HIV and the Black Underground: Collective Healing through Memory Work

Attending Honcho Campout 2026? Be on the lookout for a special program from Blake Paskal, Visual AIDS' Programs Director. Titled HIV and the Black Underground: Collective Healing through Memory Work, this collaborative workshop will name and uplift our queer Black elders lost to AIDS who built underground music and arts. Black artists/musicians lost to AIDS have often experienced a "double-death" of early passing and then erasure from the cultural archive. The work of naming and honoring them is a healing practice for both them and us. The workshop will be taking place in the Library space at Honcho on Friday at 5:30. 

A message from Dylan Harris, Library Curator:

“Last year was the library’s first year, and it was incredible – affirming, really – to see people using it, in different ways, throughout the festival. This year we want to grow the library to get more people inside the space, and, more than anything, to get more people connected to each other and to movements outside of Campout.  Public libraries are one of the last slivers of functional civil society in the US. They provide much needed resources to everyone, and they are hubs for community knowledge production and organizing. That’s the goal with the library programming this year. We want to bring people together and create space for dialogue around critical topics and practices within our community. Given the state of things, this is more important than ever.

The library programming kicks off with Kochina Rude’s Charm Reduction: Queers, Clubs & Drugs, a workshop that extends our ongoing conversations around the radical roots and potential of harm reduction. No one is coming to save us; we save us. Then, Dean Spade will be leading a dialogue, Sticking Together and Fighting Back, that digs into what it means to build and sustain community in a fucked up world. Next, Blake Paskal delves into memory work, acknowledging and naming Black artists and visionaries who have profoundly shaped underground music and art, in HIV and the Black Underground: Collective Healing through Memory Work. Then we wrap up with a writing workshop – Body | Movement | Writing – led by McKenzie Wark and Jules Wernersbach to help put into words all those complex and big feelings you might be having from Campout.

We are fortunate to have a photo/archive exhibit by Harrison Apple detailing queer nightlife in Pittsburgh’s historic Pegasus Lounge through the Pittsburgh Queer History Project. We will also have displays from two rad zines/collectives: SPIT! and Pinko. And, like last year, we are happy to present the library as a dedicated sober space throughout the festival.

Campout, come together! Grab a book or zine, have a seat and meet someone, and get involved!”

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– Dylan M. Harris