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Is ‘Pestilence’
“BIGGER THAN AIDS”? DRAFT 1
by Jack Waters
ON AIDS, PLAGUES, PANDEMICS AND (R)EVOLUTION
:
NOTES ON
AIDS IN “GENERATOR: PESTILENCE PART 1” AT LA MAMA
February
20 - March 1 2020
INVASION/MIGRATION (chorus):
Everything is about AIDS. Everybody has AIDS. Everything is about race. Everything is about
slavery. Everything is about me.
ANANSI/AOUA/BARKER/TECHNOLOGY (The Virus):
I promised a spectacle about AIDS but I’m afraid I can’t deliver. My viral load has been below a
detectable level for some time now so its very unlikely I’d be able to infect anyone at this point.
Also I’m no longer producing semen so even if I were able to ejaculate into you there wouldn’t
be enough of the virus according to current science to give you AIDS. Even if I were to bleed
into your open wound. But there are so many other kinds of pestilence I’m hoping that I might
offer some substitute for HIV. Would you be happy with a proliferation of ignorance or perhaps
a preponderance of cruelty? There’s plenty of that around and it does seem to be spreading.
My hepatologist says that AIDS is the least of my worries right now. It’s he hep B I should be
concerned about. While its not as virulent as say Hep A or C there’s no known cure for Type B.
So although that viral load has also been controlled and undetectable since forever, it’s still
possible that its presence could someday affect my liver adversely. We just don’t know.
Then there's the ticker. I’ve had three heart attacks due to lipodystrophy caused by Norvir, a
protease inhibitor I took starting from when it was still in the trial 3 phase. I started it before
they were able to get it into pill form. It tasted like lighter fluid. I’d have anxiety attacks knowing
my dose time was coming. The doctors have a word for when people don’t take their meds
regularly as prescribed. You get labeled “non compliant”. Speaking of side effects did I ever tell
you about the years I took the psychotropic Sustiva? At fi rst it was a single pill but later they
put it into a 3 in 1 combination, one pill for an easier way to block multiple routes of viral
replication. I'm simplifying. I'm not a scientist I just play one in my head. They named the 3
drug combination A
trip
la. Is that a hoot? I hallucinated on it for years. I liked the dreams it gave
me. You were only supposed to take it at night because otherwise you’d be tripping balls all
day. Some people couldn’t tolerate the side effects. It made them crazy. But it s an effective
antiretroviral so doctors would just prescribe it no matter what. People would be suicidal and
doctors wouldn’t mention the known side effects because it worked against HIV.
Someday we will not be here. Will there be anybody to remember us? What will we leave to be
remembered by? Does anyone care? If so, why? If not, why not?
The term “existential threat”, appearing in the news and articles over the past year, has
made a comeback
of sorts
1
.
T
here’s been
increased use of the word to express the
anxiety of continued
existence - of countries, political systems, and
with the entry of
Covid 19 into our daily thoughts
-
of
human
survival
:
populations
, cultures,
and
the
individuals
that comprise societies
2
.
The apparent difference in use
then and now
is that
in
an
earlier era the word was applied in
a
more philosophical framework of
meaning: A
nihilis
tic neutralizing
concept
of
how to think or feel about a world in which
human
mortality was becoming
less
of
an immediate concern
than the existence, continuation
and relationship of things to human consciousness. Ah, the ‘70s…
IS “PESTILENCE” BIGGER THAN
AIDS?
For some time now I’ve
become more sensitive to
the way the AIDS closet works
-
the
way
all
closets work
. That
polite society will almost
always
let you
go back in
to the
closet
if you
simply
don’t regularly remind the world of
the fact that you are out.
I
’ve become
aware that
many
people may not realize that “Pestilence” is a metaphor for
AIDS
because they miss
the connection that I am diagnosed with AIDS
. The
overarching
theme of the Pestilence
C
ycle is about the nature and phenomena of
pandemic
throughout
the course of
history.
One of my
recent video
s
at this writing is
“
Eye
,
Virus
”
3
made in collaboration with Victor FM Torres. The title of this short was
originally intended to be
comprised
of
hieroglyphs on which a
thread
of Victor’s work is
based.
We intended the title to be shown as a graphic, but d
ue to
the
challenges
of
adequately
reproducing
the visual
we accepted the English translation Eye
,
Virus as
a
working title.
By the end of
the video
Victor and I come to the conclusion that everybody
has AIDS
,
or at least
that many what are identifi ed as HIV- may be
conceivably
positive
based on
the current standard of measurement and determination.
For one thing your
offi cial status remains negative regardless of your detectible viral load if you haven’t
been tested. And if a p
ositive status is determined by the presence of the
HIV antibody
outside of the antigen/antibody test window
t
hen many
more people may be
conceivably infected without being diagnosed
4
.
We made these conjectures from
Victor’s observation
of
Pharma’s recommendation that a person going off PREP notify
their physician
immediately
, presumably because the previously undetected virus c
ould
possible
rebound
off medication. If there is no HIV test, no viral load and no t cell count
is taken, and no AIDS determining illness is diagnosed (whether or not symptoms have
occurred) then that person is neither determined
as
HIV positive nor
diagnosed with
AIDS. So the underlying premise of Pestilence is that the virus is always present
,
that
EVERYBODY is potentially HIV
p
ositive
,
and
that an
undiagnosed infection can
conceivably develop into full blown AIDS.
