‘status: UNKNOWN’ started as a simple idea: “More and more young people know less and less about HIV/AIDS, how can we change that?” While brainstorming and looking into art that was born out of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 90s, I came across a very touching book ‘Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image’ by Roger Hallas. Hallas argues how moving image as a medium is the closest we’ve been able to get as people to communicating experiences through an artistic medium, being able to imitate the feeling of bearing witness to tragedies such as the AIDS crisis. From then on I saw my role as a visual communicator to connect my target audience (teens and young adults with low knowledge of HIV/AIDS) to the moving image material. And what better way then a film festival.

Next task: moodboard. Often times when I create, I’m influenced by what music I listen to at the time and the visual artistry performed by musicians. In this instance, I was influenced by Jason Renaud‘s photography and Chris Horan‘s visual direction for ADÉLA’s ‘The Provocateur’ EP, plus by the visual concepts in Madonna’s ‘Sex’ book, which accompanied the release of her album ‘Erotica’ back in 1992. During that time, there was still a lot fear surrounding sexuality and queerness, so I find the release of both this book and album very inspiring. Its bold approach and lack of fear inspired a lot of the visual language the ‘status: UNKNOWN’ film festival ended up adopting.

To tie the visual language back to its message, I did a further dive into AIDS crisis art, and came across a common pattern of heavy use of typography. From what I was able to see, this came to be from two major factors: #1 the influence of protest visual communication and the use of signs in marches; #2 mocking/imitating the large amount of text found in the healthcare industry, specifically drug packaging, depicting various side effects that a lot of HIV/AIDS patients had to risk undergoing during the development of HAART (highly active antiretroviral therapy). Above are pictured: ‘Vestment (front)’ by Valerie Caris Blitz, ‘Silence=Death’ by the Silence=Death project, ‘Untitled (for ACT UP)’ by David Wojnarowicz,  ‘For The Record’ by the Fierce Pussy Collective  and ‘Electric Blanket’ by the Visual AIDS Artists’ Caucus.

I began my creative process by creating my own type, loosely inspired by the Frutiger type family. I drew all the characters out in ballpoint pen, scanned them in and turned them into individual characters. To make sure the font kept its handwritten feel, I introduced four variations per character. Following this came the lengthty process of designing the promotional poster for the festival. Below, on the left, you can see the different iterations the poster went through. I went through multiple attempts of trying to marry the use of tape and screenprinting with varying degrees of success. What I ended up with was a bright pink poster with the ‘Why We Fight’ speech by Vito Russo digitally printed as the background, topped with screenprinted elements in white and black tape with white marker type. The materiality of the poster served both a striking visual, but also a consideration for scalability and adaptability. Constant information, such as the name of the festival and its website, are screenprinted, meaning many can be produced at once, while varying information such as the location, date and time are placed on pieces of black tape, making the poster adjustable for different venues and dates.

During this project, I also briefly took on a curatorial role, because I had to create and supply program for a one day installment of the ‘status: UNKNOWN’ film festival. I chose to conduct it during Växjö’s 2026 Pride Week, expanding my audience to allies looking to further their knowledge of the AIDS epidemic and its impact on the LGBTQ+ community, both medically and societally. Whilst I initially had big dreams of the films I wanted to show, with very little budget to acquire material, I had to rescale what I imagined the project to be.

Conducting the one day installment of the ‘status: UNKNOWN’ film festival was a collaborative effort with Palladium, a local folketsbio, and Karolinska Institutet, who are the current gatekeepers and archivists working with the FACE OF AIDS film archive. Palladium were kind enough to provide the use of their space all evening free of charge, alongside sharing expertise on conducting a film festival. Karolinska Institutet were kind enough to provide viewing material from the online portion of the FACE OF AIDS film archive, also free of charge. With these parameters in mind, I searched through the archive looking for material and I landed with the following pieces of the program:

‘Crossover’ – a documentary made as the opening film for the IV International AIDS Conference in Stockholm in June 1988.

‘1998_6_06’ – an interview with Nicole, a teenage girl living in San Francisco about love, safe sex and stigma. She tells about the voluntary work she has done in the Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco and reflects on the role of internet in communicating.

‘1998_37_01‘  – an interview with Alec, a manager in a harm reduction program and does outreach work among young drug users in the streets of Moscow. He talks about the role of non government organizations to educate about HIV/AIDS and the situation in Russia.

‘Vi och dom’  – a documentary that focuses on stigma and the situation of people living with HIV in Sweden. The film focuses on the consequences of the ignorance and lack of information on HIV and AIDS.

‘Pionjärer i kampen’  – a film focusing on the Swedish AIDS history and contains interviews with some of the pioneers who have been involved in the Swedish AIDS movement since the early eighties. It also tells about important programs and organizations in the Swedish AIDS response.

My goal with this program was to follow a trajectory that would lead from a worldwide context, through a youth focused lens until eventually ending up in Sweden. This made it not only a success within the scope of my goal, but also made it make sense in the context of Växjö Pride. The reception from the audience was also affirming of HIV/AIDS being an underdiscussed topic among Swedish youth, despite its prevalence in the world.

‘status: UNKNOWN’ took me on many journeys as a designer. From unconventional work with typography, through bending the rules around traditional printing techniques, all the way to gaining experience of a moving image curator. With queer cinema culture being on the rise in Sweden through organisations such as SAQMI (The Swedish Archive for Queer Moving Images and Malmö Queer Film Festival, I see ‘status: UNKNOWN’ as a seed of something greater than what I present you with here today. So if you hear about an HIV/AIDS related movie festival somewhere in Sweden, I might just be on a team supporting it from behind the scenes.