 Good evening everyone Hello, hello, my name is Lauren. I'm with the Brooklyn Museum and adult programs part of our education division So welcome to target first Saturday by a show of hands. Can I just see how many of you guys have been to first Saturdays before? Excellent, okay perfect. So, you know the drill. This is our night of free public programs and this month We're celebrating the special exhibition adjit prop which is on view on the fourth floor And we're really excited because we have a lot of fabulous artists whose work is actually on view in the show So after the talk, please do go up to the fourth floor and check out the work That's on view and stick around the rest of the night. We are programming until 10 p.m So we hope you'll join us. So without further ado, I'm really excited to introduce a great friend of the museums From visual aids Alex Vialo. He is the programs manager there and he'll be introducing our panelists for the night So please join me in welcoming Alex Hello and welcome. I'm Alex Fialo. I'm the programs manager of visual aids and thank you all for joining us tonight It's really exciting to see such a full audience I could not be more thrilled to introduce tonight's program women art aids and activism here then here now As many of you know visual aids promotes HIV awareness through the public through the visual arts Preserving the cultural contributions of those lost AIDS and supporting HIV positive artists because AIDS is not over We do so through public programs like this as well as exhibitions Publications screenings artist projects and more Tonight we have a powerhouse lineup of artists activists here to discuss both their art and their role in HIV AIDS activism I want to thank our panelists for their participation tonight as well as their ongoing commitment to HIV AIDS activism Joy Episola, Egypt, Lebeja, Kia Lebeja, Kerry Moyer, LJ Roberts, Sue Schaffner and Jessica Whipred We'll all be here tonight sharing their work and their art and their bios can be found in tonight's programs We're also here to highlight and contextualize visual aids latest series of placemark cards Which premiere in the Agile Prop exhibition upstairs the images are here on the right Placemark trading cards are an honest and straightforward approach to promote harm reduction HIV testing pre and post exposure prophylaxis and raise awareness around HIV AIDS Placemark features fun sexy and creative trading cards packaged with condoms and Lou The back of each trading card features information to help you play smart We're thrilled that this year set centers on women in HIV awareness And we owe a tremendous thank you to LJ Roberts for approaching us with the idea to make this and at this idea a reality And for the Brooklyn Museum curatorial team Particularly Catherine Morris, Jess Wilcox, Saisha Grayson and Stephanie Weisberg We're working with us to show the placemark cards and premiere them in the exhibition All three of the packs are on are available at the front At the table at the front so be sure to take some we'd love if there were none left and you all had them And they lived in the world We collaborated with an amazing group of women on this project to Nia Anderson Beverly Bland Boyd sin the third gene Foust Raina Gossett Kia LaBeija Alice O'Malley Elizabeth Marie Rivera Morgan Paige Jamie Q LJ Roberts Sue Schaffner Serena Serasco and Jessica Wipred It's really exciting to me to read that list of names and know how many perspectives went into making these cards Possible and with a really fantastic outcome Finally, I want to thank the Brooklyn Museum for Saturday's team, especially Lauren Zalaya for our ongoing collaboration The Brooklyn Museum feels like home thus far. They let us hang up all Jessica's banners this afternoon Which is really exciting for us and you'll hear more about that from Jessica herself And I want to thank the visual my visual aids colleagues Nelson Santos and Esther McGowan for all the important work that they do to make programs like this possible So without further ado, I will turn it over to our fantastic brilliant inspiring participants Who will come out now? Joya Pasala, Egypt LaBeija, Kia LaBeija, Kerry Moyer, LJ Roberts, Sue Schaffner and Jessica Wipred. Please welcome them to the stage Thank you all for coming to women art aids and activism here than here now I'm so thrilled to present to you a group of artists and activists doing groundbreaking work Their practices are diverse and dynamic and I'm thrilled to have them here and to call them collaborators Thank you to the Brooklyn Museum and the Sackler Center for Feminist Art for hosting this program and for their steadfast support in this project and Thank you to visual aids for continuously working to support art aids activism discourse and fun happen in New York City a Special thanks to Alex Fiello. You're the best teammate I could ever ask for I Wanted to give you some background on how the special edition of place mark in the question It was a very deliberate process filled with collaboration The project features women of trans cis and gender non-conforming experience that bring with them multiple and changing identities The project featuring 11 collaborators is also very intergenerational The eldest participant was born in 1953 in the oldest and in the youngest in 1990 with ages in between Dyke action machine who are Kerry and Sue sitting here A Collective in the first wave the exhibition of agit prop which you can view upstairs in the Sackler Nominated me to exhibit my work in the second wave. This is a huge privilege, and I'm so happy to be included in institutions It also felt critically important to bring it other people in Museums are typically a place of very disproportionate demographics when thinking about who and what I wanted to put forth in the third wave I had a few ideas But ultimately wanted to have an artist or collective that continued Kerry and Sue's amazing legacy of political feminist art that appeared both in and out of institutions Visual aids is doing provocative and critical work in New York City and beyond to foster a large amount of panels Exhibitions and events that open dialogues about the ongoing AIDS epidemic and to support artists living with HIV and preserve the legacies of those who have Passed away. I have deep respect for the work They do the community they create and the conversations they enable I wanted to bring them into agit prop an ongoing project of visual aids Has been their placemart series small packets that contain condoms loop and different cards that are given away at visual aids events and spaces throughout the city Probably saw them up front The cards have a pinup on one side and facts or information usually about prevention and testing on the other Visual aids have produced five editions of placemarts so far But I've wanted to see a placemart that centered women for a really long time Too often women in trans and gender not conforming people and their health concerned are sidelined when it comes to the