The Queens Museum’s Open AIR Artist Services program in Collaboration with Visual AIDS invite you to join them for a series of screenings, workshops, discussions, presentations and performances honoring the 25^th annual Day With(out) Art in conjunction with Worlds AIDS Day. Day With(out) Art was launched by Visual AIDS in 1989 as a day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis in recognition of World AIDS Day.  All events are free and open to the public.

12:00 pm “€“ 5:30 pm “€“ Alternate Endings screenings on Loop (Theater)
In conjunction with the 25^th Anniversary of Visual AIDS’ longstanding Day With(out) Art programming, Visual AIDS is working with filmmaker Tom Kalin to commission seven artists/collaboratives “€“ Rhys Ernst, Glen Fogel, Ashton Harris, Derek Jackson, Tom Kalin, My Barbarian, and Julie Tolentino “€“ to create new and provocative work about the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic, focusing on the issues of today. (see below for video synopses)

12:30 pm “€“ 1:30 pm “€“ Youth Voices: Open Mic and Zine Launch (Werweiss Gallery)
Over the course of 3 weeks leading up to Day With(out) Art, the Queens Museum’s Queens Teens will work with GrenAIDS Educators and Artists Cristobal Guerra and Cassidy Gardner to explore issues around HIV/AIDS, its representation in the media, and the way that artists and activists have and continue to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the issues surround it. As a culmination of this collaboration, the QT will produce a zine and host an Open Mic to share their response to the crisis.

1:30 pm “€“ 2:30 pm “€“ Vogueing Workshop (Werweiss Gallery)
Vogueing Artist Kia Labeija will share about the radical history of the ballroom scene and her own journey as a performer and AIDS/HIV activist. She will then lead a workshop meant to introduce participants to the basics of Vogueing. There is limited space available for the workshop on a first-come basis, those who are unable to participate in the performance component of the workshop are still welcomed to join the introduction and observe the performance.

2:30 pm “€“ 4:00 pm “€“ The Assassination of Julio Rivera: An Exercise in Activating Collective Memory (Unisphere Gallery, English/Spanish simultaneous interpretation will be provided by Caracol Interpreters Cooperative)
On July 2^nd, 1990, at the height of the AIDS crisis, Julio Rivera “€“ a 29 year-old gay man “€“ was beaten to death by three armed men in Jackson Heights. Julio’s assassination, rallied people from around the city and left a powerful legacy of activism in Queens. This project by media scholar and memory activist Julian de Mayo Rodriguez and journalist Luis Gallo revisits a tragic, yet pivotal moment, through an oral history practice. A series of short interviews will be presented, reflecting on Julio and the legacy of the community-wide response. A discussion will follow about the construction of collective memory, and will include strategies for media literacy and community-based storytelling.

4:00 pm “€“ 5:30 pm “€“ The Order of Things (AIDS): Performance and Community Dialogue (Werweiss Gallery, English/Spanish simultaneous interpretation will be provided by Caracol Interpreters Cooperative)
In this performance and community dialogue artist Camilo Godoy addresses the writing of history. The event consists of a performance in which the public is invited to engage with an object made with lavender and bodily fluids. The object will be initially activated by a group of 4 HIV+ guests from the Latin@ immigrant community, who will be sharing their experiences with HIV/AIDS representing a variety of perspectives.

3:00 pm “€“ 5:00 pm “€“ HIV Testing Offered by Voces Latinas

ALTERNATE ENDINGS video synopses
Rhys Ernst, Dear Lou Sullivan, 2014, 6:16
This new work by LA-based artist Rhys Ernst invokes the story of Lou Sullivan, trans man and AIDS activist largely responsible for establishing the distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation. Cut with images of Ernst’ own examination of this figure and trans history, the video is structured by the search for and desire to identify transmasculine elders and an intergenerational exploration of gay transmasculine identity. Utilizing interview footage, excerpts of Sullivan’s book “€œInformation for the Female-to-Male Crossdresser and Transsexual,” VHS gay porn, and Grindr chats, Dear Lou Sullivan is a meditation on the life of the late trans man and AIDS activist that explores the bodily intersection of transmasculine gay and HIV+ identity.

