note 165

In the same interview with Geert Lovink and Andreas Broeckmann for the Transmediale in Berlin in 2001, David Garcia states the following: "This was ACT UP, a mobilisation against the AIDS policy of the Reagan administration of the time, which in choosing to ignore AIDS was a policy of silence. Artists played a critical role in both organising and giving shape and a kind of charismatic momentum to ACT UP. I believe it was the artist collective Gran Fury in their exhibition "Let the Record Show" who created the slogan (or equation) that became the symbol of the AIDS activist movement worldwide: SILENCE = DEATH. Activists carrying this statement on banners or wearing it on badges or sweatshirts were not delivering a simple polemical message from an earlier era of politics with its rigid command structures. They were developing a new language for the era of communicative networks. The activists were "wearing" a statement which required completion by others; to wear this logo was to draw people into conversation. Not a command but an invitation to discourse. Intimate media, a "user language" for both activism and the visual arts. This took the rhetorical tropes of the likes of Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger into a new and tactical dimension." (Broeckmann Garcia & Lovink, 2001).