Show Me Your Life | Real Stories Gallery

WELCOME by Rachel Chapple, PhD (Founder, Real Stories Gallery Foundation, 501c)

Kids at risk are AWARE that a lack of AWARENESS within the communities surrounding them about the reality of their lives, places them at heightened and continuous daily risk for HIVAIDS and Human Rights Abuses.

We invite you to join our international photographic collage and videoART program. Show Me Your Life is a multi-cultural and multi-lingual online peer mentored initiative with young people at risk for HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Abuse. The work created by kids, who are accomplished photographers/ poets/ dancers/ musicians/ video artists/ storytellers, will be shown in Tristan's Moon (our Art Gallery opening November 2011) in the heart of New York City. The work is a significant body of collaborative portraiture and speaks to a collective conscience in the midst of today's HIVAIDS pandemiC: 60 MILLION, LIVING AND DEAD.

The initiative is open to all kids at risk for HIV/AIDS from around the world. We do not censor the work. We include kids whose lives are affected by the sex & drug industries and armed conflicts; two superhighways for the trafficking of HIV within and across our borders.

If you would like to participate or find out more about our collaborative program, please email http://realstoriesgallery@gmail.com or the Artistic Director, Tim Barrus at http://TIM@SHOWMEYOURLIFE.ORG

Timothée Bârrus/ Shadows and Transitions

So many of us sleepwalking through our lives as if we were but shadows on a sidewalk. All the unloved years and hinges worn on our sleeves like light that might connect us to something other than ourselves and yet we are afraid. The mighty human being afraid of what. Afraid of shadows. Especially his own. Just afraid. He might get hurt. And yet that is the essence of life. To be alive is to be open to the possibility of hurt. Hurt happens. It swirls upward like a gas leak in the house and moves instantly like the wolves in autumn’s heat. Sets the shadows in alignment knowing we can lose ourselves and all the boats will take us there. Eyelid coins ready for the boatman. This seems to be a time of enormous transition. From one place to another. I do not know why. How is something I can grasp. All my fathers are from factories. They knew how things worked not why they didn’t. The filmmakers and the poets and the photographers and the artists in Show Me Your Life are all looking at the how of it. Not the why of it but the how of it. One plus one. Winds of fate. On our way to where the surf comes in. If. Fire and Ice. Benchmarks: the Neighborhood of Despondency.

Show Me Your Life is a collaborative initiative with Cinemateque Films; a webbased human rights video art workshop for at risk kids. The majority of kids in the world today live at risk lives due to poverty & malnutrition, conflicts & refugee status, intergenerational physical & psychological abuse, trafficking & sexual abuse, discrimination & lack of education, homelessness & vastly inadequate or zero healthcare. The kids participating in Show Me Your Life are taking the initiative and creatively raising awareness to effect change and alleviate the trauma of their peer groups around the world.

Professor Paul Webley

(Director, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London)

Stories and narratives help define who we are, and help us understand our world and what it means to be human. And the stories on the magnificent Real Stories Gallery will do all that - but will also have an impact on the world, and help reduce the spread of HIV.

Oliver McTernan (Broadcaster & Writer; co-Founder & Director, Forward Thinking)

I had the privilege of visiting Tunisia during its revolution earlier this year and meeting with some of the young people who through their courageous actions brought momentous change to that country. In the course of our conversations it became clear that these young people had overcome the fear that had dominated their lives and were prepared to risk all in their quest for dignity and agency. They were no longer prepared to tolerate the climate of repression that had robbed them of self respect and freedom to control of their own lives.

It was a deep sense of accumulated grievances and injustices that motivated them to act to change their lives in a decisive way.

It is well documented of course the significance of the internet in facilitating the changes. People were empowered by the ability to communicate.

They used their computers and mobiles not only to organise but to tell their stories.

It was soon after returning from Tunisia that I was introduced to the work of the Real Stories Gallery.

It struck me that it is the same quest for dignity and agency that motivates these young people from around the world who have been the victims of abuse to tell their stories.

