Visual AIDS has announced its programming for the 29th annual Day With(out) Art on December 1, 2018, World AIDS Day.
The program, ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS, emphasizes the impact of art in AIDS activism and advocacy today. The organization has commissioned short videos from six community organizations and collectives—ACT UP NY, Positive Women’s Network, Sero Project, The SPOT, Tacoma Action Collective, and VOCAL NY—representing a wide range of creative activist responses to the ongoing AIDS crisis. The videos reflect the continuing urgency of today’s HIV/AIDS epidemic, particularly addressing intersectional political concerns, including HIV criminalization, Big Pharma, access to healthcare, and the disproportionate effects of HIV on marginalized communities.
The videos will premiere on December 1 at the SVA Theatre, New York City; other screenings have been arranged for December 8 at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles and for December 15 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Other screenings will be announced. Currently, Visual AIDS is looking for more institutions to screen the hour-long video program on or around World AIDS Day, December 1, 2018. The video program will be provided free of charge, with technical and presentation logistics coordinated with you by Visual AIDS.
Day With(out) Art was founded in 1989 in response to the growing AIDS crisis. Visual AIDS called upon arts organizations, museums and galleries throughout the U.S. for “mourning and action in response to the AIDS crisis” to coincide with the second annual World AIDS Day. More than 800 of them participated by shrouding artworks and replacing them with information about HIV and safer sex, locking their doors or dimming their lights, and producing exhibitions, programs, readings, memorials, rituals, and performances. By the mid-1990s, Day With(out) Art had signed up more than 8,000 participants throughout the world.
To screen ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS through your organization, please contact Day With(out) Art Project Manager, Kyle Croft: kcroft@visualaids.org or (212) 627-9855. For more information about Visual AIDS and the Day With(out) Art, including the organizations that have produced the videos for ALTERNATE ENDINGS, ACTIVIST RISINGS, log on to http://visualaids.org/projects/detail/alternate-endings-activist-risings.
—Reporting by Hank Trout
Hank Trout, Editor at Large, edited Drummer, Malebox, and Folsom magazines in the early 1980s. A long-term survivor of HIV/AIDS (diagnosed in 1989), he is a thirty-eight-year resident of San Francisco, where he lives with his fiancé Rick. Follow him on Twitter @HankTroutWriter.