 WARNING: EXPLICIT IMAGERY & COLLOQUIAL LANGUAGE.
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) & Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)
What is Real Stories Gallery ?
Real Stories Gallery Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, facilitates contemporary storytelling and collective witness through the arts for the purpose of raising awareness and evoking social change. Through storytelling, Real Stories works to prevent human rights violations related to HIV/AIDS worldwide.
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Inside the Void by Tim Barrus & Les Garcons de Cinematheque Films, 2012
The Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography is a superhighway for the trafficking and transmission of HIVAIDS and related and ongoing Human Rights Violations taking place in the heart of our communities.
"i believe you : Show Me Your Life." A collaborative art and storytelling initiative with Cinematheque Films [http://www.showmeyourlife.tumblr.com]
At the end of the day, what young people remember is how you made them FEEL...
How does it feel as a young male to be alive today in The United States of America during an HIVAIDS pandemic and without the protection offered by Convention on the Rights of the Child. How does it feel as a young male to be repeatedly sexually abused, tormented, subjugated, trafficked, bought and sold, prostituted, practice survival sex, to be stigmatized, to inject intraveneous drugs and sniff glue to dull the horror and stave off hunger and cold, to be criminalized, incarserated and punished again and again. How does it feel as a young male to be infected with HIV and search in vain for appropriate and consistent supplies of antiretrovirals, medical care, nutrition and SAFE safe-houses to treat AIDS related cancers, dementia, night sweats and nightmares. How does it feel as a young male to survive in an abusive adult world and constantly hear the words "i don't believe you" or worse still "THEY will never believe you."
ANSWER: It feels like VIOLENCE. What does socially and culturally sanctioned VIOLENCE experienced by these young males FEEL like. Perhaps the remarkable storytelling VideoART created by some ingenious and creative young male survivors, who are participating in our Show Me Your Life program, permits us to imagine... And prompts us to ask: WHY has the United States of America not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and WHY after ratifying the CRC's optional protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography has the USA not yet implemented a coordinated Federal criminal justice & healthcare system response that best serves the interests of each violated & infected child in today's HIVAIDS pandemic. Children watch carefully the messages communicated by adults.
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Violence by Tim Barrus & Les Garcons de Cinematheque Films, 2012
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Sins and Secrets by Tim Barrus & Les Garcons de Cinematheque Films, 2012
“forbidden fruit” by Michelangelo (Sistine Chapel, Vatican, 1508-1512)
"AIDS Genocide" by Tim Barrus, 2011
Society fails to understand and recognize that male children practicing survival sex and harnessed to the commercial sex industries, are simply highly stigmatized links in the broad networks of HETEROSEXUAL transmission of HIVAIDS. The vast majority of Men Who Have Sex With Boys present themselves within their communities and families as married men with children of their own; often employing violent and derogatory language in a public forum to distance themselves from their "secret sexual desires and practices" and seeking to unjustly blame and further stigmatize responsible adult homosexuals. It is time to rip down the cultural net curtains that permits so much HURT. Is it really so embarrassing to speak of the sexual violation of young males. If so, our humanity is surely dying of embarrassment.
I now know boys doing sex work from home (low profile on the drugs). The same homes they would have been kicked out of a couple of years ago. As punishment for the crime. What has changed. Simple: they’re the only people in the family who have work. It keeps the lot of them in food. But that is about it. It will not keep them in the home they are desperately clinging to. So your son is getting fucked for bucks. Where his daddy can’t get or keep a job. So Daddy is dependent, because no one wants to pay to fuck him.
A Grave of Sighs
The idea is that you can take kids who have a history of abuse, and at the same time (and, often, a consequence of the abuse), usually a long track record in sex work; you give them cameras. They make videos. They will bring up issues as they see them. And then, you have to give the kid space to sit back and be conflicted. He has to see if what he has created speaks to what speaks to him. It is not unusual for the boy to have a crisis when he can’t reconcile the conflicts of his life. That is when someone has to be there for him. No one can ever really understand what he has lived through. Especially abandonment. You are thinking sex. It’s almost too obvious. The more fundamental issue is abandonment. He is testing you. They are not really all that difficult to stand beside even if the price you pay (and you will pay it) is that you will be compelled to listen. To the kid. Not necessarily the video. The video is only a tool. You have to let them play with it if the thing is to ever have any value beyond the obviously superficial. And that is the accomplishment of the child. He has transcended — if he makes to the end of his video — the eternally skin-deep. He will find it exhilarating and at the same time he must not be abandoned. At this point, it will be an issue of life and death. If you abandon him over what he has put in his video, he will destroy himself. I have seen it many, many times. Telling him that he does not exist is redundant. It’s just stupid. He’s heard it before. It doesn’t really mean anything, and has very little impact. He knows he exists. But exists as what is his most pressing, focused issue. Cinematheque@Europe.com
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All Old Men Are Dangerous/ Everyone Turns Away by Tim Barrus & Les Garcons de Cinematheque Films, 2012
