AIDS Graphics and Commodification

In New York during March of 1987, the ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was founded to bring awareness to the masses that there just wasn't enough being done about the AIDS epidemic in America and the world. The graphic logo SILENCE = DEATH had become an iconic logo for both the AIDS campaign as well as seen as a form of contemporary art. The graphic itself had comprised of a simply designed purple triangle with the propaganda style text below reading "SILENCE = DEATH." The triangle was chosen to commemorate the gay/lesbian groups who had suffered at the hands of the Nazis who forced them to wear the symbol of the purple triangle. This graphic campaign had set out with the intention of raising awareness through the public by means of creating t-shirts, posters, stickers, flags, and signs. Posters had been plastered to walls all over the city, shirts were worn, and bracelets were worn for the next following few years. 

The ACT UP campaign had used several tactics to engage the public sphere. The use of repetition of campaign posters and seeing the purple triangle on the walls, on TV, hearing it over the radio and marketing the campaign products to expand awareness and even making counterfeit money, had the public's attention but still people were unsure of what SILENCE = DEATH meant. It was powerful but ambiguous and the Museum of Modern Art had refused to display any of the AIDS graphics within their exhibits during an art exhibition called "Committed to Print: Social and Political Themes in Recent American Printed Art." Protests ensued. 

Douglas Crimp and Adam Rolston's article "AIDS Activist Graphics," had pointed out that even though the AIDS graphic campaign had significance and meaning in time, it does not reflect the values and ideologies of the majority culture of the time. "A current crisis is perhaps less easy to recognize, since they 'see' only what has become distant enough to take on the aura of universality." (Crimp, Rolston, 363) This suggestion as to why the Museum of Modern Art has failed to recognize SILENCE=DEATH as a movement towards the improvement of the human condition bases it's claims on the premise that it is not the issue or events that stand out but rather the artistic style of graphic imagery that has an effect on people, not the other way around. 

The over-use and exploitation of symbols and campaigns such as ACT UP and their graphics by talented and inspired graphic artist ultimately gather the attention they intended but had lost the traditional meaning of what it meant to stand up and do something about AIDS. Instead it had become an art show for who could come up with the better picture and what that picture was worth. The AIDS campaign had been successful in turning the heads of people who they came across but once their theme had become a mainstream topic of debate, the meaning is lost or becomes irrelevant. 

By way of example, the use of graphics to convey a meaning or tone is lost when it becomes convoluted within the media that is representing it. If you put on a shirt that says something meaningful, it's just a meaningful shirt, perhaps even a cool one. But the idea that you're shirt is cool is besides the fact that it means something significant; however, it is all the general public will see or think. It becomes a commodity in a consumer society in which it's popularity comes down to credibility and aesthetics instead of the campaign or product had been intended for. 

Campaign movements come and go, each with their own specific styles of media consumerism, propaganda art, street credibility, political involvement, and public opinion and awareness. Yet after decades of being old news, all that remains is the media that is left behind to be shared again in the future for future generations to evaluate and question for themselves. Ironically, these individuals will see the meaning behind the media far better than those who had exploited it in the past as being part of the mainstream culture and fitting in with the crowd. We have nothing but our sense of "cool" to thank for that.