On the 18th of February 1993, the Bush administration passed a curious amendment to the National Institutes of Health Reauthorization Bill. Known as the Nichols Amendment, this peculiar moment of North American politics placed the US of A at the same level of China, Armenia, Brunei, Iraq, South Korea, Moldavia, Russia, and Saudi Arabia: it closed the borders of the country to seroconverted individuals.
Lesson #2: Even If You Use Them, Sometimes They Break.
Despite having been aware of the North American immigration ban on seroconverted people - was told of it even years before being told of my own seroconversion - I crossed the US border yesterday. Here I declare "I broke America's condom" and it broke as easily as that other one broke 4 years ago. Since that first one broke, breaking borders has a totally different meaning for me, for it has provided me with, let's say, an epiphany. Or, better, since that moment when - maybe because the lub was not enough or maybe because I like it rough - the condom broke and the bodies touched each other in the way they should never have done, since that moment, I was saying, breaking borders provided me with what I am: I am HIV+ and that seems to be, for many, my identity; the Other, the abject, the Jew, the dirty, that shall be kept away of the Land of Plenty, the American Dream.
Lesson #3: The Irony of Modern Times.
So I crossed the US border yesterday at the JFK airport.
Immigration Officer (always with that I-am-the-authority-do-fear-me look on his face): "What's the purpose of your visit to the US?"
Me (smiling): "Holiday."
Liar, liar, pants on fire!: the aim of my visit was another, really; it was to come to a conference organized by Visual AIDS, the CLAGS, and the Australian Research Council, at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The irony of this is that the conference, "AIDS/ART/WORK", was about cultural responses to HIV/AIDS in the US, Australia, and South Africa and so I had to enter a country in which I am not welcomed - crossing its border like a virus crosses the open boundary of a broken condom - so I could discuss issues that have to do with that which makes me persona non grata inside its borders. The ironies of modern times.
Lesson #4: Let's Talk AIDS Seriously.
In 1988, in his book AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism, Douglas Crimp wrote:
"AIDS does not exist apart from the practices that conceptualise it, represent it, and respond to it. We know AIDS only in and through those practices. This assertion does not contest the existence of viruses, antibodies, infections, or transmission routes. Least of all does it contest the reality of illness, suffering and death. What it does contest is the notion that there is an underlying reality of AIDS, upon which are constructed the representations, or the culture, or the politics of AIDS. If we recognize that AIDS exists only in and through these constructions, then hopefully we can also recognize the imperative to know them, analyse them and wrest control of them."
AIDS is a political disease like no other in the history of illnesses and death. The only similar disease I can think of - similar, not equal - was the Black Plague that in the 14th Century killed 75 million people worldwide. Also the Black Plague was seen by many as a punishment for one's sins. Here lies the similitude with the representations of HIV as the Gay Plague - the punishment for engaging in unnatural acts such as loving and being loved in return (even if by someone of the same sex, even if only momentarily). This led to a get-together-and-fight: everywhere in America and soon after in the UK, gays, lesbians, and others, people that have been infected/affected by the epidemic, people that got sick of watching their friends die - first of loneliness, then of TB, Pneumonia, etc. - all of those claimed the streets demanding "AIDS Education, not Hysteria!", demanding a shift of the public fundings from gun making to AIDS researching, but mainly demanding the right to exist and be acknowledged as normal members of the population, in what seems to have been the last real global fight for common rights, the last real experience of community in the Western "civilized" countries.
Many things have changed since the 80s. And today, with the shifting of AIDS from death sentence to manageable chronic condition, one looks around and nobody is left on the streets. Nobody fights anymore. Living with HIV became living in silence. Because one doesn't die anymore; because the disease doesn't manifest itself visually on one's body anymore; because one lives with HIV and lives healthy. At least if one has a functioning NHS (UK) or a good health insurance (US).
However this new reality of AIDS as silence brings new problems that are shown by the exponential increase of new infections year after year, especially among young people (me included). So how to address these problems, how to help the HIV- keeping their status and the HIV+ making sense of themselves and of the new, dirty, "wrong" thing they carry inside, running in their veins, forever; a new thing that despite being dirty and "wrong" does not kill them but that nonetheless is there, it's here, it's real, and brings fear, doubt, and anxiety into everyday life.
These questions cannot be addressed by science. That's not its role. These questions must be addressed by the other side of culture, the one capable of dealing with uncertainties and possibilities, with realities that despite being unprovable are also full of truth; that other side of culture is Art. Art can save lives and Art can help us making sense of our lives. Art can kill loneliness.
So what happened to artists working with/on AIDS? Until the mid-90s they were many and had a very important role in the AIDS activism in the US: they helped people understanding that being HIV+ doesn't make you less, less worthy, less trustful, less beautiful, less alive. Many were the HIV+ artists that came out with their work and demanded recognition, something that ended up with the creation, in 1987 of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the "largest ongoing community arts project in the world", a memorial for all those artists that died of AIDS but that still live and fight the disease via their Art.
Richard Sawdon Smith,"Hear no Evil, See no Evil"
Today the reality is different: the AIDS Memorial Quilt grows slower and slower every year and Artistic responses to HIV seem to have become unfashionable, no longer the top of the tops, no longer important. More importantly, no longer sellable. How is it possible that people have decided to pretend that everything is OK now? It is true drugs are better and harm you less; it is true you don't need to die anymore; it is true that you won't probably need someone to care for you. But still.... is it fair? is it fair to be left by your own trying to make sense of yourself now that you know you are not like the others (even if you are!), now that every time you want to pull someone in a bar you have to think about the right moment to tell him/her "I am positive" and pray that his/her reaction will be "that's OK, I always play safe. And I still want to play with you."
So this is the reality today: AIDS Art in the US is disappearing; AIDS Art in the UK doesn't seem to exist (with a few exceptions, one of them, Richard Sawdon Smith, I met at this conference).
While in South Africa the National Gallery has a whole collection of AIDS art by
South African artists, while in the US conferences like this happen and artists are supported by Art and Health organizations (even if you need to lie to the authority so you can cross the border), while in Australia the Government has asked artists (both white and aboriginal) to help preventing AIDS with their work, while all of that happens there, here in the UK silence is the only thing you hear. A loud silence though. A silence that cannot be ignored. A silence that I want to break. 
Arts Admin
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