They fumbled with the condoms in their fingers, trying to figure out what to do next.
Instead of an awkward sexual encounter, however, these students were trying to replicate the texture of Adriana Bertini’s condom-couture dress at the Fowler Museum at UCLA as part of the first day of Professor David Gere’s “Make Art/Stop AIDS” class.
Projects such as these are the norm in World Arts and Cultures 144, which is geared toward using creative and artistic ways to combat the global AIDS epidemic.
“If you share someone information with a leaflet, and they can’t read it, (it) won’t do them any good,” Gere said. “But if you put that information into the mouth of a puppet, or if you find a way to convey it in musical form so the lyrics stay in my head, then you have taken that lifesaving information and given it to me in a form that is truly unforgettable ““ and you may have saved my life in the process.”
Gere was inspired to create WAC 144 after concluding a fellowship to India in 2004.
“I spent much of my time with my family in India, studying the ways that artists in India were responding to the AIDS epidemic,” Gere said. “As a result of that experience, I developed a course as a way to build the notion of artist activism in relation to HIV all around the world.”
In addition to works from India, Gere’s students will take a look at different activist works and artists from around the globe, including Brazil, Thailand, Senegal and South Los Angeles. They will then create their own works, which will be displayed in various public venues during the quarter.
Projects for the class include the “Poster Series,” in which students create a poster campaign aimed at reducing the stigma of AIDS in a related country, and the “Street Theater/Condom Demo,” in which students perform a live three to five-minute piece in a public square or mall about the importance of condom use in the fight against AIDS.
The important message that Gere stresses throughout all of these projects, however, is that art makes a difference. Different people communicate in different ways, and art is something so universal that its impact is hard to ignore.
“There are countless ways that art can in fact stop the epidemic,” Gere said. “It’s when the epidemic can be controlled through the sharing of information so convincingly and so vibrantly that it is utterly unforgettable.”
For Hanni Rosenfeld, a UCLA alumna who took Gere’s class in winter 2005, “Make Art/Stop AIDS” truly shows how powerful the visual arts can be for HIV/AIDS prevention.
“This class (helped) me to realize that arts education is a really strong vehicle that should really be included in HIV education,” she said. “I already had interest in HIV/AIDS prevention, and the class helped me look at it from a very different perspective.”
This quarter, two guest artists-in-residence, Anurupa Roy and Gideon Mandel, will also be teaching short independent modules outside of the class.
Roy, a puppeteer from India, will demonstrate how to incorporate the use of puppets in anti-AIDS interventions. Mandel, a photographer from South Africa, will focus on photo-chronicles, which tell real-life stories through a series of photographs.
“In the class, they’re going to pair up two people with an HIV-positive person in L.A.,” Gere said. “They’ll spend a weekend with that person and photochronicalize their lives, and their work will be put up in an exhibition in Kaufman.”
Hands-on work such as the photography project increase the appeal of this class. Instead of just listening to a lecture, students can put their ideas into action ““ and see their professor’s as well.
“It’s an amazing class with an inspiring professor who’s doing work of his own,” Rosenfeld said.
“(Because) his students are able to see that he’s actually doing it and it’s not just a professor standing in front of a classroom teaching, students realize they can do the same with whatever projects they’ve been working on in the class.”