ongoing AIDS epidemic And pretty much everywhere else if we're going to be real about women's health Like let me tell you how hard it is to get an appointment at Beth Israel where there's like an amazing trans provider that you feel comfortable with who's Kick-ass and wonderful, but it takes a while to get that appointment As a prop provided an opportunity to create a project that would be Part of the exhibition but also circulates knowledge art and activism through the world. It has safer sex tools This version had an internal condom an external condom and Louvain so the in the internal condom is a new addition and Circles back to collectives like dig action machine plastered their art in the street as an act of political visibility in the 1990s Furthermore the project presented the opportunity to assemble an exceptional group of artist collaborators who impact their community and beyond The artists and activist collaborators featured on the cards are Beverly Bland Boydson the third Keele of Asia Raina Gossett Serena of Sarisical and Jessica with bread artists collaborators Alice O'Malley and Sue Schaffner and Jamie Q Provided some of the photography Additionally the artworks of Keele and Jessica are featured on four of the nine cards and Kia's work is on the brochure for tonight beautiful These women are a very fierce and badass group each of every one of them is an artist and activist though Their work in areas of focus are powerfully and wonderfully different All of them bring multiple and an intersectional identities into their work And it felt important to have images of women on the cards as previously play smarts Packets featured pinups of men Interestingly the project features five images of women trans is and gender not conforming and this echoes the poster upstairs of carry ensues The information on the back of the cards addresses prevention and testing information Specifically for women of trans experience and the connections between reproductive justice and HIV AIDS The packets celebrate desire and very are importantly are resolutely sex positive We worked with Elizabeth Marie Rivera who did the graphic design for the cards and Jean Fouss who decide who designed the poster displayed in the exhibition collaborators also included Morgan Page and Tanya Anderson Part of the motive motivation for the project was to get as many women into the museum as I could and to get them all paid Artists should be paid and I wanted to throw off the disparities of who gets paid for their work and who doesn't Thank you so much again for coming tonight And I hope you enjoy tonight's program and please go upstairs and view the project in the exhibition and grab a packet Hello All right, where are my slides? That's me. That's me too. Oh, that's my key. Hear me. Is this on? Yeah. Okay. Hi And I'm excited to be here. I flew in from Toronto Decided to also make a hot romantic weekend. Hi, Jamie Jamie is also here and it's shy and oh, no, I'm gonna get in trouble later, but that's okay They helped to take the photos of me and I appreciate that That one It's not a solo solo project. Um, okay, so I'm Jessica and Basically everything I do is a collaboration I'm an artist an activist or researcher a UN delegate whatever you want to call me in order for you to be able to listen to me and I'm that so it is true I will be at the HIV it's high-level meeting at the UN later this week if you knew that what's happening I'm talking to the government people and stuff, but this is also what I do in parallel I Am really interested in ways to make dialogue and have really difficult conversations with people most impacted and trying to Have those conversations with people who Might not always get it. So I brought up these two slides one of them being I make banners activist banners that of Obviously merge aren't in activism with Different people. I host them publicly in places. This was at the HIV is not a crime a Training in Alabama where all this real fucked up shit I was hearing about HIV criminalization laws, especially in the US where people are getting charged for sneezing Imagine you're not even you're like, yeah, so I'm like sneezing Because they're living with HIV spitting Just all that stuff. So anyway, we in this workshop We got together I brought many of the banners here and we were able to talk about it and arts really Creates an amazing space to talk through some of the hard issues and Ted who was there It didn't we didn't think it was going to be the smoothest event as most of them start off They're like what issues impact you the most and people say like really? Privileged stuff and haven't really worked through all those pieces yet But while collaborating and doing a piece together They were able to talk through all those really hard stuff. So What also happens with the work I do is it's not just like, okay, we're gonna leave it It's like, hey, what do we want to do with it? So these banners in particular are going to be used in protests in South Africa during the AIDS conference and They're here tonight many of them such as awareness is shitty by Ted Kerr and Yeah, and they they move places and I think that's really important for us to do things as a community and have them be brought out into the world So I also make them myself and most of the time They're used in political protests the one outside that says HIV is not a crime It's profiteering is was actually done in Vancouver because there was an epidemiologist who was making quite a lot of money off researching pause folks but on the flip side was also testing in criminalization cases against people living with HIV so me and a number of Ladies who participated in another tea time project. We had a tea party We thought about it and we stood about 50 of us in the back of his lecture at this very fancy Meeting and from that he lost all of his contracts What I tried to do I guess next slide the other piece of my work is so it's it's Putting putting these words into action so I make the banners But I also like my whole life since I've been 20 I've been living with HIV my whole sexual life pretty much and there's a lack of representation of Super sexy pause ladies It's it's mostly around women Having and birthing of the children which I'm also going to experience soon, but but that's like 15 years later But but that will still be a sex positive experience because that's also possible So so the play smart series was super important to me because I have been dreaming and asking to be on a play smart card to just show that and one of the cards I actually did With Jamie was actually showing the desirability. It's not just like yeah, I look hot. Yes, sure I'm like half naked in my bed Welcome come But it was also like oh now there's someone touching me and touching me like under my clothes You know and and I felt like that was really and has been really important for me and Through the work I do. So I'm super honored to be on this panel I'm sure my five minutes is up And I will leave it to you Hello, how you doing? Okay, um, my