we’re dead anyway/ i see them as if they were horses/ they have turned away the night/ far gone in stippled blueish-grey/ caught up by the old men who would herd them into the conduits/ granted tombs, pits, banishment from entire kingdoms into wild where the kicking up its life containing whatever exists of menace above the trees of men/ the old academic crones are dangerous — they would fit you into the status quo/ for darkness, blood, stones; death awaits the slaughterhouse/ tell the bones being such frames of us, lives and grows these years of streets for those who cum to play and pay to let out their rage and speak directly to the music of the marches/ the sun climbs in / such skateboards in what appears to be translucent exhortation similarly plastered on the walls of time/ for a rock even and flocking where/ o you fell then suddenly emerge from a concrete floor whose ascending shadows are, in fact, concentric shocks, what heavens will attend to unsuspected viral loads almost worn away against his better judgment back behind us like the rings around the moon in bright and thundering formation must be counted in the bloodstream’s complex twist/ i have always seen them like the burning herd of horses that they are/ pegasus whose memories of wings were not confined to metal cages where a nail was shot into your head robed in pretty pink and grease-stained floors/ the dim-lit hospital rooms and boundary lines of after all how many of them can the land support beyond contamination/ madness leads the inner selves to theatre’s stunning audience of whores who themselves tho remain nomadic in the rounding up where the running through the dust of risk that the nail could be for them finished with its meat-packing protocols of blessing in disguise/ such a stallion’s noise when mounted by a man or another stallion, unborns where the tongues and wanting rubs the asshole clean/ the lure will come crashing to its roots of plunder — whipped on and slapped — the sun to swirl its milk in throats and thighs to be released back into a wilderness unbending where when man arrives and upon the salt and licks inundate our breathing sleep; our speaking spoke of speaking and our boots outrun by longing that spills so deep within us, the impudent among us can be counted on to kick the doors in/ how everything turns away/ the afterglow unfolding/ the stirrups still clinging to the groin and to the bed/ yet still the landscape as seen from above in flights/ falls away in ruin faster than a horse can gallop/
Human trafficking is not about the journey, and it’s not about the destination. Human trafficking is the trains, the ovens, and the stench from chimneys. Human trafficking compels you to go where they want you to go. Human trafficking is always fundamentally the same navigation through volatility and death. It is enslavement. Prostitution is not always a lifestyle choice. It was a basic problem of survival. Follow the fucking money. Whoring ruined my life and my health. It will be what eventually kills me. There were no other choices. There was no food to eat. I sold my body to men. What would you do in order to survive. Stop judging me from your safe house. It was a secret world of desperate clinging to whatever drove you to tomorrow. Tomorrow arrived on wings of wax, corpses, disease, and always, always the destruction of any inner ability to feel anything at all. We could eat. There was food. It was not enough.
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.
"there are as many stories in a dance as there are dancers to tell them"
Sucht der Junger (Show Me Your Life, Germany)
Sehnsucht is a German noun translated as "longing", "yearning" and "craving," or in a wider sense a type of "intensely missing." However, Sehnsucht is difficult to translate adequately and describes a deep emotional state. Its meaning is somewhat similar to the Portuguese word saudade. The writer Georg Tabori called Sehnsucht one of those quasi-mystical terms in German for which there is no satisfactory corresponding term in another language. Sehnsucht is a compound word, originating from an ardent longing or yearning (das Sehnen) and addiction (die Sucht).
Tim Barrus/ In the constricted universe of the at-risk kid, addiction and the issues of addiction, both socially and medically, are hard realities no one in this context can escape. They are ubiquitous to culture. Addiction in Germany is still addiction. Addiction in Texas is still addiction. The only variables are the degrees to which criminality is misinterpreted.
Sucht der Junge is not at-risk for addiction. He’s an addict. That is not how he sees himself. Does it matter how the kid sees himself. This one sees himself as a dancer.
In order to understand what the term at-risk means, we’ve frequently taken what already is, and we put a “might happen” tag on it. When, in fact, it can be a done deal by the time we get there.
At-risk for school failure cannot be applied to kids who have already failed at fitting into the system. Educational systems do not accommodate. They are inherently designed to discriminate.
At-risk for sexually transmitted disease cannot be applied to a kid who has HIV. That train left the station. As long as we fail to appropriately identify exactly who the kid is, we get to put his failures on him. At-risk for suggests that the kid can turn this around by himself, and when he can’t we can shrug and wash our hands of it.
At-risk for addiction cannot be applied to a kid who is already incarcerated by a court to a drug rehab program.
The kids are already there. By throwing around the term “at-risk,” we are perpetuating a denial the kid is already aware of and the adult wishes could be treated and shoved under the rug.
It’s not that simple. It is the stuff of adolescence to question everything. To create their own tribes.
We've been working with Sucht der Junge for eight months, now. This is the video we have to show for it because at some point with a video you have to be able to put it down and say: this is the best I can do.
Adults won’t like it. The testosterone level alone is off the charts. In real unconscious ways, adults will feel threatened by the muscular assertiveness in the dancing. It’s stylized, but not in ways adults are used to seeing dance. It’s not about my world. It’s about kids at-risk. It’s about the challenges they face. It’s about the kid constructing a picture that speaks to the story that is his life.
But no matter what, the kid simply seems to keep on dancing. Show me your life.
Konol (Show Me Your Life, Australia)
Born to Be Wasted — Blood to Fire
Tim Barrus/ It took Konol and Cinematheqe eight months to construct Born to be Wasted — Blood to Fire. It represents many aspects to Konol’s existence living with HIV in Australia. No. No. Yes. Yes. From blood to fire. Show me your life.
