LAB - Power-Point for the 25 of March 2010 - LAB2 [developed throughout the term]

Throughout this term, apart from the research, scenographical set and interviews I have been developing, I have created the performance composition, time line. Apart from that and as said before in this blog, it was also created the sound by the Music Composer Duarte Cardoso. All this material came together in a power point in order to Lecture all the process. As the M00-0364 performance will be a combination through performative actions and a lecture I have decided to Lecture all the process I have been developing.

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LAB – Sound by Duarte Cardoso [9th of march to the 15th of march]

Duarte Cardoso has been working with me since 2005. He completed his 5 years University Education in Portugal in Grand Piano for Concert and mostly played contemporary artists. Apart from that, he has been extremely interested in composition and started his own personal studies on composition before his Post –Graduate Education achieved in the US. Duarte Cardoso has been working and composing for my pieces and it must be acknowledged that that this is a work where Duarte has the authorship to express his creations within the concept proposed.

By several meetings over skype I said to Duarte that once more I just had the need to give him my interviews in mp3 file and from that point would be his own interpretation from the concept and research I have been doing so far. Duarte created a superb piece and if any adjusts will be upon the feedback I will get on the 25^th of March 2010 at the LAB2.

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“You must be awfully secure in your masculinity.” [16,17,18,19 of March '10] - at Psychology and Educational Sciences University - Portugal

The performance piece Performed in Portugal was based on Eve Ksofsky Sedgwick essay in the book “Constructing Masculinity” by Maurice Berger, Brian Wallis and Simon Watson. “You must be awfully secure in your masculinity.” is a performance where the process of preconceived feminine actions are being performed on my preconceived masculine body. Moreover, preconceived masculinity's are vanished and replaced by a common non labeled performative actions. It is to sate that there is a need to evolve beyond sexual classifications assuming that a preconceived feminine gesture can be performed in a preconceived masculine body. Having said that, the Performance was developed upon my research on the 1^st Unit at Wimbledon College of Art. “You must be awfully secure in your masculinity.” was performed at the Psychology and Educational Sciences University in Portugal were it must be acknowledged that the majority of the future psychologists state that they would not take appointments from Homosexual people. Having affirmed that, the Performance was then created and developed to this audience and would not have the same impact in London, Berlin, Montreal or New York. After the Performance a debate about the theme and the performance took place at the University Auditorium.

For the ones interested on a feedback, I asked for some comments on Facebook:

" i think your performance interestingly shows how "masculinity" relies on notions of femininity for its existence and completion, thus being "secured" by the very concept that supposedly negates it :) " - Deidré Denise Matthee

"sweetheart - was so good to see you and your work too...Isontinue to be shocked at how conservative and parochial young people here can be...there was nothing shocking for me about your performance and again I believe you create a sensitive balance between revealing themes to your audience in order that they expand their response, view, feelings about the theme and doing it in a way that is not violent or aggressive of so in their face that they freak out...and yet, here in Porto...men and women were shocked:( how come they are not shocked every day when they go into newsagents and gas station shops and have porn right in front of their faces, even on the shelves at the height of children...or shocked when someone is violated because of difference or shocked because of racism against someone from brasil, ukraine etc" - Amanda Frost

"I thought the performance was amazing. The thing that most got me was the expressed hate on your face while you where dancing as a cheerleader. To affirm "masculinity is tirany" is still in my head and it is an evidence of a masculinity that it is still a fact. Those where the stronger parts for me but the piece is more than just what I expressed. Is Feminist. It is about femininity - I' ve never been too much secure in my own feminity because I dislike passivity. In addition, explores the body in the way we relate to it: dislocated body with no space to places - communal. Art has its utility at last. This one screams and rips off exclusive thoughts. Big kiss." - Alexandra Oliveira

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LAB - [8-3-10] - [12-3-10]

Throughout the week 10, Monday the 8^th of March and Friday the 12^th of March, I have been developing the scenographical set at the wood workshop and preparing a schedule for the Performance – Lecture I was about to present on the 25^th of March. I did encounter several problems while deciding how should the tv-set structure be constructed. The final decision was influenced by the costs and the time. With the sketch changed and a reasonable lower price, I could start the process of building the structure within a short period of time.

LAB

The Lab week will be a fragment of my direction intented to achieve for the MA level. Since the objectives of the final performance M00-0364 is a lecture/performance, I dissected the scenographical space in order to address part of the performance. By performing this fragment will generate the understanding on how does the heaviest lecture section of the performance works for the audience in terms of botherness. It must be acknowledged that this section will be the segment with the most clinical and advanced vocabulary concerning reactions or procedures when having HIV (CD4, Viral Load and Lipodystrophy). The section will be lectured by me and the explanation will be from PowerPoint's and addressed as a performative action. Having stated that (and by performing that) I am not considering to minor the audience’s boredom since this section will still be long, calm and detailed. Within the description this monotony will be maintained on purpose in orther to make them realize that the repetitiveness vanishes when they start taking notes on a note book that will be explained as given at the interm-show performance. This fraction will also create botherness in order to jump out from it in the next section which will be one of the powerful picks on the overall MA performance. For those who kept the boredom as a passive receiver and want to continue with a none political and social consciousness, a hardcore and punk experimental music piece will be performed which begins by stating “If there is no political consciousness there is no aliveness but rather death of the human brain”. Having affirmed what is going to occur on the performative fraction, I do emphasise that the background will be filled with many TVs that on a loop show different people that have been interviewed about HIV/AIDS but in silence. During the MA level performance fractions of this interviews will be shown but not on the Lab week. It must be also said that the hardcore and punk experimental music piece will be inspired on one of the interviewed that manifests no political or social consciousness what so ever, no interest, no curiosity, no enthusiasm. As previously stated before, the lecture at the LAB2 will question how does the heaviest section of text works for the audience; how would the audience feel and react on the note books, how does the music created by the Music Composer Duarte Cardoso impacts as a provocation and how do small contradictions create discourse.

