AIDS, Archives, and Arts Assemblies in Belgium: aAliy A. Muhammad, and nino_uncut

Rad fag and AIDS activist collective La Radical Gai (Madrid) concluded their dissolution notice, published in Planeta Marica: Periódico mensual de sátira maripolítica (Faggot Planet: Monthly Newspaper of Fag-Political Satire) in 1997, with these two phrases: “Nuestra resistencia a gobernar (hoy más que nunca) nuestro propio espacio de diferencia establece (hoy más que nunca) los límites de las estrategias que pretenden domesticar(nos). Nuestra disolvencia es, en este sentido, la condición misma de expresión de esa evidente y clamorosa ingobernabilidad.” (Our refusal to govern (today more than ever) our own space of dissidence marks (today more than ever) the limits of the schemes to domesticate (us). Our dissolution is the clearest picture of such loud and obvious ungovernability.)

Aids, trans, fag, bi, and dyke projects are a work of joy yet strenuous to sustain in time. “Aids, archives, and arts assemblies in Belgium” reflects about unsustainability by interrogating dissolution and by calling itself a finite project: The project to host two intimate assemblies, self-organized between people concerned with HIV & aids and impacted by serophobia.

At VIERNULVIER, we will celebrate what dissolves, what transitions, and transmissions. The celebration will unfold with the recital of a poem dedicated to Melvin Dixon by Philadelphia poet aAliy A. Muhammad and a concert by Brussels musician nino_uncut. This will be the occasion to release a song dedicated to our project. “What songs are sung about the start of a connection that happens long after death?” writes aAliy in their poem. We will continue celebrating with lunch, a fab moment to ask each other: What do we do when our projects end?

Image credit: Marnie Slater, Le Madame (Brussels, 1981–1983), 2019-22. Photo by Aurélien Mole