Umthombo (Show Me Your Life, South Africa)
Dannyboy (Show Me Your Life, USA)
Tim Barrus/ Make no mistake about it, the kid’s on fire. The other junkies call him Dannyboy. The kid has major learning disabilities. I doubt that he has written a sentence in his life. His video is short, but it’s all the attention span he has. I don’t treat junkies. I don’t deal with addiction as a sickness. Mainly because that’s not my job. My job is to facilitate kids at-risk in expressing themselves. I met Dannyboy when I was visiting Los Angeles and staying at the Alta Cienega Motel in West Hollywood, where Danny was living with other night creatures of his kind. No parents. No school. Danny deals drugs, and he’s a thief. When I met him I thought he was most definitely at-risk, and I think that now. The only difference between the Danny then and the Danny now is the cough. I suspect tuberculosis. There has to be something redeeming about this kid. Even if you have to turn over boulders the size of mountains to find it. Danny’s into sports. Even if he does attend most sports events either high on meth or zombied out on heroin. I do not know Danny’s world. And either do you. Those of you who are shaking your head knowingly, know nothing of this landscape. Stop pretending. I did not know that Danny could focus his head around images that are mainly of the spectators at any given game. He’s curious. But there is something off about the speeds at which the neurological connections here are made. You can put any kind of moral on this story that you want. It’s still Dannyboy who is living it.
Liu (Show Me Your Life, Tibet)
Liu Floating In Life
**the soundtrack is a poem written by the sixth Dalai Lama; background voices are Liu's friends singing.
Diego (Show Me Your Life, Spain)
La danseuse se dishabille (The dancer undresses)
I'm Diego. I am 19 years old. I live in the Barcelona, Spain. I was a dancer. The disease AIDS is killing me. I am dancing in the movie. I have nerve damage. The medicines have hurt me. I can not dance anymore. I can only make videos of dancers.
Pascal (Show Me Your Life, France)
Tim Barrus/ Pascal is a sixteen year old patient suffering from HIV and schizophrenia at the Maison Blanche Hospital in Paris where he has assembled for Show Me Your Life — à risque: lumière et movement. A collage of sound, motion, dance, and metaphor that explores the perceptions he has of the world around him.
brothers running from a fire they did not create/ infected/ turning purple under the weight of enormous summer clouds/ you cannot just summarily and arbitrarily split them up/ i will not allow it/ i’m telling you they would die/ like seed packets through pasturage/ pills and pain/ one kissing at a time/ under the aegis of the flames above you/ run boys run/ stop but you are breaking free/ unaffiliated with silhouettes/ you find the wandering oblivion/ flashes cross the memories of lucidity with fire/
your whispering was what had been the piercing of your eyes/ the discordant street/ that pulls cold stone over cuts that tie the threads/ to you, to all your minutes/ through corridors of medical indifference/ who were you to question anything/ let alone identity/
Human Rights Abuses & The Trafficking of HIV
Today, the trafficking of HIV directly affects the lives of millions of children who are reaching for their adulthoods within our communities. Within this context our stories and images permit us to introduce ourselves to each other within and across borders. Our stories and images compel us to feel, to imagine, to empathize and to care. To care enough to encourage our families and friends and neighbours to imagine a world in which all 192 United Nations Member States ratify and enforce the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the two Optional Protocols that directly impact the lives of millions of children by facilitating the trafficking of HIV and cruelty: the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, and the use of children in armed conflict where HIV is increasingly being employed as a weapon of war.
Lusala (Show Me Your Life, Southern Sudan)
Nuit
The average price to purchase a Southern Sudan boy slave is $35. Boy slaves are repeatedly gang-raped by their Arab Masters. The United Nations took the firm position that genocide and slavery were world crimes, should be eradicated and those engaged in it should be put on trial by the world court in The Hague, (Resolution 260 (111 A), UN General Assembly). This action has been the modis operendi in the case of Kosovo. Yet the world has not addressed the crimes being committed in Southern Sudan.
Dear Tim Barrus (Director, Show Me Your Life). You do not write enough. When you write, I listen. Sometimes I grow very dark inside in order to listen. But I listen. When you said show me your life you had my complete attention. I have never believed that white people wanted to know anything about my life. You white people were the teachers, the lawyers, the doctors, and the law. All my life. We were there to shine your shoes, and kiss your white ass. You don’t need to know who I am. Know this, white boy. I do not believe and I do not know anyone who believes that if you just work hard enough, it’s going to happen for you. My work will never be anywhere near the center. It will only happen at the edges. The edges where slavery is no abstraction, and abstraction is exactly that. When I heard that you were doing Show Me Your Life I thought you do not mean me. Exchanging places. Is it about how I made this as a black man who has no access. Or is this about what story is being told and has been constructed as metaphor and images. White people won’t like it. Black people will not like it anymore than white people. Or maybe it is not about race at all. I suspect it is far more about voice than anything. I feel like my voice is always dancing in the darkness and the best I will ever do is called just barely hanging on. Lusala.
“Sight without confronting the past” by © Carolyn Srygley-Moore
How can we see Africa without confronting the past.~~ Tim
Children murdered by soldiers in the Congo. One child.
You held his hand his camera held....a vision, gestating.
One sees the animism
one sees the transcendence the black, black skin
of which the whites were innately envious.
We are fashioned of school paste. I ask you
How do we stop writing of trauma when trauma
exists meteors of trauma
flesh entering the atmosphere of hatred of stupidity
of mistrust
entrails burning until the rock makes
its mark in the canyon.
I cannot see a piece of glass in any manner
as I once did a piece of wood
blood on a medicine man's doll: what is white magic
what is darkness called upon
as the gold skinned snake is called upon
mid-apocalypse ? My brother who traveled the 3rd world
extensively once said all who live in America are
spoiled. I wonder.
