VisualAIDS

Get Your Game On!

Play Smart trading cards featured in A&U magazine.

Play Smart is an honest and straight-forward approach to promote harm reduction, HIV testing and post-exposure prophylaxis. Trading cards are packaged with a sticker, condoms and lube. The back of each trading card features information you need to know to Get Your Game On & Play Smart.

NY Gay Pool League to benefit Visual AIDS and local charities

Join the New York Gay Pool League on Sunday, October 17 at Boxers NYC between 4 – 7 PM. Performances by Miss Fire Island: Logan Hardcore and deluscious' Tony Guerrero.  Plus a chance to win great raffle prizes and hang out with sexy raffle boys and make some new pool friends.  NYGPL is also looking for new players to join the league. If you're interested in becoming a member, contact NYGPL at join@nygpl.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.

 

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.

The AIDS Ride on the Logo Network

The AIDS Ride airs follow the stories of a diverse group of cyclists taking part in the seven-day, 585-mile race AIDS/Lifecycle 4 annual race, as they struggle in the fight against HIV and AIDS. This reality/documentary series offers an in-depth look at some of this year's participants, the reasons they've chosen to undertake this challenge, and the important and inspirational people in their lives who serve as their inspiration. AIDS Rides airs on the Logo Network.

Click here for the AIDS Ride blog.