name is Egypt. I love Asia. This is a trailer about a short movie called happy birthday Marsha It is a film about the legendary transgender activists and artists Marsha pay it no mind Johnson And her life in the hours before the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City And I had the pleasure of being in this In case you didn't get the message but I can see you did because you all are the message We have someone here that's gonna sum it all up to you again of this year Ireland She's the saint of Christopher Street. It's gonna be legendary It's Miss Marsha Johnson, okay, so that film was long and hard to get together Because it's so effective people that really did not know Marsha were doing the Stonewall Riot movies, but they didn't talk about the person who actually Started a Stonewall riot So when they asked me to do it it was a it was a privilege to me to do it Like I said, my name is Egypt love Asia I am a ballroom queen a show girl As you see and I am at the former Coordinator for trans justice at the orgy Lord project at the other Lord project we Had a lot of obstacles to obstacles to go through to make sure that trans women Get proper care proper rights one of our major campaigns was HRA in Discrimination on trans and gender non-conforming people So it took nine years Back and forth where they kept saying no, it's not a problem Finally they said yes, there's a problem. So we had to come with a policy That they had to follow to conform to trans people and Me my and amongst other people actually had to train HRA How to treat trans and gender non-conforming people it wasn't easy because some people How can I put it in a nice way or just big it You know, they don't realize their job is to help you and if your name is This this you call if I'm a she you call me she do not call me out of my comfort zone So finally that went to play and we started with Hossa and now we have started training regular HRA So how to treat Trans and did not conforming people I Am very honored to be here today with all of these ladies up here. This is an amazing Panel and what what we do is not easy work You know a lot of people on the outside just think you know We just go up and we do this and we say that it's not easy every event that goes on takes Months and months of planning it takes a lot of resources and it takes people like you to show up and we appreciate that and It's not This is just the beginning what we do is just beginning we all and I'm so sure some of you out there have a lot of things bless you We have a lot of things that we want to do and that we are going to do as far as helping women is that my time Okay, so like I said, you know, I am the former coordinator for trans justice I will always be a part of trans justice and on Friday, June 24th is trans day of action And it is from three to six in Washington Square Park Does everyone know what that is? Google it you'll find it and thank you so much my guys. I love you and can't wait to see you Three images I'm gonna talk about On the top is from the political funeral of AIDS activist Tim Bailey Which took place in Washington, DC on July 1st 1993 The Mary's which was an affinity group of act up the AIDS Coalition to unleash power carried out three political funerals between 1992 and 1993 and these funerals of Part of the inspiration was from David Runner-Rowich's book Close to the Knives Which has that very famous passage that I I'm not gonna be able to completely quote But it was every time someone dies for maids. I wish that their friends and lovers Would drive a car a hundred miles an hour and throw their body over the White House fence and Because by this point we had been losing so many people Going to a memorial service just wasn't cutting it not that That was a very respectful way to go about things But it wasn't a way to make the world understand what was really going on and it was like being in a war zone So the second funeral this was for Tim and he was a menswear designer for Prussia fields And he was 35 years old the top right image Is an artwork of mine. It's called aerial view three From 2015 and it's an installation with a thin sheet of plex glass that rests atop a Stack one of them being a large photograph raw canvas Styrofoam sheeting and Styrofoam packing blocks and Then the image on the bottom is by fierce pussy the queer art collective that I've been involved with since its beginning in 1991 This project was called for the record and it was a printed broadside. It was sponsored by visual aids for worlds a day 2013 and it was installed in printed manner the bookstore in Chelsea has now moved And there were piles of the broadsides in the windows for people to take for free For the record grew out of a piece that pierce pierce pussy had done at Y columns in 2010 The exhibition was called act up New York activism art and the AIDS crisis 1987 to 1993 the title of fierce pussy's piece was called get up everybody and sing and First pussy can see to the piece as a bridge between then and now So looking at these three images. I'm reminded of a variety of things How my work is multi-platformed layered slow it considers the social environment and the site How even after 23 years I Still have difficulty looking at my friend Tim is coffin How we wanted to fulfill Tim's wish to have a funeral Percession from the capitals reflecting pool to the front of the White House, but we never made it out of the parking lot Because we as we drove in we were surrounded by police and riot gear the CIA the FBI and the park police But we did make it into the New York Times and the How the photogram installation aerial three in this iteration seems to slide in space as if it landed there Like Dorothy's house after a tornado How so many AIDS activists protected Tim's body that day How knowing and working with three fierce people Nancy Brooks Brody Zoe Leonard and Carrie Emma Oka Collectively for over 25 years as artists and activists is a gift When you hit it, it's a shared experience When you fail, it's a shared experience And that's in contrast to my solitary studio practice How I continue to try to push the boundaries between photography and sculpture How all three images are of a performative nature and in gesture and certain words came to mind alchemy Temporality and transformation How even in death Tim wished to transform his body into a political statement about the AIDS crisis in the United States How desperate the times were and how the public needed to know How that day felt like I crossed over never to return to the way things were before How in the photographs I am attempting to recreate the sea and The illusion of distance using silver gelatin photo paper in constant motion submerged with underwater with salt and suffocating foam subject to time light and photochemistry Transforming matter into a singular image that might look like the ocean from the sky How aerial view three is never installed in the same way twice How my art practice transforms my life and vice versa how all three