Living Politics: Remembering HIV/AIDS Activism Tomorrow

12-13 September 2019 @ Refugio, Lenaustraße 3-4, 12047 Berlin, Germany

How are politics and life narratives in the fields of HIV/AIDS activism in Europe entangled?

The conference discusses the meaning, methods and importance of preserving histories of HIV/AIDS, and how these and other ongoing practices relate to current engagements with the epidemic. It brings together social science researchers, policy makers and representatives of NGOs and activist groups from the fields of HIV/AIDS, drug policy, LGBTQ rights, sex work, migration politics and prisons. The conference has been organised by the EUROPACH research team, which will present project outputs and concluding arguments about citizenship in Europe in relation to HIV/AIDS. It will celebrate the opening of the exhibition “HIVstories” at the Schwules Museum, and the launch of the EUROPACH contribution to the European HIV/AIDS Archive, which includes over 100 oral history interviews.

Conference language: English with translation on request. 

Click here to see the conference program

Register by 1 September 2019: https://tinyurl.com/y4jktmml 

Under the title "Making health promotion easy" the 10th European Conference for German speaking countries takes place in Bonn, Germany. Physicians, nurses, social worker, AIDS service organisations, scientists and policy-maker gather to discuss the improvement of prison health care and access to harm reduction and HIV prevention. You can register here.

A new book based on Europach research in Turkey has been recently published. The publication entitled "Aids und HIV in der Türkei Geschichten und Perspektiven einer emanzipatorischen Gesundheitspolitik" and edited by Zülfukar Çetin, Peter-Paul Bänziger is a unique collection of voices of activists, professionals, representatives of key populations and people living with HIV in Turkey. 

To learn more about the book, visit the website. 

The 1980s HIV/AIDS crisis may be recent history, but the experiences of those who lived through it are rapidly disappearing from the public mind. To reintroduce one specific collection of experiences, from the HIV/AIDS separation unit in Dublin’s largest prison, historian Janet Weston created a podcast based on oral histories and archival research. You can listen to the podcast here.

Agata Dziuban (Principal Investigator in Poland) and Todd Sekuler (a postdoctoral researcher) participated in the conference of ESA Sexuality Research Network Sociological Explorations of Sexuality in Europe: Bodies, Practices, and Resistance in Troubled Times at Jagiellonian University 14th-15th February 2019 and and presented a paper entitled "Sexualising the Humanitarianism-Securitisation Nexus: Sexuality, Migration and HIV". 

Photo by: Emilia Oksentowicz, Kolektyw.kolektyw

Hêvî LGBTI Association has recently published a book "HIV Stories From Turkey" in three different languages: Turkish, Kurdish and English. The book presents a collection of 13 stories based on experiences of people living with HIV. In the introduction authors of the books state: 

Living with HIV is not a sickness. HIV is an infection that affects immune system and HIV and AIDS are totally different from each other. However, a systematic discrimination against people with HIV still continues today. HIV Stories from Turkey aims to bring different experiences together and break down prejudices.

For more information, please the website. 

We are very pleased to announce the completion of a EUROPACH HIV/AIDS interactive policy map on criminalisation in relation to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Europe. This resource has been developed for researchers, activists and advocates who engage in any of the entangled policy fields of HIV/AIDS, drug use, sex work, migration or prisons. It presents users with events from various “stories” of criminalisation in relation to HIV/AIDS in Europe that took place in Germany, Poland, Turkey and the UK. These stories unfold chronologically, or by following the implicated policies and actors introducing “links” between events across time and place. Connecting all five stories are the cultural “logics” that we have analysed to underlie the events. Users are thus able to navigate through these narratives by disentangling their actors, policies and arguments, and exploring the conflicting and complimentary logics that they enact or upon which they are based. Please use the contact function of our website to share your thoughts, ask questions or provide additional information for these maps!

During the 19th Congress of International Society for Ethnology and Folklore, taking place in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in April 2019, EUROPACH post-doc researchers will chair a panel discussion about unachieved goals and activism. The panel will explore the role of emotions, technologies and social memory in shaping aspirations of future transformation, and possible aberrations in a linear narration of social movements' success. We encourage you to visit the Congress website and explore the program. 

01 Aralık 2018 - 02 Şubat 2019 tarihleri arasında Amerikan Hastanesi “Operation Room” Sanat Galerisi’nde izlenebilecek olan “Pozitif Alan” sergisi, kaydeden, ayrıştıran, kabul eden, reddeden, bulaşan ve yayılan öznel bedenlerin karşısında ideolojik ve medikal bedeni, görünürlük ve damgalanma, kurban ve suçlu halleri, haz ve hastalık gibi HIV/AIDS’le doğrudan ilişkilenen konuları tartışmaya açar. Sergi “pozitif olmayı” olumluyor olsa da, AIDS’i bir “metafor” olarak görme hakkını da elinde tutar. Bulaştığı hücreyi yok etmeyen, onu savunmasız hale getiren baskılanmamış HIV, eril tahakkümün, biyoiktidarın pratiklerini de hatırlatır. “Pozitif Alan”, bu pratiklere karşı yeni bulaşma teknolojileri arar. Alper Turan’ın küratörlüğünde gerçekleşecek olan sergi, video, yağlı boya, kolaj, heykel, yerleştirme ve fotoğraf gibi farklı medyaları kullanan sanatçıların işlerini birbirleriyle temas ettirecek ve bir “anlamlar epidemiği” olan HIV/AIDS’i deşifre etmeyi amaçlayacak.
Katılımcı Sanatçılar: Ardıl Yalınkılıç, Artık İşler, Can Küçük, Ceren Saner, Furkan Öztekin, Elmgreen&Dragset, Güneş Terkol, İz Öztat, Leyla Gediz, Nihat Karataşlı, Onur Karaoğlu, Özgür Erkök Moroder, Pınar Marul, Sabo, Sadık Arı, Serdar Soydan, Ünal Bostancı. Grafik Tasarım: Umut Altıntaş. Sergi Tasarımı: Doruk Çiftçi

The exhibition 'Positive Space', which runs from December 1, 2018 and February 2, 2019 in the American Hospital Art Gallery 'Operation Room' in Istanbul, and has been curated by Alper Turan, "interests in attributing a collective face to the virus and doesn’t care about protecting the ‘sterile’ other. The title is derived from a term used for the focal point of visual art compositions. It asks the spectator to get involved and is opposed to presenting a negative space to them. It...also opens discussions about themes, directly related to HIV/AIDS, such as visibility and stigma, victimhood and guilt, pleasure and disease as well as subjective bodies recording, separating, accepting and rejecting, infecting and spreading in opposition to ideological and medical bodies. Even though the exhibition affirms ‘positivity,’ it reserves the right to see AIDS as a metaphor. The unrepressed HIV does not destroy the cell, it attacks and emaciates it, just like masculine domination or bio-power practices do. 'Positive Space' looks for new contamination technologies against these practices." Participating Artists: Ardıl Yalınkılıç, Artık İşler, Can Küçük, Ceren Saner, Furkan Öztekin, Elmgreen&Dragset, Güneş Terkol, İz Öztat, Leyla Gediz, Nihat Karataşlı, Onur Karaoğlu, Özgür Erkök Moroder, Pınar Marul, Sabo, Sadık Arı, Serdar Soydan, and Ünal Bostancı. Graphic Design: Umut Altıntaş Exhibition Design: Doruk Çiftçi