Glen Fogel, 7 Years Later, 2014, 4:19
For 7 Years Later, Glen Fogel visited his ex-boyfriend Nathan Lee in Providence, RI., and videotaped a conversation between the two of them. They discuss the events that led to their breakup 7 years ago, while a robotic camera autonomously scans the apartment. The videos is edited to look as though it is a seamless single take, a time warp in which Fogel and Lee appear in multiple places in the apartment at the same time.

Lyle Ashton Harris, Selections from the Ektachrome Archive 1986″€“1996, 2014, 7:23
Lyle Ashton Harris’ Selections from the Ektachrome Archive is a snapshot from 1986″€“1996, chronicling the moments”€”now memories”€”of this charged decade. This selection features over one hundred images taken by Harris from his extensive archive of Ektachrome photographs. Harris captures creatives and intellectuals including Nan Goldin, Samuel R Delaney, Stuart Hall, Essex Hemphill, bell hooks, Isaac Julien, Catherine Opie and Marlon Riggs among others in both intimate settings as well as now-historic events such as the Black Popular Culture Conference (1991), the opening for the Whitney’s landmark Black Male Exhibition (1994), and his travels from New York to London and Los Angeles to Rome. In Selections from the Ektachrome Archive, bedroom scenes and personal mementos punctuate public presentations and social gatherings, as a register of Harris’ life during the height of the AIDS crisis and its impact. Moreover, this archive takes the temperature of America’s recent past and charts its radical epistemological shifts.

Hi Tiger, The Village, 2014, 6:41
Hi Tiger, the Portland, Maine based art-punk band fronted by visual artist and performer Derek Jackson, recreates the song “The Village” by New Order. Originally, New Order recorded the song as an upbeat new wave tune in 1982. With Hi Tiger’s re-imagining some 30 years later, The Village becomes a torch song that meditates on themes of love and loss, complicity and defiance. In the context of HIV and AIDS, the song becomes a love letter to those that have passed and a call to arms for the ones who remain.

Tom Kalin, Ashes, 2014, 5:49
For the 25th Anniversary of Day Without Art, Tom Kalin photographed thousands of high resolution still images and “stitched” them into a moving image. While borrowing library books for research on another project, Kalin discovered, glued to the endpapers, ordinary “due date” ledgers stamped with dates spanning three decades. Inspired by these tiny ledgers”€”like skin or palimpsests that recorded an analogue history, an accumulation of many gestures”€”Kalin combines quotidian pictures snatched from his daily life with an evocative musical track by ongoing collaborator Doveman (Thomas Bartlett). The film layers dates and moments from Kalin’s personal world with the public and global history of AIDS.

My Barbarian, Counterpublicity, 2014, 7:12
My Barbarian’s Counterpublicity is a staged video performance based on an essay about Pedro Zamora, AIDS activist and star of the Real World: San Francisco, written by José Esteban Muñoz in his book, Disidentifications. The three members of My Barbarian re-perform scenes from The Real World in an alienated style, resisting the affect of “reality tv” even as they interrogate its politics, contrasting these scenes with the embodied performance of 90s-inspired music videos, with lyrics adapted from Muñoz’s theory of Queer counterpublic spheres that operate against the dominance of racism and homophobia.

Julie Tolentino, evidence, 2014, 4:17
In evidence, Julie Tolentino’s naked, moving body articulates backward on her hands and knees, balancing a cluster of Asian medicine cups. Her self-made sound piece initiates the video with a queer list of loved ones living and lost, recognizable or not, as both invocation and provocation of individuals who deeply shifted her perspective. As the listed names blur and are archived in Tolentino’s body, evidence opens up to the list’s potency through a female, brown, artist/activist body in the unseen yet held spaces of relationship, memory, sex and loss.

