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Proposals are invited for the Visual AIDS Day With(out) Art 2025. Click here to learn more about this opportunity and apply for it.
Opportunity Details
Visual AIDS invites artists and filmmakers to submit proposals for new video works highlighting stories of harm reduction and drug use and their intersection with HIV. Videos will premiere on December 1, 2025 at over 150 venues worldwide as part of Day With(out) Art / World AIDS Day.
Visual AIDS has organized Day With(out) Art every year since 1989, coordinating art museums, galleries, and nonprofits across the world to present programs in response to the AIDS crisis.
Since 2014, Visual AIDS has commissioned short videos from artists and activists to be distributed and screened at venues worldwide on December 1, World AIDS Day.
2024 Theme: Drug Use & Harm Reduction
For Day With(out) Art 2025, Visual AIDS will commission five short videos that center the experiences of drug users and harm reduction practices as they intersect with the ongoing HIV crisis.
Harm reduction has long been at the heart of the AIDS movement through practices like needle exchange and safe injection sites, and people who use drugs have been impacted by AIDS from the earliest days of the epidemic. Historically, stories about drug use and HIV have positioned people who use drugs as statistics or precarious subjects, rather than narrators or leaders of harm reduction practices. We rarely hear the voices of drug users, even within AIDS culture, and recreational drug use continues to be criminalized and stigmatized across the world.
They understand harm reduction as a framework that encourages meeting and supporting people where they are rather than prescribing a specific model of health and wellbeing. They hope to emphasize the invaluable role that harm reduction has played in saving lives and providing pathways to autonomy and community support. The 2025 program will reflect a broad range of perspectives and stories around these themes, while prioritizing the first-person point of view of current and former drug users.
Commissioned videos may be in any language.
Visual AIDS will work with artists to produce
English subtitles. Applicants should be aware that communication with Visual AIDS during the commission process will require some use of English, though they are happy to utilize translation tools over email and Zoom.
Selection Criteria
Proposals will be reviewed by a jury of artists/community workers including Eva Dewa Masyitha, Heather Edney, charles ryan long, and Leo Herrera. Jurors will evaluate proposals based on the following criteria:
To apply, click on the link to the application website and submit a 250-word video proposal, a personal statement, and work sample.
Apply for Visual AIDS Day With(out) Art 2025