VisualAIDS

Mark Morrisroe monograph

New Mark Morrisroe monograph published by jrp ringier.

from jrp ringier website:

The extraordinarily diverse work of the American photographer Mark Morrisroe has until now mostly been exhibited and discussed in connection with his famous Boston colleagues Nan Goldin and David Armstrong. Like them, Morrisroe documented his circle of friends, whose lifestyles were inspired by punk and bohemia. He finished his studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1982, a few years later than Goldin and Armstrong. He moved to New York in the middle of the 1980s, and died of AIDS-related illnesses in 1989 when he was only 30. Mark Morrisroe's short period of creativity in the 1980s was astonishingly productive and stands out because of its individual aesthetic. He captured his friends in painterly portraits and nude photographs; the Polaroid camera became a mirror of his own body, reflecting its illness and decay. During the three years leading up to his death he transferred his photographic experiments more and more to the darkroom, where he used pages from porn magazines and X-ray images of himself as negatives.

This first comprehensive monograph, realized on occasion of an exhibition at the Fotomuseum Winterthur and in collaboration with The Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection), shows many unknown works: from the tumultuous punk beginnings to the sandwich prints produced through extensive laboratory work, the graininess and muted colors of which are reminiscent of Pictorialism. The book is illustrated with more than 500 images, and accompanied by newly commissioned essays and a complete biography.

For details visit www.jrpringier.com

General Idea: Imagevirus by Gregg Bordowitz

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Book Launch with a conversation between AA Bronson and Gregg Bordowitz

Friday, December 10, 7pm

Artists Space 38 Green Street, 3rd floor, NYC

Published by Afterall Books, 2010
112p. ISBN: 978-1-8463806-5-5
$16 / $12 for members of Artists Space

To celebrate the launch of General Idea: Imagevirus, a new book by Gregg Bordowitz for Afterall Books' One Work series, Artists Space is hosting a discussion between Bordowitz and General Idea member AA Bronson.

Imagevirus started in the mid-1980s, when AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal, working together as General Idea, created a symbol using the acronym AIDS, boldly arranging the letters in a manner that resembled Robert Indiana’s LOVE logo. This launched a series of paintings, sculptures, videos, posters, exhibitions and ephemera that from 1987 to 1994 used the mechanism of viral transmission to investigate the term AIDS as both word and image.

Emerging out of the 1960s Canadian communal counterculture, an environment populated by experimentations with gender, media and polymorphous perversity, General Idea came together as a three-man outfit of anti-art art-pranksters who worked prolifically and exploited almost every medium, from print and exhibition to broadcast. The group thrilled and confounded, but always delivered an extraordinary display of control over both format and dissemination. Imagevirus is one of their most important works, and the perfect illustration of their way of working.

In the book, Gregg Bordowitz, an artist and a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, analyzes Imagevirus from the perspective of his own involvement with activist art initiatives in New York during the 1980s and 90s. Reconsidering the battles fought over sexuality and representation in those years, he explores how Imagevirus infected urban spaces across the world, offering a new model for artistic production, one strongly suited to ideological struggle.

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.

Writers with AIDS reading series at White Columns

Writers with HIV/AIDS Reading Series
Curated by Sarah Schulman of the ACT UP Oral History Project - the readings will take place at White Columns. Admission is free and on a strictly first-come basis - we suggest early arrival to guarantee seats.

Monday October 4 at 7pm:
David Halperin reads Michel Foucault
Jaime Manrique reads Reinaldo Arenas
Jim Eigo reads John Preston
John Weir reads David Feinberg
Marie Howe reads Tory Dent
Terry Rowden reads Steven Corbin
Penny Arcade reads Jack Smith

Part of: ACT UP New York: Activism, Art and the AIDS Crisis

White Columns
320 West 13th Street, NYC

Exhibition runs until October 23, 2010.

 

Bil Donovan: Book Launch

Bil Donovan book launch:
Advanced Fashion Drawing: Lifestyle Illustration
October 1 from  6:30 p.m. - 9:00 PM

In this book, designed specifically for those interested in illustrating fashion and lifestyle commercially, Bil Donovan shows how to create an illustration with a sense of fashion, rather than one that concentrates solely on the fashion figure.

