Unpacking Serophobia, Migration, and Race through HIV Narratives

We want to talk about aids, migration, and race. We invite you to do it with us in a night of performances and discussions.

“Aids, archives, and arts assemblies in Belgium” is a two-year project to host two intimate assemblies between people concerned with HIV & aids and impacted by serophobia, as well as public programs. Last year at Kaaistudios, we dedicated a public programme to aids and lesbianism. This year, we end our project with a focus on serophobia, migration, and race. We interrogate how these experiences interact and overlap, using intersectionality as a means to create connections and overcome isolation.

The night will begin with Salope (Whore), a work in progress by Brussels-based artist Jaouad Alloul, in collaboration with Jeroen Vanluyten for the text and with VNVND for the music, on his experiences navigating serophobia on gay sex apps, during a threatening sexual encounter, and in chemsex. Brussels-based artist Emmanuel Cortés will follow with a cold reading of a new short play on his experience of living with HIV and not disclosing it to his mother.

The performances will be followed by a debate facilitated by the two artists and by Parisian artist and aids activist Pascal Lièvre. To nurture in-depth and intimate discussions, we will split into two groups: one of BIPOC and one of white people. We will discuss HIV & aids, seropositivity and seronegativity, migration, race, and serophobia. Who is that visible “well-behaved” “perfect” HIV patient? What exclusions lurk behind the Undetectable=Untransmittable movement? What misconceptions about medical breakthroughs? To come out of the HIV closet, or not? … By the end of the night, we will all get together one last time to continue the discussion.

The facilitators of the night speak English, Arabic, French, and Spanish; the venue is wheelchair accessible; and its bar will be open for the night. We have reserved half of the seats, free of charge, in priority for BIPOC, migrants, and/or people living with HIV. If you want to book one of those seats, send an email to unpacking2024@proton.me (your email will be read by a HIV+ member of the team of “Aids, archives, and arts…” and will be discarded after the reservations are finished). Everyone else can book a seat here.

We donated the equivalent of one artist fee to Brussels for Palestine.

“Aids, archives, and arts assemblies in Belgium” is a project having hosted two intimate assemblies in Kortrijk in 2023 and ’24, self-organized between people concerned with HIV & aids and impacted by serophobia, as well as public programmes. It devises processes to carry out projects on aids, archives, and arts made by and for people concerned with HIV & aids. Castillo, Emmanuel Cortés, and Talya direct this project from their HIV+, transfagbidyke-queer, feminist, antiracist, materialist, harm reductionist, and intersectional community health political agendas.