About Day With(out) Art
Visual AIDS launched Day Without Art in 1989 as a day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis in recognition of World AIDS Day. At its height Day Without Art included over 8,000 national and international museums, galleries, art centers, AIDS Service Organizations, libraries, colleges and high schools. In 1997, Day With(out) Art became a day with art, to recognize and promote increased programming of cultural events that draw attention to the continuing pandemic. It had become clear that active interventions through the annual program were far more effective than actions to negate or reduce the programs of cultural centers. Though the name was retained as a metaphor for the chilling possibility of a future day without art or artists, Visual AIDS added parentheses to the program title, Day With(out) Art, to highlight the proactive programming of art projects by artists living with HIV/AIDS, and art about AIDS, that were taking place around the world. As the AIDS crisis and our understanding of it evolve, so must our actions. Visual AIDS continues to produce year-round program of thought-provoking exhibitions, events and artist editions promoting HIV prevention and AIDS Awareness.

About the Artists and Presenters:
Kia Michelle Benbow (Kia Labeija) is a multi-disciplinary artist working in photography, performance and installation. A native New Yorker, she is an alumni of the Juilliard School and the Ailey School, where she trained in music and dance at a young age. Benbow is a member of the Iconic House of Labeija, a platform in which she uses to continue her love of the intersections of performance, fantasy, nightlife and community. As an activist her work is focused on raising awareness of issues surrounding HIV/AIDS -specifically in relation to youth- by educating, and creating space for new conversations through her artistic practices.  Currently, Benbow is finishing her degree at The New School University.

Julian de Mayo is a media scholar and memory activist based in Brooklyn, NY. His work engages with cross-disciplinary and non-linear mediations of collective memory. Currently, his research is focused on the symptoms of genocide and violence in Guatemalan contemporary art, and the legacy of the ongoing AIDS crisis in Latino communities. He was born to Chilean-Colombian parents in Bogota, Colombia, and raised in Vancouver, Canada. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Geography and Latin American Studies from Simon Fraser University, and is a Master’s Candidate in Media Studies at The New School.

Rhys Ernst is a filmmaker and artist who works across narrative and experimental film, photography, animation, and mixed-media, utilizing various forms and modalities to investigate masculinity, transgender identity and the intersection of gender and narrative construction. Ernst received his MFA in Film/ Video at CalArts in 2011 and a BA from Hampshire College in 2004. His MFA thesis film THE THING premiered at Sundance 2012 and his collaborative film with Zackary Drucker, SHE GONE ROGUE, premiered at the 2012 “€œMade in LA”€ Los Angeles Biennial at the Hammer Museum. He lives in Los Angeles.

Glen Fogel is an artist living and working in New York. Solo exhibitions include Callicoon Fine Arts, New York (2013), Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (2013), Aspect Ratio, Chicago (2013), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (2012), Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2011), Participant Inc., New York (2011), The Kitchen, New York (2008), and Momenta Art, New York (2006).

Luis Gallo is a Colombian-born journalist who has worked in Istanbul, Seattle and Bogotá. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Geography from the University of Washington and is currently completing a Masters in Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College. He currently works for StoryCorps, a national oral history and radio project, where over the past 2 years he has recorded over 300 interviews– some which aired on NPR’s Morning Edition and Weekend Edition. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Camilo Godoy is an artist whose work is concerned with examining the construction of political and social meanings. He is a graduate of the New School (2013) and is currently a Keyholder Resident at the Lower East Side Printshop(New York).

Lyle Ashton Harris has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation and performance. His work explores intersections between the personal and the political, examining the impact of ethnicity, gender and desire on the contemporary social and cultural dynamic. Known for his self-portraits and use of pop culture icons (such as Billie Holiday and Michael Jackson), Harris teases the viewers’ perceptions and expectations, resignifying cultural cursors and recalibrating the familiar with the extraordinary.. He currently lives and works in New York City and is an Associate Professor at New York University.

Derek Jackson is a visual artist and performer living in Portland, Maine, and New York City. He is the founder and creative director of Hung Magazine, published by Sur Rodney (Sur) and a member of the gogocuntrypunkmashupelectrohouse ensemble Daisy Spurs. His work was most recently featured in a video program at CRG Gallery curated by Angela Dufresne and is included in the exhibition “Framing AIDS” curated by Hector Canonge at the Queens Museum of Art. Jackson is a recipient of numerous awards including the Brooklyn Arts Council, The Djerassi Artist Residency Program, and Momenta Arts. He is a graduate of the Experimental Theater Wing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts as well as the City University of New York at Brooklyn College.

