LIFELINES: Art, Intimacy, and HIV—an Intergenerational Conversation

The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division will host LIFELINES: Art, Intimacy, and HIV—an Intergenerational Conversation, a virtual event on Zoom, on Friday, June 18, 2021, from 6 to 7:30 PM EDT.

Artist Eric Rhein, poet Mark Doty, and writer and curator Paul Michael Brown reflect upon the themes that run through Rhein’s first monograph-memoir ERIC RHEIN: LIFELINES (Institute 193, 2020), to which both Doty and Brown contributed key essays.

Rhein, Doty, and Brown will discuss the overlapping contexts in which they came of-age—and how they emerged, matured, and created within an era of crisis.

Rhein will show artworks and intimate photographs from LIFELINES. Doty and Brown will read from their essays, showing the richness of thought, heart, and history which make the book both an artistic expression and an historic document.

The discussion will be opened to questions from the audience.

“These images affirm the desiring self at a moment when the desire had become dangerous...” —Mark Doty

Purchase ERIC RHEIN: LIFELINES on or before June 18, 2021, and receive 25% off!

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link for this virtual event on the morning of Friday, June 18, 2021.

Closed-captioning will be available.

Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.

All are welcome to join, with or without a donation. Donations can be made when registering on Eventbrite.

About the participants:

Eric Rhein has gained international recognition as an artist whose work embodies themes of love, sexuality, and identity as explored through his ever-evolving experience with HIV. In 1996 Rhein began his ongoing project Leaves, a memorial honoring the lives of over 300 individuals he knew who died of complications from AIDS. Rhein’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. Reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Huffington Post, ARTnews, Vanity Fair, and Art in America. He is included in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art’s Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project. Rhein currently lives in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.

Mark Doty won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008 for FIRE TO FIRE: New and Selected Poems. He’s published ten books of poetry and five of nonfiction prose, most recently WHAT IS THE GRASS: Walt Whitman in My Life, which NPR called “a celebration of gay masculinity, queerness, and the power and elasticity of poetry.” His book STILL LIFE WITH OYSTERS AND LEMON appears on arts curricula around the country, and he can currently be heard on audio guides at the Met. He teaches at Rutgers and lives in New York City.

Paul Michael Brown is a writer and curator based in Lexington, Kentucky. He is the former director of Institute 193 and was the recipient of the 2020 Arts Writer’s Grant. His research and writing has included a focus on queer and self-taught practitioners from the American South. Brown curated the 2019 exhibition Eric Rhein: Lifelines at Institute 193 and 21c Lexington, which served as the inspiration for this book. The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is an independent, all-volunteer queer cultural center, bookstore, and event space that opened in New York City in 2012 and has been hosted by The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center since 2014. We aim to foster a community invested in the values of mindfulness, intellectual curiosity, justice, compassion, and playfulness. The Bureau seeks to excite and educate a self-confident, sex-positive, and supportive queer community by offering books, publications, and art and by hosting a wide variety of cultural events, including readings, performances, film screenings, book discussion groups, and workshops. We provide local and visiting queers and friends with an open and inclusive space for dialogue and socializing.

Contact: Greg Newton

E-mail: contact@bgsqd.com

Phone: 646-457-0859

Website: bgsqd.com

Please note: As of March 13, 2020, the Bureau has been temporarily closed. We will announce a reopening date once we learn of the reopening plans of our host, The LGBT Community Center. Please visit our website for updates: bgsqd.com