How does one speak of Africa indeed of life at all
without speaking of the past?
I peel my chalked skin
it does not make me weep the pain
my own pain is nothing.
I hear the voices of the damned
those damned by humanity
those tangled in the apparati of the penal colony.
I hear the voices of the damned
paired with flute violin brushes heaped with color
such are the voices of the damned
ripely coiling upward strangling tree strangling
what does not permit them to reach sky.
Moise (Show Me Your Life, République Démocratique du Congo)
Sur la rivière. Ces vidéos sont dangereux à faire. Je dois arrêter de les faire pendant quelques jours
Tim Barrus/ Moise was Show Me Your Life's first student. Moise died in March 2011.
Moise died. Why, Tim, why. And not from AIDS but from his infected machete wound so in the end it was AIDS that became a warzone. I know he felt trapped. By the virus that is violence. By his survival and running. By seeing his family killed like that. By soldiers on one side and soldiers on the other side.
I would argue that it is a crime against humanity to rape either men or women and use HIV as a biological weapon. I am going through Moise’s video clips to see if there is anything I can convert into a still. It is difficult stuff to look at. I cannot imagine surviving it. He is not quite out of the woods yet. They can hear gunfire from the clinic.
In many countries, the intentional or reckless infection of a person with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is considered to be a crime. People who do so can be charged with criminal transmission of HIV, murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, or assault. Some states have enacted laws expressly to criminalize HIV transmission, as in the United States, while others charge under the existing laws, as in the United Kingdom.
Raymond Fils: This is for Moise. I am your Cinematheque Films video mentor. The video you have sent me is shocking. I have never seen a human being beheaded before. At first, I did not know what to say. I do not see how we can show a human being beheaded by soldiers. I am sorry. I am sorry you had to see this. I am sorry you are trying to run from these soldiers. Here is what I think we can do. I think I can try to get some still photography from this video. It is very dramatic. I will do that and we can still tell this story that you are fleeing soldiers, who are raping and killing people village to village. I am praying for you to live. You need to know that I will always tell you the truth. This project was designed for something less than this. But we need to know this is happening in your part of the world. That does not mean I know how to make what photographs we will come up with important. But I will try. Please be as safe as possible. I am in awe of your ability to survive this. Your friend, Raymond.
Jasha (Show Me Your Life, Russia)
Cornered
I am always feeling cornered. By death. By the life that encircles me with walls and cubicles and boxes and the weight of history and the gravitas (translator’s word) of definitions and old dead bones. I feel trapped in languages and with Tim translating; Tim writing it down as we attempt to work together and bridge what is human to the two of us — Tim, what does this mean please write it down I do not understand — what death means and what life means now and me hearing but I do not know what anyone means anymore. Moise died. Why, Tim, why. And not from AIDS but from his infected machete wound so in the end it was AIDS that became a warzone. I know he felt trapped. By the virus that is violence. By his survival and running. By seeing his family killed like that. By soldiers on one side and soldiers on the other side. This video is for Moise. I learned a lot from you. Tim says learn one. Do one. Teach one. This is the doing. I do not know what “Cornered” says. The video is my voice. The images themselves are only stories. Narratives like the Russian doll inside the doll inside the doll inside the smiling doll. It’s all a prison. We are imprisoned. We all have bars that keep us caged. I grew up disassembling all those dolls. Now, I only want to reconstruct them so I can understand what was actually on the inside. It doesn’t really matter if Tim screws up with translations. It’s only important that we see what was on the inside of the doll is the doll. There are no answers to a Russian mystery. That is what HIV and AIDS are to most Russians. Another mystery and maybe it is not real. We suspect everything. To only reveal a litany of dolls that that are pulled from my bad dreams of being chased and scars and outer shells. I told Moise he would have great scars when he healed. But then he said, “They will kill visual poetry.
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"our stories are not easy to witness without the benefit and protection of hindsight. our stories will survive when some distant generation turns to ask, what were they doing, what were they thinking, how could they allow this to happen on their watch. we thank you for the fire in your belly that ignites and compels you to join us in ending the horror." http://realstoriesgallery@gmail.com
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PAIN by Tim Barrus & Les Garcons de Cinematheque Films, 2012
Once a month we stand in the long line at the AIDS pharmacy clinic for our antiretrovirals and medications that keep us alive. If they don’t have what we need, they don't have what we need. And that's it. We leave empty handed, wait for the next month's line in excruciating pain. The AIDS clinic pharmacy shelves are becoming bare in the USA. The drugs are not reaching us. And no one at the pharmacy knows why. It is insane public health policy. Taking appropriate antiretroviral medications consistently reduces a person's infectiousness by 95%, prevents the retrovirus from mutating and can extend the quality and length of a person's life. Can you imagine what it feels like to stand in line for hours each month for your medications and then be told there are none for you. Can you imagine how vocal Obama or Clinton would be if this was their experience, or their children's experience. It's unimaginable, unthinkable, that they and their children should have to ever experience such PAIN in the United States of America in 2012.
Professor Philip Goulder
(Pediatrician & Research Immunologist, University of Oxford)
We watch carefully the people who inspire us, and listen to the stories they tell us; what we learn from them shapes what we understand, how we feel and how we act in the world.
Daniel Ben-Horin (Founder & Co-Ceo TechSoup Global)
I have watched Real Stories Gallery evolve from the outset - a pure vision encountering huge obstacles, but never wavering. The result is what you see: An inspiration to all of us, a path forward for our hearts and minds (and bodies) and a reminder of how technology is there to fulfill human creativity and meet human needs.
