Screening and discussion
In person: Jim Hubbard, Ted Kerr, Sur Rodney (Sur)
Organized by Devon Narine-Singh
Q&A follows the screening in-person and online at 9pm ET
Microscope is very pleased to present ACT UP, A Sonnet, an evening of films and discussions around HIV/AIDS — 40 years after the first diagnosis in the US — and the critical, unrelenting action of the ACT UP movement with Jim Hubbard, Ted Kerr, Sur Rodney (Sur), and members of theWhat Would an HIV Doula Do? community. The night is curated in collaboration with Devon Narine-Singh.
The evening includes the screening of two historical films by Jim Hubbard, Two Marches (1991) and Kiss-In (1988), selections from the ACT UP Oral History Project from 2003-2014 by Hubbard and Sarah Schulman among others; as well as newly recorded Zoom discussions between members of the What would an HIV doula do? (WWHIVDD) collective orchestrated by Devon Narine-Singh.
An in-person conversation with Jim Hubbard, Ted Kerr, Sur Rodney (Sur) around topids of illness, community, documentation and survival follows the screening. Other members of the What would an HIV doula do? (WWHIVDD) collective and online audience will able to partake in the discussion as well via live chat.
From Devon Narine-Singh:
“Formed by Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard, the ACT UP Oral History Project was designed to “present comprehensive, complex, human, collective, and individual pictures of the people who have made up ACT UP/New York. These men and women of all races and classes have transformed entrenched cultural ideas about homosexuality, sexuality, illness, health care, civil rights, art, media, and the rights of patients.” This program is designed to both examine the many narratives within the Oral History Project and to have a modern day intervention with it.
WHAT WOULD AN HIV DOULA DO? (WWHIVDD) is “collective is a community of artists, activist, academics, chaplains, doulas, health care practitioners, nurses, filmmakers, AIDS Service Organization employees, dancers, community educators, and others from across the movement joined in response to the ongoing AIDS Crisis.” Inspired by their project AIDS IS/AIDS AIN’T 40 which acknowledges that 2021 is “40 years since the US public health enterprise and media first reported on a set of conditions that would come to be known as AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome)”, this evening has members of the collective responding to the Oral History Project interviews. From this engagement new connections are found and challenged.
Following a screening of excerpts from the Oral History project and the current day responses, Oral History Project co-founder Jim Hubbard will join members of the WWHIVDD for a dialogue around illness, community, documentation and survival.“
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Jim Hubbard has been making films since 1974. He made United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, a feature length documentary on ACT UP, the AIDS activist group, which won Best Documentary at MIX Milano and Reel Q Pittsburgh LGBT Film Festival and has played at over 150 museums, universities and film festivals worldwide. Sarah Schulman and he completed 187 interviews as part of the ACT UP Oral History Project. One hundred and two of those interviews were on view in a 14-monitor installation at the Carpenter Center for the Arts, Harvard University as part of the exhibition ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987–1993, October 15 – December 23, 2009. A version with 114 interviews showed at the White Columns Gallery in New York, September 8 – October 23, 2010. He, along with James Wentzy, created a 9-part cable access television series based on the Project. Among his 19 other films are Elegy in the Streets (1989), Two Marches (1991), The Dance (1992) and Memento Mori (1995). His films are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and have been shown at the Warhol Museum, ICA Boston, the Harvard Film Archive, Tokyo University, der Zürcher Museen, mumok (Vienna), the Berlin Film Festival, the London Film Festival, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tokyo, London, Torino and many other Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals. His film Memento Mori won the Ursula for Best Short Film at the Hamburg Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in 1995. He co-founded MIX - the New York Queer Experimental Film Festival. Under the auspices of the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, he created the AIDS Activist Video Collection at the New York Public Library. He curated the series Fever in the Archive: AIDS Activist Videotapes from the Royal S. Marks Collection for the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The 8-program series took place December 1-9, 2000. He also co-curated the series, Another Wave: Recent Global Queer Cinema at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, July and September 2006. In 2013-14, he curated an 8-program series of AIDS activist video from the collection of the New York Public Library to accompany their landmark exhibition Why We Fight: Remembering AIDS Activism. In 2018, he received a grant from the Al Larvick Conservation Fund to digitize over 2 hours of his Lesbian & Gay Pride March and other Queer demonstration footage and Queer home movies.
Canadian born Theodore (Ted) Kerr is a Brooklyn based writer, organizer and artist whose work focuses on HIV/AIDS, community, and culture.Kerr's writing has been published in books, online and in magazines. It has appeared in Women's Studies Quarterly, The New Inquiry, BOMB, CBC (Canada), Lambda Literary, POZ Magazine, IndieWire, HyperAllergic, and other publications. In 2016, he won the Best Journalism award from POZ Magazine for his HyperAllergic article on race, HIV, and art. In 2015, Kerr was the editor for an AIDS-focused issue of the We Who Feel Differently journal. Kerr earned his MA from Union Theological Seminary where he researched Christian Ethics and HIV, and his BA from the New School where he was Riggio Writing and Democracy fellow. He has lectured at Hunter College, Rutgers and Skidmore College. Under the direction of Amy Sadao and Nelson Santos, Kerr was the programs manager at Visual AIDS where he worked to ensure social justice was an important lens through which to understand the ongoing epidemic. Working with collectives, organizations and solo, Kerr has organized events at the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, BQSQD, Bluestockings, The New School, Housing Works and other locations. In 2016 / 2017 Kerr performed 10 interviews for the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art's Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project. Kerr received his oral history training from Suzanne Snider as part of the Oral History Summer School. He was a member of the New York City Trans Oral History Project. Working with the Brooklyn Historical Society, Kerr indexed their AIDS oral history project. Kerr is a founding member of the What Would An HIV Doula Do? collective, a community of people committed to better implicating community within the ongoing response to HIV/AIDS. Currently, Kerr teaches at The New School.
Sur Rodney (Sur) is a writer, artist, archivist and activist. A fixture on the East Village art scene, Sur was co-director, with business partner Gracie Mansion, of the celebrated Gracie Mansion Gallery (1983–88), which helped establish the international reputations of many young and emerging artists. In the late 1980s, Sur shifted his practice to work with artists affected by the growing AIDS crisis, leading to his involvement with Visual AIDS and the Frank Moore Archive Project. He also began to collaborate on curatorial projects with his longtime partner Geoffrey Hendricks, organizing a series of exhibitions related to art and AIDS. Sur often works collaboratively, drawing variously on performance, poetry, community archives and activism. Free Advice July 6, 2008 (2008) was created in collaboration with Hope Sandrow. In the work, Sur set up a roadside counseling business along a two-lane rural highway with a sign reading “Free Advice.” His office was comprised of a wooden table with two chairs—one for him and one for a guest. Intrigued, passersby stopped to take a seat and ask him about issues in their lives, to which he offered carefully considered responses. Since its debut, Sur has reprised the performance many times, often along rural highways in the Northeast. He also recreated it at the opening reception for Radical Presence at the Grey Art Gallery on September 9, 2013.
What Would an HIV Doula Do? is a community of people joined in response to the ongoing AIDS Crisis. We understand a doula as someone who holds space during times of transition. We understand HIV as a series of transitions that begins long before being tested, continues after treatment and beyond. We know that since no one gets HIV alone, no one should have to deal with HIV alone. We doula ourselves, each other, institutions and culture. Foundational to our process is asking questions.
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Microscope’s Event Series 2021 is sponsored by Re:Voir, a home video label for classic and contemporary experimental film in Paris, France.