Drawing the Line Against AIDS
An interdisciplinary and international conference concerning the history and impact of cultural production surrounding HIV/AIDS.
4-5 February 2010
The University of Adelaide, Australia
Invited Participants
Bren Brophy
Brenainn (Bren) Brophy is a Program Manager for the Culture and Arts Program (CAP) within the Centre for HIV/AIDS Networking (HIVAN) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He has worked as a fine art curator (Market Theatre Galleries, Johannesburg, and KwaZulu-Natal Society of Arts Galleries, Durban), and was the Consultant Arts Curator for the XIII International AIDS Conference in Durban, 2000. He was also invited by the community program of the XV International AIDS Conference (Bangkok, Thailand, 2004) to present a digital installation of the Artists Action Around AIDS exhibition which he curated for the Durban Art Gallery. Bren curated the SHUTTLE’99 Cultural Exchange (SA/Nordic Council of Ministers) in 1999 and has been a judge for Windsor and Newton Millennium International Art Competition and the Volkskas New Signatures Art Competition.
Bren's present focus is the development of Arts and Culture methodologies and interventions that address the issues and challenges surrounding HIV/AIDS. The CAP Program researches Communication for Social Change theory and media- and arts-based responses to public health issues. Bren’s team develops workshop and educational programs that aim to facilitate skills transferral and nurture advocacy and social–cultural transformation.
Albert J. Winn
Albert Winn has been at the forefront of cultural production about HIV/AIDS since the 1980s. His writing and photographic work is primarily autobiographical and addresses issues of identity, especially as it relates to religion, ethnicity, gender or sexuality and how each informs the other in a context of illness, personal relationships and memory. He received a National Endowment for the Arts / Western States Arts Federation Fellowship in 1993 for a collection of photographs and stories titled 'My Life Until', which dealt with his life as a gay Jewish man living with HIV/AIDS. He received a fellowship from the Memorial Foundation of Jewish Culture in 2000, was an artist-in-residence at Blue Mountain Center in Blue Mountain, NY, and an Artist-in-Residence at Light Work, in Syracuse, New York. He is the creator of ‘Blood on the Doorpost…the AIDS Mezuzah’ which was installed at the Judah L. Magnus Museum in Berkeley for World AIDS Day in 1996. His work is in the permanent collections of The Library of Congress, The Jewish Museum (New York City), the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Light Work (Syracuse University), and the Visual AIDS Archive (NYC).
Dennis Altman
Dennis Altman is a Professor of Politics at LaTrobe University and a former Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University. His major fields of expertise are the politics of sexuality, HIV/AIDS, globalisation and security. He also teaches a course on American politics and culture and has written a book about the eminent American writer, Gore Vidal. Prof. Altman is a member of the Governing Council of the International AIDS Society and a former President of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific. He is the author of twelve books, including Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (1971), AIDS and the New Puritanism (1986), Power and Community: Organisational and Cultural Responses to AIDS (1994), Global Sex (2001), and, most recently, 51st State? (1996).
