llness is a practice, not a metaphor; it is a daily antiretroviral drug intake and a chemotherapy treatment applied periodically, it is a hand rehabilitation with lymphoedema at the Tryton rowing club. Yet, this is, most of all, solidarity that gives strength and unrelenting criticism of a society that grounds itself in the myth of a self-sufficient individual. The creativity of disease doesn’t manifest itself in a creative fever and a discharge of a genius. The Amazons demonstrate that it is quite a normal matter to create habitable worlds. You may start with a shared portion of morning gymnastics, and in the afternoon go out into the streets to manifest your rights.
Patients’ movements teach us that acts of law established in separation from disease realities remain a prosthesis imposed on society to keep it under control. The important matters are being discussed in the waiting rooms and corridors of hospitals’ ERs, in queues of people waiting for their benefits. The sick are the avant-garde of radical democracy, because it is the weakness that highlights the most systemic exclusions. A society that is hard of hearing inevitably repeats the trauma of fascism; in the form easier to apply and share.
We change the algorithms, we reverse the rules! How about a sick-leave for everyone! In an abstract society at the top of the growth index, let us talk about the matter that should never become a subject of speculation. We demand a place for the reality of a body. The exhibition entitled Creative Sick States: AIDS, CANCER, HIV aims to cast a spell on reality in which there is no space for the body, in particular, the seropositive body, the one after mastectomy, with abnormal abilities, dependencies, pains, panic attacks, and inflammations. We assume that illness is the real, and patients’ problems are social challenges that we need to deal with together. The health is a fiction, an impossible ideal to achieve. We need to normalise and socialise the disease because health has died, or perhaps it has never existed?
Research Group: Luiza Kempińska, Paweł Leszkowicz, Zofia nierodzińska, Jacek Zwierzyński
Participants: Amazonki, Szymon Adamczak, Dobrawa Borkała, Vala T. Foltyn | Valentine Tanz, Barbora Kleinhamplová, Bartek Arobal Kociemba, Olga Lewicka, Piotr Macha, Iza Moczarna-Pasiek, Piotr Nathan, Jaśmina Wójcik, Inga Zimprich
Support: Federacja Stowarzyszeń AMAZONKI, Fundacja Edukacji Społecznej, Grupa Stonewall, Klub Kobiet z Problemem Onkologicznym w Łomży, Niewykrywalni, Ogólnopolska Organizacja Kwiat Kobiecości, Pofam-Poznań, Polskie Towarzystwo Stomijne Pol-ilko, Poznańskie Centrum PrEP, Replika, Społeczny Komitet ds. AIDS (SKA), Stowarzyszenie „Amazonki” Warszawa Centrum, Stowarzyszenie Mężczyzn z Chorobami Prostaty „Gladiator”, Stowarzyszenie “SIEĆ PLUS”, Zjednoczenie Pozytywni w Tęczy
guided tour with artists: 9.11.2019, 3 pm
photo: Maciej Krajewski
photo: Tomasz Pawłowski
photo: Maciej Krajewski, performance ritual by Vala T. Foltyn / Valentine Tanz
ACCOMPANING EVENTS:
- http://www.arsenal.art.pl/en/events/undetectable/
- http://www.arsenal.art.pl/en/events/emotions-are-facts-magic-sex-politics/
- http://www.arsenal.art.pl/en/events/learning-from-the-amazons/
- http://www.arsenal.art.pl/en/events/breathing-symphony-panic/
- http://www.arsenal.art.pl/en/events/starting-over-and-over-again/
- http://www.arsenal.art.pl/en/events/around-hiv/
- http://www.arsenal.art.pl/wydarzenia/the-berlin-years-1984-to-1992/
CRITIQUE:
https://www.dwutygodnik.com/artykul/8574-chorobowe-dla-wszystkich.html
https://www.vogue.pl/a/tygrysia-krew
zofia 