VisualAIDS

David Wojnarowicz artwork censored at Smithsonian

 

 
via People for the American Way

Smithsonian Gives in to the Far Right, Censors the Artist Who “Spoiled Christmas”

Incoming House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor called yesterday for the closing of an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery that features work with sexual themes and a video about the AIDS epidemic in Latin American culture that includes 11 seconds of ants crawling on a Christ figure. Museum director Martin Sullivan has announced that the video has been removed from the exhibit because “people were leaping to a conclusion that we were intentionally trying to provoke Christians or spoil the Christmas season.”  

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, who has a long history of far-right extremism, is the main force behind the move to censor the privately-funded exhibit.

Michael B. Keegan, President of People For the American Way, issued the following statement:  

“There is absolutely no reason for our government to be in the business of censoring art, or cave to pressure from extreme Religious Right organizations just because it’s Christmas. That Bill Donohue and the Catholic League are fighting for censorship is unsurprising. That the GOP leadership is echoing their call is shameful. That the Smithsonian has given into their transparent political bullying is deeply disturbing.  

“The United States, like other free nations, has a long history of supporting and embracing art by those of many different values and viewpoints. The Smithsonian museums host art that expresses strong religious devotion and art that expresses atheism and doubt. The museums house art from around the world, from every religion, and allow Americans to make their own decisions about what they like and what they don’t. These museums are an educational resource for the American people, not a political mouthpiece for the majority opinion.  

“The new GOP leadership wants a government that stays out of people’s lives when it comes to health care and unemployment benefits, but they show no scruples about using government power to censor the free expression of those they disagree with. The American people must stand up to this blatant attempt to force politics into art and religion into politics."

Play Smart in POZ Magazine

via POZ magazine October / November 2010

Get Your Game On

by Cristina Gonzalez

Safer-sex trading cards from Visual AIDS

A tattooed and muscled basketball player slips his hand down his short shorts, a sleek swimmer is awarded a condom medal, an oiled-down tennis player gets ready for a match—these aren’t your average sports trading cards.
 
These are just some of the images on the “Play Smart” trading cards released in June for LGBT Pride month by Visual AIDS and The Men’s Sexual Health Project. They tell you how to play it smart while getting some play.

Each card showcases commissioned artwork by photographers (two of whom are HIV positive), as well as information on safer sex, HIV testing and PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis). The names on the front of each card are those of the photographers—not the subjects. Each pack of trading cards comes packaged with a sticker, condoms and lube.

“Play Smart” trading cards are free for distribution and available in bulk for the cost of shipping and handling while supplies last. E-mail [email protected] for more information.

A&U Magazine: Collect Them All

via A&U Magazine
August 2010, Issue 190, NewsBreak – Headlines
 

Collect Them All

Trading cards have long been a staple of sports fans, so what better way to recruit fans of safer sex and AIDS awareness?  Featuring adrenaline-pumping photographic images of men in sports gear, Visual AIDS’ Play Safe Trading Cards were created in response to the absence of sexy and straight-to-the-point HIV prevention messages in New York City, where Visual AIDS is based, and across the nation.  Along with Cover the Stump tote bags by Steve DeFrank, the trading cards are part of the Visual AIDS’ annual Artist Edition Broadside project.  The mission of Visual AIDS is “to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV-positive artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over.”
 
Four artists – Aaron Cobbett, inkedKenny, Greg Mitchell and Slava Mogutin – were each commissioned to produce new works for two trading cards and one sticker, which are bundled with condoms and lube.  Emblazoned with “Get Your Game On” and “Play Smart”, the back of each card features need-to-know information about harm reduction, HIV testing, and port-exposure prophylaxis.  Each card pays tribute to a different sport.  The set of eight trading cards and four stickers was designed by past A&U contributor John Chaich.

In collaboration with The Men’s Sexual Health Project (M*SHP), which promotes sexual health among en who have sex with men in NYC and provides free on-site testing for HIV and STDs at sex clubs and parties, Visual AIDS freely distributes the Play Smart trading cars around New York City this past June during Pride Month. Distribution will continue throughout the summer and fall at various sites throughout the city, including bars, sports clubs, and LGBT organizations, while supplies last. A list of locations (including those outside on New York City) is available here.