Tom Kalin is known as a prominent figure in the New Queer Cinema. His critically acclaimed work traverses diverse forms, including experimental films, video installations and narrative feature films. In these works and as a member of the activist collective Gran Fury, Kalin has done significant work to change public opinion of AIDS. Named one of the top 100 American Independent films by the BFI, his first feature, Swoon, was awarded Berlin’s Caligari Prize, Stockholm’s Fipresci Prize, Sundance’s Best Cinematography and the Gotham Awards ”Open Palm.”€ Kalin was a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow. He has twice been included in the Whitney Biennial.

My Barbarian is a Los Angeles based collaborative group consisting of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade. The trio makes site-responsive performances and video installations that use theatrical play to draw allegorical narratives out of historical dilemmas, mythical conflicts, and current political crises. My Barbarian had solo exhibitions with Steve Turner Contemporary in Los Angeles (2008, 2009) and at Participant, Inc. in New York (2009). In 2008, the group made a collaborative exhibition with the sculptor Lara Schnitger at Museum Het Domain, Sittard, NL, which, in 2009, traveled to the Luckman Gallery in Los Angeles.

Queens Teens offers local youth opportunities to learn about contemporary art and gain a deep understanding of the inner workings of a cultural institution, while developing their own creative interest and passion for the arts in a community of like-minded peers. The Teens become part of a close-knit professional and peer network that fosters personal and professional growth and provides individualized support as they move towards college and beyond.

Julie Tolentino‘s career spans over two decades of dance, installation, and site-specific durational performance. Her diverse roles have included host, producer, mentor, and collaborator with artists such as Meg Stuart, Ron Athey, Madonna, Catherine Opie, David Rousseve, Juliana Snapper, Diamanda Galàs, Stosh Fila, Robert Crouch, Elana Mann, Mark So, Gran Fury, and Rodarte. Tolentino is deeply influenced by her extensive experience as a caregiver, an Eastern and aquatic bodyworker, a highly disciplined contemporary dancer, and as proprietress of the Clit Club in New York. Her manifold, exploratory duet/solo practice includes installation, dance-for-camera, and durational performance engaging improvisation one-to-one score-making and fluids, including blood, tears, and honey.

Voces Latinas aims to reduce the rate of HIV transmission and violence among immigrant Latinas by empowering, educating, and providing leadership and advocacy training to enable them to make healthier decisions for themselves and their families. Through collaborative relationships, we connect immigrant Latinas with culturally and linguistically sensitive services to address their immediate needs, which allows them to identify with their risk for HIV/AIDS.

The Caracol Interpreters Cooperative opens multilingual channels of communication to ignite language justice in our community. We work to create a world where language is not a barrier for exchange, but a helpful tool that can be used democratically to communicate, learn and strategize together.

About Visual AIDS
Visual AIDS utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS IS NOT OVER. Visual AIDS is the only contemporary arts organization fully committed to HIV prevention and AIDS awareness through producing and presenting visual art projects, while assisting artists living with HIV/AIDS. We are committed to preserving and honoring the work of artists with HIV/AIDS and the artistic contributions of the AIDS movement. www.visualaids.org

About Open A.I.R. Artist Services Program
The expanded Queens Museum features a new, expanded slate of artist services, including a brand new Studio Program, with professional development features and a networking Lecture Series that draws on human resources at the Queens Museum. Open A.I.R. programs will offer professional development topics targeted specifically to all interested emerging artists.

Open A.I.R. is made possible by a generous grant from The Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund. Queens Teens is supported by grants from The Pinkerton Foundation, Keith Haring Foundation, and the William T. Grant Foundation. Additional support for both Open A.I.R. and Queens Teens provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Questions? Email sjmo@queensmuseum.org