incarcerated women of color living with HIV and AIDS.
Katherine “Kat” Cheairs is a filmmaker, educator, curator, activist and community artist. Kat’s areas of interest and research include: HIV & AIDS, visual culture, media arts therapy, community arts, and, critical race theory in art education. She is a co-curator of Metanoia: Transformation Through AIDS Archives and Activism, an archival exhibition focusing on the contributions of Black cis women, transwomen of color, and women of color activists to HIV/AIDS activism from the early 1990s to the present. Kat is a member of the What Would An HIV Doula Do? Collective and the producer and director of the documentary, Ending Silence, Shame & Stigma: HIV/AIDS in the African American Family. She has a master of fine arts in film and television production from the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University. Kat’s new project, In This House, currently in development, is a video installation exploring HIV/AIDS narratives through the Black body.
Cristóbal Guerra, Nobleza(s) de Sangre
Nobleza(s) de Sangre is two fragmented interviews with artists living with HIV in Puerto Rico mediate an audiovisual invocation of the late Boricua poet Manuel Ramos Otero, who passed away from complications of the virus in 1990. Guerra sets out to translate work Manuel deemed untranslatable, thus investigating the ongoing passions that informed Manuel’s work.
Cristóbal Guerra is an interdisciplinary artist from Puerto Rico. Their work currently combines experimental video, documentary film, language justice, and text to explore ideas of home, el caribe, queerness, and belonging.
Danny Kilbride, The Mersey Model
In 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 the mid-80s, the first government-funded needle exchange program in the UK.
Danny Kilbride is a community filmmaker based in Liverpool UK. He is the founding director at Thinking Film, a not-for-profit organization that exists to provide marginalized communities with a voice and to tell stories that challenge the way people see the world.
Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad and Uriah Bussey, #Medstrike: Confronting the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
#Medstrike: Confronting the Non-Profit Industrial Complex is a chronicle of Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad’s 2017 medication strike against the Mazzoni Center, a LGBTQIA+ health clinic in Philadelphia, and the direct action campaign by the Black and Brown Workers Cooperative that preceded it.
Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad is a Philadelphia born writer, organizer, and co-founder of the Black and Brown Workers Co-op. In their work, they often trouble ideas of medical surveillance, bodily autonomy, and Blackness.
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.
Beto Pérez is a documentary filmmaker and television producer working in Tlaxcala, Mexico. He is the co-founder and president of the cultural organization Colectivo Arte Contemporáneo (COARCO)(C. In 2018), his docu-series Tlaxcala Indigena received an honorable mention from the National Journalism Prize.
Steed Taylor, I Am a Long-Term AIDS Survivor
In 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.
Steed Taylor's art includes public works as well as art for gallery settings. Shown nationally and internationally, Steed’s solo shows include University of the Arts, Medick Gallery, Philadelphia (1996); Ambrosino Gallery, Miami (2004); and Il Ponte Contemporanea in Rome, (2000). Recent commissions for his public art include Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, Arlington, Virginia, New York City, New Orleans, and West Palm Beach, as well as the North Carolina Museum of Art, Duke University, York College/CUNY, Florida State University, and Columbus College of Art & Design. His art has been discussed in publications as varied as Art in America to Playboy.
J Triangular and the Women's Video Support Project, 滴水希望 (Hope Drops)
滴水希望 (Hope Drops) is 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.
J Triangular is an independent curator, experimental filmmaker, and multimedia poet. Colombia- born, Taiwan- based. J Triangular received a degree in film studies and screenwriting at TAI University School of Arts, Madrid, Spain. She received her master's degree in experimental documentary film at the Cinema and Audiovisual School of Catalonia, Spain. Her work consistently addresses themes of community identity, self-empowerment, care practices, and promoting communication and solidarity. In 2019, J was the international curator in residence at Visual AIDS with her project The Whole World is Watching, which has been exhibited internationally in Taipei, Tokyo, Kyoto, Mexico City, Lima, and Colombia.