Bil Donovan is a fashion illustrator who has worked and lived in New York, Paris, and Milan. He has recently been appointed Dior Beauty’s first artist-in-residence, and his work has appeared editorially in various publications and promotional advertorial campaigns throughout the world.

For details visit www.societyillustrators.org

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.

 

Call for Artists: Positive Inspirations

The Friends of AIDS Foundation is currently seeking artistic submissions from individuals interested in donating their talent to the POSITIVE INSPIRATIONS project.

POSITIVE INSPIRATIONS is the exciting and upcoming publication designed to raise the level of global HIV awareness through artistic expression. The publication will showcase the talent from individuals around the world who are committed to our fight against the HIV pandemic and the HIV-related stigma.

Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned professional, you do not want to miss this opportunity to gain worldwide recognition and enhance your portfolio by joining in our fight against HIV.

Art is the universal language that has the power to bring together many diverse people to hear an important message. Artistic expression has the ability to educate, motivate, and empower people to affect meaningful change. This project is about inspiring others through your creativity to make a positive change. YOUR ART CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

For more information, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org/PositiveInspirations or contact Steven Smith at: [email protected].

Please help us to spread the word about this important project. Pass this information along to anyone whom you think would be interested in participating in POSITIVE INSPIRATIONS.

We look forward to your participation!

Together We Can Make A Difference!
Together We Remain Strong!

Citywalker by Orlando Ferrand

Citywalker tells the story of a man's journey rediscovering his identity, his sexuality and ethnicity. The quest for love and acceptance is multilayered in New York where everything is possible. Touched by the encounter with others, surrounded by high rises, bridges, intertwined highways, subway trains, the sound of sirens, club music, and the waves of the Hudson River…from the East to the West Village, gaining momentum as in a circuit party, he revisits universal archetypes in the bohemian lifestyle of a myriad of characters and dramatic situations, coexisting with flashbacks to his family's “island” and the nostalgia for the unconditional love he tries to find in New York at the expense of his own sanity. When existence in the fast lane is poisoned by deception and overwhelming feelings of abandonment, Citywalker realizes his journey towards identity has become a mantra revealing his wisdom through the mundane.

Stage Reading: The Most Famous Woman in the World

The Most Famous Woman in the World

by Kerthy Fix and  Craig Harwood

In 1953, Christine Jorgensen stepped off a plane in New York City and kick-started the sexual revolution.  Based on a true story, this film recounts how a shy insecure boy from the Bronx became "The Most Famous Woman in the World. Tickets are still available for the staged reading of this screenplay, sponsored by NewFest, the New York LGBT Film Festival.

Wednesday, April 14th, 7pm – 9pm
92nd Street Y TRIBECA

For Ticket info, click HERE

Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image

Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image

In Reframing Bodies, Roger Hallas illuminates the capacities of film and video to bear witness to the cultural, political, and psychological imperatives of the AIDS crisis. He explains how queer films and videos made in response to the AIDS epidemics in North America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa challenge longstanding assumptions about both historical trauma and the politics of gay visibility. Drawing on a wide range of works, including activist tapes, found footage films, autobiographical videos, documentary portraits, museum installations, and even film musicals, Hallas reveals how such “queer AIDS media” simultaneously express both immediacy and historical consciousness. Queer AIDS media are neither mere ideological critiques of the dominant media representation of homosexuality and AIDS nor corrective attempts to produce “positive images” of people living with HIV/AIDS. Rather, they perform complex, mediated acts of bearing witness to the individual and collective trauma of AIDS.

Challenging the entrenched media politics of who gets to speak, how, and to whom, Hallas offers a bold reconsideration of the intersubjective relations that connect filmmakers, subjects, and viewers. He explains how queer testimony reframes AIDS witnesses and their speech through its striking combination of direct address and aesthetic experimentation. In addition, Hallas engages recent historical changes and media transformations that have not only displaced queer AIDS media from activism to the archive, but also created new witnessing dynamics through the logics of the database and the remix. Reframing Bodies provides new insight into the work of Gregg Bordowitz, John Greyson, Derek Jarman, Matthias Müller, and Marlon Riggs, and offers critical consideration of important but often overlooked filmmakers, including Jim Hubbard, Jack Lewis, and Stuart Marshall.

Roger Hallas is an assistant professor of English at Syracuse University. He is a co-editor of The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory, and Visual Culture.