ABOUT CONTACT AND COMMUNICATION AND THE OLD COLONIAL VIRU$
Bruna Kury
Photo of the container used in the performance “The boundary of the body is the body and/or prostheses”. Photo: Paulx Castello
Some sort of quarantine for some bodies seems to exist in different forms for a long time. Trans gender¹ people, racialized, immigrants, dissidences in general, we are socially excluded and segregated by the heterowhitecishealthynorm. seropositive people have been banned from entering some countries also for a long time, according to a report by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the list of countries that offer some restriction on the entry of people living with HIV includes Australia, Cuba, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, New Zealand, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, Russia, Singapore, Syria, Taiwan, among others.
It seems to me that contact is something we should talk about. Contact and communication! The artist Linga Acácio, during a meeting with the Loka de Efavirenz collective (collective that discusses and thinks HIV beyond a biomedical response and centered on those who do not live with the virus and its stigmas), said that she thinks the HIV virus acts directly inside and outside of us in communication technologies, push us away and silence us. A silent virus.
Let us also think here of a communication other than the normative one, as well as ancestral presence –which is the opposite of this culture of control of different potencies.
Comparisons are dangerous, this text does not come to equal anything, just to analyze what composes, both the viruses and the structures that are put as the basis of our lives. Once again: contact and communication.
Container used in the performance “The boundary of the body is the body itself and/or prostheses” where the artist also addresses issues such as social hygiene and gentrification. In action, contact microphones are attached to the body and the container. Base gif image by: Paulx Castello
The HIV virus is basically transmitted through bodily fluids, often during sexual intercourse, and this makes it even more taboo, as it hurts institutions so dogmatic such as church, nuclear family, state, etc.
When the first news of the new coronavirus appears, the media insists on stressing and emphasizing that IT IS NOT AIDS, precisely because of the stigma that HIV-positive people are dirty and promiscuous. The stigma that only a few bodies are contaminated persists. In the 1980s and 1990s, for instance, cis women were excluded from campaigns against AIDS–campaigns that often, instead of being against AIDS, have an explicit position against AIDS and against HIV-positive people, who further reinforces the stigma of evil and targeted marginalization. Often reaching the height of criminalization of HIV positive bodies. The transmitting bodies according to the media have always been homosexuals and transvestites… today we already know that the proportion of cissexual and straight people who also have the virus is enormous. The new coronavirus in this case also acts indiscriminately (Older people and people with heart problems also develop symptoms more quickly. And obviously the most affected people are still the poor and racialized. Structural oppressions!), and also because of this there is an environment of higher solidarity (besides - obviously - proportionally, the contagion and mortality of the new coronavirus is alarming!).
The fear of proximity, of being together –at this time when social distancing is necessary – also aggravates other distancing due to existing recriminations. The privacy and intimacy, the rumors that “so-and-so upstairs has a coronavirus”, or the harmful and prejudiced “so-and-so has AIDS”. Beyond being invasive to others personhood, it is also cruel and proliferator of disinformation. Miscommunication is violence. Fakenews interfere in politics (see algorithms that collaborated with the current Brazilian president).
Thinking of “disease as a metaphor” (Susan Sontag), we can expand the idea that things are not 8 or 80 in a society that, in addition to disease, has the State manipulating its interests. To think, for example, HIV or the new coronavirus, which, in addition to medicine’s thinking, also represents a major change in economic, cultural, political, and social aspects… and it is obvious that the public mightiness has an obligation to give us assistance but let us not cancel the power of non-state organizations or even what small, organized groups have done. The formation of new communities and the reaffirmation of dissident communities that already existed.
Gif based on the image of the panopticon (Jeremy Bentham, 1785). Policing and controlling gender, class, and race. The militarization of dissident, poor and racialized bodies in the absence of capital’s interests.
Regardless of the theories of the origin of the virus, one thing is certain, the state appropriates it to further increase control over our bodies. “The coronavirus is the militarization of social life.” said Maria Galindo of the Mujeres Creando collective. Only when the hegemonic countries give the go-ahead are measures taken. Remember that the WHO only declares that AIDS is an epidemic when the virus reaches Europe and the United States, even though a large part of Asia is already affected.
Very complicated to make comparisons when it comes to something as unique as a worldwide epidemic, but beyond comparisons, the intersections of issues are sorely needed. Yes, we must think about GENDER: unabled abortions, hormonal accompaniment to trans people paralyzed, a scheduling of days to when men or women can go out on the streets to do the basic necessary –a situation that generates transphobia in countries that opted for this scheduling; CLASS: a global basic income plan beyond quarantine, how much poorer people are more affected or how much poor ill people hurt more the colonial hygienist imagination than ill rich people, and RACE: black and indigenous racialized bodies being massacred and killed daily by recurrent colonialism and also yellow bodies being stigmatized even more – see Latino-migrant mortality in New York, blacks and indigenous peoples in Brazil, etc. As well as the lack of care for the elderly, the increasing violence even with the social isolation towards women and trans bodies, etc.
It’s about access and capital, but it’s also about sensibles beyond the economy, it’s about the project of humanity that has failed (or not, as the very concept of humanity involves so much everyday colonization, animalizing, objectifying and enslaving non-white and dissident bodies). How much is it a combination of factors, some extirpated from vulnerable bodies. Accesses and even affections denied by the colonial machinery.
