AIDS Activism: Tom Kalin and Gran Fury

Gran Fury was was an artists’ collective that emerged from ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in 1988 and was devoted to AIDS activism through agitprop art. Gran Fury used public space and and advertising space to bring attention to the AIDS crisis and the lack of government support for people suffering from the disease. Most of their work borrowed the language and rhetoric of advertising as well as radical feminist artists. Tom Kalin was one of the 11 members of the collective. In this oral history, he discusses the origins of Gran Fury, their aesthetics, the collective's artistic process, the representation of people with AIDS, and his own feelings of urgency and fear.