METAPHORS & THEIR DISTEMPER: An Evening of Poetry & Prose At The Whitney

During the first month of the opening of the Whitney Museum of American Art's new building, Visual AIDS presented METAPHORS & THEIR DISTEMPER, an evening of readings by artists and authors Gregg Bordowitz, Morgan Bassichis, Orlando Ferrand, Park McArthur, Stacy Szymaszek, and Frederick Weston. The evening consisted of readings considering diagnosis, disease, coping and wellness. HIV was a primary focus, yet the theme was inclusive of all ailments, predicaments, and their embodiments in writing.

METAPHORS & THEIR DISTEMPER was coordinated by Gregg Bordowitz, Alex Fialho and Pati Hertling, in conjunction with the inaugural publication of Visual AIDS' DUETS series, Stephen Andrews & Gregg Bordowitz in Conversation (2014), which features a conversation between Gregg Bordowitz and Visual AIDS Artist Member Stephen Andrews. DUETS is a series of publications that pairs artists, activists, writers, and thinkers in dialogues about their creative practices and current social issues around HIV/AIDS. In the first publication of the series, Gregg Bordowitz speaks to longtime friend Stephen Andrews about painting, poetry, cosmology, and survival. Lynne Tillman pens the publication's foreword. Further information on the publication can be found here.

This program was supported through a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities.

Readers' Biographies

GREGG BORDOWITZ is an artist and writer. His most recent book, General Idea: Imagevirus, was published by Afterall Books in 2010. A collection of his writings —titled The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings 1986-2003— was published by MIT Press in the fall of 2004. For this book, Bordowitz received the 2006 Frank Jewitt Mather Award from the College Art Association. His films, including Fast Trip Long Drop (1993), A Cloud In Trousers (1995), The Suicide (1996), and Habit (2001) have been widely shown in festivals, museums, movie theaters, and broadcast internationally. Professor Bordowitz is the Director for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Low Residential MFA Program, and he is on the faculty of the Whitney Independent Study Program.

MORGAN BASSICHIS is a writer and performer whose plays include When the Baba Yaga Eats You Alive and The Witch House. Morgan has performed at Dixon Place, La MaMa, PARTICIPANT INC, Recess, and the Shandaken Project, and has published essays on queer politics and prisons in the Radical History Review, Captive Genders, and other edited volumes. Morgan is a 2014-2015 Queer/Art/Mentorship fellow and a 2015 Process Space Artist with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

ORLANDO FERRAND is a Cuban-American award-winning poet, writer and multidisciplinary artist. Ferrand is a Visual AIDS Artist Member. He is a graduate of City College, Columbia University and Parsons. A professional member of PEN American Center, he received the 2015 Artist in Community Grant from NYSCA/BCA, and the BRIO Award for Excellence in Poetry from the Bronx Council on the Arts in 2014. His memoir, Apologia: Cuban Childhood in My Backpack, received a 5-stars rating by Readers’ Favorite in 2012, and was selected as the Book-of-the-Semester by Hostos Community College, CUNY, in the spring of 2012. He is the author of three poetry collections, a memoir, several plays, and has contributed to various anthologies of poetry and creative non-fiction. He teaches creative writing at various colleges and universities in New York, and works as an editor, literary translator, script supervisor, script analyst and writer's coach for several independent and studio film production houses.

PARK MCARTHUR is an artist from North Carolina living in New York. Her most recent exhibitions took place at ESSEX STREET, New York, Yale Union, Portland, OR and Galerie Lars Friedrich, Berlin. She writes about dependency, care, and autonomy, and has been published in Women & Performance: A journal of feminist theory with Constantina Zavitsanos, and The Happy Hypocrite. Her first book-length project, co-edited with Jennifer Burris entitled Beverly Buchanan 1978-1981 was published by Athénée Press in 2015. She is a 2015 Wynn Newhouse Award recipient.

STACY SZYMASZEK is a poet, editor and arts administrator. She is the author of the books Emptied of All Ships (2005) and Hyperglossia (2009), both published by Litmus Press, as well as numerous chapbooks, including Pasolini Poems (Cy Press, 2005), Orizaba: A Voyage with Hart Crane (Faux Press, 2008), Stacy S.: Autoportraits (OMG, 2008) and austerity measures (Fewer & Further Press, 2012). Her book, hart island, was just published by Nightboat Books and her book Journal of Ugly Sites & Other Journals won the Fence Books Ottoline Prize and will published later in 2015. She is a regular teacher for Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, Salon Guest for LMCC’s Workspace program and mentor for Queer Art Mentorship. She is the Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in the East Village of Manhattan.

FREDERICK WESTON makes art that is primarily collage; however, this work is most often composed of elements found in stationery and office supply stores, or “materials at hand,” rather than conventional artist’ materials. Weston founded the guerrilla artist group known as Underground Railroad in New York, which produced street art and outdoor installations in the mid-1990s, as well as during the difficult period New York City lived through after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Weston is currently focusing on issues of HIV/AIDS and the difficulties of living with a misunderstood chronic disease. His work concerns a variety of social, racial, and historical themes and issues involving sexuality, gender, politics, religion and man’s relationship to “stuff.” Themes of style, fashion, and the commercial male image permeate Weston's work. Weston continues to be challenged to find new mediums of expressions as he explores various forms of media particularly sculpture, print making, poetry, performance, and happenings.