Professor Paul Webley (Director, SOAS, 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 and Human Rights Violations.
"Banned" by Gonkar Gyatso (Artist, Tibet; Art For Humanity)
PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sexually Violated Males Infected with HIV/AIDS Debut Art Show in New York City
"Tristan's Moon" opens to the public, showcasing real stories expressed by young males ensnared in the international commercial sex industries and living with the devastating consequences of HIV/AIDS
NEW YORK, Jan. 10, 2012 -- Throughout the United States, one in every six males under the age of 16 is a victim of sexual abuse. More frightening, many are immersed in sex trafficking and at extremely high risk for contracting and dying from HIV/AIDS or related illnesses, substance abuse and suicide. From the beginning of abuse through death, these young people typically suffer in silence with no hope of appropriate or consistent medical care, justice or safety. The sale of children, child prostitution, child pornography, sex trafficking, HIV/AIDS and ongoing human rights violations are the motivation behind a disturbing yet powerful 2012 art show at Real Stories Gallery Foundation in Tribeca, New York.
The "Tristan's Moon" art installation is the collaborative effort of young artists and their mentors. Thanks to Tim Barrus and Les Garcons de Cinematheque Films, founder and residents of an international safe-house and innovative arts program, these artists have been given a voice through artistic expression. Real Stories initiatives are showcased at http://www.real-stories-gallery.org with a foreword by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. Tristan's Moon is also the first human rights brick-and-mortar gallery of its kind, revealing personal stories through video, poetry, music, tattooing, photo collages and fine art prints.
"Tristan’s Moon spotlights a tragedy experienced by thousands of young males worldwide, including the United States," says Dr. Rachel Chapple, Real Stories founder, anthropologist and mother of four children (three boys). "One startling story is the vast majority of abusers are married men with children. This and other realities make it a difficult story to share and to witness. But we must, if we are to end the trauma happening on our watch. Tristan’s Moon reveals the creativity and guts of young males forced to survive in an abusive adult environment, and their extraordinary empathy and compassion. We have much to learn from these remarkable young survivors. Tristan's Moon will be a life-changing experience for anyone who witnesses it."
Tristan’s Moon is a conversation raised by Real Stories in collaboration with Cinematheque Films and Art for Humanity, which have gifted their international fine art and poetry human rights portfolios. Other notable contributors include composer Philip Glass and Dunvagen Music Publishers (Satyagraha: “confrontation and rescue”); tattoo artist Anthony "Civ" Civorelli, lead singer for the punk band Gorilla Biscuits; and Sumana Witherspoon-Ghosh, assistant to Vanity Fair's art director.
Tristan's Moon is located at 36 Laight Street, Tribeca, NY 10013. Please ring the bell to enter (Monday through Friday). For private viewings, ask Rachel at realstoriesgallery@gmail.com; 646-331-0117.
Real Stories Gallery Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, facilitates contemporary storytelling and collective witness through the arts for the purpose of raising awareness and evoking social change. Through storytelling, Real Stories works to prevent human rights violations related to HIV/AIDS worldwide.
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to touch. just. being. alive.
the art of it and the guts of it escape my morbid hand/ you can deny that they exist but what you see, and what you do not see, and what you deny, and what you do not deny is irrelevant/ it is not germane to their existence that you see them/ your indifference is meaningless because they will demand to live their lives without either your approval or acceptance/ it’s not about you/ it’s about them/ i would wear a pink triangle but i don’t know how to sew/ excuses, excuses/ don’t tell me i cannot do what i do because i am doing it/ i do not need your permission or anyone’s permission/ i am not talking about doing it/ i am doing it/ no, no/ yes, yes/ my question to you is: how do i imbue them with a humanity after they have been through what they have been through/ they would mash their very mothers into the matrix/ yes, yes/ no, no/ yes/ just being alive/ to touch/ is being infected to the bone against the throat/ to touch what/ my blind eyes drilling knives through the masks of stone/ touch shimmering and disappearing/ carving out the deeper dreams of things to touch among the dead/ the past is iridescent streaked with the boatman’s sweat/ self-righteousness gets my ass up in the morning/ and next the heart declines to find the whirling of a shore/ heavy as the savage cave alive and writhing in the silence of the shattered, fast-bound curse/ to touch the barbs and wire/ my scratching twilight with its furious stare murmuring i was loved once by a sullen and fleshless wind/ and sailors fallen faster/ and over this glimmering river broke all the desolate nudes in stark and bewinged detail/ to touch/ being touched/ carving out the heart/ to touch/ don’t tell me i cannot do what i do because i am doing it/ i do not need your permission or anyone’s permission/ i am not talking about doing it/ i am doing it/ no, no/ yes, yes/ yes/ my question to you is: how do i imbue them with a humanity after they have been through what they have been through/ mash mashed/ yes, yes/ no, no/ yes/ just being alive/ is not enough/ you have to walk that walk/ oh, humanity/ you have to give them what they have anyway/
because it belongs to them/
