Gran Fury: Art, Design, & Activism
The Gran Fury was an art collective conceived in 1988 and formed to work in junction with aids activist group ACT UP (AIDS coalition to unleash power). Gran Fury’s name comes from the car used by the New York City Police Department, and the group made a billboards, postcards, videos, posters and paintings calling attention to the issues associated with the AIDS crisis. These public projects, described as “exploiting the power of art to end the AIDS crisis”[1] , demanded reforms and change in public policy. While it’s hard to quantify the effectiveness of these projects, the imadry created for ACT UP and AIDS activism has lived on in modern day social justice practices, public health reform, and memory. Much of the work that was produced in the 80’s and 90’s has a timeless and lasting quality in both design and message, and has been noted as having “Renewed efforts to employ art as a mechanism for social change”[2].
The group started during an ACT UP meeting when Bill Olander, at the time a curator for the New Museum in New York City, proposed an idea to use windows in the Museum for visual demonstration. He suggested that all those interested meet in the back after the meeting that was held in a New York City gay and lesbian community center. This resulted in a project titled “Let The Record Show”, which was an instillation of the silence = death poster graphic as an LED lights display and pictures of political figures who were not talking about AIDS when they should have been [3]. In its official press release by the New York Museum it was described as providing current information on the aids epidemic as well as depicting it in a historical perspective[4]. The intent is to make viewers understand the depth of the AIDS crisis by relating this is to other historical disasters by showing how leaders responded.
Tom Kalin described the way in Gran Fury operated to be “bullet-style” in nature, compiling political points made by countless individuals and whatever stuck became the issue they focused on for that project. Donald Moffett noted the efficiency of the process, “The issues unfolded, and the form followed.” It was an additive process, much like ACT UP. Everyone put in the skills and assets that they could, and it ended up melding together coherently. There were a few important reasons why this process worked. Most of it came from the willingness of the participants, but there was always the looming goals of ACT UP motivating the creative process. It was the push and pull of activism and creativity that was a big part of the success of the Gran Fury. Unlike a lot of visual artists, designers love to create guidelines and rules for the act of creating, and in the frenzied environment of social justice, that process is really put to the test. In his book Creating the Perfect Design Brief, Peter Phillips defines art and design differently. He defines art as a form of self expression that is about the individual creating the work, and design as a problem solving discipline. “Though the designer may wish otherwise, the work does not revolve around him or her. Rather, the work is about finding a highly creative design solution that fits the stated problem.”[5]. This positions designers and activists in closer proximity than artists and activist. For the purpose of discussing the Gran Fury, it seems to make sense that this is a the pairing that worked. Using this definition of design, it would be correct to say that The Gran Fury’s work was merely a vessel through which the frustration and urgency of the aids epidemic was able to be visualized. There were full communities of people who say there friends and family members die practically every week, and these people as well as the ones affected by HIV and AIDS felt ignored by their government and healthcare system. The infamous bloodied hand poster that must have been hard to avoid around NYC in the 80’s showed the desperation of the public as well as the need for political action[6].
To a lot of people, art and design are the same thing, and although I could academically divulge into why that is entirely untrue, it’s not just artists and designers who are viewing the work made by Gran Fury, all that matters the functionality of the final solution. As much as I hate to admit it, this is also why one doesn’t have to be a designer to create good graphic design, (though it is usually the case that is it at least a little accidental).
Gran Fury had a component to it’s collective that ACT UP did not; exclusivity. Tom Kalin commented on the transition from open to closed as going from “wheat-pasting hooligans”, to “ Having real resources, opportunities, and a platform”. It was the only closed affinity group of ACT UP and ended up gaining institutional support from the art world. Gran Fury being separated from it’s activist origin group was problematic at it’s conception as well as currently. To look at the design they created in terms of art history as opposed to the activism it was part of would be disingenuous. Gran Fury wasn’t a group of artists who made work for AIDS activists, they were an AIDS activists group. Saying this, it’s also important to consider that the role of art throughout history because ACT UP and the Gran Fury are both reactionary groups and that isn’t a new concept, William Olander, the curator for the Let The Records Show, stated that “all periods of intense crisis have inspired works of art whose functions were often extra-artistic.” Like the eclectic Dada artists reacting to a catastrophic war, if the Gran Fury’s work is anything, it’s emotional.
In an interview for the magazine Artforum, Douglas Crimp made the observation, “I guess we probably have to admit that the resting place of Gran Fury is the museum.”[7], after he considered with former members of Gran Fury the extent to which queer communities have seemed to “forget” about the epidemic. Queer spaces are becoming less and less like communities, at least in comparison to the solidarity present during parts of the 1980’s. The Gran Fury set out to use their art making abilities to to publicize a crisis a get drugs into bodies, yet there will always be a source of frustration or injustice to react to, so while the Gran Fury is done, art activism is not.
Activism and Design in Gran Fury worked together to raise public awareness of AIDS as well as pressuring politicians and sparking debate. The mix of guerilla activist techniques and quality communication design influenced later movements particularly in New York City because it was so successful in bringing together many communities under one goal. Art tends towards exclusivity, making people believe they need to have some sort of academic prerequisites to understand or create it, but as mentioned before it’s the final product that matters. Diversity is what made ACT UP so powerful and it’s what will only help all of the communities involved, even now.
Figure 1. Let the Record Show . . ., an installation by members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in the windows of the New Museum of Contemporary Art on Broadway in New York City, 1987.
Figure 2. The Government Has Blood on Its Hands, 1988, Gran Fury. Poster, offset lithography, 31 x 49"
References:
Phillips, Peter L.. Creating the Perfect Design Brief: How to Manage Design for Strategic Advantage (Kindle Locations 401–403). Allworth Press. Kindle Edition.
Clements, Alexis. “We Were Not Making Art, We Were at War.” Hyperallergic. November 29, 2012. Accessed April 29, 2018. https://hyperallergic.com/60650/gran-fury-in-2012/.
“Gran Fury Talks to Douglas Crimp.” Center for Artistic Activism. November 11, 2010. Accessed April 29, 2018. https://artisticactivism.org/2008/06/gran-fury-talks-to-douglas-crimp/.
Sember, R., & Gere, D. “‘Let the Record Show . . .’: Art Activism and the AIDS Epidemic.”American Journal of Public Health 96.6 (2006): 967–969. PMC. Web. 29 Apr. 2018.
Meyer R, ed. Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in 20th-Century American Art. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2002:224–275.
