Since 2019, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art has been running projects to raise awareness of the HIV epidemic in Russia.
Our work in this field is part of a long-term commitment to inclusive projects, the key goal of which is to overcome exclusion, discrimination, and stigmatization of people with different experiences, including those living with HIV.
In 2021, Garage Inclusive Programs team launched the Diversity and Inclusion platform, which brings together materials about inclusive practices in the field of culture. The section «Special Projects» includes a range of materials about social inequality that are not part of the general discourse on inclusion in culture and in museums in particular.
During research into this area Museum staff interviewed many people who work with the topic of HIV, including artists, authors, and screenwriters. The inspiration for this call for applications came from the experiences and doubts of interviewees expressed in private conversations. Does this topic, which they address in their work, invariably imply emotional manipulation? Is it possible to tell a story without setting the protagonist with HIV against the entire world?
As a result, Garage Inclusive Programs team has launched an interdisciplinary laboratory to bring together authors working in various genres who are interested in the topic of HIV and producing new narratives that will avoid stigma, exoticization, and the reproduction of stereotypes about people living with HIV.
Applications are welcome from authors, playwrights, screenwriters, documentary filmmakers, and interdisciplinary researchers.
Meetings will take place biweekly from February 6 to April 10, 2025, from 19:30 to 21:30.
They will take place online to accommodate applicants from other cities.
Participants will meet with invited authors who have worked with the topic of HIV representation as a socio-cultural phenomenon and with HIV researchers, who will provide academic support for the project.
The laboratory is expected to produce pitches, synopses, and drafts for future fiction and documentary works. It may produce theoretical materials on the representation of HIV in culture. Materials produced during the laboratory may be published on the Museum’s Diversity and Inclusion platform.
