The Manual on Viruses

One of the most prominent HIV/AIDS
activist groups, ACT UP (AIDS Coalition
to Unleash Power), got its
start in 1987 at the Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual & Transgender Community
Center in New York State. It was
an international, grassroots political
group working to end the AIDS pandemic.
The group worked to improve
the lives of people with AIDS through
direct action, medical research, treatment
and advocacy, and working to
change legislation and public policies.
Larry Kramer talked as part of
a rotating series of speakers, and
his well-attended speech focused
on action to fight AIDS while condemning
the Gay Men's Health Crisis
(GMHC) group. Though a founder
of GMHC, Kramer resigned due to
his perceiving of the organization
as politically impotent. During the
1980s and 1990s as well as onward,
ACT UP focused on strident public
demonstration aimed at shocking
mainstream public opinion.
Inspired by posters made by the Art Workers Coalition and the Guerrilla Girls, the group (ACT
UP) decided to create their own poster to be wheatpasted around New York City. Rejecting
any photographic image as necessarily exclusionary, the group decided to use more abstract
language in an attempt to reach multiple audiences. They created the Silence=Death poster
using the title phrase and a pink triangle, known from its association with the persecution of
homosexuals in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.
54 // GLOBAL EPIDEMIE / HIV: A SLOW DEATH