Dont Won't Let the Sun Go Down on AIDS Art, Activism and Advocacy

LifeLube exclusive
a blog chat with Dont Rhine of Ultra-red

It's ridiculous that we're twenty-five years into this epidemic and all we've got to show for it are condoms.

Where are the microbicides, the morning-after cocktails?

Who are you?

Hello, LifeLubers. My name is Dont Rhine and I'm a sound artist as well as a grass-roots organizer with Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (or CHAMP) out in Los Angeles. CHAMP is an amazing network of folks across the U.S. connecting HIV/AIDS activism to broader social justice issues. Our particular focus is what we call HIV prevention justice - agitating, mobilizing and educating around a range of prevention issues including research. You know, back in the days of ACT UP we used to chant, "Ten years, one drug, big deal!" It was our way of protesting the federal government's obsession with AZT and their slow response in developing other forms of HIV treatment. Today, we need to be screaming, "Twenty-five years, one form of prevention, big fucking deal!" It's ridiculous that we're twenty-five years into this epidemic and all we've got to show for it are condoms. Where are the microbicides, the morning-after cocktails, and so on?

Why are you in Chicago?

Alongside working with CHAMP I'm a member of the sound art collective Ultra-red. The group has been around since 1994 and originally came out of the needle exchange program in Los Angeles. Over the years we've grown to ten members, each person comes from a different political movement: the fight to protect public housing, anti-racism, migration struggles, and HIV/AIDS. We have teams developing different sound-related performances and recording projects here in the U.S. and in Europe. Sometimes the work sounds like house music, sometimes it looks like very theatrical performances, and sometimes it sounds like abstract electro-acoustic soundscapes. It depends on the community in which we're working and the nature of the political-artistic intervention. It was because of my work in Ultra-red that the School of the Art Institute invited me to spend the semester teaching classes in the performance department.

What have you learned from your time here in the City?

It's been really awesome spending the last four months in Chicago. It goes without saying that Chicago and Los Angeles are very different places. I've used a lot of my free time to explore the city and meet with folks doing all kinds of social justice work. Chicago has an incredible landscape of political movements and histories. And, of course, the city has a very special place in my own imagination as the birthplace of house music. But the best part has really been meeting incredible folks doing inspiring work from the south side to Roger's Park and all points in between. I've also seen what an incredibly difficult place Chicago can be for a great many people; struggles around housing, the catastrophic erasure of public housing communities, the criminalization of youth of color, and the massive detention and abuse of migrants. Not that Chicago is alone is contending with these things - after all, I come from Los Angeles. But here it seems to take on a particular urgency both in terms of the scale of the problems and the level of activism.

What is the intention behind the May 9 performance?

On Friday, May 9 Ultra-red will be conducting a performance, "Untitled (for large ensemble)" through downtown Chicago. I'll be joined by my Ultra-red partners; choreographer Taisha Paggett and Robert Sember. We hope to bring together some of the amazing folks I've met during my time here. Some of these people have dedicated themselves to the fight against AIDS while others have worked to build coalitions around housing for the poor, human rights for migrants, radical arts programs for youth, and a whole host of issues facing incarcerated people, from HIV prevention to torture in jail. For Ultra-red, we consider all of these people and all of these political movements to have a piece to an analysis of HIV prevention justice and the larger picture of fundamental change in our society. So, we want to bring all these people together: to hear what's on their minds, and listen as we walk together through downtown Chicago.

And I think that's what we hope everyone will leave the experience with: learning how to listen - to each other, to people who are like us, to people who aren't like us, to people who are HIV positive, to people who are HIV negative, listening across all the boundaries and borders in this city, listening to the city itself.

What do you hope will result from the May 9 performance?

The exciting thing about working with CHAMP is its commitment to bringing folks together across social movements and across localities. This performance hopes to enact just that sort of coming together. So we'll walk through the city beginning at the Abraham Lincoln statue in Grant Park. We'll make our way down Van Buren Street across Michigan Avenue, under the Elevated, past Harold Washington Library, past Metro Jail, past Board of Trades, the north entrance to the Stock Exchange, across the river, past the old Post Office, and finally come to Jefferson Avenue - also named "The Godfather of House Music, Frankie Knuckles, Way." We'll have a group of Art Institute students helping us with chants and choreography. And we'll listen to statements performed for the record by our friends in different social movements. At the end, we'll ask a very simple question, "What did you hear?" And I think that's what we hope everyone will leave the experience with: learning how to listen - to each other, to people who are like us, to people who aren't like us, to people who are HIV positive, to people who are HIV negative, listening across all the boundaries and borders in this city, listening to the city itself. From out of that, we can begin to build something new - something we can't even imagine on our own.

I hope all the people from LifeLube will come out and walk with us on May 9.

www.ultrared.org
www.champnetwork.org