Voices at the Gate - Kat Cheairs Film Fundraiser

Voices at the Gate - Short Documentary Project

Voices at the Gate, currently in production, is an experimental documentary short featuring video of the bucolic landscapes often inhabited by women’s prisons with audio recordings from archival poems and essays written by women of color at the intersection of HIV/AIDS activism and incarceration. The archival pieces are primarily from the Judy Greenspan Papers at the LGBT Community Center National History Archive in New York City and read by contemporary poets and activists.

Voices at the Gate is a commissioned work by Visual AIDS and will be screened in Day With(out) Art 2021 at cultural institutions throughout the US and around the world. It is an honor to have this project chosen by Visual AIDS.

Check out the link for more information about Day With(out) Art 2021.

https://visualaids.org/blog/announcing-dwa-2021

This campaign has a goal of raising $2,500 to support production costs of Voices.

• Funding areas include:
• Travel
• Production Equipment
• Post Production/Editing
• Honorarium for Readers

A PERSONAL NOTE FROM KAT CHEAIRS

Image Credit: Noelle Hanrahan. Newspaper Clipping. "To Die in Chowchilla," 1994. San Francisco Bay Guardian. Judy Greenspan Papers, The LGBT Community Center National History Archive.

Voices at the Gate is inspired by the work I did as a co-curator on the exhibition sponsored by the One Archives Foundation entitled, Metanoia: Transformation Through AIDS Archives and Activism, which follows two parallel stories about women’s inclusion into the definition of AIDS and Black women’s AIDS prison activism in the early 1990s. I discovered through research into the Judy Greenspan Papers at the LGBT Community Center National Archive in New York City the work of pioneering activist Joann Walker. I had what many archivists will tell you, “an encounter in the archive.”

Seeing the image of Joann Walker in a Fire Inside Newsletter publication in one of the files in the collection sent a chill down my spine and I knew there was a powerful story behind the steely eyes and confident air stemming from this woman. Continued research would reveal Walker to be a groundbreaking activist working with other women inside the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla to secure human rights, health care and compassionate release for women living with HIV & AIDS. Metanoia co-curators Theodore (ted) Kerr and Alexandra Juhasz introduced me to the work of Katrina Haslip and her historic contributions with women at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York and steadfast activism to ensure women’s inclusion into the definition of AIDS.

Image Credit: Catherine (Saalfield) Gund and Debra Levine. "Katrina Haslip, the vibrantly inspiring AIDS activist leader." Still from the video, I'm You, You're Me: Women Surviving Prison, Living with AIDS, 1992. Used with permission from artists.

I was able to learn something about myself as a Black woman who is always thinking about my own historical context and found inspiration in Haslip and Walker’s insistence on love, care and dignity. Voices at the Gate seeks to activate memory contained within archival material that connects people across time and space. It’s also another opportunity to spend time with sister Joann and sister Katrina, as well as, others whose voices need and deserve to be at the forefront of AIDS and women’s histories. Ase. Amen. And so it is.

Listen to a recording here of Tamara Oyola reading the words of Katrina Haslip.

Citation: Katrina Haslip. Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum-security Prison by Members of
the ACE Program (AIDS Counseling and Education) of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility Overlook Press, 1998.

*Note: Recording is not available for reproduction. 

Please support this project at whatever level you can.

Metanoia: Transformation Through AIDS Archives and Activism was on view at the LGBT Community Center in New York City from March 9th-April 29th 2019 and the One Gallery in Los Angeles, CA in January 2020. Metanoia is now available as an online exhibition here .

Katherine “Kat” Cheairs Bio

Katherine “Kat” Cheairs is a filmmaker, educator, curator, activist and community artist. Kat’s areas of interest and research include: Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) histories in HIV/AIDS; quantum Black futurity, Black feminist/womanist theory; visual culture; media arts therapy; community arts and social practice; and, critical race theory in art education. Ms. Cheairs is co-curator of Metanoia: Transformation Through AIDS Archives and Activism, an archival exhibition focusing on the contributions of Black women, transwomen of color, and women of color HIV/AIDS activists from the early 1990s to the present. Kat is the producer and director of the documentary, Ending Silence, Shame & Stigma: HIV/AIDS in the African American Family. Kat has presented on panels at the Tribeca Film Institute, BAM, Pratt Institute, The New School, New York University, The Studio Museum, The Aperture Foundation, UnionDocs and SUNY Buffalo. Ms. Cheairs holds a Master of Fine Art in Film and Television Production from the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University. Kat serves on the Archive Committee for Visual AIDS.

About Visual AIDS

Founded in 1988, Visual AIDS is the only contemporary arts organization fully committed to raising AIDS awareness and creating dialogue around HIV issues today, by producing and presenting visual art projects, exhibitions, public forums and publications - while assisting artists living with HIV/AIDS. We are committed to preserving and honoring the work of artists with HIV/AIDS and the artistic contributions of the AIDS movement.

Key Image Credit:

Kate Ter Haar - Creative Commons

*It has gone under some modification and design.