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.