 

Media: Revisiting the Foul! Visual AIDS broadside

via The New Gay by TNG contributor, Ted Kerr

A few months ago I wrote a lengthy piece about Visual AIDS’s latest broadside PLAY SMART. After some feedback  from a friend  I edited it down to be a more suitable, shorter, blog length. What was published was a focused critique regarding issues of representation within PLAY SMART. What I edited out was nuances, and questions about context, the complexity of creating a campaign for unknown audiences and praise for  past Visual AIDS broadsides which I compared to PLAY SMART.

I made a mistake in editing the piece. Too much was lost, the piece came across as confrontational rather than promoting conversation, gone was the opportunity to discuss the difficulty in making and disseminating  gay men’s health promotion to an interested and under-served global audience and missing was a chance to consider the need for context when judging a campaign.

Upon reading the first draft I realize I edited out an important section where Amy Sadao, Executive Director of Visual AIDS speaks at greater length about the impetus of the PLAY SAFE campaign beyond what I included in the shorter piece. She mentions the impact of eight years of Bush and states that PLAY SAFE was one of Visual AIDS’ first explicitly sexy campaigns – a point I failed to fully grasp. What does it mean to be able to do a sexy campaign after years of feeling  oppressed?

Related, Nelson Santos in a conversation I had with him regarding PLAY SAFE, felt as though it was also the first campaign in a long time to target gay men that may have been left out in the past decade due to the need to focus on specific under-served communities. For me I take this now to mean – what about the Chelsea boys? The gym bunnies and middle class gay men well served by the market place and culture in general but perhaps because of their privilege are forgotten by health and real wellness providers.  What about the gay men who are now entering a new stage of life and maybe need to be reminded of safer sex messages and learn about new developments? What about the gay men who have left the AIDS community because a place they once felt so at home at – now seems to have no room for them? PLAY SMART falls in the tradition of Visual AIDS reaching out, commissioning and creating work to speak to a specific community. It just so happens that the community is one that is very dominate, often at the cost of other communities. One of the obstacles in all community work is to remember the diversity within diversity.

By not fully including Sadao and Santos’ points I replicated the problem of the Internet – removing context. It is impossible to think that Visual AIDS should be able to create a broadside that responds to all the diverse and possibly conflicting needs of gay men everywhere. Nor were they trying to.  The Internet , and maybe even Visual AIDS’s warranted excitement, made what I can now see as a community specific broadside into a campaign with international reach, stretched beyond the broadside’s capabilities. I did the campaign no favours by failing to see the scope while focusing on only one important- yet ultimately singular-  aspect of the campaign.

Issues of representation are important. The tyranny of the white fit body in gay male culture is a real factor in gay men’s health and undermines a lot of the good we may be trying to do. It is something that should be discussed and considered in our work. I did not fail by bringing up the subject. I failed when I did not include as much context to the PLAY SMART broadside as I could have. Visual AIDS is a small, hard working arts organization that is committed to using art to create awareness and opportunities around HIV and AIDS. While we should hold people and organizations within our communities responsible for their actions – and I say this to myself – it is also wise to view their choices within larger contexts and provide those bigger pictures to each other so that we can grow and evaluate and grow some more together.

What do you think of the PLAY SMART campaign?

Does it work for you?

Where do you think I missed the point? Or have I still?

To read the original unedited draft on The New Gay blog, please click here.

Positive Markings

24-year-old Brad Crelia from Seattle shares the story behind the new tattoo on his right wrist.

via BUTT Magazine

The Tattoo

Sitting in the doctor’s office after class a few weeks ago, I had a sense of what was coming. I had blood drawn a week prior and got the call that my doctor needed to talk to me about the results of my blood work. A thousand cups of coffee couldn’t have gotten my blood going any more than it was that day. When I got into the room and had my doctor sitting in front of me, I thought the veins around my temples would explode. He ran down a list of other sexual transmitted diseases, and at the end of the list he looked me in the eyes. I was told that I’m HIV positive. My body shook, uncontrollably. I imagined all the blood running out of my face. He offered me time to get my thoughts together. I turned him down and asked for a smoke instead. He obliged but only if I promised to come right back. That’s what hit me the hardest: his concern. I thought about his worry that I might not come back or that I could possibly hurt myself, that the severity of this diagnosis worries someone so much that they can hardly let you leave their sight for a smoke.

