Ep. 2: ROBERT BIRCH on Turning Toward the Fire
In the second episode of Imminent Domains, Alessandra sits down community organizer Robert Birch to hear personal stories from the HIV/AIDS pandemic. They discuss queer lineage and community care, speak about death, dying, and ecological grief, and discuss how we can love this world more fiercely. "In these movements," Birch shares, "there are extraordinary skills and strategies of how to continue to love in the face of horror and violence.
At the end of the episode, he adds: “For those of us who have been told that we don't matter, that should suggest to us how much we do matter; that the world's violence is trying to cut us off from the very resource that can help us evolve more consciously, and that's one another.
Video transcript available on YouTube | Audio transcript coming soon
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ABOUT ROBERT BIRCH: A story bio
Robert Birch currently plays with gender from queer masculine and f@g-femme perspectives. He was born on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabeg people, and raised by the shores of the Otonabee River, which in Ojibwa means, “river that beats like a heart.” For the past four decades, whether as a writer, creative director, community facilitator or counsellor, Robert has been acknowledged as a gifted educator who helps people more effectively adapt through life’s changing circumstances. He now lives as an uninvited settler on the unceded territories of Hul'qumi'num and SENĆOŦEN speaking peoples otherwise renamed as Salt Spring Island, B.C. As a young teenager he founded and ran the Peterborough Children's Theatre Workshop and taught workshops at local colleges and universities while attending highschool. Robert’s initial acting break came in 1990 when he was cast in Canada’s first AIDS play, Colin Thomas’ award winning Flesh and Blood. During each performance when his character kissed his dying lover, hundreds of youth in the audience groaned with disgust. By the end of the hour many wept. Four years later, Robert was himself diagnosed with HIV on the day his niece was born. His initial fear was of never being allowed to hold her. His sister told him not to be ridiculous. Bizarrely, that same day, while producing a month-long Health Canada sponsored arts festival investigating issues of HIV stigma and homophobia, his company performed Happy Virus Day, a pre-planned guerrilla theatre ritual taking over Government Street in downtown Victoria, B.C. Barely six hours from his own unexpected diagnosis, Birch donned fishnet stockings over his face, grabbed a video camera and interviewed passers-by. “We’re talking about AIDS today. Do you know anyone living with HIV? No? Hi, I’m Robert, you do now...” generation studio, his company went on to facilitate a three-day event called Blood Bros. and several other workshops at the ground-breaking 1997 International AIDS Conference in Vancouver where scientists announced life saving antiretroviral medications. He credits his health and wellbeing to scientific advancements almost as much as he does from the gift of life-long mentors and communities of spiritual practice. Because of this, Robert continues to learn how to transform some of life's suffering into experiences of creative adventure and service: as an author and co-editor of the Annals of Gay Sexuality, a co-developer and provincial trainer of one of Canada's most comprehensive youth social justice programs; as a regional coordinator of gay men’s health; as well as through three graduate school programs, and in 2010, becoming an international co-facilitator of weeklong events supporting people to heal socio-sexual traumas within community contexts. Throughout much of it, he has worked as a farmer with the love of his life, Crowdog for these past 25 years. He is grateful to all his peers and other teachers for their evolutionary courage to focus on capacities rather than pathologies