denial is the tongue from hell/ denial is the indelible smell of char/ denial is the darker, sooner death draped around your neck by the sneering status quo/ denial is the anchor of your hate/ denial is your whore to paradise the glowing and the knowing pink things three squares flush on flush/ denial is the retch infinitely attended to by the curling of a peasant with a bullet in his brain/ denial is the message giving birth to acidic spill that soaks all mourning in retreat/ denial is the soak of drought upon which a pirouette like god salts a suicide/ denial is the drag of knowledge down the tearing street so necessary for a pathos nourished by spit alone/ denial’s breath is vile/ and where have you ever shown me beyond your flesh’s stretch marks that what you think matters/ why does what you think matter/ why does what you deny matter/ you knocking on doors declaring that your hollow matters/ how do you matter/ why do you matter/ you have never explained this/ you have never articulated in an open mike at the reading why your venom should be my blood/ why/ why/ why is your droning buzz in monotone backlit by significance/ you, hater/ how is it that your desire for revenge should be mine as well/ your hissing only leaves a shrinking shell for your epic migraine and the trotting off/ denial is the shield you ache with to ward off blood/ denial is the shame of fate/ denial is the rubble of a set of lungs stirring in a winter’s rearrangement of reality/ denial is the kingdom of the shadows governed by the jackals of your shock/ and where is it written by your hands of stones that we all should burn with it/ on your hands and knees/ why is it that you matter/ how is it that i am compelled to choke on your petrification/ some mean proof imbued with panic’s suffering/ how is it that i should run with you and facing away/ gesturing to the space you occupy that covers your disturbance/ denial is the end of nothingness and a freedom from the past and the wounded dream of a memory whose spin is a shifting of the passages wave-to-wave teething on nothing more than bones and the slow spread/
of reason’s ashes/
they are not your children/ your children are not your children/ i didn’t make it up/ nothing is original/ not you/ not me/ we are frozen as copies of ourselves/ stand at attention/ do not look around or you will be shot/ or are you are the indifference/ or are you are the people in the town who do not know who know/ who know/ who know/ no, no/ oh, yes, oh yes/ you know/ you are the guards/ you are the gates/ you are the wire and the barb/ you are the ovens and the smoke of faggots/ razzle dazzle, baby/ they are doing it without you/ for themselves/ you cannot abide the idea of it/ the trains in the background are only trains/ they can cum for anyone/ not us we paid our mortgage we sent our kids to college we bought a car we did all the right things/ we did all the right things/ but they are cuming for you, too/ no, no/ you can deny that they exist but what you see, and what you do not see, and what you deny, and what you do not deny is irrelevant/ it is not germane to anyone that you see them/ your indifference is meaningless because they will demand to live their lives without either your approval or acceptance/ it’s not about you/ it’s about them/ the reality of now is juxtaposed against what went down back then because it has to be/ flashing and dancing to a touching of the dreams/ where is this humanity i speak of to be found/ you either hear the music of it or you don’t/ there is no middle ground/ of course, i’m a liar your body’s nice, too/ in the background are the faces of the walking dead/ oh, denial/ the ovens of your hateful tongues mean you you you/ i would wear a pink triangle but i don’t know how to sew/ excuses, excuses/ the art of it escapes me/ no, no/
yes, yes/ yes/
HIV/AIDS Bodies Series
Pascal (Show Me Your Life, France)
"collapsed veins" by tim barrus & cinematheque
Nevertheless... with the economy in the toilet, more and more kids are living on the street and in the system. In this particular community which prides itself on family values, the real statistics for kids in the system are staggering. Here’s the reality: 90% of every child in the system here in the USA, who makes it to the age of 18 will be in prison before they are 19; which is obviously almost all of them. They’re in rest areas. They’re in truck stops. They’re in whorehouses and shooting galleries and meth labs. To be in foster care means you are going to prison. How many of them are HIV by the age of sixteen. 42%. 42% of kids in foster care before the age of 16 will get HIV. They will enter prison infected. How many of that 42% will have a history of sex work. 98% of the 42% will have that history. In other words, for our family values community, almost all kids in foster care go to prison and by then half will be infected and 90% infected from unsafe sex with tricks.
Western Europe has turned it around. Almost all infections now are through IV drug use. But in the States, the most vulnerable kids are the ones in the system, and the chances of them becoming infected are 70%. For a kid in a family, it’s less than one percent of a percent. That means that for a kid in the system, the chances of getting HIV are seven hundred times more than any kid in a family. We fail them by the boatload. We fail almost all of them.
Erik (Show Me Your Life, USA)
“My Teacher Says I Have No Brain”
"our second selves" by tim barrus & cinematheque
- President John F. Kennedy –
(Address, Amherst College, October 26, 1963)
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations.
When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence.
When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.
One step from the body history is made by Carolyn Srygley-Moore (poet, USA)
A step from my body history begins:
the electric fan sounds like a warplane.
I am tired of hearing sounds
that are not valid. It is only an electric fan
not the neighbor with the short cropped yellow hair walking her white dog.
She disparages to say hello.
Our house is overgrown with thistle. With wings, not conceptual
but real. Who are you, man
walking the train trestle like Wilde bearing a parasol
for balance? The incapacity to love
is what breaks the heart what shatters the very moon.
Cored like an apple the hen beaks
the very necessity of light by which history is made
& seen & often misunderstood.
The trafficking of human beings is an HIV superhighway
"Traffickers are always one step ahead"
Trafficked boys and girls are frequently raped and exposed to violent sexual behavior, which can cause tissue tears that make HIV transmission more likely. Trafficked boys and girls are rarely tested, diagnosed, and treated for the disease, thus allowing AIDS to develop. When they contract HIV, they continue to be forced to have unprotected sex with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of men before exhibiting any symptoms. The cross-border transportation which often accompanies sex trafficking operations also spreads the disease, as one infected victim can infect the men who buy a boy or girl in several different regions or countries. Those men may then infect other partners, both in and out of the commercial sex industry. Furthermore, some cultural myths about AIDS, like the idea that sex with a virgin will cure an HIV infection, cause infected men to seek out unprotected sex with young trafficked boys and girls. And so the cycle continues.