I walked outside, a friend was with me and before I could say a word, I looked into his eyes and broke down. A ton of bricks came crashing down square on my shoulders and I wanted to disappear – and to think this was only five minutes into the disease. I had a rather normal gay boy’s life growing up; there was my time with drugs and depression, I was beaten up a few times, and safe sex practices were preached to me like the Bible. But at this moment I couldn’t help thinking about how even in the queer community we sometimes make it pretty rough for each other. Gay guys don’t always get along with lesbians and we sometimes laugh at the transgender community. The men and women affected by HIV/AIDS are outcasts to us. I know because I’ve treated them that way myself. I used to think that these people had dug their own graves and played a losing game with the devil; that their problems were their own doing.

Suddenly, standing outside the doctor’s office, I realized my world had changed. The reality of living with HIV might be very different from what I had in my head that moment. I know there have been medical advances. I know that compared to only ten or fifteen years ago, the disease has become somewhat manageable. And I know people can live full lives being HIV positive. But all that doesn’t change my fears. It’s hard for me to separate the reality from what my mind has turned into reality.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of emotion and I’ve started to learn that I need to throw out all the prejudices I’ve harbored. What makes me any better than anyone else? I’m just a twenty-four year old college student living in Seattle. But more importantly, who knows what tomorrow brings, good or bad. The only thing I can concentrate on now is my health and my friends and family. 
The weight of those crashing bricks from just a few weeks ago has eased away a little. I’ve come to terms with many of my misconceptions. A calmness has set in. When my mother died in 2003 I got a tattoo of her initials on my left wrist to remember the love I have for her and the pain of losing her. A few days after my diagnosis I decided to get another tattoo: the outline of a plus sign on my right wrist. My tattoo of my mom’s initials is a constant reminder of love and pain, and to take advantage of the time we have and the people we love. I feel the same way about the new tattoo. I guess you could say I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve. 

Play Smart - Home Run or Strike Out?

Play Smart Trading Cards is Visual AIDS newest set of Artist Edition Broadsides, promoting harm reduction, HIV prevention and AIDS awareness.  Play Smart is packaged with a set of trading cards, sticker, condoms and lube.  They are distributed for free. 

While Play Smart has hit a home run with some viewers and blogs Bilerico, After Elton, Open Ceremony, Chelsea Now, we also wanted to share this critical review. 

via The New Gay

July 16 2010.  By Ted Kerr.

FOUL! Visual AIDS strikes out in new broadside

Every year New York based Visual AIDS, VA, “the only contemporary arts organization fully committed to HIV prevention and AIDS awareness through producing and presenting visual art projects,” unveils two new broadside projects created with different visual artists to promote  “harm reduction, HIV prevention and AIDS awareness” to diverse audiences.  According to visualaids.org, “Broadsides are a creative response to the lack of provocative and frank HIV-prevention messages in our city and nationally.”

Of the broadsides being released this year is a trading card project called PLAY SMART with photographers Aaron Cobbett, inkedKenny, Greg Mitchell, and Slava Mogutin in consultation with Dr. Demetre Daskalakis at the NYC based The Men’s Sexual Health Project, M*SHP.

Each photographer created a set of trading cards, one side featuring a photo of a man in sports drag and the other communicating ‘stats’. Rather than ‘player’ information, the PLAY SMART trading cards feature the ‘new rules’ of what Daskalakis calls “Smart Sex.” The rules include using a condom, getting tested, talking about HIV / sex with friends, partners and doctors, and getting information on post-exposure prophylaxis.

Visual AIDS supporters like myself and other community members are calling time out on PLAY SMART for its language and imagery.

According to Amy Sadao, Executive Director of Visual AIDS, some early push back on the broadsides came from a NYC POZ activist who asked after reading the name of the trading cards, “What? Am I having dumb sex? Are you calling me dumb?”

As Sadao and Santos explain the PLAY SMART theme and name emerged after the trading card size and sports motif were decided upon. Designed specifically to be given out at clinics Daskalakis runs within NYC sex clubs, it was thought that the trading card size, and sex-positive sport motif would ensure people picked up and retained the cards as well as absorbed the information provided.

As Santos recalls, “Using the word “smart” instead of “safe” was a way of refreshing the concept. People seem to tune out the words “safer sex”… but “smart” was a different way of thinking how to play, like using the proper equipment or talking to your teammate so you know what’s going on ‘on the field’.” Sadao says she hears the critique and, as with everything pertaining to the campaign, it is under consideration as VA thinks of how to roll out of the second phase of the trading cards.

For me the issue with the PLAY SMART trading cards is around how the narrow focus of whom is being ‘traded’ in the cards. All feature fit, able-bodied, predominantly white, men.

