Field-Notes on Luv 'til it Hurts

BLACK [strength]

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

“Initiated by Lanchonete.org and ArtsEverywhere/Musagetes, the Cidade Queer program was a broad collective inquiry into how can we understand the contemporary city through a queer, intersectional, non-normative lens. The program included a series of encounters, dinners, residencies, and performances, and “Cidade Queer, uma Leitora” reconfigures these moments into a new form, extending the inquiry trans-nationally.”

***

On the same color wheel as WHITE and RED, BLACK symbolizes strength.

The above-language is precursor to an essay on the ArtsEverywhere website, entitled Can a mestizo asshole speak? loaned by Jota Mombaça (as well as others) during Cidade Queer, an episode of Lanchonete.org.

RED [luv]

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In WHITE I exclaimed how nice it was nice to put the final touches on the LUV archive in December only 6 months after the ‘official’ closing in July 2020, but three months have now passed and this one particular RED piece resists being finished … perhaps because it’s the only outstanding element on the entire RED site [**a new LUV site was erected on World AIDS Day, December 1 2020. During the 2010 ResArtis general assembly at Tokyo Wonder Site the Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen said something to the effect that ‘artists are concerned with starting things, and their closure is not something the artist must always consider’. In the context of his speech, this notion made perfect sense to me. Perhaps because I was looking for additional justification for moving on from a ten-year pursuit providing safety measures for artists-in-distress to a five-year site-specific endeavor in São Paulo called Lanchonete.org. I don’t make works that a collector can purchase, so the idea of finishing a work isn’t so much about its monetization for me. I suspect however that this ‘knowing when it’s finished’ is common across artistic mediums regardless of their commodity.

WHITE [hope]

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The first thing I want to say is ’thank you’ to all the people–artists, non-artists, poz and negative folks–who took part in Luv ’til it Hurts for the past two-plus-years. While I’m still putting final touches on both RED & BLACK, I would like the last words on the site (and perhaps the first to be read) to be these: THANK YOU !!!

A simple color wheel confirms that WHITE is a symbol of ‘hope.’ Given 2020 and COVID-19, hope is in high demand. Sometimes white does not offer hard borders, and that is one way of imagining hope … just knowing that something hard to reach is also impossible to touch may neutralize a certain strain of fear.

If I had a bit more time...

Mon, 28 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Image by Todd Lanier Lester

In Why Make an ‘Open Work’? I begin to discuss DURATION, and why a project like LUV would have an initial, formal (albeit arbitrary) two-year timeframe.

Lately, I’ve been sifting through scraps of paper, contacts and ideas for articles. Luv ’til it Hurts is in the process of transforming itself into a new (and perhaps more concrete) form that will be fully explained by its forthcoming new site. Before I tie a bow on the ‘red’ (or archive) site, I wanted to reference a few of the ideas and contacts that come to mind as I look back on the past two years concentrated on HIV & stigma. For example, I remembered two pieces by Gian Spina, On Pedagogical Turns and the Use of Time (with Nikos Doulas) and Waiting for the After-Effects of Documenta 14 in Athens (with Jota Mombaça) I wanted to include. Some others are:

LUV, a timeline

Mon, 28 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Image by Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria

In January 2018 and speaking on freeDimensional, I was invited to give a co-keynote address on day two of the 10th Anniversary Celebration of the Centre for Applied Human Rights @ York University [see download]. And while I now realize the ‘second day’ programme (of thinkers from the art camp vs. the human rights camp) is not included in the ‘one day’ online history of this two-day event, this was the first time I mentioned being HIV+ from any type of stage, podium, pulpit, soapbox and/or dais. This is indeed where I first met Professor Maggie O’Neill.

Biography – Hummingbirds

Mon, 07 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Eric Rhein
Hummingbirds – Installation of Six
2016, wire and paper, (each one is 16”x13”x2”)

For Eric Rhein there is a metaphysical aspect to creating his wire drawings of hummingbirds and having them go out into the world. “The Aztecs believed that hummingbirds were the reincarnation of warriors, and that their presence had the ability to transform conflict—both internal and external.”