images depict a moment in time How as a witness I have a responsibility to tell what happened How if he were alive today, he'd still be living Hello, everyone. We're digaction. We're a digaction machine We as the old people on the panel with the joy we're gonna talk about I was thinking of 1991 that's why I'm saying that That I guess one of the Things that we wanted to talk about as we're here is how Digaction machine the two of us began We were in queer nation together and as ostensibly as an organization that was supposed to be for queers meaning Everything men women lesbians gay men the lesbians found themselves without a voice So digaction machine was born Which was a much larger group within a year Sue and I were making adjaprop together just to give you a sort of quick Background on it. Do you want to talk about this? This is a campaign that was done in 98 basically the way we operated as we rift on what was going on at the time in terms of advertising and This was the year that Ralph Loren was really starting to feature red white and blue which Which he still does hey the works don't fix it and Also, we were taking our cue from WPA excuse me WPA posters And we have this message that the lesbian would be this kind of very earnest Authority that could really just tell it how it is and Not only the lesbian the butch lesbian. All right an important clarification the authentic American Did just to back up slightly just to give a context I mean one of the reasons that Sue and I became involved with doing activism was because we were sort of swept up in What was going on in the gay community around act up around queer nation? this idea that We as artists as people who worked in commercial design could bring all those tools To promote a kind of lesbian visibility, which at the time we didn't fully understand how that would operate I mean now it's like yeah, there's a lesbian on TV. Whatever, right? So it's like this idea that visibility itself is going to be this gateway to Tolerance and acceptance was a very complicated journey through Dicaction machine, and I think it's interesting to see the things that have come out I mean in a way to look at all these banners and stuff here. It's like everything is gone from being very Glitzy and sort of advertising oriented to these sort of handmade banners. So we're becoming neo Luddites I guess Which could be part of the future Sue also shot something for the play smart cards. Do you want to talk about those? We have the next slide So This is the play smart card that I shot LJ got in touch with me and she had this idea of Excuse me of getting This idea that we could make it kind of have a full circle and once That idea was putting me I was like, oh my god I want to do it, but then I couldn't do it and then last minute we decided it was going to be a rainy day Actually, this was supposed to be like a wet t-shirt kind of thing. We were gonna do but we ended up shooting her on a black background and That's me shooting her there But bottom line The idea I liked about this is that Serena is one of the only Asian American In the in the fire department. You can't there's no is there another one? No, she's it She's the only one you can't get more marginalized than that and digax machine has a history a rich history of shooting and Highlighting the marginalized Lesbian butch lesbian whatever it is That was kind of like our specialty. So this idea that that LJ asked me to do this was really quite an honor and only 11 with at least only 51 women in 11,000 firefighters in New York City Yeah, it's worth gasping about One Asian American woman in the entire New York City Fire Department, so And my idea was to make her look really hot Totally succeeded it it wasn't hard I also got to hold the helmet during this shoot which was Possibly one of my favorite. It's like a new part of my artist practice is being able to hold helmets and Props during lesbian and dyke pin-up shoots any time Whatever I'm working on you were an awesome assistant. I'm just gonna say that And producer and just to sort of sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah To just to contextualize this a little bit more and maybe for some of the younger people here The idea behind a lot of this work including the stuff that fierce pussy did was this notion that We needed to see ourselves in public and that was not happening at that time We were not part of mainstream visual culture. We were not being Advertised to if you take that as a mark of being present in American culture Or maybe it's a good thing. I don't know. I mean so again this raises all these interesting questions about What would we look like and how would we look in a way that other people who are not queer could recognize us? So that was a very important part of how this thing operated and if you want to see more There's another campaign upstairs of the Do you love the dyke in your life? Which was based on the marky mark underwear Calvin Klein ad campaign? It's it's only covering an enormous wall Upstairs, so you might see it. Yeah, you might see it as you walk in Underneath the banner that says failure is impossible which is kind of amazing The the suffragist banner, so thank you so hard to follow all of that It's really astounding for me to sit up here because I Discovered dyke action machine and fierce pussy as a college student. So we're Dating myself circa two thousand and I didn't even want to be an artist when I was an undergrad and it was really a Gateway for me to understand to understanding how art and activism could Increase a lot of visibility and could make a really big difference a tangible difference so it's it's astounding to be here with you all and then With Egypt and Jessica and Kia feel like I show up like all of your events because I'm so hungry to see the work that you do all the time like I'm such a total fan boy, but And and the transmarts of action has always been a really important thing in my life and really empowering and Seeing Jessica's banners and going to your events and always seeing Kia dance and then also Kind of interviewing you and I you can say no if you don't talk about this, but Kia reading Kia's Writing lately on our aides America and and everything that you've gone through with that has really Was super influential in trying to shape this project Thank you, and it was so eloquent to see how you handled all of that So I wanted to pose one question and then we're going to open it up To ask you all how did you come to merge your art with your activism? what was the genesis of that and how has it evolved in your practices and Where do you plan on taking it in the future and and part of that also goes into all of you have some such diverse practices because You know both of you did all of this adjunct prop, but you're working in really different mediums now and Kia does photography and dances and also it speaks out and these really beautiful ways and Egypt is acting and Also organizing and Jessica is throwing. I don't know if you want to call it