AIDS Video Activism: Women and Incarceration

AIDS Video Activism: Women and Incarceration
Programmed by Katherine Cheairs & Alexandra Juhasz

Part of METANOIA: Transformation through AIDS Archives and Activism
FREE! RSVP: https://gaycenter.org/aids-video-activism/

ABOUT:
Spanning several generations within the AIDS activist and related video movements, this series focuses upon the stories, activism and struggles of women, particularly Black women and women of color, who organized and become activists around injustices facing incarcerated women. At the heart of these videos is a deeply feminist commitment to freedom and a linked understanding that those on the inside are part of life on the outside, even if structural and penal forces work to deny them these connections. Questions of faith, race, gender, sexuality, what-could-be and the weight of systemic violence on all people permeate the work.

These videos honor the past and present of organizing work—its legacies, leaders and lessons—and offer insights into how activism of the not-so-distant past continues to inform contemporary movement work around incarceration. As part of the show “Metanoia,” the videos also represent with power, beauty and eloquence, the transformative power of AIDS, activism and archives for women of color, prisoners and their allies.

Featuring the following films:

I’m You, You’re Me: Women Surviving Prison, Living with AIDS
(Catherine Saalfield-Gund and Debra Levine, 1992): 28 mins

Blind Eye to Justice Directed and Edited by Carol Leigh
Produced by Cynthia Chandler (Women’s Positive Legal Action Network/ Justice NOW), 1998: 35 mins

Digital Stories
(From the Center/ Margaret Rhee, Isela Ford, and Allyse Gray, 2011): 15 mins

Special Guest:
Judy Greenspan

Followed by a conversation with the filmmakers, moderated by Margaret Rhee

This programs is connected to “Metanoia:Transformation through AIDS Archives and Activism,” an archival-based exhibition of community-based responses to the ongoing AIDS crisis in the USA on view at The LGBT Center in New York, March 11-April 29, 2019.

The exhibition’s title is of Greek origin and expresses the possibility of change through transformation. “Metanoia” demonstrates that HIV/AIDS is a powerful agent of change and that transformation happens through community, activism, words, sex, care and the materials that document these human efforts.

“Metanoia” is displayed over three floors of The Center and was curated from The Center Archive’s holdings, as well as those of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at USC Libraries (ONE Archives). The show centers primarily on the contributions and experiences of Black cis and trans women, and cis and trans women of color who have always been at the forefront of movement work, but who are often found at the margins of AIDS archives, art shows and histories. Locating their words, images, stories and histories in these archives has been transformational for the curators and will be for audiences concerned with the ongoing impact of the AIDS crisis.

“Metanoia” is curated by Katherine Cheairs, Alexandra Juhasz, Theodore Kerr, and Jawanza James Williams for What Would An HIV Doula Do? (WWHIVDD) a collective comprised of artists, filmmakers, writers and activists committed to ensuring that community plays a key role in the current AIDS response.

The Videomakers and Speakers

Cynthia Chandler is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Justice Now, a human rights organization working with women in prison and local communities to build a safe, compassionate world without prisons. Cynthia speaks and publishes regularly on prison industrial complex abolition, racial justice, and women's health.

From the Center is a collaboration of health educators, academics, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women as co-educators and advocates. We work in partnership to re-imagine HIV/AIDS education, research, and advocacy through the power of digital storytelling. Our project aims to provide digital media access and education for women inside and outside the jail setting as authors, directors, and storytellers of their own lives. We believe incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women are experts, educators, and storytellers on pressing social issues of HIV/AIDS, the prison industrial complex, and gender equality. Our Team Members include: Isela Ford (Formerly González), Kate Monico Klein, Allyse Gray, and Margaret Rhee.

Judy Greenspan is a prisoner rights activist concentrating on HIV/AIDS inmates in California. In 1991, Judy moved to California, joining (the original) San Francisco ACT UP. She later founded the HIV/AIDS in Prison Project of Catholic Charities of the East Bay, an advocacy group working on behalf of women with HIV and AIDS.

Catherine Gund is a producer, director, writer, and activist who founded Aubin Pictures in 1996. Catherine Gund's films have been featured in numerous film festivals and on national television networks.

Carol Leigh, a.k.a. The Scarlot Harlot is an American artist, author, film maker, and sex workers' rights activist. She is credited with coining the term "sex worker"at a Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media conference in the late 1970s.

Debra Levine received her Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University and her MFA in Theatre from Columbia University. Her current research interests focus on translocal imaginaries in transnational and global performance, trans-disciplinary performance, disability arts and culture, social practice art and digital humanities performance scholarship.



ABOUT
The ONE Archives Foundation, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) dedicated to telling the accurate and authentic stories of LGBTQ people, history, and culture through public exhibitions, educational projects, and trainings, and community outreach programs. Our exhibitions,
school programs, and community outreach programs are free. We depend entirely on members of the public and private foundations for support. For more information, please reach us at
www.ONEArchives.org.

The Center Archive is a community-based archive that collects, preserves and makes accessible documentation of LGBTQ collective histories and personal stories, focused on but not limited to New York. It houses approximately 1,500 feet of material, including personal papers, business and organization records, photographs, audiovisual recordings, periodical, and ephemera.

The What Would the HIV Doula Do? collective is a community of artists, activist, academics, chaplains, doulas, health care practitioners, nurses, filmmakers, AIDS Service Organization employees, dancers, community educators, and others from across the movement joined in response to the ongoing AIDS Crisis. We understand a doula as someone in community who hold space for others during times of transition. For us, HIV is a series of transitions in someone’s life that does not start with being tested or getting a diagnosis, nor end with treatment or death. Foundational to our process is asking questions.

Metanoia is Funded by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, Kors Le Pere Foundation, and the ONE Archives Foundation