“My mother keeps a hummingbird feeder outside of her sliding glass doors and takes great pleasure nurturing these seemingly delicate, yet powerful creatures, as she’s done with me through my years of living with HIV.”

Biography – Leaves

Mon, 07 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Eric Rhein
Frank the Visionkeeper (Frank Moore 1956-2002)
(from Leaves, an AIDS Memorial)
2013, wire and paper, 16”x13”x2”

1. There are more than 300 individuals represented in Leaves. I say more than 300 because I know that there are more than 300, but it’s challenging for me to keep track.
When I started the project in 1996 I set out to keep making tribute for everyone I knew to die from complications from AIDS going forward. That is how it’s grown to represent so many. I’ve held on to this concept, though I haven’t been able to keep up. So - I have a backlog of people to make leaves for. Some of this is in my head - some on scraps of paper. . . Over time I hope to be able to back track and fill in those I’ve yet to do. This is yet to be seen. There are corresponding aspects that I am behind in - Like writing biographies for those represented, and other texts. I could use some grant money and assistance / interns to help with these things.

One luv ends and another begins; HIV2020; etc.

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Originally HIV2020 was to be held in Mexico City as an alternate meeting to AIDS2020 that was to be held in San Francisco. The biennial AIDS conference is a big show, and cities compete to host it for its business. There’s a tenet of the meeting that it alternates between ’north’ and ‘south’ countries. AIDS2018 was in Amsterdam, but for some reason the decision that it be in San Francisco was made, which in turn gave rise to HIV2020. Luv ’til it Hurts was launched at AIDS2018 with a postcard series by the artist Kairon Liu and his project, Humans as Hosts. And, since it’s a two-year project (at first), we have a major milestone now two years later as both AIDS2020 and HIV2020 go totally online due to COVID19.

Codename: Exquisite Corpse

Mon, 11 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

[*When the project began, I wrote a piece entitled Why Make an Open Work? where I used some borrowed ‘game storming’ graphics to show the chaos needed within a project before it comes to a point. This logic showed up again when Adham Bakry made LUV’s first design elements (see image). While I don’t imagine that an art exhibition is the only ‘point’ of LUV’s two-year period of understanding, it does seem very compelling as we near the end of its initial two-year period. Codename: Exquisite Corpse! xo Todd]

Game of Swarms descends upon LUV

Mon, 11 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Game of Swarms will be thus a communication device as well as a register of the artistic research upon how dynamics of networks in nature can be used as a tool to understand new ways of relationality among humans and non-humans—based on the distribution of agency, rather than the centralisation of powers.

***

Collaboration is often considered a value, but not a standard behaviour in Western societies, as much of their thinking is rooted in the individualistic view of the subject—based on autonomy and self-determination. Game of Swarms is an artistic investigation and communication device that offers an alternative to that exceptional framework of the human, emphasising the collaborative behaviour of systems in nature.

More instructions for afterlife (next-LUV) designer

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

[*In February and back before Covid19 suspended travel (and life as we knew it) a group of LUV peeps met in NYC to work on the ’next-LUV’ or an afterlife for Luv ’til it Hurts, a project that I originally charted for only two years. Those two years are almost up. We received some instruction/planning questions from teammate Jakub Szczęsny at that time, and again now as a new group plan takes shape. xo Todd]

A pre-Covid 19 estimation of LUV

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Brainstorming in New York at the Goethe Institut

[*From February 9-11, 2020, Luv ’til it Hurts was busy in NYC. LUV participated in Love Positive Women (a project by Jessica Lynn Whitbread) with a poetry and food-inspired event ‘LUV YEMANJÁ’. Food and a series of handmade porcelain candles were offered by artist Thiago Gonçalves and poet Brad Walrond offered a version of his work ‘1986’ paired with other poems to suit the occasion. On the following two days, a group including Jakub Szczęsny, Eric Rhein, Todd Lester, Brad Walrond, Paula Nishijima, Paula Querido Van Erven worked on the hopeful next phase of the LUV project. Within this process were statements describing the project from individual viewpoints, such as this one by Brad. xo Todd]

