How Aids Was Branded: Gran Fury 25 Years Later

Sometime between January 31 and the Black Party, you must attend the NYU retrospective Gran Fury: Read My Lips. In anticipation, The Atlantic posts How AIDS Was Branded: Looking Back at ACT UP Design, a conversation between SVA's Steven Heller and Loring McAlpin speaking on behalf of Gran Fury. 

"So much of Gran Fury's work, which appeared radical then, has been co-opted or adopted by mainstream image-makers. Does this make you proud or not?

"At the very least, it suggests that our imagery became part of a vocabulary, so yes, that's nice to know.

"How would you describe Gran Fury's legacy?

"Perhaps we take our greatest satisfaction in the achievements of the broader movement - the ways in which the drug approval process was accelerated, the inclusion of patient groups in that process, the reduction of pricing for life saving drugs, the broader movement to make health care more affordable and increase access for all Americans. If we had a role in advancing the ways in which political and social dissent harnessed the power of media to communicate a more radical politics, then that also. But perhaps in that sense we were the product of many other broader forces that propelled these things. In many ways, we were just at the right place at the right time to have been allowed to operate as we did."

It's the second time in two months the magazine has covered Gran Fury and ACT UP. In December, the Atlantic posted Before Occupy: How AIDS Activists Seized Control of the FDA in 1988 by Douglas Crimp, excerpted from his book AIDS Demo Graphics.

Literary readers: This month the Atlantic also has a long essay by Caitlin Flanagan about her love of and disappointment in Joan Didion's work that's inciting strong feelings on both sides.

Comments

[Reylan]

Kissing with people who has AIDS do KILL.

[Mike]

Please, Reylan, arm yourself with the facts. HIV IS NOTTRASMITTED THROUGH KISSING. Herpies can be, as can syphilis and gonorrhea if your partner is infected. As I nurse, I say, know your partner, yourself and the relative risks. Get tested for all STDs and love each other. Kissing doesn't spead AIDS; ignorance will.