[*Working together with the City of São Paulo office of Human Rights, George Ferraz prepared (styled) two downtown cultural spaces for Love Positive Women 2020 with the theme of Yemanjá and using the posters designed by Thiago. A message from the Office of Human Rights was distributed along with Valentines Day cards. The Human Rights flier encourages HIV+ women to use the city’s three citizenship centers for meetings any time of the year, and provides a QR Code to find more info easily. Both Tapera Taperá bar and esponja spaces in São Paulo hosted Love Positive Women-related info / set-ups. Thiago made the candles for an event in NYC held on February 9th. George helped with the event too, making some more cloth hearts, like the ones distributed in São Paulo and Khartoum. There were extra hearts and we mailed them to Puerto Rico with Valentines cards. Some also went to the cast of I, OF COURSE, WAS LIVID, a Love Positive Women-affiliated event at Housing Works bookstore. And, about 15 leftover candles go on to the VisualAIDS Women’s Empowerment Art Therapy Workshops. Thanks guys! xo, Todd]

[*When I asked NYC-based artist Thiago Correia Gonçalves if he’d like to help make a Love Positive Women event, he proposed making Bobó (shrimp and cassava stew) for Yemanjá, the goddess for fishermen who is celebrated on February 2nd in Brasil. When I asked poet Brad Walrond to participate, I’d already seen a poem ‘Yemaya’ in his forthcoming book Every Where Alien. He offered his 1986, Yemaya and other poems. DIG Ferreira, Jesse Hawkes, Livia Alexander, George Ferraz and others helped out. George made another batch of cloth hearts for attendees to the February 9th, NYC event. In addition to Bobó, Thiago made dendê or palm oil-infused candles that each guest would light upon arrival and then take home as a keepsake from the night.  Thiago let me help a little making the wax and filling the candles the night before … and puréeing the cassava. xo todd] 

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.

DSS: Buenas tarde, Jaque, gracias por estar aquí y colaborar con esta entrevista. Te voy a hacer unas preguntas que ya conoces. Si no quieres responder o te sientes incómoda podemos parar y no hay problema. 

¿Hace cuánto descubriste que tienes VIH? ¿Cómo ha sido todo desde entonces?

JS: Bueno, yo descubrí que tengo el virus del VIH desde noviembre del 2015. En un centro asistencial de mi barrio estaban en una campaña y me propusieron hacer la prueba, ahí me enteré. Para mi ha sido un poco complicado pero quiero salir adelante, surgir. Esto ha cambiado mi vida notablemente.

[*I first met Oma working in the legal aid clinic for Iraqi refugees in Cairo set up by Barbara Harrell-Bond back in 2007. To read more about our background, check out A series for LovePositiveWomen2020 and What do a Sudanese Mom Search the Internet for?, as well as a description of LUV’s ACT 1.5 (LovePositiveWomen2020). Thanks for being there, Oma! xo Todd]

Viral Love, Unconditional One!

Friend’s Love

I enjoyed having a very special and unique friendship with few yet very unique persons. As a Sudanese woman, it is not a frequent thing to happen. That adds more allure to the whole thing, it is such a blessing, a grace, and a gift from the greatest lover ever: “Allah,” I muchly thank for his almighty!

Behind the curtain

“أنا مريضة إيدز ونفسى أتعامل كبنى آدمة، معملتش حاجة غلط علشان المجتمع ينبذنى ولما بمرض مش بلاقى دكتور يعاملنى كويس، وبقيت أخاف من الناس فاضطرت لارتداء النقاب خوفا من تعرف الناس على شخصيتى عند اللجوء لتلقى العلاج. "

“فى عام 2006 ظهرت الأعراض الأولية كإسهال وترجيع وسخونية، وفقدت الكثير من وزنى فبعد أن كان 83 كجم أصبح 45 كجم دون أن أعلم السبب، وعلى الرغم من أنى أجريت الكثير من الفحوصات والتحاليل التى حيرت الأطباء وشخصها الكثيرون بأنها مشاكل فى المعدة أو مرض الدفتيريا”.

LTIH: You have been involved with LGBT and HIV activism for some time now. How long have you been doing this in São Paulo?

CO: My trajectory with activism began from 1996 to 2007, in Jundiaí, with people who have lost their homes. At this point, matters such as HIV/Aids and drug abuse were already present in my life. It was in this scenario that I began to act in intersectional militancy, although it was still less centralized on LGBTs and, instead, oriented towards this population’s more structural conditions. However, I had already done research for LGBT news outlets, notedly for SuiGeneris Magazine.

EBL: Momô, qual a sua avaliação sobre o cenário cinematográfico de um modo geral no Brasil?