A preamble for shifting gears

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

[*After some meetings in NYC in February (2020), the LUV team set about a visioning process that should yield the project’s next phase–with a new level of clarity–by the middle of the year. We asked Brad Walrond to help us come up with a new introductory text (something like an artist statement), and we are gonna hold this back until we launch the next LUV. However, in our recent consensus-building process, Brad Walrond, Paula Nishijima and I all wrote (from where we were stood at that moment) about LUV. Here’s mine. xo Todd]

I wanted to elaborate more on the concept of 'transcendence'

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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)

ART, POLICY, AND WELLNESS (1 of 2)

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

[*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.

Steal This Game

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

‘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.

artHIVism, Condom Art & a lifetime of caring

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

[*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.

Relatoría última sesión Luciérnagas - Last Luciérnagas Session Report

Fri, 21 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Certain Things between stigma and love #LPW2020

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

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.

What I'm learning about participatory art; #LPW2020, pre-B & Elpenor method, #2

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This year Love Positive Women is so big for us it constitutes an ACT … Act 1.5 to be exact. The acts are dramaturgically useful for steering Luv ’til it Hurts toward its endpoint in mid-2020, and in that way reveal various ‘assemblages’ (or intense clusters) along the two-year course. While the ‘business plan’ of ACT II is about to be revealed (around Feb 14) with a graphic poster by Brasilian illustrator, chef, Umbandista and cat lover, PogoLand (who says artists don’t make worlds?), the co-making of activities in São Paulo, Khartoum and NYC for Love Positive Women 2020 and sequencing 14 days of women-authored and -focused online content took on a life (or ‘act’ as it were) of its own. Working with Canadian artist, Jessica Whitbread and using her ‘open source’ model for the Love Positive Women fourteen-day holiday has been a labor of LUV. And as such, we’ve learned some things. When we first started talking about her work in 2018, Jessica sent me the 2018 Love Positive Women holiday implementation guide (please download and use). I have written before on the LUV site about making (or why making) an ‘open work’, which is a reference to Umberto Eco’s writing at length on the prospect. Whether duration is called out by name or not, an open or open source work must consider duration and endurance. And, I think, whether it is growing in the intended direction over time. I’ve made three durational, rights-themed, multi-stakeholder projects for 10, 5 and 2 years respectively. So, I am familiar with the vernacular and semantics–and a new phrase, ‘articulation curve’–involved in the creation of a long-term project, and in this case a new 14-day holiday to celebrate positive women.

Please, touch me (PT/EN)

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

[*Alberto Pereira Jr. first made ‘Please, touch me’ for a 2019 workshop in São Paulo. His production notes are the third in a series that also includes a project abstract #movingtarget and creative writing, ELE. xo, Todd]

Instigado por um workshop realizado no instituto Itaú Cultural, sobre estigma e produção artística contemporânea em relação ao tema HIV/Aids, realizei a minha segunda saída do armário: vivendo há 10 anos com HIV, criei a performance “Por favor, toque-me”, revelando meu status positivo e convidando o público a ressignificar a imagem pré-concebida de um corpo positivo.

Field of Action: curatorial interview b/w Kathleen Bitetti & Todd Lester (MAP Catalog 2013)

Fri, 17 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Instructions from next-LUV designer for NYC mtg

Fri, 17 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

[*Polish artist and architect, Jakub Szczęsny is helping to lead ACT III. LUV’s denouement is gonna be a blast! Stay tuned!!]

considering attach-ability (#2)

Wed, 08 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

hi guys,

So, I’ve had an idea for you both for around 6 months now and have regrettably failed to share it in a robust form. I would like to do so now.

We may thank Brad Walrond for texting with me overnight (why he was awake, I do not know:). Jonathan, Brad archives Pony’s work and/or that of his house.

