AIDS – Actipedia | A Wiki for Creative Activism

Reagan has died of AIDS

Date:
Jan 15 1994

Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States on November 4, 1980. In less than a year, in the Summer of 1981, AIDS was first identified in medical journals. However, it took until 1987 before he would give his…

Untitled

Practitioner:
Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Date:
Jan 15 1994

In May 1992, a series of 24 billboards displaying an identical image began appearing throughout New York City. They featured a giant close-up black-and-white photograph, without text, of a rumpled bed, pillows still indented from the heads that had rested…

ACT UP protests

Practitioner:
ACT UP

Date:
Jan 15 1994

In 1987 with AIDS deaths in the thousands and government policy still criminally indifferent, activists formed ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) with the purpose of turning grief and fear into rage and action. Over the next decade, rage…

“Medicine Man,” a mobile sculpture commissioned by MAKE ART/STOP AIDS

Practitioner:
Daniel Goldstein, John Kapellas, MAKE ART/STOP AIDS

Date:
Jan 15 1994

“Medicine Man,” a mobile sculpture that MAKE ART/STOP AIDS commissioned from San Francisco-based artists Daniel Goldstein and John Kapellas. The piece is constructed of pill bottles that Goldstein and Kapellas, and their partners, saved up from treatment regimens dating as…

Men’s Magazine Prints Editions Using HIV-Infected Blood To Tackle Stigma

Practitioner:
Saatchi & Saatchi, Vangardist

Date:
Jan 15 1994

Thanks to dramatic advances in drug therapy, infection with HIV has been transformed from a death sentence to a chronic, manageable disease. HIV-positive patients can even enjoy a normal life expectancy if treatment is successful. So we needn’t worry about…

Art AIDS America traveling exhibition

Practitioner:
Jonathan David Katz and Rock Hushka

Date:
Jan 15 1994

If you visit the Art AIDS America exhibition expecting to see activist slogans and memorial pieces along with some art-world superstars, you won’t be disappointed—Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe and the “Silence = Death” slogan are present and accounted for—but you…

AIDS Quilt Goes Digital

Practitioner:
Microsoft Research, NAMES Project Foundation, University of Southern California

Date:
Jan 15 1994

With more than 48,000 panels and 94,000 names, the AIDS quilt is a constantly growing testament to the deadly toll the disease has taken on the world. At roughly 1.3 million square feet, it is so large that it can’t…

Puppets Against AIDS

Practitioner:
Gary Friedman, Puppets Against AIDS

Date:
Jan 15 1994

“Puppets Against Aids was launched by Gary Friedman on 1st December 1988 in time for ‘World Aids Day’ in Johannesburg, South Africa. During 1987, Friedman had been studying with Muppet master, Jim Henson, in Charleville-Mézières, France. Henson provided the initial…

AIDS Memorial Quilt

Practitioner:
Cleve Jones

Date:
Jan 15 1994

In June of 1987, a small group of strangers gathered in a San Francisco storefront to document the lives they feared history would neglect. Their goal was to create a memorial for those who had died of AIDS, and to…

The Condom on Jesse Helms’ House

Practitioner:
ACT UP

Date:
Jan 15 1994

On September 5th, 1991, I put a giant condom over Jesse Helms’ house. Why? Because, as the condom said, “Helms is deadlier than a virus.” Senator Jesse Helms was one of the chief architects of AIDS-related stigma in the U.S.…