Call for Video Proposals: Visual AIDS Day With(out) Art 2025

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.

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. We 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.

Benefits

• Up to five selected artists will receive a $3,000 honorarium to produce a short video work (6–8 minutes).

Check: NAAEE Global E-STEM Award Program 2024

Eligibility

• They welcome proposals from both emerging and established artists in a range of forms, including documentary, narrative, and experimental. Collaborative proposals are also welcome.
• Anyone may submit a proposal, regardless of geographic location or HIV status. Artists and filmmakers who are living with HIV are encouraged to apply.
• Proposals should be submitted in English but may be translated with Google Translate or ChatGPT prior to submission. For the second year we are offering a Spanish language application page, but request that all materials be provided in both Spanish and English.
• 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 we are happy to utilize translation tools over email and Zoom.

Also Check: Call For Proposals: The Research, Documentation, and Policy Engagement (RDPE) Programme 2024

Selection Criteria of Visual AIDS Day

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:

• Thematic relevance: Does this encourage reflection or provoke conversation around the themes outlined above?

• Strength as artwork: Can you visualize the video as proposed? Does it seem like a compelling artwork?

• Past work: Does the work sample and proposal suggest that the artist will be able to execute their proposed project as described and on schedule?

Application for Visual AIDS Day

To apply,  submit a 250 word video proposal, a personal statement, and work sample

Join us on Telegram for more opportunities!