Opening Precedents-and-predecessors

This discussion will situate the overdose crisis in relation to recent histories of harm reduction, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and artist-led activism by people who use drugs and their allies. To open Here, Better, Now, this conversation posits that creative resistance to the overdose crisis exists within a continuum whose roots span decades. Contributors will discuss strategies from the past that inflect the present, and how the current moment informs and integrates with longstanding struggles.

Light lunch for in-person attendees will be provided.

Accessibility: For in-person attendees, Kaneff Centre is a physically accessible venue. Accessible single-gender washrooms are available on the main floor.

Contributors

Theodore (ted) Kerr is a Canadian born, Brooklyn based writer and organizer. For the US's National Library of Medicine he curated, A People's History of Pandemic: AIDS, Posters, and Stories of Public Health. He edited an On Curating issue entitled, What You Don't Know About AIDS Could Fill a Museum. He is a founding member of What Would an HIV Doula Do? With Alexandra Juhasz, he co-wrote the book, We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production (Duke University Press, 2022).

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Los Angeles native Marcus Kuiland-Nazario is an interdisciplinary artist, performance curator, and producer. Kuiland-Nazario’s works are long-term research-based cross-genre projects exploring extreme states of emotion such as grief, anger, and loss influenced by the cultural and spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora. His performance works have been included in national and international festivals, including the Rapture Festival, ICA London, London; the Rompeforma Festival, San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Pacific Standard Time LA/LA, Los Angeles and The Queer Commons: Politics of Friendship, Love and Affects in Skopje, Macedonia. Currently he is participating in Culture Hub's ReFest, hosting an Instagram Live talk series investigating masculinities for LA FREEWAVES with guests including Nao Bustamante, Sherry Vine, Madison Moore, Pavitra Prasad, Anuradha Vikram, Ron Athey, Guillermo Gomez Peña and Amelia Jones. He is developing an interdisciplinary work about his headstone and is Founder and Creative Director of THE WRINKLE ROOM, a performance lounge for connoisseurs of alternative culture who are over 50 years of age.

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Darien Taylor has been living with HIV for 35 years. She was one of the first women in Canada to be "out" about her HIV status. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she was a force behind a number of HIV and women-focused initiatives. This work included co-editing an international anthology of works by women living with HIV and creating Voices of Positive Women, a provincial health organization led by and for women living with HIV. During this time, she co-chaired the HIV treatment activism group, AIDS ACTION NOW! Over the years Darien has been continuously involved in HIV work. She was the Director of Program Delivery at CATIE, Canada's source for HIV and HCV information, and was more recently involved in a small, informal group of individuals who worked behind the scenes to ensure public recognition of U=U, the research demonstrating that people with an undetectable HIV viral load cannot transmit HIV sexually. She is currently working on a short semi-autobiographical film through the SSHRC-funded Viral Interventions research project at York University.

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Contributors

Opening: Precedents and Predecessors