Ein Sommer in Berlin

365 ceramic pills lie on the floor. Handmade and hand-painted. This number represents the dose that an HIV positive person has to take to protect themselves and others from infection.
Although medications for people with the HIV virus are now so effective that the virus can no longer be detected in the body, it is still a daily obligation to take medication, because HIV is still considered incurable. The availability of antiretroviral drugs is linked to access to medical care, information and economic resources and is therefore also linked to the question of the social group to which one belongs.
Today, the HIV virus continues to spread and often represents a problem for socially excluded people, such as sex workers, drug users, gender dissidents, people with low income or from the so-called global south. Treatment is not only an ongoing and physically stressful process but also a social justice issue. It is also a question of the current necropolitics, which raises the reality that some bodies are more important than others.
Ceramics is a fragile material, which can break and splinter quickly. Thus, in this context, it also represents the human body and the uncertainty that arises from the fact that it is fundamentally and continually at risk of disease. At the same time, the tablets represent the fact that some bodies are exposed to greater dangers because social mechanisms forcethem into situations in which they are exposed to greater health risks.