Jonathan, remember when I mentioned I wanted to talk to you on insta the other day. Well, maybe we can do that in person on February 9th. I want to invite you to a performance at the home of Livia Alexander. It is rumored that Brad will perform there/then. Pony, you are most welcome also.

hiv / art / establishment (#1)

Sat, 28 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

[*The pink elephant image is borrowed from a Facebook intervention made by Niki Singleton and Todd Lanier Lester several years ago called Coming out of the Web 2.0 Closet.]

There is definitely an HIV art establishment. I have met it in a few forms over the first 3/4 of Luv ’til it Hurts, a two-year project that also aspires to elicit a few forms. In fact, I guess this broad ’establishment’ may have factored into the form of LUV in the first place. I am an artist who works in organizational or immaterial form now for almost twenty-years. This can also be other things at the same time, like ‘site specific’ as was Lanchonete.org or a field-invading ‘sea change’ as I hoped freeDimensional would become. For the purposes of this field note, I would say that content or theme or issue inform the form(s) that are aimed for. LUV aspires to forge a philanthropic device (or mechanism) that can be taken and used freely at the end of the two-year process, which will be around July 2020 and when it is fully explained. I also think that style, affect and notions of gesture inform ‘forms’. In my own practice I understand that these styles, affects and attempts at gesture can be rehearsed over years and in different contexts.

How LUV is research, in part (part 1)

Tue, 24 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

[* For the LUV site, this is part one of a set. Let’s call it the Elpenor Set. See part two, here.]

The purpose of this ’entry’ is to introduce Ismar Tirelli Neto. I’m writing a book right now. It’s called Variations in Worldmaking. I can’t wait until it’s finished because it might be driving me crazy. It’s like birthing a set of gremlins … or so it presently seems. The book covers the span of my three durational, multi-stakeholder, rights-focused works. freeDimensional was a ten-year focus on free expression, artist safety and shelter. Lanchonete.org was a site-specific (São Paulo) five-year focus on the right to the city. And, Luv ’til it Hurts is a two-year focus on HIV and stigma. I chose to begin the book in the same time period as the two years of LUV, July 2018-2020. I thought that one process might help the other. At least in my head. They are both (art) works. I am applying a methodology for durational, multi-stakeholder, rights-focused projects that has been developed over the course of freeDimensional, Lanchonete.org and in giving support to other projects, in the making of Luv ’til it Hurts. I think the same can be said for the making of Lanchonete.org drawing on lessons learned from freeDimensional, but I was not concurrently writing criticism in that instance. Ishmar is working with me on the book, and also features in the book. We started conjuring these relations during a poetry workshop he offered at São João Farm Residency in Rio State (Brasil), and now we meet weekly for a writing class. Below is Ishmar’s ‘opener’ from an excerpt of the book in which I describe its 20 characters.

Some tenets of Elpenor thought (part 2)

Tue, 24 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

[* For the LUV site, this is part two of a set. Let’s call it the Elpenor Set. See part one, here.]

