We are pleased to invite you to a lecture in the American Studies Colloquium Series in the 2023/2024 Spring semester!
Todd Sekuler
(University of Zürich)
Film, AIDS, Activism: Culture Engagements that Move
Monday, April 15, 2024
at 4:45 p.m.
You can get 3 OZN points for participating in this event.
Where?
Dobra 55, room 2.118
(the building features some mobility accommodations: ramp and lift)
Who?
Todd Sekuler is Oberassistent in Popular Cultures at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies of the University of Zürich. He has a Master in Public Health (MPH) – with a focus on sexuality, gender and health – from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City and a PhD in European Ethnology from Institut für Europäische Ethnologie at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU). Sekuler was previously a post-doctoral researcher at the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in the Disentangling European HIV/AIDS Policies: Activism, Citizenship and Health (EUROPACH) and, subsequently, the “CrimScapes: Navigating citizenship through European landscapes of criminalisation” research teams. He has co-organized various events on the cultural politics of HIV/AIDS, including, most recently, the “arcHIV. A Search for Traces” and “HIVstories. Living Politics” exhibitions at the Schwules Museum in Berlin. Additional earlier engagements include a film and video series accompanying the exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe at C/O Berlin, an event on ACT UP groups in Germany at the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), a discussion and screening on AIDS, activism and video art at Bochum University, a sound installation on religiosity and AIDS activism at the international queer audio festival ECHOS+NETZE, and a discussion on HIV/AIDS in cinema at the XPosed International Queer Film Festival.
What?
This presentation will look at the structures of feeling that guide notions of kinship in AIDS activist video works from the earliest years of the AIDS epidemic of the United States. In these videos, notions of family, lineage and inheritance are variably mobilized, negotiated and deconstructed through a range of emotions including alienation, intimacy, humor, longing and desire. Together with attendees and a special guest, filmmaker Jim Hubbard, we will view clips and discuss collectively what selected works do with us, and how such modes of feeling relate to the contemporary political moment.
