Queer at Queen’s 2016 Positive Futures: HIV/AIDS Disclosure, Prosecution and Performance Queen’s University, Belfast 18th-19th November
Last year, Queen’s University and Outburst Queer Arts Festival played host to an inspiring range of speakers for Queer at Queen’s 2015: HIV/AIDS, History, Memory, Performance. That event looked to the past as it attempted to address, among other things, the ways in which the history of HIV/AIDS activism has been written and in some cases distorted. In talks from artists, scholars and activists, including people living with HIV, one of the most significant things that emerged was a sense of continuing disparity, globally, in attitudes and policies, with Ireland, north and south, continuing to see HIV through the lens of stigma and sexual shame. This event challenged participants to imagine how we might begin to expose, critique and change this reality through art, film and performance and gave us striking examples of PLHIV who have shaped their own realities through art and anger, beyond shame. In light of the NHS’s recent refusal to fund preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and the fact that new diagnoses in Ireland have now reached crisis levels, their highest ever, it is clear that this conversation is far from over. This year’s event will therefore build on what began last year, and look to the future of HIV/ AIDS representation, performance and activism, locally and internationally. There will be a particular concern for the varying degrees and forms of criminalisation of those living with HIV, an emerging global trend. We are keen to bring together artists, activists, academics, community groups, the general public and people who have been affected by HIV. To that end we would like to invite submissions for academic papers, performances, artworks, creative writing, works-in-progress, or workshops on the theme of Positive Futures.
Queer at Queen’s has an arts and performance focus but also welcomes non-arts related submissions. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
• HIV/AIDS representation in contemporary literature, art, performance • Criminalisation, disclosure, and the overstatement of harm • The problematics of “post-AIDS” discourses • Who tells the story? HIV revisionism and its ongoing impact • Desexualisation and the question of sexual freedom in the current era of HIV treatment • “Post-equality” homonormativity and HIV representation • HIV+ families and parenting • Sex workers and HIV • HIV in the workplace • What are the structures/limitations of care? • Community and intersectionality • Global versus local communities of care • Global pandemic versus local epidemic • HIV/AIDs, the Global South, neo colonialism • Medical treatment versus cultural perception/representation Please send paper proposals or descriptions of artworks/workshops (no more than 250 words) to Cormac O’Brien cormac.obrien@ucd.ie & Trish McTighe pmc.mctighe@gmail.com by 5th August 2016.
Queer at Queen’s 2016 is part of Belfast’s annual Outburst Queer Arts Festival and will take place during the second week of the tenth anniversary festival (10th-19th November). As well as the conference itself, there will be many exciting festival events happening concurrently. To keep up to date on Queer at Queen’s, see our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/QatQ2015/
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An Outburst Queer Arts Festval event, in partnership with Drama Studies at Queen’s University Belfast and University College Dublin School of English, Drama and Film. PHOTO: by Iris Gaillard, International AIDS Conference, Melbourne 2014.