social practice We've had talks about that term and and our feelings about it But to talk about the diverse practices and and how they merge with your art and activism and how that begun and Where it's going Maybe I'll start because I didn't say anything I mean, I said a lot of things Body language I Really first started kind of making this work when I met visual aids when we started working together, which was kind of happened by Chance or by the universe brought us together because as someone who was born HIV positive And I lost my mom when I was 14. I didn't have like a lot of space and room to talk About it for a very very very long time and then by chance. I met Jessica at one of her Maybe social practices or one of her art gatherings In this amazing project called tea time where she brings women living with HIV together to have tea parties Which is so fab and fun And it was the first time I had met another woman living with HIV in Since my mom passed Like I think at that point it was like nine years or something crazy like that and I started my series one of the my piece that I had up is called 11 Which is the most recent piece of my series and I wanted to create Artwork that Talks about my own experience living with HIV in a way that I can present it as something beautiful something How I see my life living with HIV in this kind of fantasy world So it doesn't have to be so scary. It doesn't have to be sad or limiting in any kind of way It can be you know, just it can be beautiful, you know, and I can be beautiful Inside and out because what's inside of me is not a biological weapon. Hello So it's been really really wonderful and especially with you know movement and dance and Vogueing, you know vogueing is a practice that literally comes from posing in magazines So the two kind of correlate very very well together And I think of myself in myself portraits as Stancing as vogueing as posing, you know for myself because I take pictures myself But yeah, it's been a really amazing experience To share that with everybody you want to move this way or just Jump in y'all. Yeah jump in well, I'll go I guess I Came to Activism because I graduated from art school as a painter and was completely freaked out by the art world and didn't think I would have a place there and Was also living in the middle of the AIDS crisis and Also coming out. I mean I was out in high school, but I was wasn't an activist or I didn't have a community so just sort of getting my sea legs in terms of being part of Lesbian and gay culture and So that was basically what drew me to go to act up Actions and Lesbian Avengers and a lot of the things that came out of that Irish lesbian and gay organization that protested the St. Patrick's Day parade for many years. So to me that became the sort of location for my Art energy and I was really interested in people like Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer, which who were very important at the time in terms of combining text and I was earning my living making Graphic design and so all there was a kind of synergy with all of this stuff And then Sue and I sort of collaborated for How many 18 years something very long We started in 1991 and we our last thing was in 2008 17 years So and we still do things occasionally together, but I sense have become mostly a painter and I write a lot and I feel like my activist energy goes into teaching now I teach at Hunter and I'm just really interested in Creating a space for students who Want to be artists, but who are not very entitled so And in whatever way that means class gender race so that's I feel like that's really this heart of Where all that energy has gone that's not in my painting so yeah, I think I got Involved in activism because I I've always sort of been interested in this idea and me and Kerry have sort of argued over this idea over the years about can you be ironic and also be radical and In the 90s, I would say yes We could be ironic and it was really radical to like have this idea of that we were like these lesbian consumers In advertising and that we were this the lesbian advertising agency That seemed very ironic and radical Now what how many I don't know lesbian advertising agencies are there. I mean who isn't I know one So I think that is really kind of a genesis of where I was coming from I like I really was interested in this idea of irony of taking this what we basically do is culture jamming taking this Corporate space or the space that's normally occupied by corporate media and inserting and an ironic slash political activist message Now I feel like there are other why other ways to be Radical that are a lot more powerful I Don't know how many radical things I'm doing right now sometimes I I feel like just indoctrinating young people in some way I Think that can be powerful Sometimes I just have to say like things like money can't buy you love and I feel like that is radical I work in construction management right now, so I feel like that's a really powerful thing to say But Definitely my my early years are definitely influenced by this idea this kind of like ideal view of irony and and being radical I'm like minded people. I was involved with anti-war stuff abortion rights and anti-nuclear stuff The gay ballot that was on in in California I was there on Harvey milk shot, so I don't know just seem like part of my DNA in a way And then when I found My father had died actually and this is like 89 and my dad taught me a lot about people and Just He was a very giving kind of person and I think he Made me understand what it is to be human So When I found this person I was I had a magazine job Doing paste-up mechanical at Eldacor magazine. It was right after my dad died I lost my job and I was coming back into the workforce again and I Met this guy Jim Baggett and I'd go in his cubicle and we'd smoke cigarettes together because these crazy French guys ran Eldacor at the time and they liked to they were real sadistic They like to keep us there to two three o'clock in the morning to move something on the board by a point You know really crazy stuff So James and I would hang out and you know, we got to talking we got friendly And I'd always look around his cubicle and he'd have all these stickers up that said silence equals death Act up And so I started asking him about it And he said oh, you know, I'm gonna take you to a meeting and at that point Act up had now moved from the center and it was meeting at the Great Hall at Cooper Union and He belonged to this so within act up there were smaller groups affinity groups and the group that James Was a member of was the Marys and so he brought me to this humongous Orditorium with tons of people like the size of this but maybe three times the size of this and that many people was huge and I Thought it was like this wild Beehive of people and I sat down I sat down with the Marys and I Never you know, that was it. I felt like I'd found my family and It all just made sense to me and so it just started there and this group of people