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In Boston, making art on World AIDS Day

E-mail|Link|Comments (5) Posted by Michael Paulson December 2, 2008 07:33 AM

Yesterday was the 20th World AIDS Day, and lots of religious organizations marked the occasion with statements or services of some sort. Here in Boston, artist Michael Dowling has developed an unusual tradition for commemorating the day -- an annual 24-hour vigil of art, performance and prayer inside a cavernous circular domed hall called the Cyclorama, at the Boston Center for the Arts.

Last night was the first time I had ever seen the Medicine Wheel, and it was hard to know what to make of it at first -- there was a maze of displays and activities, including some conventional artworks, memorial shrines, and impromptu performances/readings/rituals referred to as "offerings.'' There were people sleeping on the floor, eating, chatting, or just alone with their thoughts -- some, like me, had popped in for a few minutes, while others had been there for hours. There were at least two people carrying hula hoops, and two with dogs.

Some of the installations from previous years were on display, including a striking wall consisting of painted maps that tracked the path of HIV infection rates across the globe over time, and another group of walls adorned only with hatch marks symbolically counting off infection numbers. The shrines were also interesting -- little boxes with small memorial displays inside, arrayed atop pedestals and arranged in a circle (the wheel), with flameless votive candles all around. People were invited to bring some kind of personal object or memento to become part of the display.

The main activity this year was something called "The Paper Project" -- a simultaneous work of creation and destruction, in which people wrote prayers on pieces of paper, tore them up, and gave them to the artists (many of them South Boston teenagers) who blended them with some kind of red-dyed goop to make pulp that in turn formed a thick paper of melded prayers that was displayed on yet another wall. The work was the brainchild of Michael Dowling, who runs Medicine Wheel Productions. Here's the official description:

"This year, Dowling developed The Paper Project as a public art project that involves thousands of people from all walks of life in creating a single work, fragile and resilient, temporary and enduring. A single sheet of hand made paper 600 feet long and 12 feet high created by thousands of people over the course of ten months at Medicine Wheel Studio in South Boston using entirely recycled materials. Participants wrote hopes, fears, dreams, prayers and truths onto paper, which was broken down and reconstituted into the continuous sheet of earth colored paper, so that the thoughts and prayers exist together, woven into the fabric of the whole. Prayers for peace in the world, for an end to violence in our neighborhoods, for a longed for child, for a job or a lover or an end to personal suffering, will all come together as a single human prayer to become who we know we were meant to be. Conflicting prayers and desires are side by side, bearing witness to the human condition without the fraught emotions we attach to it. In this way The Paper Project evokes the wisdom of the dead, the detachment of the mystic, the transcendent knowing of the divine."

I shot a few photos on a friend's iPhone -- these give you a glimpse of what the installation looked like.

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5 comments so far...

I'll probably be castigated for this but here goes. I marvel at how society quickly forgets how the majority of those that died of AIDS were victims of their own, often perverted life style. I have compassion for those that became infected becuase of a tainted transfusion or transplant but to "honor" victims of AIDS other than those I specified is hypocracy at it's finest. IV drug users sharing needles, wanton promiscuous sex? These people aren't to be honored but pitied. Worse yet, over the years there have been ample warnings about risky life styles but often ignored. Now we want to enable them with needles and condoms. ENOUGH!

Posted by XENOPHON December 2, 08 01:00 PM

Xenophon...you'll indeed be castigated and for damned good reason. Perverted? I think you're engaging in more than a bit of projection with that one. It is truly perverted to glory in the misfortune of those who refuse to follow your direction in life. Obviously, you and the rest of the zealots continue to see AIDS as God's revenge against those who refuse to bow down and worship you - yes, you - in the guise of worshipping your idea of God. You sanctimoniously dole out your "compassion" while you sit in judgment on high. And that's perverted. And pathetic.

Posted by OnTheLeft December 2, 08 01:21 PM

We cannot forget that there are millions of people in the world right now (far more than in the US) who are dying from AIDS for lack of access to affordable care, everyday people who live, laugh, and love the same as any of us - if anything AIDS has dropped in visibility in the US due to access to treatment, allowing the specter of death to be held at bay for years and even decades, while those in the developing world suffer and die the same as men and women did here in the 1980s.

AIDS is a global epidemic, not just a problem of small communities of so-called "perverts" in the US. World AIDS Day, and Medicine Wheel's project at the Cyclorama, are a reminder that much more needs to be done in the fight against HIV/AIDS, from research to basic care, and that the disease has not disappeared. Anyone reading this article/comment can make a difference by making even a small donation to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS at http://www.theglobalfund.org/EN/

Posted by brandon December 2, 08 01:58 PM

We don't honor people living with HIV/AIDS for using drugs or having lots of sex. We honor them because they are human beings with dignity.

The words of intolerance written above further remind me why the least among us need our honor.

I'd invite you to my home here in South Africa where you can meet families dying of AIDS. In fact, you should come to the clinics where I work and visit with the 25% of all pregnant women who are HIV+.

You'd quickly find that your compassion is bigger than you give yourself credit for.

Posted by Nicholas December 2, 08 02:07 PM

Much of the ridicule heaped on HIV/AIDS victims is a result of hysteria generated here in the US. The disease was largely isolated in the homosexual population but of course this couldn't possibly be reported that way. Plus if the heterosexual community was made to fear AIDS then they would be more likely to open their wallets. As a result HIV/AIDS siphoned time, attention and resources away from other diseases that are far more widespread such as breast cancer and prostate cancer

If the disease had been reported truthfully in the beginning then maybe there wouldn't be so much cynicism about it now. The people in Africa and Asia are the ones paying the price for the way the politically correct crowd politicized the disease here in the US.

Posted by Magic J December 2, 08 03:21 PM

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Michael Paulson covers religion for The Boston Globe. He shared in the Pulitzer Prize in 2003, won the Mike Berger, Templeton and Supple awards in 2008, and is a four-time winner of the Wilbur Award.
E-mail mpaulson@globe.com.

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Harvey Cox, the Hollis professor of divinity at Harvard University, marks his retirement by asserting a little-used right of his professorship -- to graze a cow in Harvard Yard. Photo, by Barry Chin of the Globe staff, taken on Sept. 10, 2009 in Cambridge, Mass.