Q&A with Alexandra Juhasz, Theodore (ted) Kerr, and Viva Ruiz
In their newly released book, We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production, writers and activists Alexandra Juhasz and Theodore (ted) Kerr model doing history work through video, conversation, and community. Central to their process are AIDS videos and the foundational role they play within the ongoing HIV response, including as forms of activism and memorialization. Examples of this include Juhasz’s own Video Remains, an elegiac tape she made using footage she shot of her friend, Ridiculous Theater member James (Jim) Lamb, the year before he died in 1993; and Viva Ruiz’s video Chloe Dzubilo: There is a Transolution, a snapshot portrait of the punk/artist/activist told through saved footage of Dzubilo.
For this one night screening, see these two pieces about lasting friendship and memory in the face of loss and the form of video, followed by a conversation between Juhasz, Kerr, and Ruiz. Books will be available for purchase!
The Films:
CHLOE DZUBILO: THERE IS A TRANSOLUTION
Dir. Viva Ruiz | 2019 | 7:31 min
Viva Ruiz invites transgender AIDS activist, artist, and beloved friend Chloe Dzubilo (1960–2011) to speak via never before seen Hi-8 footage filmed by Chloe's then-partner Kelly McGowan in the 1990s. The process triangulates mother (Chloe), lover (Kelly), and child (Viva) in a deliberate ritual to uplift the spirit and legacy of an ancestral teacher. Through artifacts from the moment when video first became accessible and before mobile phone cameras became ubiquitous, we witness Chloe declare herself and her sisters as leaders in art, advocacy and culture for evermore.
VIDEO REMAINS
Dir. Alexandra Juhasz | 2005 | 54 min
In 1993, Alexandra Juhasz shoots an interview with her best friend Jim Lamb (1963 - 1993) as he tries to recount his life as he is dying. In 2004, she re-works this haunted video, playing it in real-time but letting bleed in a host of present day interviewees who also reflect upon AIDS, death, activism, and video. What remains is this woman’s contemplative, loving memorial to one gay man lost to AIDS that also marks what changes and lasts after death, across time, and because of videotape.
The Panelists:
Viva Ruiz (shethey) is the Latinx progeny of Ecuadorian immigrants and a community and sex work educated advocate and multi hyphenate artist from Jamaica Queens, New York. Ruiz is building power and birthing pro-abortion propaganda with the Thank God for Abortion (TGFA) initiative whose mission sits at the intersection of abortion access, queerness and spirituality. Ruiz is a 2022 Creative Capital grantee for the making of the Thank God for Abortion telenovela. S/he stands on the shoulders of many, eager to celebrate and be in service to the spirits that love and walk with them.
Dr. Alexandra Juhasz is Distinguished Professor of Film at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She is a core faculty member in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. Dr. Juhasz writes about and makes feminist, queer, fake, and AIDS documentary. Her current work is on online feminist pedagogy, YouTube, and other more radical uses of digital media and their archives. Her work as media artist, curator, and writer engages with linked social justice commitments, including COVID-19, AIDS, black queer and lesbian media, feminist and queer/trans film, and activist archives and collectives. She publishes about her cultural and political commitments in scholarly and more public platforms.
Theodore (ted) Kerr is a writer, organizer and artist whose work focuses on HIV/AIDS, community, and culture.
The Book:
We Are Having This Conversation Now (Duke University Press, Sept 2022) offers a history, present, and future of AIDS through thirteen short conversations between Alexandra Juhasz and Theodore Kerr, scholars deeply embedded in HIV responses. They establish multiple timelines of the epidemic, offering six foundational periodizations of AIDS culture, tracing how attention to the crisis has waxed and waned from the 1980s to the present. They begin the book with a 1990 educational video produced by a Black health collective, using it to consider organizing intersectionally, theories of videotape, empowerment movements, and memorialization. This video is one of many powerful yet overlooked objects that the pair focus on through conversation to understand HIV across time. Along the way, they share their own artwork, activism, and stories of the epidemic. Their conversations illuminate the vital role personal experience, community, cultural production, and connection play in the creation of AIDS related knowledge, archives, and social change. Throughout, Juhasz and Kerr invite readers to reflect and find ways to engage in their own AIDS related culture and conversation.