MO: Vejo o cenário cinematográfico no Brasil com muitas incertezas, apesar de sabermos recentemente que para o ano de 2020 grandes nomes do STREAM irão injetar alguns milhões no setor, o que é muito positivo, não teremos, por outros lado, políticas públicas neste sentido e, naturalmente, a comunidade mais carente não será tocada por essas ações do setor privado. Ao meu ver, faltam mais projetos que envolvam a parcela menos favorecida da população.

[*When I asked Thiago if he’d like to make a meal in NYC–something we’ve done together a few times in São Paulo and once in Bamako–he said yes and immediately suggested making an offering to Iemanjá. We’ve worked together since 2012 (usu. on Lanchonete.org projects), and I imagined that the idea would be good. When I heard Iemanjá and given the date of our NYC performance (Feb 9), I immediately thought of making it a Love Positive Women 2020 event. It’s gonna be really cool. George saw the NYC design around the time that both esponja and Tapera Taperá (cultural spaces here in São Paulo) agreed to be styled for Amem Mulheres Positivas/Love Positive Women 2020. So then came Portuguese and Spanish versions of the same poster, pared down. If in São Paulo, drop by esponja or Tapera Taperá, and in NYC, let us know if you’re free on the 9th. xo todd et al]

If writing is a committed utopian action, then the Jean Genet of Edmund White’s engaging, impressive, transformative Genet: A Biography was the epitome of  manic depression. Genet wrote his five novels in five years, from 1942-47. After seven years of sadness and silence, he wrote his three best known plays in two years. The subsequent 1960’s were filled with death as his lover, Abdallah (a high wire performer) committed suicide, his agent and English translator Bernard Fruchtman committed suicide, and Genet himself tried to commit suicide. Then he entered into the other utopian endeavor: activism. From 1970 until his death in 1986, Genet was aligned with oppressed people and supported them in energetic ways, on their terms and on his own.  White calls him “an apostle of the wretched of the earth.”

Image: $oropositiva, by Micaela Cyrino for LovePositiveWomen2019
Collage on greaseproof paper and serigraphy
30 x 40cm

In some ways the whole LUV experience has geared us up for Love Positive Women 2020. In March 2019 I visited Egypt and afterwards, Paris where I met the Ankh (Arab Network for Knowledge on Human Rights) Association. The Ankh guys moved to Paris after a long period of activism on access to HIV meds in Cairo. From Paris they made the Points of Life exhibit that featured artists and activists from Egypt and the Middle East living with HIV. ‘Behind the Curtain’ is an image and text by Iman, an artist living in Egypt. Daniel Santiago Salguero’s project, Luciérnagas began with the idea to consider the changing situation–HIV info, support and medication access–in Bogotá with new arrivals of Venezuelans in the wake of that country’s financial crisis. It ended as an experimental performance in Bogotá’s Botanical Gardens. I met Jackie during the project’s conclusion in October 2019. Daniel interviews her for LovePositiveWomen2020 and further reflects on the Luciérnagas process. 

[*It is very exciting (and an honor) to get to imagine and implement ideas for Love Positive Women 2020 in Khartoum (Sudan), New York City (US), São Paulo (Brasil) and other places in South America. Designer Adham Bakry (Port Said/Cairo) came up with a version of the Love Positive Women insignia in Arabic and Gustavo Marcasse in both Portuguese and Spanish. Love Positive Women is a project by Jessica Whitbread. xo Todd]

Watch: INGABIRE “Gift” (2005), by Jesse Hawkes.

For its first Rwandan Film Festival in 2005, the Rwanda Cinema Centre helped several young directors and groups of actors to make films on important issues in Rwanda. The film “Ingabire” was based on an original musical theatre piece that was created by a group of high school students at an HIV Prevention conference earlier in the year. It was based on true stories from their lives and lives of their friends. The film still resonates today. During a recent Global Youth Connect workshop, I showed this film and the participants insisted that “stigma against people living with HIV does not exist in Rwanda today.” Little did they know that there was a GYC delegate from Rwanda standing in that room who didn’t disclose their status among these peers for fear of stigma. Apologies for the subtitles, but we created it in two days, and English was not one of the key languages of the staff at that time. Rwanda has since shifted from French to English as its official second language of instruction in schools after Kinyarwanda, which is the language you hear in the film.  

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. 

Piece: $oropositiva**
Collage on greaseproof paper and serigraphy
30x 40**

Micaela Cyrino, 30, is a visual artist and militant of sexual and reproductive rights, blackness, and HIV / AIDS, in her artistic work and in her participation in groups such as Coletivo Amem. She graduated in Visual Arts from Santa Marcelina University. (São Paulo, Brazil)