... "Has the angry life-or-death struggle against AIDS from years past finally been co-opted into a blithe fashion statement, or will the images succeed once again as a potent reminder that AIDS is still with us and remains a threat to everyone's health?" [via]
"In 1987, six gay activists in New York formed the SILENCE = DEATH Project and began plastering posters around the city featuring a pink triangle on a black background stating simply ‘SILENCE = DEATH.’ In its manifesto, the SILENCE = DEATH Project drew parallels between the Nazi period and the AIDS crisis, declaring that ‘silence about the oppression and annihilation of gay people, then and now, must be broken as a matter of our survival.’ The slogan thus protested both taboos around discussion of safer sex and the unwillingness of some to resist societal injustice and governmental indifference. The six men who created the project later joined the protest group ACT UP and offered the logo to the group, with which it remains closely identified.posted by ericb at 3:20 PM on March 14, 2011 [2 favorites]
Since its introduction, the ‘SILENCE = DEATH’ logo has appeared in a variety of manifestations, including in neon as part of an art display and on a widely worn button. It was also the forerunner of a range of parallel slogans such as ‘ACTION = LIFE’ and ‘IGNORANCE = FEAR’ and an entire genre of protest graphics, most notably including a bloodstained hand on a poster proclaiming that ‘the government has blood on its hands.’ Owing in part to its increasing identification with AIDS, the pink triangle was supplanted in the early 1990s by the rainbow as the dominant image of ‘gay pride.’ By force of analogy, however, the rainbow itself has, in some countries, become an image associated with AIDS.
The SILENCE=DEATH Project was a group of six men who had started meeting a year and half before the formation of ACT UP, made up by Avram Finklestein, Brian Howard, Oliver Johnston, Charles Kreloff, Chris Lione, and Jorge Soccaras. They were men who needed to talk to each other and others about what the fuck were they going to do, being gay men in the age of AIDS?! Several of them were designers of various sorts--graphic designers--and they ended up deciding that they had to start doing wheat-pasting on the streets, to get the message out to people: 'Why aren't you doing something?' So they created the SILENCE=DEATH poster which at the bottom said: 'Why is Reagan silent about AIDS? What is really going on at the Center for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Vatican? Gays and lesbians are not expendable...Use your power...Vote...Boycott...Defend yourselves...Turn anger, fear, grief into action.' A short time later, several of them were at the evening event when Larry Kramer spoke, which motivated the community of people to found ACT UP." *
With regard to any items in which ACT UP held copyrights, ACT UP has decreed those materials to be held in public domain.They're also working on giving the NYPL all their videos.
Can you name another group that achieved even one such impressive outcome?The group ACT UP (it isn’t hyphenated) was modelled on: ADAPT.
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posted by ericb at 3:10 PM on March 14, 2011 [1 favorite]