It never ceases to baffle and amaze me whenever an association between Elpenor – a decidedly minor character in Homer’s Odyssey – and an idea of methodology crops up in my presence. Akin to being caught midfall (pants down). It is a kinship that plunges me from a secure apex, a terrace (a spacing out) of experience into abstraction, the amplest of falls, towards the world. One thinks [during the fall]: what exactly is a methodology? What is it made of, what are its parameters? Solid and well-built as the Achaen ships, wouldn’t a methodology forcefully entail global applicability – or, better still, isn’t the efficaciousness of any given methodology ultimately tested in and by socially intricate contexts? Elpenor translated, carried over into a methodology. For me, it seems startingly easy to squash a methodology: one minor incoherence is enough, one dicey corner, one false move. It seems to me even easier to destruct a model. If, on the one hand, I am capable of recognizing Elpenor’s potential as a “conceptual character” such as the ones presented by Deleuze and Guattari in “What is Philosophy?”; if I am able to interpret him as a body of diligences and prescriptions – a sort of lens through which the world into which we are falling is simultaneously sought after, a world that grows more and more clear-cut as we approach the asphalt –, it is also my innermost guess that an identical link could be established between a certain postural inclination and the harmless Choreocampa elpenor caterpillar, one of the mimetic insects listed by Caillois in his Man, Play & Games. The caterpillar in question, if perceived to be threatened, operates in itself a physical mutation termed terrifying by the author; in taking upon itself the likeness of a serpent, it manages to fend off lizards and small birds. Through an act of camouflage, a momentary absence from “self”, the caterpillar postpones its death. The analogy doesn’t seem that far-fetched once we take into consideration that both beings have developed (evolved) strategies to go unnoticed – in the mythical world and in the natural world. Were it not the case, how else could we justify Elpenor’s survival through so many dangers – a character repeatedly referred to as inept at warfare and somewhat dumb? Both Elpenor and the caterpillar that echoes his name help compose a gallery of beings unfairly flattened into the singular episodes they are at the forefront of – in most cases, episodes taking place in other people’s lives – the predator’s, the hero’s – in a supposedly general circumstance that divorces the hero, the “true” virtuous hero, from all those who surround him; characters which seem to exist solely in relation to a stilled organizational nexus oft emblemed by a protagonist who is in some way exceptional. I think of counter- types such as Bartleby, the scrivener – the Incredible Shrinking Man – and finally Jepthe’s daughter, an anonymous character from the Hebrew Bible who seems to serve the single purpose of illustrating a most dubious idea of sacrifice. Characters about whom we know next to nothing; characters we know just enough about, however, so as to feel compelled to side with them, to defend their opacity.

Using one 'project' to see another

Fri, 06 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This article is a field [luv] note to Luciérnagas and friends in Bogotá. I was there for a project by Daniel Santiago Salguero and his HIV+ peers. Fireflies, this is the word in Spanish for fireflies.

Speaking of fireflies, I met some luminary folk while in Bogotá Like Jackie … as far as I know she is the only woman in Luciérnagas, well, except your costuming friend (Daniel). I would love to publish a text or reflections on process by her for the 2020 Love Positive Women holiday (Feb 1-14). We will be putting up 14 days of woman-authored content on those days early next year. Can you ask (or work with) Jackie to make a text? Let’s do in Spanish, but also we can translate on our side. If you will agree to interview her for the site, then you can also be a bit instructive w/ your questions. Just make it about the lab process. In that way you both support Love Positive Women.

notes on starfucking (v.1, not to be confused with 'resource fucking')

Fri, 22 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I do luv this term: starfucking …. star (*) fucking. While it is not used (as such) it is something that is present in the Sontag biography I read. Like people considered whether she liked to know famous people. I was once at a church party with Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams, and to explain it further would be inconsequential. Conditionally, I like to know famous people. I would say. Edmund White’s hand on my leg, but that won’t work for showing pure happenstance. A chance encounter with Kele Okereke on the LES, but I think I was considering straight fucking on that occasion. But my ex showed up and blew the scene. However, when I consider the ‘starfucking’ as I’ve heard it bandied about, I’ve decided its not necessarily a sexual thang. Once at the Tennessee Walking Horse Celebration in Shelbyville (TN), I decided to pass by Zsa Zsa Gabor’s box seat and casually ask her for an autograph. She declined. Queen. It’s ok because I got out of it what I wanted. I wanted to be close to her. I don’t know why a 14 year old gay kid wants that, but I did. In fact she obliged what I really wanted with a lick of rudeness in her curt refusal.

Relatoría Sesión #6 – Disidencia Sonora

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Laboratorio Luciérnagas

Relatoría 24 Agosto

sesión #6

disidencia sonora

artista invitado: Mauricio Rivera Henao

lugar: Adorno – Liberia

Relatoría:

Mauricio Rivera es artista sonoro, también trabaja con video e instalaciones. Tiene una pregunta constante por el territorio.

