Over the last ten years, Gregg Bordowitz and Fatima Hellberg have been in dialogue and recurrently worked together across formats, with the next project manifesting in a forthcoming solo show at Bonner Kunstverein (PV: 20 September 2024).

In anticipation of this and as a reflection on some shared and morphing concerns, the two join in conversation. The exchange will loop back on some of the key strands of this project, from considerations of holding, containment and more tentative reflections around survivalism, beauty and a certain faith, or even joy connected with the making of and experience with art. Of the conditions that make doing so possible, necessary, even pleasurable.

Gregg Bordowitz is a renowned filmmaker, writer, and activist whose work has been exhibited at the Whitney, the New Museum, Artist Space, MoMA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Tate Modern, among others. His work is the subject of Gregg Bordowitz: I Wanna Be Well — first organized by the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, in 2018 and subsequently presented at MoMA PS1 and the Art Institute of Chicago. Since 2023, Bordowitz has been director of the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York.

In the 1980s, he focused his creative practice on responding to the AIDS crisis. He organized and documented a number of protests against government inaction and advocated for health education and harm reduction as a member of the groundbreaking AIDS activist group ACT UP. He also served as a founding member of the 1980s video/film collectives Testing the Limits and Diva TV.

Bordowitz is the author of The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986–2003 (2004), General Idea: Imagevirus (2010), Volition (2010), and Glenn Ligon: Untitled (I Am a Man) (2018).