Human rights are easier to endorse than enforce.

and creates solidarity in a common humanity.

Health is a truly universal aspiration

Finally! A plenary on MSM.

Finally! A plenary on MSM.

This exclamation, followed by thunderous applause opened Jorge Saavedra's plenary session titled Sex between Men. Activist friends the previous day had said that the IAC in Mexico City was going to be to MSM issues what the 2000 conference in Durban was to the African epidemic. Saavedra's lecture was far and away the most exciting of all the lectures I saw at the conference. But how is it that we are 27 years into the epidemic and only this year at the 17th International AIDS Conference was there a plenary lecture on MSM? Only now, when in 1981 Larry Kramer founded Gay Mens Health Crisis (GMHC) and in 1987 AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP)? Only now, when the leadership of these organizations along with other LGBT activists began public discourse and challenged governments at the very start of this global crisis? Among gay men in the United States, HIV incidence fell by 75% during the 1980s. This was in large part because of the tireless and extraordinary leadership in the gay community. During a meeting of the LGBTA Caucus (A = Allies) at the Ecumenical Pre-Conference on HIV and AIDS, a concern that was voiced over and over was that the shifting nature of the pandemic (the growing number of orphans and vulnerable children, the "feminization" of the pandemic, etc.) has forced gay and lesbian activists back into the closet. Hard won battles have escaped the attention of history. This cannot stand and Dr. Saavedra's plenary lecture was a step in the right direction.

Jorge Saavedra at the International AIDS Conference

Bill Clinton at the International AIDS Conference

Part of the whole picture

70% of people living in poverty worldwide are women.

76% of HIV positive women in Africa are between the ages of 15 and 24 years old.

2/3 of all caregivers for people living with HIV in Africa are women.

Over 30 million people are living with HIV, half of them women.

Where do we go from here?

Four days after the closing session of the 2008 International AIDS Conference, Where do we go from here? is surely the nagging question keeping delegates up at night. The past six International AIDS Conferences have had overarching, unifying themes and this year's theme was Universal Action Now. In 2006 the theme was Time to Deliver. In 2004 Access for All. In 2002 Knowledge and Commitment for Action. In 2000 Break the Silence. In 1998 Bridging the Gap. In his treatise on rhetoric Aristotle wrote, "Rhetoric is useful because things that are true and things that are just have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites, so that if the decisions of judges are not what they ought to be, the defeat must be due to the speakers themselves, and they must be blamed accordingly." The rhetoric of past conferences has been captivating, and surely future conferences will continue to use rhetoric to induce action surrounding this global crisis. The speakers of the 2008 IAC in Mexico City, the first I have attended, took Universal Action Now, in word and meaning, to be the framework for their political speechmaking, and rightly so. If the failure of what is right and what is just falls on speakers and not judges, then surely once rhetoric wins in the court of public opinion (and who among us will argue that the time for universal action is not now) whose responsibility is it to interpret that rhetoric, to hold to account speechmakers, to question the progress of promises?

These are not easy questions. From now until the 2010 IAC in Vienna I will be continually creating artworks asking these questions, illustrating the overwhelming statistics presented at the 2008 IAC, and attempting to interpret the progress and failures of policy in the years that will take us from Mexico City to Vienna.