Day With(out) Art 2021: ENDURING CARE

Screening on the 32nd-annual Day With(out) Art, the program features newly commissioned work by Katherine Cheairs, Cristóbal Guerra, Danny Kilbride, Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad and Uriah Bussey, Beto Pérez, Steed Taylor, and J Triangular and the Women’s Video Support Project.

From histories of harm reduction and prison activism to the long-term effects of HIV medication, ENDURING CARE centers stories of collective support, mutual aid, and solidarity while pointing to the negligence of governments and nonprofits. The program’s title suggests a dual meaning, honoring the perseverance and commitment of care workers yet also addressing the potential for harm from medications and healthcare providers. ENDURING CARE disrupts the assumption that an epidemic can be solved with pharmaceuticals alone, recasting community work as a lasting form of medicine. (approx. 60 mins., DCP)

The Wex is excited to partner with the graduate student organization Cinéseries for this year’s presentation of Day With(out) Art. Please join us after the screening for an informal discussion of the program, open to all audience members.

Program lineup

Voices at the Gate
(Katherine Cheairs, 2021, 7:75 mins.)

Voices at the Gate juxtaposes the bucolic landscapes inhabited by women’s prisons with archival and contemporary audio recordings of poems, essays, and interviews produced by women of color in the early 1990s at the intersection of incarceration and HIV and AIDS activism.

Nobleza(s) de sangre
(Cristóbal Guerra, 2021, 10:24 mins.)

Two fragmented interviews with artists living with HIV in Puerto Rico mediate an audiovisual invocation of the late Boricua poet Manuel Ramos Otero, who passed away from complications of the virus in 1990. Guerra sets out to translate work Manuel deemed untranslatable, investigating the ongoing passions that informed his work.

The Mersey Model
(Danny Kilbride, 2021, 7:37 mins.)

Danny Kilbride interviews Professor John Ashton, a public health official who helped institute the Mersey Harm Reduction Model in Liverpool in 1986, the first government-funded needle exchange program in the UK.

#Medstrike: Confronting the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
(Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad and Uriah Bussey, 2021, runtime to come)

A chronicle of Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad’s 2017 medication strike against the Mazzoni Center, a LGBT health clinic in Philadelphia, and the direct-action campaign by the Black and Brown Workers Cooperative that preceded it.

In the Future
(Beto Pérez, 2021, 7 mins.)

In the Future tells the stories of people living with HIV in Mexico who have been unable to access treatment because of government corruption and widespread theft and looting of medication.

I Am a Long-Term AIDS Survivor
(Steed Taylor, 2021, 7:18 mins.)

Through a chorus of voices, Steed Taylor explores the difficulties of being a long-term AIDS survivor and the unexpected health problems facing many senior survivors.

滴水希望 (Hope Drops)
(J Triangular and the Women's Video Support Project, 2021, 8:18 mins.)

A collaborative video project made with women living in Taiwan who use their cameras to process stress and stigma and to share their experiences living with HIV.