The thing about your affinity group was that you knew that you had each other's backs and that was a very That was that was like family And so it kept it kept the whole thing real the way and The thing that happened simultaneously is that a number of women that I'd met and act up as We were working in the trenches We decided that we wanted to talk about lesbian visibility and so a number of us met at someone's house And it was really low-tech. We had no money And we would the first thing we did was we made these lists of every single word that a lesbian was called That was sort of derogatory and it would say I'm a I am You know muff diver Amazon lesbian feminist You know queer pervert and proud And we had three of these and they were like on the typewriter. So Carrie Amoka was here. We were both at the Condi Nast. And so actually Condi Nast paid for much And act ups posters because we stayed late after work and run everything off And that's how we you know that that was where it came from. So anyway long story short We would blow up these little you know Timing things a number of times on the Xerox machine and we'd get to a 11 by 17 and then we Call another meeting to go out and we'd paste and you'd have like somebody who'd watch the street And then you'd we paste up on the street and Then you could do it in those days because it wasn't illegal yet until Giuliani came in That changed the you know the landscape and then the next project we did was our baby pictures and that was pretty much something so you had these very sweet children Which was us at that time? One was Jean-Carlo Musto, which might be someone that a lot of people know it was her in this little Dress that had little cherries on it And those were also we paste on the street. We got a lot of responses from that So, you know, we did the lower side we go up on the upper side, you know, whatever and So all that stuff you used a word before parallel and I think that's really accurate That's how I feel as well is that a lot of things are running in parallel and it's very hard to Decide that you know, this is this and this is the cubby holding doesn't work for me I think a lot of what I've done over the years has influenced My artwork isn't you know, it's it all plays back and forth It's all happening at the same time and I have to say that in those really dark years of you know late 80s and early 90s when It I mean it was just imaginable I Think Maxine Wolf who was a member of act up I think she counted that we did something like I don't know 500 Demonstrations in one year, so you figure out the math as to how that might have played out And so you were doing that, you know, you were going to demonstration you were going to an active meeting We're gonna first pussy meeting. We're going out we pasting Maybe I was in my studio then you started visiting somebody in the hospital and you were taking care of them And I see Maxine Wolf I Feel like all of us know someone or have done this thing where we like the analog copy machine made a huge Like I'm dying to get my hands on a copy machine and like to have that. It's really a great tool But there is something you can use which is that King goes Because We did a project called gutter that we started actually at the lesbian her story archives and It's a big plan or machine like people do their Architectural plans on it black and white so it can blow it up and you can kind of do some things Hi again, how you doing? Okay, let's see my thing actually started Seven years ago in 2009 when I became a student. I was a student at the first Transjustice community school and This school taught me that to think outside the box and think outside the box meet to me meant The system is set up to keep you in this circle so you can't do what you need to do for you and your comrades The school taught me to Say I'm finding a crack somewhere and I'm getting out It taught me to have a voice it taught me to be strong it taught me To know that I can make a difference in my life in someone else's life and When I started realizing that I could actually make a difference It became contagious Because when you see that you can say something to help somebody Because you in that situation or you know someone in that situation and you know how to get them out of it I always tell anybody it's that thing that they have in the subway if you see something say something It's the same in everyday life If someone is treating you wrong or someone wrong Speak up say something because that can actually help them even save their lives I Became so involved in helping people even when I resigned from The original project I had people call me and tell me My caseworker won't change my name. My caseworker won't change my gender marker So what would I do is because I'm that kind of girl. I would say when is your next appointment? I'm going with you So because I know the policy I make sure I have a copy so I can give it to the worker just in case they didn't read it and I would go in they would say well, who are you? Well This is my client right now and you are not doing your job. Here is the policy read it and We just didn't have anything to discuss. Well, I don't know if I can do it So the next best thing is I don't want to talk to you anymore. I want your supervisor People don't not like when you say I want to speak to your supervisor Because now they have to deal with the stuff after it's all over it So the long story short is I Today I still go with people to their centers to get their name and agenda marker change Which shouldn't make any sense, but if you call me I'll be there It's funny how when you're just listening you totally forget the question So I mean art activism so um I think that I I Made this really cool promise to myself when I was diagnosed because it was it was around New Year's Very fun Christmas as you can imagine So I was waiting all Christmas and then so it was a New Year, so A promise I had made to myself was anything I want to do in life. I'm gonna do it and I Really held that true Sometimes like if I'm gonna make some wild decision to like not get on a plane and stay for a romance somewhere else I'll just close my eyes and I'm like anything I want to do in my life. I'm gonna do it I'm like I'm not getting on the plane and it's very dramatic and lovely But I think that I identified first as being an activist and Working with artists and in the arts community It wasn't actually till visual aids was basically like you're doing art and I'm like well No, it's just like stuff I make and they're like That's art and your your parties are social practice and that's art and you curate things and You're part of that community too, and I was like oh, I'm shy to use such words Cuz let's face it our community Judgey So nice either so it's fine Anyway, so Yeah, I think when it came to representation as I was talking about before and that we've also heard is that like it Socked being like 20 I wanted to be a sex educator, and I was like how can I be a sex educator if I don't even have