Day With(out) Art 2021: ENDURING CARE

For Day With(out) Art 2021, Visual AIDS presents ENDURING CARE, a video program highlighting strategies of community care within the ongoing HIV epidemic. 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 non-profits. The program’s title suggests a dual meaning, honoring the perseverance and commitment of care workers yet also addressing the potential for harm from medications and healthcare providers. ENDURING CARE disrupts the assumption that an epidemic can be solved with pharmaceuticals alone, recasting community work as a lasting form of medicine.

The hour-long video program will premiere on December 1, 2021, World AIDS Day/Day With(out) Art. Visual AIDS partners with museums, galleries, universities, and organizations around the world to present over 100 free screenings on/around December 1. If you are interested in screening this year’s Day With(out) Art video program, please contact Kyle Croft <kcroft@visualaids.org> and Blake Paskal <bpaskal@visualaids.org>.

The artists in this year's program were selected through an open call process juried by Ivy Arce, Jean Carlomusto, Thomas Allen Harris, and Mathew Rodriguez.

Video Synopses

Katherine Cheairs, Voices at the Gate

Voices at the Gate juxtaposes the bucolic landscapes inhabited by women’s prisons with archival and contemporary audio recordings of poems, essays, and interviews produced by women of color in the early 19990s at the intersection of incarceration and HIV & AIDS activism.

Cristóbal Guerra, Nobleza(s) de Sangre

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, investigating the ongoing passions that informed his work.

Danny Kilbride, 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 1986, the first government-funded needle exchange program in the UK.

Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad and Uriah Bussey, #Medstrike: Confronting the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

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

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.

Steed Taylor, 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.

J Triangular and the Women's Video Support Project, 滴水希望 (Hope Drops)

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.

Biographies of the commissioned artists are available on the Day With(out) Art 2021 project page here.