Gran Fury

Spawning from ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in 1988 Gran Fury was an AIDS activist artist collective from New York City consisting of 11 members including: Richard Elovich, Avram Finkelstein, Amy Heard, Tom Kalin, John Lindell, Loring McAlpin, Marlene McCarty, Donald Moffett, Michael Nesline, Mark Simpson and Robert Vazquez. The collective mutually disbanded in 1995, a year prior to Mark Simpson’s death on November 10, 1996 from AIDS. Gran Fury organized as an autonomous collective, describing themselves as a “...band of individuals united in anger and dedicated to exploiting the power of art to end the AIDS crisis.” The contribution of recycling historical images of homoerotic pleasure contributed to the pictorial landscape of the AIDS activist movement. By recycling the title of the Plymouth sedan used by New York Police Department, Richard Meyer writes “[i]nscribed within the group’s name...” references “...both a subjective experience (rage) and a tool of State power (police squad cars), to both an internal sensation and an external force.” Action, not art, was the aim of the collective. Producing posters and agitprop in alliance with ACT UP to accompany the larger group’s demonstration, Adam Rolston and Douglas Crimp articulate how Gran Fury served as ACT UP’s “unofficial propaganda ministry and guerrilla graphic designers.”