Eastern Europe and Africa are two of the fasting growing regions of human-trafficking and modern-day slavery in the world. The USA is the number one country of destination for slaves to be trafficked to. Children are abused, raped or beaten to death in the sex slave trade, professional begging or in forced manual labor camps. Then they are easily (and cheaply) replaced from this abundant ‘pool' of destitute children barely surviving in the sewers and tunnels of Romania and Russia… so on and so on.
in rooms
and he waited to couple on the steaming nights or the colder nights up against the streetlight plunging into snow/
hot, cold, it hardly mattered with the angles of it dripping down his face when they came on him/
blind leagues and golden greeds with the angles of it sensing death’s accord inside the body count, he would survive today/
a meal somewhere/ these immediate things/ were all a russian boy could dream of/
perhaps half an hour on a computer where the gameboys played and he surfed the web for what might be compassion that would cum his way/
to hope/
in a landscape where hope was a mythology/
to dream however briefly of being yet consumed in alliances with whatever he could sell/
to eat/ to not be hungry/ to not get arrested/
he had already eloped from how many warehouse orphanages and conduits to human trafficking/
perhaps enough sucking cock to buy some glue to blot the screaming hunger out breathing deeply from the paper bag/
which, for its part, the hunger, eats at the hole in his gut whenever he shits blood in the squatting in the middle of the subway tracks/
holes being the crawling down into the labyrinthine maze of darkness he lived in/
his mind bursting at the lifting, heaving overhead, of a bloody axe/
o moscow leningradsky train station 30,000 children live inside your filthy anal hole/
with the angles of it sensing only one way awaiting equilibrium and all of them are where your guts collide
with the feeling of fatigue saluted at the grave of body counts and all the laid it down and falling in/
and they want to talk to me of hope/
do not talk to me of hope/
help me take two across the border and the get-them-the- hell-out/
of there/
or is that too radical a notion for you to do/
do not talk to me of hope and medication/
talk to me of how you will be getting off your white ass/
talk to me of art in motion/
talk to me of body counts where the angles of it sensing death’s accord takes his hand and pulls the boy by his lifetime
across the threshold of a hundred years of pandemic’s voices singing champion/
us/
“Weeping openly” by © Carolyn Srygley-Moore (Poet, USA)
I don't cry often though my daughter would say otherwise
for she recalls each time she has seen my shoulders tremble at a movie
like dark nights pouring in from the other end of the world
I don't cry often but to her my tears are a giant's tears //
like the tears of the underground woman
who should never cry at all, simply write circles in her notebook
the echo of a moth
"Precious Cargo" by Ernestine White (South Africa; © Art For Humanity)
**There is a story circulating today that if an infected man has unprotected sexual intercourse with a virgin child (female or male) they will be cleansed of HIV. The TRUTH is that the man will remain infected with HIV. And the child will be HURT, and infected with HIV. The second danger lies when intergenerational sexual intercourse occurs. Smaller bodies tear and legion easily, and that provides easy access for HIV to enter a young body. "Even when he was HIV-positive he still wanted sex. He refused to use a condom. He said he cannot eat sweets with the paper wrapper on" (Uganda, 2002 - "Just Die Quietly").
“Mary Mother Of No-One” by Lindiwe Nkutha (South Africa; Art For Humanity)
Yet again unfounded myths
re-write themselves on my body
faceless malevolent voices
proclaim me the virginal cleanser
of heartache and dis-ease
while taking turns to fill me to the brim with same
my shrills swathed in regal stoles of collective silence
lie behind consensual paralytic truths
that have never walked,
let alone flown
i watch with a throat full of swallowed words
while my consent is sacrificed on alters to inconsiderate gods
it crushes the bones in my heart
that no one ever hears the
two, sometimes three, mostly seven pleadings
that drip out of the sides of my mouth
onto my pillow now gone deaf
will somebody...
will somebody, anybody...
somebody,
anybody,
your body
stop this madness
"Ngingu Maria Uma Kamuntu" (IsiZulu translation)
Kwenzeka futhi, izinganekwane ezingena msusa
Zizibhala emzimbeni wami
Amaphimbo anomunyu kodwa angenabo ubuso
Angibiza ngocwebileyo
Ogeza izinhlungu zenhliziyo nezifo zonke
Ngaleso sikhathi agcwalisa ubunjalo bami ngalezo zinhlungu
Izikhalo zami zemboswe ngengubo yobukhosi engasho lutho
Yona egquma amaqiniso akhubazekile
Angakaze ahamba
futhi angeke andize
Konke lokhu ngikubuka umphimbo wami ugcwele
Amagama engingakwazi ukuwagwinya
Kwenziwa izihlabelo egameni lami ngokuvuma kwami
Kwenzelwa onkulunkulu abengenandaba
ukhona mumbe...
ukhona mumbe, nanomawubani ...
mumbe,
nomawubani,
nawe qobolwakho
masibambisaneni siphelise lomkhuba.
"...an Angel of Mercy" by Judy Woodborne (South Africa; © Art For Humanity)
"Having Sex With A Virgin Does Not Cleanse HIVAIDS" by Rachel Chapple
Are You So Afraid Of Dying
You Would Abandon Your Pride,
Shut Your Heart To The Hurt
And Your Mind To The Truth?
