UNITED IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP STUDY GUIDE

UNIT 5: ACTIVIST ART

Unit Summary
Unit 5 examines the activist art practices and modes of cultural production that helped in large part to define ACT UP to the world.  ACT UP adapted the burgeoning visual literacies associated with the mass media, most notably advertising and television, to respond to the AIDS crisis in culturally relevant, politically edgy ways.  Further, drawing on the vibrant queer art culture associated with New York’s East Village and Lower East Side, of which many ACT UP members were a part, ACT UP infused AIDS protest with both mainstream and avant-garde influences.  These ranged from innovations in graphic design inspired equally by contemporary advertising, as well as artists like Barbara Kruger whose work commented on advertising, to strategies of performance art, thereby reclaiming public space as a site for dialogue on subcultural aesthetic and political values.

The objectives of Unit 5 are:

  • To become familiar with ACT UP’s aesthetic practices and cultural production

  • To analyze examples of art and mass media created by ACT UP

  • To examine ACT UP sex education messages around HIV/AIDS

  • To reflect on the intersection of visual culture and politics

Making Connections: Sexual Mis/Representation
Though this unit focuses on activist art practices, the social context of those aesthetic interventions was one of misinformation, silence, and censorship about HIV/AIDS and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people.  When the AIDS crisis began in 1981 gay sex was illegal in the United States and remained that way until the Supreme Court struck down “sodomy laws” in 2003.  A key goal of much of ACT UP’s cultural production was, therefore, to promote life-saving sexual education and self determination through innovative representation that transcended censorship, stigma, and exclusion.

To prepare for this unit, think about the link between the cultural conditions of homophobia and heterosexism and the general lack of authentic representations (pictures, movies, plays, TV shows) of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer life in mainstream education, arts and entertainment.  Have you seen a commercial film or television show that had authentic and realistic representations of LGBT people?  What truths about their lived experience in the real world were clearly expressed there?  Have you ever been introduced to a complex representation of a queer person as part of your formal education/schooling?  Are most representations of LGBT people in mainstream media designed to be acceptable to straight people, or are they accurately representing how LGBT people experience the world?

Key Terms
agit-prop
political funeral
Gran Fury
DIVA-TV: Damned Interfering Video Activist TV
performance art
visual argument