Through the use of videos they too are learning to overcome the fear that has gripped their lives and to discover their intrinsic dignity despite what may have happened to them in the course of their early lives. I fully recommend Real Stories Gallery's Show Me Your Life collaborative initiative with Cinemateque Films, who provide these young people with a chance to be free.

Melvin Burgess (Author of children’s fiction including Junk, Doing, Nicholas Dane)

Yes, they were angry, but they were also determined that they would move on and that they wouldn't let the people who had abused them win. Listening to them was an illustration in just how powerful the human spirit can be... The stories they told me were so much more horrific than anything you could make up and what struck me was just how resilient they were…

"And I really do not give a flying fuck about who has a problem with that"

Internet access is a human right, according to a United Nations report (May 2011): "Given that the Internet has become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights, combating inequality, and accelerating development and human progress, ensuring universal access to the Internet should be a priority for all states," Frank La Rue, a special rapporteur to the United Nations. New technologies. Several recent campaigns have demonstrated the potential of reaching large numbers of adolescents with HIV prevention messages to increase knowledge and change behaviours (Opportunity in Crisis: Preventing HIV from early adolescence to young adulthood © United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) June 2011).

Tim Barrus: Director, Show Me Your Life

Their eyes follow me whenever I land like an albatross anywhere in the worlds they live in.

In Paris, they were doing sex work.

It has another meaning in Cambodia (slavery).

India has the highest rate of child prostitution on the planet.

In Russia, they live in the subway tunnels.

In Thailand, the refugee camps are filled with children who fled soldiers who would hunt them down.

During the United Nation’s International Year of the Child, I worked for the Children’s Rights Group with a Ford Foundation grant. All of us involved there were committed to making the lives of children better.

We failed pretty badly.

I have arrived to tell you that the lives of children are worse.

The number one killer of children on the earth is pneumonia.

In the developing world, child mortality rates are up.

It’s a struggle to survive out there.

Violence is endemic and HIV still kills millions.

We know all of this from the news and from what we read.

We know this stuff from what adults who have been in these places and who are from these places know from what they have experienced.

But we only rarely see it from the child’s eyes.

I have started receiving video and photography from kids.

I can’t promise to post all of it.

Some of it is intense and disturbing.

This is not about making everyone harder than they are.

This is about finding a way for specific kids to capture their world even as those worlds are on the move.

"Where are the Cows?" by Beverley Samler (artist, South Africa; © Art For Humanity)

Homelessness and street life have extremely detrimental effects on children. Their unstable lifestyles, lack of medical care, and inadequate living conditions increase young people's susceptibility to chronic illnesses such as respiratory or ear infections, gastrointestinal disorders, and sexually-transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. Children fending for themselves must find ways to eat; some scavenge or find exploitative physical work. Many homeless children are enticed by adults and older youth into selling drugs, stealing, and prostitution. Drug use by children on the streets is common as they look for means to numb the pain and deal with the hardships associated with street life. Studies have found that up to 90 percent of street children use psychoactive substances, including medicines, alcohol, cigarettes, heroin, cannabis, and readily available industrial products such as shoe glue. Deterioration of physical health (TB risk / HIV risk/ STD risk / skin infections like scabies /chronic malnutrition) directly affects their physical as well as mental health parameters, and results in street youth being avoided and walked passed by citizens which further adds to their sense of rejection by society. Ignoring and criminalizing and incarcerating kids who are surviving through stealing, working the streets and seeking the protection from violent street gangs, simply exacerbates the trauma of their lives and places them at further risk for HIV and AIDS. More people exit prison with HIV then enter system. The kids need urgent access to a safe house, nutrition and healthcare.

At risk kids are at risk for a reason.

