Posts

[*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. 

[Emanuel Brauna-Lechat is a filmmaker from Maceió. ‘Dora Não Cansou de Viver…’ is a short film about many things, including access to healthcare and the precarity of daily life in Brasil. Manu needs some help finishing the film before April 7th, World Health Day 2020. One simple way to share holiday cheer (and some dough) is by giving to his crowdfunding campaign on Catarse, which supports the final film shoot in late February. xo, Todd]

I vomited tonight … earlier today.

I had taken an ecstasy pill. I may have used a couple other things as well. I’m a Taurus ‘control freak’, I’m told. So, while the idea of drugging up for going out may seem a bit careless, I also monitor my anti-depression medication, and not so long ago decided with my doctor to change my HIV meds. 

As I said in ‘we use drugs’, or was it ‘drugs’ .. but that yes, we do use drugs. Or so it seems. 

[*Bruno Mendonça e Felipe Caprestano - Terra Falsa (parte do projeto “Nenhuma Intenção Revolucionária”)]

O uso da palavra vírus para além do campo das ciências biológicas teve início a partir da década de 1980 com o desenvolvimento da cultura hacker, assim como ao longo da mesma década foi sendo assumido por outras áreas.

Essa passagem conceitual de um objeto estudado pela área das ciências
biológicas para outras disciplinas corresponde de forma bastante direta ao que os linguistas George Lakoff e Mark Johnson irão abordar como “metáfora conceitual”, ou seja, a atualização cognitiva de uma ideia. Essa atualização corresponde também a uma atualização cultural, social e político-econômica que ressignifica uma palavra, expressão ou conceito para dar conta de um novo contexto.

[* 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. 

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

1. 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.

   Read More

[ACT I entailed a lot of things, and one of the most significant outputs is a GAME made by project members and artists/designers in Egypt. There is also this very cool GIF made by Brazilian designer, Gustavo Marcasse. Overall, ACT I was meant to be rather playful! Now, we’re working on ACT I.5 in support of Love Positive Women, Feb. 2020:]

[Abazar Hamid was forced to leave Sudan for singing peace songs during its civil war and the Darfur conflict. I met him when I was working for freeDimensional in Cairo (Egypt) through a collaboration with the Townhouse Gallery called TADAMON (solidarity) that organized with Cairo’s various refugee communities. Cairo is where Abazar first went into exile. Over the years Abazar and I have kept up, and we’re now working on a safe (cultural) space project back in Khartoum. I love to hear him sing Bob Marley, and so the other day I asked him if he’s ever sang about HIV/AIDS. Of course he has … he sent us this song اكيد فى امل (THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE). Enjoy, xo Todd]

We take drugs. 

A colleague of mine, Carué Contreiras gives away spices and herbs in his HIV med bottles. Artist Kairon Liu ( 劉仁凱 ) makes portraits in which he asks pill bottles to be among other memorabilia (signs of life). I luv mine. 

But actually I’m talking about party drugs and entrée to harder ones. 

George and I were packing our things as the bottle of liquid Ketamine arrived to the party. I had been coerced into chipping in on it, but didn’t plan to use the powder Gabriel would cook down from the liquid. 

Sudanese like other people of this planet, search for many things, some are really important researches and of course there are other things that are also important, …,etc!
For me I am a Sudanese, I search every day about jobs for Home Based or Remote Arabic Web Content Writers. Secondly in order come searches for guides, guide to write, guide to sew, guide to solve children problems, guide to education, guide to learn, and a lot of self learning projects and subjects. Other times I research about home remedies for health issues, skin and hair care. I also search about easy and quick recipes that is good for old people, toddlers and people with health issues.
I search for uses of a word, or a meaning of another, film reviews, book reviews, and names of actors, actresses and scientists or doctors.
Some times I search for good erotic books and stories, I look sometimes for free photos to use for my numerous profiles on micro-service web platforms. I search for photos of cosmetics and medications, and children, or adult fashion designs.