Our Daughter, Our Son, Our Sister, Our Brother,
Will Bleed and Will Tear,
And You,
You Will Remain Infected
By The Knowledge
You Abandoned Your Pride,
Shut Your Heart To The Hurt
And Your Mind To The Truth.
"Inspired," by © Bernedette Muthien (Poet, South Africa)
(co-Founder & Director of Engender; co-Founder of KhoeSan Women's Circle, South Africa; Affiliate of Real Stories Gallery)
i want to write
about love
again
love that slaps me
in my tracks
a derailed train
without passengers
or other superfluous
cargo
love that flashes
miniscule silver stars
just before i bleed
like a slaughtered cadaver
fairy dust
in earth's abattoir
like a full moon
too far gone
love between aunt
and niece
mother and
adopted child
elder
and ordinary
the love of neighbours
thru post-op care
breast cervix
slashed & slithered fantasies
love
so different
to the ways i know some want
platters pain
to mimic the torture
in eyes empty
as politician's lies
not what i imagined
before
the fictions of lifetimes
of hatred
which i erase
rubber on charcoal
as nanoseconds to aeons
there's more to lightyears
and enlightenment
like love
can you feel it -
light...
love...
everywhere...
"Farid is dead. He died peacefully among the whores who kept — vigil"
"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.
Show Me Your Life
Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again
And interesting
And modern
The country is grey
And brown and white and trees
Snows and skies of laughter are always diminishing
Less funny, not just darker
Not just grey
It may be the coldest day of the year
What does he think of that
I mean, what do I
And if I do
Perhaps
I am
Myself again
"Mizu" (water) by Michio and Joseph
Tim Barrus (Director, Show Me Your Life & Sexwork; Founder, Cinemateque Films): Michio is a 12-year-old boy from Japan. We have recently been talking a lot about the idea of struggle and the idea of survival. Michio has been working with Joseph from Cinematheque Films, and they have put together this video Michio calls “Mizu.”
Tim Barrus (Director, Show Me Your Life; Founder, Cinemateque Films): It’s very dark out there. You can barely see the trees in a wood of shadows. I do not think we have the slightest clue as to who or what a kid at-risk is. Children never live the lives that have been assigned to them. They’re too vibrant. I have roamed through wreckage, too. To tell those stories, you have to possess a dead ahead vision, you have to be willing to fight for the story, you have to say: this is mine. The videos are beginning to come in. They are from all over the world. The stories are about the lives of kids who are usually kept shut up and shut away. They aren’t living the cultural television myths of television children. They’re struggling to survive. The woods are still dark. You can barely see the trees. But we are all writing our books of transformation.
The ghetto has its own images. It is allowed. It is why there is a ghetto. The rhetoric says: we give at-risk kids cameras so they can show us something of their lives. But the truth is that we — our culture, our society, our species — only want the correct issues to look at. We do not want issues that make us squirm. Like sex and death. How easy is it to censor kids. Especially powerless ones. Pretty easy.
Just yesterday, I cut out scenes of kids shooting dope. The subsequent, disingenuous handwringing would be a waste of my time. Kids with HIV would never shoot drugs, right. People are so stupid. How do you think some of those kids got HIV in the first fucking place. I superimposed Eminem. I am in need of symbols, too. He was a kid-at-risk once. One who was able to transcend those risks through language. Listen to the words. That is what rap is about. Listen to the language. It’s all in there. You might not like what you hear. You might not like what you see. But it’s not about you. You might, indeed, have the power to compel me to take any image you do not approve of down. But I know this. It’s not about you. It’s about kids who have potential but something in the process breaks. They end up in hospices. They end up in prisons. They end up lost. They never understand how they arrived anywhere, they never comprehend where it is they’re going, and they do not fathom why it is they are never able to anticipate any of the serious challenges in their lives. They do not know how to transcend anything let alone themselves. Because they have no internal concept of how they are living their lives. It’s like anything else. For it to work, you have to start learning how to do it early on. You have to know yourself. If we are not allowed to confront the issues that haunt us as human beings, how do we EVER manage to transcend them.
If we can’t so much as look at an image of the issue, how is it that we find answers. Tell me, please. No one ever has and no one ever will because, artist or no artist, art or no art, no one can. It is NOT an issue of protecting children. That is a red herring. It IS an issue of children with a terminal disease confronting how they will live what they have left of TIME. But no. They are not allowed. Like hell, they’re not allowed.
The ten-year-old in this video has a mouth. He’s failing in school. This in spite of the fact that he writes some very heavy rap. Anyone who is writing rap should be turned on by school and the study of language, poetry, and music. But no. The kid’s at-risk. I will go out on a limb here because I know this: One of the things the ten-year-old is at risk for is HIV. Listen to the words about whores, bitches, and trojans. Listen to the ten-year-old rap about his hard cock. Watch the non-verbals when he’s addressing issues like hard drugs. Who has TIME to be shocked. The shock is contrived but the ignorance is only ignorance. Art is how you speak to all of these issues. The ten-year-old is making art. I doubt that it can save him. I am not a hopeful person. I think he will be destroyed. I think he may already be destroyed. Destruction or no destruction, annihilation or no annihilation, school failure or success (he’s never had any), the boy is writing poetry and music.
What did you make today. This boy, this kid from the ghetto and the gutter, is making art, and then he’s singing it for everyone to hear. Show me your life.
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