Adults perceptions and behaviours in the form of overt violence, fear, silence and complacency, exacerbate the situation. Perhaps most dangerous of all, is the adult who believes that it is someone else's responsibility, that someone else should or is dealing with the horror, perhaps someone more professional or someone with more wealth. Within the context of such clear and present danger, every ones assistance becomes invaluable and plays a profound role in shifting perceptions that contribute to the horror experienced by humanities' children. The simple act of facilitating for stories to be shared and for sharing the stories that speak of the reality of these kids lives, will disseminate knowledge and awaken humanities' extraordinary capacity to imagine and to envision and create safe houses and access for appropriate healthcare for at risk kids.

"Looking up" by Finuala Dowling (poet, South Africa; © Art For Humanity)

The moment before you died

You looked up,

The way all children look up: hopefully.

You were expecting us to come

But we didn't come.

You see --

The economy has been growing at 3.2% per year

Many of our shopping malls have parking for over 1000 cars

Things have been looking up

We've had a lot of new stuff to look after

Of course, when we read how you'd died,

You had three hundred thousand mothers;

You had four hundred thousand fathers.

Yet it's true that the moment before you died,

You looked up, and no one came.

Impucuko (IsiXhosa translation)

Umzuzwana phambi kokuba usweleke

Wajonga phezulu

Ngendlela bonke abantwana abajonga ngayo: ngethemba.

Ubulindele okokuba sifike

Kodwa zange sifike.

Uyabona ke --

Uqoqosho lunyuke kakuhle ngonyaka

iivenkile zethu ezinkulu zineendawo zokupaka iimoto ezingaphezu kwewaka

Izinto ziye zaphucuka

Besinezinto ezininzi ezintsha esinokujonga kuzo

Kaloku, sakuba sifunde indlela obusweleke ngayo

Ubunentlaninge yoomama;

Ubunentlaninge yootata.

Nangona, uthe ngomzuzwana phambi kokuba usweleke

Wajonga phezulu,

Kodwa akwabikho

namnye ufikayo.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)

The Kids are acutely AWARE

The Kids are acutely AWARE...

Show Me Your Life is a collaborative initiative with Cinematheque Films; an online international VideoART peer mentored program for kids at risk for HIV/AIDS. The Artistic Director is Tim Barrus, who Founded Cinematheque Films/The Studio; a 24/7 safe house and intensive arts program for boys with HIV/AIDS.

The majority of kids in the world today, live ‘at risk’ lives due to poverty & malnutrition, conflicts & refugee status, inter-generational physical & psychological abuse, trafficking & sexual violations, discrimination & lack of education, homelessness & vastly inadequate or zero healthcare. Show Me Your Life gives small video cameras to kids at risk for HIV/AIDS and through an online supervised peer mentoring program they create VideoART and photographic collages and poetry that express their experiences and inner lives. Their body of collective portraiture is a significant document of contemporary witness and of survival despite all the odds.

The relationships between the Show Me Your Life mentors and students allows for dynamic and meaningful knowledge to be disseminated. What has become indisputably clear during this program is that kids labeled 'at risk for HIV/AIDS' are highly creative and extremely intelligent; two skills they rely on to survive within our communities. The kids are acutely AWARE...

The kids are acutely AWARE of the tension and complexity that exacerbates their risk for HIV/AIDS and their ongoing risk for further physical and psychological trauma experienced as a direct result of inappropriate and inconsistent access to healthcare and a safe place to live.

The kids are acutely AWARE that the mashup of their inadequate living conditions and nutrition, their exposure to constant physical and psychological and sexual violence, their use of narcotics and alcohol to dull the pain of surviving on a daily basis, all compromise their immune systems; making them susceptible for opportunistic infections and diseases; making it difficult to treat and heal even simple infections and cuts.

The kids are acutely AWARE their lives will be further threatened due to discrimination and reprisals from those such as family and gang members, teachers and social workers, pimps and tricks, police and medical personnel, if it becomes known they have chosen to seek testing and happen to be diagnosed as HIV positive.

The kids are acutely AWARE they will be placed at risk for further physical, psychological and sexual violations and a heightened risk for HIV (including for new strains of HIV if they already happen to be HIV positive), if they are prosecuted and incarcerated for drugs, theft or prostitution.