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Gene therapy offers hope of cure for HIV Doctors rid man of the virus with bone marrow transplant breakthrough.

Doctors have succeeded in ridding a man of the HIV virus by giving him a bone marrow transplant in what they claim is the closest treatment yet to a cure for the disease. The remarkable case gives new impetus to the development of gene therapy for HIV which could ultimately replace the need for expensive and toxic antiretroviral drugs. Instead of taking drugs for life, HIV sufferers might instead have a one-off treatment that would leave them virus-free.

The 42-year-old American had been infected with HIV for a decade. He was treated with antiretroviral drugs in Berlin, where he lives, for four years to hold the disease in check, but then developed leukaemia. Since being given a bone marrow transplant two years ago, he has not taken antiretroviral drugs to control HIV and has had no resurgence of either disease. He is believed to be the longest HIV-free survivor who was previously treated with antiretroviral drugs. Full details of the case are published for the first time today in The New England Journal of Medicine. An editorial in the journal says it "places further emphasis on gene therapies" for HIV, adding: "The case paves the way for innovative approaches that provide long-lasting viral control with limited toxicities for persons with HIV infection." The man's treatment began with a search by doctors at Berlin's Charité Hospital for a bone marrow donor with a genetic resistance to HIV. One of the strangest features of the disease is the way some people who have been exposed to the virus on many occasions remain uninfected. Twenty years ago, it was noticed that certain prostitutes in Nairobi remained uninfected despite exposure to the virus through thousands of sexual contacts. It has since emerged that some people carry a mutation of a gene (CCR5) that confers protection against HIV. In Western populations an estimated one to three per cent have the mutation. Dr Gero Hutter, a haematologist at the Berlin Charité Hospital, and colleagues tested 61 potential donors before they found one with the CCR5 genetic mutation, who agreed to the operation. The American recipient of the transplant, who runs a holiday rentals business in the German capital, has undergone regular checks in the two years since the treatment. The doctors have tested his bone marrow, blood and tissues and found no sign of HIV. "For as long as the viral load remains undetectable, this patient will not require antiretroviral therapy," they say in the journal. Speaking to The Independent yesterday, Dr Hutter said there had been several previous reports of patients being virus-free following treatment but none to compare with the latest case. "The difference is that in our patient we had a plan. It was not an accident," he added. "It is the longest time someone who has had antiretroviral therapy and stopped has lasted without the virus rebounding. Normally it rebounds within weeks. It is the closest we have come to a cure." Dr Hutter said a bone marrow transplant would be too risky as a routine treatment for HIV and too difficult to find donors with the right genetic make-up. But a modification of the approach using gene therapy to render a patient HIV-resistant could work, he said. Even a costly treatment could be worthwhile. The price of treatment with antiretrovirals in Europe is €70,000 to €80,000 (£63,000 to £72,000) a year compared with a one-off cost of €20,000 to €30,000 for a bone marrow transplant. Dr Hutter said: "When I started in medicine, HIV was completely untreatable. Now the situation has changed completely. Perhaps our case is a glimpse of hope for the future." Professor Jay Levy, an Aids specialist at the University of California, and author of the US journal's editorial, said claims that the patient had been cured of HIV would be premature because of the virus's capacity to hide in other parts of the body including the brain, gut, liver and lymphatic system, from which it could always re-emerge. "Nevertheless, the results... provide further encouragement for those examining approaches to treatment that reduce CCR5 expression in persons with HIV infection," he writes.In 2007, an estimated two million people died from Aids and 2.7 million were newly infected with HIV.

25 years of research: The HIV virus

When the discovery of HIV was announced in 1984, US politicians predicted that a cure for Aids would be found within five years, but it is still a distant prospect. Over the past 10 years, a cocktail of aggressive antiretroviral drugs has been developed to help keep the effects of the disease at bay. Eliminating it has proved far more difficult because of the virus's unique nature. HIV integrates itself into an infected person's DNA and attacks the cells the immune system sends to attack it. Once infected, these T-cells take the virus deeper into the body. Gene therapy is a new approach that harnesses the natural resistance to HIV shared by 3 per cent of people. Experts hope that by tweaking a sufferer's DNA, they can achieve "long-lasting viral control".

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor

12 February 2009

“Fault”

By stating on my previous writings that fetishism should be considered as a normal variation of the human sexuality and should be taken in consideration the self consciousness of the individual body, I do admit that this statement should be revised and furthermore taken into another level. I do still agree and believe that fetishism for HIV positive people doesn’t disturb me since fetishism should be considered as a normal variation of the human sexuality. This implies a self consciousness of the individual body and therefore each one has the responsibility for their own bodies. Through many researches I did conclude that there are also HIV positive people that on purpose try to infect HIV negative people. This obviously is a concern for many HIV positive people who have fought in order to vanish discrimination. I must say that when someone is infected with HIV the “fault” is not from the one who has the virus. The decision to use protection has to come from both sides but as we do have the urge to make someone guilty, the blame on the oder takes place. Having said that, I can not understand the frustration of being infected and then having the need to infect others. This range and urge to infect others normally happens through sexual contact (I do emphasize that there is a need to ejaculate inside the body in order to be infected); through rape or the person living with HIV is in a bar or pub, chooses the victim and with a nidlle self inflinges himself or herself and does the same procedure to the victim which may not even realise. If the victim hasn’t realized I am secure that the PEP wouldn’t be eficient because there is the need to take it within 72 hours.

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M00-0364 Scenography - Lab

M00-0364 Scenography