1
[“The Astonishing Rise Of Existential Threats”, John McWhorter, The Atlantic June 19, 2019 ]
2
[“Invisible Bullets: What Lucretius Taught Us About Pandemics”, Stephen Greenblatt The New
Yorker, March 16, 2020
3
https://www.artforum.com/video/jack-waters-victor-f-m-torres-eye-virus-2019-81494
4
https://www.sfaf.org/collections/beta/heres-why-you-test-positive-for-hiv-if-youre-
undetectable/
CURING AIDS?
The Social Security Administration governs disability benefi ts. Although the SSA does
not consider HIV infection alone a disability, AIDS defi ning illnesses have long been
covered by the agency’s Supplemental Security Income
program
(SSI)
5
. Recent
observations have been made that, with the diminishment of AIDS defi ning illness due
to the management of HIV, many HIV+ people previously supported by SSI are no
longer qualifi ed for
disability benefi ts
. Similarly, such clients of
Medicaid
,
HASA
,
and
other govern
ment aid are having their
HIV/AIDS
benefi ts removed as a result of
recertifi cation
. This raises a question:
can a person previously diagnosed with AIDS
whose viral load has remained undetectable on
medication but whose AIDS related
illness are no longer debilitating
be considered as no longer having AIDS
?
We’ve
already
crossed
a
threshold
where
patients who have remained undetectable off
medication are
spoken (by some at least) of being
“cured”
6
.
Or might the specter of
relapse, and as yet undetermined long term
treatment
complications forever defi ne both
AIDS and HIV diagnoses as chronic pathologies.
Are
PREP and HART “cure
s
”?
Considering the small minority of people that can access these treatment and
prevention can we who have access comfortably relax as we have been doing, or is it
safe to say that because AIDS is all around us
that
everyone potentially has AIDS.
Can
we say that
politically speaking
,
if AIDS is a problem for
anybody
, its a problem for
everybody
, and therefore everybody has AIDS
?
My
contribution
to
the
Eye, Virus
video was
as a followup to
“Guess Who I Ran Into At
The AIDS Clinic”
,
an essay I wrote
for
AIDS OS Y 10.1.6
,
a
zine
My partner Peter
Cramer and I
created
commissioned by Danspace Project’s Platform 2016
7
.
Our contribution to the project was followed by a
public discussion at Printed Matter’s
2017 New York Art Book Fair
8
Both the video and the essay are intended to address an
idea that Peter introduced to me as The New AIDS Closet. Both the video and the essay
call for a new language for AIDS, and by extension, a new language for everything else.
In the same way that
,
because I’m black and queer
anything
I do or say will invariably
be about being black and queer
, k
nowing that my AIDS diagnosis will put an indelible
stamp on who I am and what I say from the perspective of anyone for whom that status
has signifi cance.
T
he degree of
signifi cance is
relative - conditional to
time
and c
ontext.
But
I
believe
that having AIDS, being Black, and being Queer is of
irrefutable
signifi cance in a world and
in
a time where
those identities are
still
consider
ed
marginal
,
are
consistently under attack
, yet remain considerably impactful
.
W
e must keep our
sanity by not
allowing undue
awareness of our status
to
be of such
great
concern that
we are over
come
by
an overwhelming isolation
.
In fact, we
take
enormous pride and
5
https://www.ssa.gov/disability/professionals/bluebook/14.00-Immune-Adult.htm#14_11
6
https://www.health.com/condition/hiv/second-hiv-patient-cured
7
https://danspaceproject.org/journal/issue-4-lost-found-dance-new-york-hivaids-then-and-
now/
8
https://alliedproductions.org/allied-productions-inc-present-zinesartist-books-more-at-
printed-matters-ny-art-book-fair/
great joy in our difference.
AIDS is a consistent theme throughout the Pestilence cycle.
Although the Pestilence cycle starts in prehistory, the historical period in which AIDS is
identifi ed does not occur until the third and last part of the trilogy. Even then the
epidemic is felt as an undercurrent that manifests expressively, not literally.
Nevertheless the AIDS content is explicit in the Pestilence libretto - as a formal
element, even if not in the narrative form typical to the western operatic format.
Our statement in the La MaMa season brochure speaks about those “infected and
affected by AIDS/HIV”. In our work and in our lives Peter and I are explicit about our
sero status. I assume people know that this is a defi nitive aspect of who we are
creatively, as well as social and political individuals.My simplistic argument is that if I
have AIDS then everything I do, including Pestilence, is ultimately about AIDS.
Following the earlier argument by extension that everybody has AIDS then by extension
everything is about AIDS.
PERSONIFICATION OF THE VIRUS
In developing GENERATOR: Pestilence Part, I our dramaturge Tim Cusack pointed out
that a virus is not living a organism but an acellular particle that depends on living cells
to survive and reproduce. Viruses
have no energy metabolism, they do not grow, they
produce no waste products, and they do not respond to stimuli.
We decided that the
character of the Barker who dramatically functions as the narrator would, as well as
being the fi gure of Technology (
referring
to the making, modifi cation, usage, and
knowledge of tools, m
echanisms
, techniques,
systems, and methods of organization
to
achieve a goal, handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specifi c function
9
),
also be imbued with the character of the Virus, whose motivational desire is to exist; to
continue and to belong, even as that desire means to compromise and eradicate the
existence of it's host. The hosting body is performed by the chorus in their evolution
from single celled organism to the splitting into separate cells, to their development as a
pre-human social collective.
9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology
