The Centers for Disease Control can’t write these words anymore. The White House webpage on National AIDS policy is literally blank. Donald Trump just fired the rest of the AIDS Advisory Council by Fedex.  Queerskins is a project especially needed NOW.

Thanks to our incredible supporters–we successfully funded our Kickstarter campaign. Special thanks to Chris Vroom (Collector IQ), Ed and Ilene Vroom, Piri L. Welsch and Karen Olson, Dr. Yael Halaas and especially artist T-mo Bauer for their generosity. Check out the short video to get a sense of what Queerskins: a love story for VR is all about.

This is not a partisan political work, but through story and technology, it puts visitors in the position of experiencing the intimate interior worlds of others. You aren’t in the driver’s seat, because, you know, as in life, as in politics, it’s still the dad who drives. Death is final. You can’t change that. The material reality that LGBTQI people experience every day is not something you can wish away. But, you can change your own mind, your own way of accepting and supporting others within or outside your community. You can expand your conception of who is worthy of love and forgiveness and respect. This work allows YOU to create the main character. Who was he, what was his life? Was he worthy? Maybe you will hate that he is religious or maybe you will hate that he has sex with men, wherever you come from, you will construct him a different way. As a woman, trained as a physician specializing an HIV who works in one of the most notorious jails in the U.S. (Szilak) and a gay man (Tsiboulski), we have our own answers, just as you will have yours. There is no judgement right or wrong. Our hope is that, in constructing the story, you’ll learn something important about yourself and your limits. It’s a gift to understand this. Because, only in seeing it, can real change happen.