Disidencia = contra hegemónico

Obra: un diálogo con el lago Titicaca

Paisaje sonoro: retratar los paisajes en término sonoros. Volver plástica la materia sonora. Habla de tener conversaciones con insectos o minerales como gesto contra hegemónico ( disidente ).

Relatoría Sesión #7 – Cuerpos Fluidos

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Laboratorio Luciérnagas
Relatoría 7 septiembre
sesión #7
cuerpos fluidos
artista invitado: Juan Manuel Mosquera
lugar: Jardín Botánico de Bogotá

Taller
Exploración de las posibilidades expresivas del cuerpo a partir de un reconocimiento y una apertura del espacio sensible.

Actividades
Reconocer y explorar las tres llaves del espacio sensible: el peso del cuerpo, sentir y hacer consciente la respiración y permitir la consciencia del cuerpo en su totalidad (sentir su totalidad en el momento presente.
Ejercicios de composición instantánea: sentir y escuchar mi movimiento y el movimiento de los otros cuerpos en el espacio. Esta idea se exploró a través del ejercicio “eje” un trabajo en parejas y grupal al mismo tiempo que busca la escucha y la coordinación permitiendo una composición coreográfica. Ejercicios de contacto: reconocer el movimiento a través del contacto con otro cuerpo, se invitó a los participantes a desarrollar pautas de consciencia y descubrimiento del movimiento a través de entrar en contacto con otro cuerpo, la potencia expresiva del toque, del masaje y del movimiento en contacto a través del espacio.

Character Development à la Proust

Tue, 22 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

[*I totally misunderstood what you wanted me to do with the ‘Proust Questionnaire’ and just answered the original. I get it now … you’re gonna ask me these questions in a new fresh way. Is that it? Go ahead, and we’ll link my new fresh answers here!]

hey ego sum frank (aka Dr. Prof. ego sum frank),

I want to commend you on your new pursuit. While I’ve not yet visited the offices of MetaMorphineMachineFuriosaXXX, I imagine it to be a hybrid pharmacy and yarn shop. I even heard you all make quilts there. But before I would normally digress, let me answer these 35 questions that Proust used to ‘size up’ a character. I would like to assume the character of the difficult artist. I suppose this is somehow the real me; I’ve been called it with great regularity since I began the Luv ’til it Hurts project just over a year ago. I am starting to believe it, and therefore I’m ready to answer this particular MMMFXXX inquest.

Relatoría Sesión #4 – Arte / Fronteras

Fri, 11 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Laboratorio Luciérnagas

Relatoría 27 Julio

sesión #4

Arte y fronteras políticas

Invitadas:

Melissa Guevara

Artista

Laura Echeverri

Abogada derechos humanos

Relatoría:

Melisa Guevara es artista Salvadoreña. Habló del libro “Luciérnagas en el Mozote” que contiene narraciones y testimonios sobre la masacre (1981) mas grande que ha sucedió en américa latina, 900 muertos perpetrados por el ejercito.

También nos habla del proyecto 24 Horas de fronteras abiertas, realizado por el colectivo del que hace parte, comprendido por dos colombianos, dos salvadoreños y un salvadoreño en NY. El proyecto se trata de grabar 24 capítulos relacionados cada uno a diferentes perspectivas sobre fronteras y migración, visto desde el punto de vista académico, artístico y de los inmigrantes mismos.

Relatoría Sesión #3 – Arte / VIH

Sun, 06 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Laboratorio Luciérnagas
Relatoría 13 Julio

sesión #3
Arte / VIH

Invitados:
Fernando Arias
José Fernando Serrano
Juan Betancurth

Relatoría:

Fernando habló de su proyecto de residencias Más arte más acción. Dice que para el arte debe accionar. También habló de la importancia de la crítica

En diálogo con José Fernando se tocaron los siguientes temas:

Activismo / Violencia / LGBTI / proceso de paz / activismo LGBTI en Colombia / LGBTI con la paz (ahí se trabajó el tema Venezuela)

