Whose aids?

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Whose aids? interrogates who is speaking about aids, who is listening, and who is hosting. In other words, who is owning aids. We ask these questions in two acts.

From 5:30 to 7:30 pm:

Insistence and Consistency: Lesbians and aids is a double bill of performances by Fefa Vila and Talya. Fefa will recount her experiences in LSD and La Radical Gai, two lesbian and faggot collectives practicing aids activism and publishing queer zines in Madrid in the 1990s. Talya will address her gender and HIV transitions from her radical trans lesbian experiences in Paris and beyond. Also, two paintings by Marnie Slater will be exhibited, which adapt the artwork on the walls of the former lesbian bar Le Madame, which was open in Brussels between 1981 and ’83. This double bill is only accessible to a chosen diverse audience of lesbians concerned with HIV and aids.

Book a free seat for Insistence and Consistency: Lesbians and aids if you identify as a lesbian concerned with HIV and aids by emailing viralmail@proton.me. You can register under any word or number of your choice. The team of “Aids, archives, and arts…” will add you to a participant list that they will check themselves on the event date. All correspondence on this matter will be deleted by December 17.

Alternatively, you can show up on December 14 from 5 pm. The remaining free tickets, at least 10, will be given on a first come first served basis.

Note that all seats for Insistence and Consistency: Lesbians and aids are reserved for lesbians concerned with HIV and aids. The full capacity is 100 people.

The performances will be in French, English, and Spanish; and whispered translation will be organized between participants.

From 8:30 to 10 pm:

We Need to Talk is the recording of a discussion on aids and resting between Emmanuel Cortés, Héloïse, nixie, and Raphaël Kalengayi Junior in conversation with a small audience. This recording marks the publication of a sofa which is a conversation starter on aids and rest because we need to talk. The recording will be aired on a local radio in 2024, and shared online by this project’s institutional partners.

60% of the seats for We Need to Talk (30 seats) are reserved for poz people, and for BIPOC, trans people and lesbians concerned with HIV and aids. The full capacity is 50 people.

If you identify as poz and/or a BIPOC, a trans person, and/or a lesbian concerned with HIV and aids, book a free seat for We Need to Talk by emailing viralmail@proton.me. You can register under any word or number of your choice. The team of “Aids, archives, and arts…” will add you to a participant list that they will check themselves on the event date. All correspondence on this matter will be deleted by December 17.

Anyone else can book a free seat for We Need to Talk by emailing tickets@kaaitheater.be.

The conversation will be held in English, and whispered translation will be organized between participants.

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A presentation committee has programmed Whose aids? as a tool to attempt at satisfying some of our desires for our future assemblies, as listed by our first assembly, which we held last summer at BUDA Kunstencentrum. More precisely: the desire to participate in communities of lesbians concerned with HIV and aids, and the desire to rest.

We are a group of people collaborating throughout 2023 under the name “Aids, archives, and arts assemblies in Belgium” and alongside the threefold question, “Who is listening, who is missing, and whose aids?” Our project is to host three intimate and self-organized assemblies in 2023, ’24, and ’25 between chosen diversities of people concerned with HIV and aids. The assemblies, with their self-contained audiences, are our artwork of choice, where we share inter-community knowledge, where we self-govern our project. In the past months, we also hosted other events with different audiences: residencies and workshops at Le Delta, erg: école de recherche graphique, and Sint Lucas Antwerpen; and an intimate arts festival by and for people concerned by HIV and aids programmed at La Bellone, which we titled aids, who?

Azahara Ubera Biedma, Castillo, Emmanuel Cortés, Fefa Vila, Héloïse, Joëlle Bacchetta, Marco Labellarte, Marnie Slater, Matteo Sedda, nino_uncut, nixie, Oscar Mathieu le Bussy, Raphaël Kalengayi Junior, Talya, Turi Cantero and others have collaborated in “Aids, archives, and arts...” in 2023.

We aim at devising processes to carry out projects on aids, archives, and arts made by and for people concerned with HIV and aids. We direct this project from our transfagbidyke and queer, poz, feminist, antiracist, materialist, and intersectional community health political agendas. It is coproduced with La Bellone, BUDA Kunstencentrum, Le Delta, erg: école de recherche graphique, Kaaitheater, and Sint Lucas Antwerpen, all of them in Belgium.