sex? and so I was like My whole thing is like, okay Well, I gotta like make this world for myself because I didn't see it and identifying as a queer woman The queer community lesbian community was not so welcoming To to pause women Not saying all but I didn't find it I didn't I didn't see it like I didn't feel safe to go to the back house and play like everyone else did I didn't I didn't I don't know those spaces like someone's like no come to this like play party. I'm like, are you joking me? scary but then But then I'm just like kind of now part of my practice is like carving out that space and being able to be there and be present and whether it's like Having dance parties in my underwear. I want to Create that world that I didn't see and It's been successful And But but it doesn't mean that it's it's not Hard at the same time and I think that this is Something that I've been thinking about lots and sorry if I'm going on a slight tangent, but I think it's really important I think I think you said it about how hard the work can be and and it's actually super super lonely too Being the not the front person but putting yourself out there all the time is it may seem kind of easy It's it totally sucks and and actually we've we've seen in our communities a lot of people that Very much struggle with mental health and stuff and one thing that I've been thinking about a lot lately is that like Everyone that I've ever known that died of AIDS has been suicide and that's a very different reality Then then previously and I think that's something that we need to like talk about I think about my own mental health a lot And and that of my friends and people who especially have been Activists and you know getting yelled back at all the time Hard to take Yeah, so I'm excited to hear all of your questions that you're gonna ask us And I'll just leave that for you to think about We want to open the floor We have mics in the audience for folks who have questions and we have about Eight minutes for questions, so we'll take a few if you could step to the aisle if you're gonna ask a question Hi, everyone. I was just wondering. Oh There you are on the stage What role do you think art has to carve out new realities and kind of create spaces where? Being positive or being queer are looked at in really different ways. How does art? Do that to talk about a project that fierce pussy just did It's gonna be it's in art form right now But it has no attribute as being from and it's actually a transmission From the future to 2016 We're gonna try and get it out there in different ways because that's just not the best way but it's one way and What I think is really interesting about it is that We've been talking a lot about how There's a lot of things that are very negative right right now What if One could think about things for how you really want it to be and That was the rubric you were looking through as a way to address people And that's basically how this you know this piece is about but I think that's somehow in mix You know and you use everything you have right at your disposal But you know how to do to make that happen And so I think that that might I don't know that answers your question, but that's what comes my mind I Think one thing that art does is that it creates community first it creates visibility visibility because You know we as human beings the way we process things is through what we see you know imagery you know And in making visibility for yourself you can carve spaces like Because Jessica carved a space and because she was visible to me and I could see her and she could see me She invited me into her community and I was able to create more community amongst myself And that is you know one of the things that I treasure so much about you know our personal relationship is that she actually Had already been building the space because she made that promise to herself You know and I made a promise to myself too that I would find it you know and by chance the universe brought it to me so And I you know through my own Artistic practice and being so visible myself. I've been able to draw more people to me And all of a sudden now I have this community. I mean look at all the amazing people that I'm sitting with right now Talking to you about something that before I was very very secretive and kind of silenced and not really you know Not really talked about so I think that is really the biggest way in my mind that Art can create this kind of community and carving out spaces for each other. I just want to Challenge you on the question actually because I feel that the art world is a place that actually fetishizes gay people queer people and so It's not I mean to as somebody who's been around this for a really long time I feel like Because it's called art. It's this place where anybody can say what they want and it's protected and it basically has no Impact in a way on the outer world because it's art So to me the real challenge is changing that dynamic So I mean I don't I feel like I'm very happy to be an artist. I'm happy that I did activist art but I feel like we're in a much different moment now in terms of Where we're at where younger people are in terms of their own identity, it's like we came up We didn't have the support as young people I mean and they're not to say that everybody has it but the terms are really really different now and there are a lot of Older gay artists who are supporting and mentoring younger artists So it's a really different world and I and I really encourage people to rethink this as a As a location to just describe your own personal identity and find a community I feel like it needs to be bigger than that That's sorry. I'm being the Debbie Downer right now, but How do we do that? I? Think it's I mean to me it's as much about class and all this other stuff that's going on in this country I feel like art the art world is this very privileged location and Yeah, I don't have any answer. I just feel like having watched how Identity has operated in the art world for 25 years You know, I mean it's yeah, I'm not going to dig myself any deeper, but I Wanted to take Jessica's bait about Thinking about mental illness and what it looks like to die from AIDS related complications now It made me think of the Grand Fury piece that's up in the Agile crop Exhibition women don't get HIV. They just die from it. It was born of women's HIV related symptoms not being classified In the like AIDS diagnosis list and there was like a movement to get women's symptoms Considered part of it like categorized as something that could qualify for an AIDS diagnosis and get them access to services treatment Medication, so I guess my question back is just what does it look like like what do we need to add to the list? of like what it looks like to live with HIV Struggle with HIV now like what is not being like what is part of the experience of women or people living with HIV now that's not seen as part of the struggle There's a long list I think I don't know it's it's Challenging