The attempt at the following thought is the transcription of some Instagram stories about the project EM.COITROS - Erotic encounters of a body living with HIV! Many people come to me asking questions about how I approach the theme of HIV relating to sex, religion, talking about cults, about rites, about myths. Simple... all this is what runs through me! It's the way I decided to work HIV/AIDS, I believe that before talking about HIV I should talk about sex, my body living with HIV and sex and about these institutions.
I see people building a narrative that maybe doesn't serve me and doesn't contemplate me, that builds a barrier, a psychological fortress to talk about HIV/AIDS. Social stigmas have been established since human beginnings and I'm not just talking about all these stigmas about sex and the gay body. For me, it is up to me to talk about this human side, about the dualities, about this fear that we go through for not having knowledge, for not having information and it is not our problem but a social historical construction. So I'm going to talk about this pain, yes, that I felt for not having knowledge, maybe if I had, that would have been something else. But I will not erase this past, I cannot erase what was formed in this body that lives with HIV and in the story of this body. It's like that jar that breaks and they stick the pieces together with the mixture of glue and gold, it's about not being a super hero, not being strong all the time, I cry and some things still cross me. Yes it is possible to live with HIV, yes there is a super effective treatment, yes I talk about it, yes there is a free system - SUS - for distributing these resources to LIVE with HIV.
But I don't want to and I won't erase or redraw this story for a thought that, to me, sounds like too academic. Because that's not what happens, these cycles of thoughts are just in the circle of those who are debating HIV and many people don't even know how they contract, they don't know that there are types of efficient treatments to live, they don't know anything about anything. That's why I talk about sex, about this raw material, about jouissance, about life, and about what death is, and how they relate to it. And I ask why people still see death as a negative, dangerous, bad process. I understand the whole history of HIV in relation to death, I understand all these issues, for example, the color red not being associated with HIV, because it is the color of death of danger, I understand and use "a body that lives with HIV ", but I understand death as part of life, we are born with this certainty and for me it's very wonderful to know that I'm going to die and to know that every day I live I get closer to death and it's interesting to demystify this said death as a bad thing, we die and if we are here we are dying and that is it and that makes everything very wonderful. Maybe some people misinterpret me, but it's my construction of it, it's me and I'm not going to put on a cover and fly away, I'm going to tell my story and how it was established in this body.
This vase that was broken by an institution and a state and then rebuilt itself through its own strength, which goes and puts some golden threads and decides to put its face in the world and talk about HIV/AIDS, sex and institutions and be censored and keep talking and keep releasing these provocations even within these nuclei that research and talk about HIV/AIDS. This pain of mine, is not and was not, a bad thing but a food, it is this broken vase that you can repair with gold, I am interested in this fragility and the poetics that exist in it and in its construction, that's why I keep doing thus. I hope that something has arrived for someone and that it makes some sense. This research follows this format, not discrediting other approaches or other ways of thinking related to the topic, but this is what I have to do and the way I believe to be useful. We are alive, as much as the State or these institutions do not want to, we are, we live and we talk about HIV, no matter who it hurts! We live until death do us part!