As those involved in gay men’s health know being able to navigate condom use, talk about HIV / AIDS with friends, family, doctors, and accessing Post-exposure prophylaxis is often a point of privilege based on race, class, ‘attractiveness / desirability’ and other factors.

Diversity is not represented in the cards. If anything PLAY SMART works against social factors we know to be true;

• HIV rates among visual minority men who have sex with men is disproportionately higher than their white counterparts.
• Racism, class-ism, size-ism, able-ism all factor into sexual negotiation dynamics.

So while the information PLAY SMART wants to get out is very helpful, the images of the card may prevent someone from thinking that the cards are for them, or worse may work to reinforce poor self esteem, heighten senses of not belonging and ensure that the information is never obtained or retained by the intended audience.

PLAY SMART, aside from being culturally and otherwise insensitive also plays into the tyranny of fit white males as the dominate ideal of who is gay, who gets to have gay sex and who can / should be desired and protected.

The supremacy of white fit bodies is such that it rules out other conversations that could come from PLAY SMART.  We can’t talk about condom use if we don’t talk about social isolation. We can’t discuss the need for frank discussion of sexuality unless the cultural differences around sexuality are on the table.

Of course PLAY SMART is not all bad. One could argue that in a way PLAY SMART is advocating for a holistic approach to HIV / STI prevention. By using a sports theme the broadsides can be understood as suggesting ’smart sex’ is a lifestyle choice- taking care of your body is not just about getting fit but also condom use, getting tested etc.

In the end PLAY SMART falls short. It is just sexy. It is just eye catching. Celebrating the male form and being sex positive is much need in gay men’s health work but what is not needed are messages – intended or not – that silence, disappear and under mind bodies already repressed and undervalued in society (often further within gay communities).

Visual AIDS is an amazing, thoughtful, proactive organization that has lead the way in how art can galvanize energy and ideas around HIV / AIDS. PLAY SMART, in my mind does not represent the best of what VA can do – but along the way does raise valuable questions about limits and expectations of campaigns.  If I can venture a guess I would say that Visual AIDS has taken a hit on this one, will go back to the locker room to regroup and will come out swinging better than ever next time.

Ted Kerr is a writer, artist and activist with a focus on HIV / AIDS, queerness and expression. He was HIV Edmonton’s first Artist in Residence and currently contributes to Queermonton – a column about queer life in Edmonton for VUE Weekly. He was a founding member of Exposure: Edmonton’s Queer Arts and Culture Festival.

***

Part of Visual AIDS mission is to "provoke dialogue," so please feel free to share, comment or contact us with your thoughts and suggestions at [email protected]

Chelsea Now: Trading Cards Help Make Hookups Safe

Robert Blanchon - The New York Times review

via The New York Times

ROBERT BLANCHON

The conceptual artist Robert Blanchon, who died of AIDS in 1999 at 34, was fortunate in his friends. One of them, the fellow artist Mary Ellen Carroll, worked assiduously to preserve his work after his death, placing it in the care of Visual AIDS, which published a fine catalog. The material was then transferred to the archives of the Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University, the organizer of this small but exemplary survey.

Blanchon’s art is materially spare, mostly texts and photographs, often combined. An early and recurring subject was art itself. He created his own versions, which fall somewhere between send-up and homage, of signature pieces by successful older contemporaries like Robert Mapplethorpe, Robert Gober and Félix González-Torres.

The elaborate syllabus Blanchon prepared for a class he taught at the University of California, Irvine, remains an astute distillation of the themes and issues that shaped American art in the mid-to-late 1990s. (His annotated copy of the syllabus is in the show; its contents are in the Visual AIDS catalog, which was edited by Tania Duvergne and Amy Sadao.)

The issues Blanchon addressed in his teaching frequently centered on sexual differences, and so did his art. He approached the rituals and clichés of gay culture with wicked humor in the 1995 video montage of nonsexual scenes from vintage porn films. He made prints based on the colored handkerchiefs worn by gay men in the 1970s to signal preferred sexual practices. He posed for the soft-core magazine Honcho, and when his picture didn’t make the cover, he designed a cover of his own.

Much of the strongest work was autobiographical, and it feels even sharper now than when it was new. For one piece, he exhibited painfully uncomprehending letters he and his mother exchanged on the subject of his homosexuality. For another, he printed business cards with firsthand accounts of growing up effeminate and bullied. As his illness progressed, he photographed his underwear stained from incontinence; he designed an absurdly impractical set of eyeglasses as he lost his sight.