The imminent risk that some bodies suffer, and so many coups. If we don’t die from viruses, we die from bullets that only detect our bodies; when we don’t die for lack of jobs and basic structuring conditions in this capitalist cis-tem, we die of (trans)feminicide, transphobia, racism and even suicided. The cis-tem is closed and imprisoning, so we have to tear it up, create new weapons, understand that there are people who suffer more than others, even though this is not exactly a hierarchy.
May the revolts echo, may the redistributions of income and privilege be made in this state of emergency that we have been living for a while. May we protect ourselves and may life be abundant. That white people understand their privileges and toxic whiteness, and yes, that they come to awareness and position in front of our bodies in demonstrations (and if they don’t do so, know that with each affection between us, we make ourselves stronger and, moreover, the hatred in common also unites us. What you call militancy, we do for the simple fact of existing and surviving), because your bodies become unattainable, while black and dissident corporeality are lethal targets. In war tactics black bodies were massacred for being sent to the front lines, and in this colonial machinery, we remain the first to die. And we intersectionalize, George Floyd was brutally murdered by a police officer in the service of the nationalist US state, a week later Tony Mcdade, a black trans man was also killed by an American policeman. Muffled case. Among so many.
How many close people who died for the state and its henchmen… how many deaths in the tropics made invisible… It’s not an American series, it’s real life and death, there and here.
We must take care to survive. Some of us are last in line to get state medical support, so let’s keep safe. It will pass or will alleviate the new coronavirus, as well as the “Spanish” flu, smallpox, H1N1, bird flu, etc. what will not pass is the massacre of the patriarchy on certain bodies. So, let’s arm ourselves! Contact and Communication!
Still frames of performance with the participation of Vulcanica Pokaropa at CCSP, Brazil. 2019
For some time, I’ve been talking with HIV and in/with the body in performances, among them “the boundary of the body is the body itself and/or prostheses”. In this version, talking about body and geographic boundaries, positioned by political and economic interests, as well as social distancing is also influenced by the economy and politics of hegemony, which distances some bodies to subalternize them, thus maintaining the wheel of normativity and oppressing, segregating, enslaving, and colonizing.
¹ In the original text in Portuguese the term used is “transvestigênere” that is a nomenclature created by the whore activist Indianarae Siqueira, by the junction of the words “trans”, “travesti” (transvestite) and “gênere” (a non-binary form for gender). Whom also jointly created the term was Black women, human rights activist and São Paulo’s councilor Érica Hilton, as she “considers that the words “travesti” and “transexual” are loaded by stereotypos, colonizaded and/or pathologizing.
Other writings by the artist for complementary readings:
KURY, Bruna. A póspornografia como arma contra a maquinaria da colonialidade. Selo Monstruosas e ed. Fera Livre (2020). texto em espanhol: https://hysteria.mx/la-pospornografia-como-arma-contra-la-maquinaria-colonial/
KURY, Bruna; CAPELOBO, Walla. Desejo que sobrevivamos pois já sobrevivemos #black #travestchy #prosperity. Blog GLAC Edições (2020) https://www.glacedicoes.com/post/desejo-que-sobrevivamos-pois-ja-sobrevivemos-bruna-kury-e-walla-capelobo
KURY, Bruna. DESCONSTRUIR SEM FETICHIZAR ou como destruir a estrutura do prazer hegemonizado. Projeto Vulgar (2020)
Outras refs:
https://www.webmd.com/lung/coronavirus-and-hiv#1
https://egocitymgz.com/amor-en-tiempos-del-coronavirus-queerentena/
http://radiodeseo.com/desobediencia-por-tu-culpa-voy-a-sobrevivir-la-acera-de-enfrente
https://nacoesunidas.org/unaids-48-paises-impoem-restricao-de-viagem-a-pessoas-vivendo-com-hiv/ (Publicado em 12/07/2019)
Tintilay, Ivana; "Memorias de una cuarentena eterna".
https://www.moleculasmalucas.com/post/memorias-de-una-cuarentena-eterna
Mayo de 2020
Links de origem das imagens que compõem o plano de fundo:
https://g1.globo.com/sp/mogi-das-cruzes-suzano/noticia/2020/05/22/avo-medico-cria-cortina-do-abraco-para-contornar-distanciamento-e-abracar-os-netos-apos-dois-meses-video.ghtml
https://tabonito.com/avo-embrulha-neta-em-plastico-para-poder-abracar-o-pai-policia/
https://veja.abril.com.br/saude/imagem-da-semana-abraco-nem-que-seja-de-plastico/
https://avozdaserra.com.br/noticias/no-dia-mundial-do-abraco-em-plena-pandemia-vale-o-improviso
foto: Camila Falcão
Bruna Kury is Brazilian, anarchtransfeminist, performer, visual and sound artist, currently living in São Paulo (BR) and developing works in different contexts, whether in the institutional art market or in edge productions. Focused on creations crossed by issues of gender, class, and race (against the current compulsory heteronormative patriarchal cis-tem and structural oppressions-class WAR). She has performed with Coletiva Vômito, Coletivo Coiote, La Plataforma, MEXA and Coletivo T. She currently investigates postpornography sounds and the creation of objects that are ramifications of the performance work. She participated in the artistic residency Capacete in Rio de Janeiro, Comunitária in Argentina, Festival Anormal in Mexico, composed the organization of the postpornôpyrata residency in Fortaleza (CE) and performed at the Libres y Soberanas aka Performacula festival in Quito, Ecuador. She participated in Pivô Pesquisa Ciclo II residency program (2020).