I think about all the women I know I'm trying to keep it more in like a like a local context because I do lots of global work I actually work for the international community of women living with HIV in the global office So I work a lot in Eastern Europe and Central Asia the Caribbean as well as the With young women and girls all around the world But I think and it's very different in different places and spaces like for instance prep That is not a conversation that happens in other places That is really part of a conversation that happens here with certain people It takes up a lot of space, but it's it's Impact is tiny But when it comes to side effects Where are you? Hi When it comes to side effects I hear The way that especially women's bodies are treated is really different. So If there's a lot of weight gain, then it's like well, you just need to do a sit-up. That's not a side effect some hair loss you know or Fat redistribution still happens in a lot of women's bodies, but it's it's blamed a lot of times on on women for being Deficiency in them As if if you gained 40 pounds as my friend did in two months, that's from not doing enough sit-ups So I think that's something that needs to be talked about and a lot of women. I know they've actually Don't take their medication. They don't want to and they're also the same women that do adherence workshops and Our leaders in the community talking about come on take your meds every day guys You can do it which once again when talking about activists in the movement That's the double life some of us lead myself included I think another issue that's not talked about is around reproductive rights forced-in-course sterilization, especially globally of Those are able to bear children It's a thing that happens and there are very active court cases that are happening now and Namibia Kenya, I didn't keep it local Thailand and so on and these are Also, there have been cases of more domestic that people don't talk about Especially doctors telling people not to do it and around breastfeeding People can be babies taken away locked up even if there's like no transmission The power dynamic I'm talking too long, but the power dynamics that exists especially in the gender disparities Around HIV criminalization more broadly are really scary condom negotiation if condoms are used It's not so easy when you're gonna fuck someone to be like hey Can you put on a condom? It's actually not your decision if you're sleeping with someone who? That would be one of the tools Yeah, anything else Yeah, I think there's a lot of things that we don't talk about especially, you know Women's mental health in terms of living with HIV and especially side effects because you know as as women We already face a lot being in the world and we are already criticized so Much and have been criticized and will be criticized so much about how we look how we dress what we think And all these different types of things and then when you add something like HIV to it Which you know can make you feel unpretty, you know because the society tells you that okay? There are all these modes of transmission in which you know someone becomes HIV positive that you know are like like very What's the word I'm looking for a word Someone give me a word That are like dirty or nasty or stigmatized, but there's like that's a better word for that You know what I'm saying like people are like oh you got it because you were using dirty needles Or you were having promiscuous or you know all these kinds of things Yes, very very shameful and even the kind of language that we use You know people are afraid to get tested because of things like you know someone coming in being like Oh, well, you know you're clean or you're dirty, you know all these kinds of words and you know side effects are incredibly incredibly Harsh on women's bodies particularly, you know, we don't talk about you know Everything that comes with taking very violent medications every day every single day, you know what that looks like What that feels like there was something else I wanted to say It's very very very hard to take it every single day, you know, I am I Went to go do jury duty It was awful. I went to go serve jury duty and They were like, you know, if you if you don't think you can serve you can you know You can go and you can leave so I went to the office and as like I Am very nauseous right now. I need to leave because it's 9 a.m It's very hard for me to get up in the morning because I take my medication at night So it's very hard for me to get up in the morning without feeling dizzy and tired and nauseous and all these things And I went to my doctor and I was like can you write me a note for jury duty and she was like no problem She's like, I'm gonna write like a really serious note so that they never Ever call you again. Is that okay? And I was like, yeah, tell them everything tell them that you know I have like diarrhea You know vomiting all the time like do whatever you have to do to do that But in the letter, I read the very end and it says that you know Kia will have to take this medication for the rest of her life and That kind of hit me really hard when I read it. I was like, oh my god, you're right I've been taking this for my entire life and until They present us with the cure because I'm sure they already got it somewhere locked up You know, this is this is what life looks like for us, you know, and there's not enough conversation There's not enough visibility and there's you know there's not enough Awareness of the things that we go through as women and Another thing is is violence, you know violence is a big part of it, too You know a lot of women become HIV positive because of domestic violence because of you know They're partners because of rapes all these kind of things that we don't talk about because we're so Scared or it's so shameful or stigmatized So that's why things like this are very very important, you know conversations like this that we're having in these kind of very big Spaces institutions are so important because you know, we can finally be together Which is not very often because we don't get as much funding and we don't get as much, you know Platforms, you know to actually be together and talk about what's important and what we need to see change That's our event. Thank you all so much for coming And let's give one more round of applause for the fantastic folks Thank you to the Brooklyn Museum for having us. Please grab play smart cards on your way out check out agile prop on the fourth floor and Hope to see you again soon Can I make an announcement? So there's a couple events that are happening this week on Monday at Cooper Union There's a screening and discussion on the the film called consent. It's about sexual assault law being used In HIV non disclosure cases and how that impacts women. It's a very very interesting Conversation around feminism and HIV so please comments from six till nine Yeah, come to that one Cooper Union Monday night and there'll be snacks