What’s most remarkable is his ability to infuse politics and mortality with a mordant, gallant wit. This quality is lovingly reanimated in this show, installed and documented by two New York University graduate students, Sasha Archibald (sic) and Bethany Martin-Breen, working with Ms. Duvergne.

It puts the work created two decades ago by a very young artist in its best light. And a sense of the terrible loss he was part of is brought home yet again. HOLLAND COTTER

Tracey/Barry Gallery,
Bobst Library
New York University
70 Washington Square South
Greenwich Village

EXTENDED through March 25, 2010

---

*Correction: Sasha Archibald has an interdisciplinary humanities MA degree from NYU, as well as a degree in Museum Studies, and was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2005. 

In Memory of Fritz Lohman

Leslie Lohman and life partner Charles Leslie  (Source:Charlie T. Photography / Image posted at nypost.com)

NYC gay art gallery owner dies

By ULA ILNYTZKY, Associated Press

via the Washington Examiner

NEW YORK — Fritz Lohman, who championed gay and lesbian artists and waged a battle to rezone what today is the city's artsy SoHo district, has died.

Lohman died Dec. 31, said Charles Leslie, his partner of 48 years. The cause of death was cardiac arrest.

In 1990, the two men established the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, a nonprofit art gallery on Wooster Street "to provide an outlet for art work that is unambiguously gay," according to its Web site.

The gallery mounts five or six major exhibits a year of works in all media, and houses a sizable permanent collection.

"When we first set up house, we became aware that many great artists were gay," said Leslie in a telephone intereview on Monday. "We noticed that a lot of them had amazing works of erotica and political and social imagery that resonated with the gay community."

They decided to exhibit some of those works in their SoHo loft in 1969-1970. Invitations were sent and phone calls were. They expected about 80 people, but "hundreds of people came," he said.

"Why should this art be hidden all the time," he said they asked themselves of the works that most art galleries deemed too controversial at the time. That question morphed into a "struggling" gallery on Broome Street, but it shut down in 1981 amid the turmoil of the AIDS crisis that resulted in fewer visitors to the gallery. In 1990, it reopened as the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation in the basement of a building the two men owned and two years ago it moved into the 3,600-square-foot Wooster Street space.

Leslie said he will continue to run the gallery.

"That's what Fritz would want. He was a continuer. He never stopped at anything," he said.

Lohman, avuncular, balding with soft, kind eyes, also ran a successful interior design business for 40 years, until 1987, that catered to a wealthy clientele that included Barbara Walters and the late French fashion designer Jacques Fath, Leslie said.

Four decades ago, the two men waged a legal battle with the city to rezone 12 SoHo square blocks from commercial to residential, Leslie said. In the end, he said their efforts resulted in 48 square blocks being rezoned into what is known today as SoHo.

At the same time, they joined the efforts to save the district's historic cast iron buildings.

"We fought an aggressive battle with the Landmarks Preservation Commission to declare SoHo a landmark because of its amazing assemblage of cast iron buildings," Leslie said. A section spanning from Crosby Street to West Broadway and Houston to Canal — where the cast iron buildings are concentrated — was eventually declared a landmark in 1973.

A small real estate company that the two men launched in 1969, buying up and selling nine buildings in which they retained commercial space, allowed them to invest in their other ventures.

Leslie said the art gallery "comes into the category of 'what we do for love.'"

He said Lohman will be remembered for his dry wit and "brilliant taste."

In addition to their SoHo apartment, they owned a 40-acre country home in Preston, Md., called Todds Wharf, and a place in Marrakesh, Morrocco.

"A big party" to celebrate Lohman's life will be held sometime in the spring at all three locations, Leslie said.

Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation: http://www.leslielohman.org

A World First: Vaccine Helps Prevent HIV Infection

From the New York Times

BANGKOK (AP) -- For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.

The World Health Organization and the U.N. agency UNAIDS said the results ''instilled new hope'' in the field of HIV vaccine research.

The vaccine -- a combination of two previously unsuccessful vaccines -- cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 percent in the world's largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok.

Even though the benefit is modest, ''it's the first evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive vaccine,'' Col. Jerome Kim told The Associated Press. He helped lead the study for the U.S. Army, which sponsored it with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The institute's director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned that this is ''not the end of the road,'' but said he was surprised and very pleased by the outcome.

''It gives me cautious optimism about the possibility of improving this result'' and developing a more effective AIDS vaccine, Fauci said. ''This is something that we can do.'' (read more here)