Sesión #2 - Memoria Léxica

Wed, 02 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Relatoría Sesión #1 - Contexto del cuerpo en las Artes

Thu, 26 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Laboratorio Luciérnagas
Relatoría 15 junio

sesión #1
Contexto del cuerpo en las Artes (para artistas y no artistas)

Escuchamos la pieza sonora de John Cage “canción para Marcel Duchamp”.
Hicimos cuadernos de notas para tomar anotaciones.
¿Por qué del laboratorio? Lineamientos.
Cada uno habló de cómo se relaciona con los contenidos del laboratorio

Contexto del cuerpo en las artes:

Body art, Arte Conceptual, Performance, Danza, otros. El cuerpo como material.

Some remarks before I make the video

Tue, 17 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Deza,

I’ve been thinking about something and I’d like to share it. Perhaps these are thoughts that go into the production of a short video clip. While I don’t pretend to know how to edit such a thing, and barely know how to turn my camera on (something I don’t often do for skypes). I don’t like to give away my ’eye power’ so much.

I wanted to start with something I recently read. In Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Art, one of his citations suggest that an artist will often attract attention to her/his/their self in order to then re-direct it somewhere else. Without re-reading or reading into the statement too much, I get it. Given my interest in art history, it is quite easy to think up of various incidences and artists to which this idea pertains.

1st 'About' page: A discussion to be accountable to

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A discussion to be accountable to …

Luv ’til it Hurts is about HIV and stigma.

Discussion, campaign, mechanism, agency.

All of these words describe the vision for Luv ‘til it Hurts. Yet, if it becomes nothing more than a discussion to be accountable to, then it has succeeded.

It should have this accountability first and foremost. And, thereby, remember the work (art and otherwise) that came before it.

As a porous container, it aspires to ‘hold’ people together long enough for essential introductions and exchange of ideas.

Thank you to Lois Weaver (ample version)

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Conceived by Luv ’til it Hurts participants during a design workshop in Port Said, Egypt, the LUV_GAME is inspired by The Long Table, a performance process by Lois Weaver. The game is designed for art world and non-art world venues … public, private and super private spaces. At the same time it may be available online one day. The game pieces will be downloadable from the LUV site by World AIDS Day, December 1, 2019. Each time the game is presented in a new language, the translated ‘instructions’ will be made available from the site. The game can be played in black and white or in color.

Fault Lines

Wed, 31 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Luv ’til it Hurts is the third in a series of durational, multi-stakeholder, rights-focused art works: freeDimensional (2003-12), Lanchonete.org (2013-17), and LUV (2018-20). In Why Make an ‘Open Work’? I discuss some of the logic around stakeholder recruitment. Between the first and second, the first and third, and the second and third projects, I have invited cross-over stakeholders. For example, Adham Bakry who is working on ACT I has worked on design outputs for all three projects. There is a practicality in doing so: to learn to work with another artist or designer ‘practices a muscle’ that gets stronger through repetition. If it works, it really works, and can reduce some of the time needed to train production staff on a project that includes a ‘cross-over stakeholder’ and for which they are contributing a similar skillset offered for a past project. Design is an easy example to use here.

Why Make an ‘Open Work’?

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I launched Luv ’til it Hurts, a long-considered project on HIV and stigma in July 2018. The project goes through the middle of 2020 officially, and yet I’m also quite interested in the afterlife of projects. DURATION is important to me for reasons I’ll explain later, and based on specific methods drawn from the community organizing field. Luv ’til it Hurts follows a five-year project on the right to the city, site-specific to the center of São Paulo called Lanchonete.org and a ten-year project, freeDimensional on free expression and artist safety (and shelter) in pre-existing artist residencies around the world. Given that an afterlife is expected and having experimented with different forms of archiving (or the project reporting on itself) with both freeDimensional and Lanchonete.org, Luv ’til it Hurts attempts to externalize a ‘record’ of the two-year process in various ways, such as the project’s website as ‘scrapbook’… and even an annual report.