The Kids are acutely AWARE that not wearing a condom for anal sex or two condoms for oral sex will heighten their risk for HIV (condoms are not available for Males Who Have Sex with Males within the penal system).

The kids are acutely AWARE their immune systems are particularly vulnerable surrounding periods of detainment and enforced detox, and that exhibiting signs of vulnerability within confined environments such as the military, camps, detention centers, places them at extreme risk for violent reprisals from people around them.

The Kids are acutely AWARE that a lack of ACCESS, and interrupted access, to antiretrovirals and healthcare poses a clear and present danger to their health and well-being.

The Kids are acutely AWARE that a lack of SAFE safe houses poses a clear and present danger to their health and well-being.

The Kids are acutely AWARE that a lack of AWARENESS within the communities surrounding them, places them at heightened and continuous risk for HIVAIDS and Human Rights Abuses.

The kids are acutely AWARE that hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in HIV prevention and awareness.

The kids are acutely AWARE that the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and The Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography are two superhighways for the trafficking of HIV and AIDS related diseases within and across international borders.

The kids are acutely AWARE that too many adults believe they have no power, no knowledge or no money to assist 'kids at risk.'

The kids are acutely AWARE that too many adults believe 'kids at risk' are dangerous and that they educate their own children to avoid 'kids at risk.'

Let us ignite with Show Me Your Life the power of our humanity and our enormous capacity for creativity, so we may encourage each of our esteemed 192 United Nations Representatives to ratify The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and to adopt the two CRC Optional Protocols that endemically link HIV with The Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and The Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography. What a wonderful gift we will create for our children and our grandchildren. We will be able to look them in the eye and proudly declare our legacy of freedom to them, and to the world.

Let us begin by encouraging the United States of America to join the 190 United Nations Member States who have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. And then by encouraging the United States of America to ratify the CRC's two optional protocols, two superhighways for the trafficking of HIV within and across our borders, that prohibit the... The Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and The Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography.

Show Me Your Life also works directly with kids who are self-identified as sex workers. We have never met a kid doing sex work who had not somewhere in the past been sexually abused or hurt. As a sex worker you know the many risks you take. But the one silent killer out there you are dancing with is HIV. We encourage you to get tested. No one can force you into it. We want to know something about the journey you have been on. We want you to know that you can tell the story about how you live, how you have survived, and no one is going to tell you that this story cannot be told, and no one here is going to put you down and humiliate you in any way. It is what it is. You are a person with dignity and worth. It is safe for you to say: this is how I have been hurt. It is safe for you to say: these are my dreams and this is what I want from life. No one is going to beat you up for that. Your stories belong to you and only you can tell them. To that end, the boys at Cinematheque Films will work with you to find the most effective way to form and mold your story into a visual form we can all attempt to begin to understand.

Contact http://tim@showmeyourlife.org

Tim Barrus. Director, Show Me Your Life.

http://tim@showmeyourlife.org

There will be many children on Show Me Your Life and some of them have very difficult stories to hear. But we must hear them and we will listen.

"Hope and the Imagination"

For many young people, a lack of hope stems from a sense of isolation, a sense that no one shares their values and that they are not cared for by others. Caring about people outside of one’s own circle of friends and family presents a challenge in a world where such concern is not a common value... If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us (George Eliot, Middlemarch). We cannot teach hope unless we ourselves are hopeful, not merely in a general sense but in specific ways for individual children (Herbert Kohl).

"It's all about choices; standing up for the Rights of the Child and assisting our neighbours who are struggling to stand up."

Only 2 of the 192 UN Member Countries have NOT ratified The Convention on the Rights of the Child (20 November 1989): The United States of America and Somalia.

Only 137 of the 192 UN Member Countries have ratified The Convention’s Optional Protocol: The Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography.

Only 132 of the 192 UN Member Countries have ratified The Convention’s Optional Protocol: The Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict.

“Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens

The medical gentleman walked away to dinner; and the nurse, having once more applied herself to the green bottle, sat down on a low chair before the fire, and proceeded to dress the infant.

What an excellent example of the power of dress, young Oliver Twist was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar; it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have assigned him his proper station in society. But now that he was enveloped in the oldcalico robes which had grown yellow in the same service, he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once--a parish child--the orphan of a workhouse--the humble, half starved drudge--to be cuffed and buffeted through the world--despised by all, and pitied by none.

Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mercies of church-wardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder.

***

'What are you crying for?' inquired the gentleman in the white waistcoat. And to be sure it was very extraordinary. What COULD the boy be crying for?

When becoming aware of the medical ramifications of poverty and the importance of child advocacy, Charles Dickens was an effective proponent for children. The pediatrician Dr Patricia Brennan suggests Dicken’s “Oliver Twist” is a textbook of child abuse: "there in the background, were all sorts of observations of abuse some of which have only been brought to the fore in recent research. You look at this book and it's all there. With child abuse people are divided. They either see it under every stone or they do not think it happens at all. Oliver Twist may help people face up to child abuse, or keep their minds open to it." John Skelton, a senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham: "The death of Paul Dombey in Dicken’s “Dombey and Son” is an extraordinary insight into what you might presume a young child feels when he's dying… it offers students a different way into looking at the world.”

Farid is dead. He died peacacefully among the whores who kept - vigil.

Show Me Your Life also deals directly with kids who are self-identified as sex workers. Our purpose is not to scare you or to change you or to tell you how to live your lives. Our purpose is to provide a safe place for you — a place no one can invade — where you can tell us anyway you can about the story that is your life.

As a sex worker, you know all about many of the risks you take. But the one silent killer out there you are dancing with is HIV. We encourage you to get tested. But no one can force you into it.

I have never met a kid who was doing sex work who had not somewhere in the past been sexually abused. We want to know something about the journey you have been on. We want you to know that you can tell the story about how you live, how you have survived, and no one is going to tell you that this story cannot be told, and no one here is going to put you down and humiliate you in any way. It is what it is.

You are a person with dignity and worth. It is safe for you to say: this is how I have been hurt. It is safe for you to say: these are my dreams and this is what I want from life. No one is going to beat you up for that. Your stories belong to you and only you can tell them. To that end, the boys at Cinematheque Films will work with you to find the most effective way to form and mold your story into a visual form we can all attempt to begin to understand.

Ext: From high overhead, we see the frozen Russian landscape slip beneath us as our flight takes off for Asia.

A cacophony of sounds and voices.

We wade through the maddening crowds. The boys for sale are almost invisible.

Almost is the operant idea here.

We see them set against the heterosexual landscape even as it melts like ice. We see the hookers waiting. We see a landscape saturated with the quid pro quo of sex. We see the bare bones of survival. Everything around them flashes with a contrived beat and a forced light.

Smokin’ heroin. Chasing dragons. They are only there. The men who seek them out know where to look. Knowing how to blend in, too.

It is the year of the hyena. It is always the year of the hyena. It is the planet of hyenas.

There is the stereotypical tragedy of a lost childhood. But it’s about more than that. The loss is the loss of life itself.

What does homelessness mean. What does survival sex mean. What does abandonment mean.

We see them talking about what they want. They want to be loved. They want to be wanted.

I find this an almost stunning commonality. “I want someone to love me.”

You think they are so hardened.

We are ALL wrong about so many things.

How hardened they really are — beyond exterior assumptions — is one of those things we are so wrong, wrong, wrong about. Survival is a journey, too. But there is more to life than merely surviving it.

And they know that. If you took the time to travel like a tourist beyond the realm of exploitation; if you were to know any of them, any of them, you would discover that they know that. They know who and what they are. And they also know that there is so much more to life, and they are doing their best to hang tightly to what constitutes a life where hope is almost always just outside their outstretched reach. And ours.

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