Let’s Talk: Vulnerable Bodies, Intimate Collectivities

In a world in which connectivity cannot be refused, this day-long conversation asks: how can we negotiate interpersonal and communal boundaries instead of fortifying and defending borders—institutional, physical, social, and geographical? How do we think about and enact activism against the toll of multiple pandemics as they bear upon our psyches, bodies, and communities? What dialogue and action might unfold as we address viruses as agents of change? In gathering together speakers, creatives, audience, and recorded accounts, we inquire: what’s provoking you at this time?

Julie Tolentino and activist, writer, and scholar Jih-Fei Cheng collaborate to highlight the work of artist-activists and members of the What Would an HIV Doula Do? (WWHIVDD?) collective. Engaging with visionary forms of activism, each presenter reframes our common understanding of risk, instead finding opportunities for radical transformations of the unjust status quo. In dialogue with these concerns, the day is punctuated by a repeating slide presentation and video works. This chorus of participants invite us to redefine our shifting terms for intimacy, safety, and community, and to improvise our ways of being, and being together.

Contributors include Demian DinéYazhi', Pato Hebert, Theodore (Ted) Kerr, Kia Labeija, Kang Seung Lee, Tiffany Marrero, Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad, Ray Navarro, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Tamara Oyola-Santiago + Bronx Móvil.

let’s talk: vulnerable bodies, intimate collectivities and its companion durational performance, HOLD TIGHT GENTLY, follow ECHO POSITION, a collaboration between Ivy Kwan Arce and Julie Tolentino for Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It's Kept.