Rich Boy Cries for Mama Kickstart!

There are only a few weeks left to help get this book published! Ethan is looking to get a limited first printing of Rich Boy Cries for Mama, the first book in his series of three. We're so close to the goal, but just a few of you can help to push it over the edge! I've read it, take my word for it, this shit is good. It'll appeal to those who like history, or punk rock, or sociology, or psychology, and on and on and on. Click the link below to donate, anything helps, really, and you get sweet gifts as a token of our appreciation.

Rat Houses - 2 weeks later

Have a little respect for the rats!

2 weeks ago we spent a few hours in Tompkins Square Park, showing off the rat houses that several of our artists made. People were really great, asking all sorts of questions and taking pictures and everything. A few days later, we set up the houses in an empty lot on 14th street and let them be exposed to the elements!

We initially thought that after a few days, they would be removed, by either the city or by people stealing them, or something. And that partially did happen. A few of the houses have now been appropriated by new owners, Ethan's capitol building, Un's rat cafe, and Jeramy's log cabin have all gone off to live elsewhere.

The rest of the houses remain however, and still look fairly decent, even after some inclement weather. We even have a new addition to the group, someone set up a beaten guitar case and gave it the name, "The Hard Rat Cafe". Someone else cut a hole in the fence for easy access, so people can actually stroll in and out of the open lot as they please.

Check out the situation as of this afternoon! And go take a look at these houses, it doesn't look like the city has any intention of removing them (or really any knowledge OF them). 14th St. between 2nd and 3rd Aves.

Rat House Street Project

"In the East Village middle school kids have been making bird houses as part of their school projects. The neighbors started complaining when they discovered rats were getting into the birds house to eat the food. I say to hell with the birds, this is New York City. Have a little respect for the rats."

The Rat House Project
Design and build your own Rat House.
Requirements: One foot cubed or smaller. Light weight.
Remember we may have to climb a fence to install this.

Date of drop off: Thursday February 25th 8pm to 2am
Location for drop off: Niagara bar

Note: date of the show will be February 28th weather permitting. We will then install the show somewhere on the streets of the East Village and text the artists the location that Sunday.
NO ONE WILL KNOW WHERE THIS SHOW IS UNTIL THE DAY OF THE SHOW.

If you want to be a part of this you must confirm with
antagonistart@aol.com

Antagonist Showcase @ Never Records!

ANTAGONIST ORPHAN POTLUCK!

Everyone get excited for the annual Antagonist holiday party! This year were busting out with all sorts of cool stuff, from music, art, food (obviously) and writers!

The night will be hosted by our own Julian Stockdale and everyone should participate by bringing photos you have of Antagonists. We're going to put up stuff all over the walls, like a giant end-of-year scrapbook.

The night will go something like this:

6pm: Bring FOOD!
7pm: Photo Show Starts
730pm: Mystie Chamberlin
8pm: Bradley Dean
830pm: Holiday Horror Stories
9pm: Paloma
945pm: More Holiday Horror Stories
10pm: Raffle!
1015pm: Seann Branchfield & Band
11pm: Richard Allen Birthday Roast

Bring those dancing shoes, we've got 4 amazing musicians/bands playing!

And please bring food, we want to eat.

And bring your friends, we want to meet them.

Oh, where is it?
Niagara Bar!
112 Ave A (@ 7th St)

Time: 6pm-Late

Date: December 14th (that's a monday, kiddies)

It might be best if you take that tuesday off from work...or warn them that you'll be somewhat less capable that day.

SEE YOU MONDAY!

Kickstarter: Help us Get to Lisbon!

A bunch of the Antagonists will be going to Lisbon in 2010 to create an art show! We're going to be working with international artist, street art, music shows and making a documentary of it all.

This great website called Kickstarter is one way we're looking for help from all of you! They give us a platform to have anyone and everyone pledge to help us fund some of our costs for Lisbon.

For different amounts we're also giving incentives, such as t-shirts and DVDs, just for pledging a few dollars. For example, pledge $15 and you'll get a DVD, pledge $100 and you'll get a limited edition print plus both of our DVDs! This goes on and on, you can read more about it at the Kickstarter website.



We greatly appreciate any and all help. As a community of working artists, our goal is to always assist each other in our endeavors, so provoke us into doing art by pledging to get us to Lisbon!

Brooklyn Museum Screening

As many of you know, we have this movie out called Anything Boys Can Do.

Did you know we just had a screening for it at the Brooklyn Museum? Apart from the usual suspects attending, we had people show up who are not involved in the Antagonists, and they had some of the most interesting questions to ask during the Q&A afterwards.

This opportunity was really great for us; if we can begin to infiltrate the "high" art world with our raggedy band of impressively talented, yet unknown, artists, then who knows where we'll be off to next!

As a reminder (we're so good at reminders) you can purchase the film at the Brooklyn Museum, or at St. Marks Bookstore. Of course you can always grab one of the Antagonists from the street and they'll figure out a way for you to buy a copy as well. Probably a t-shirt too.

The DVD comes with a bonus that we did not show at the Museum. There is a shorter documentary called Mark of the Ninja which chronicles street art in NYC and has many of the faces you know and love from the Antagonists. Really it's like 2 movies in 1, so we're giving you a fucking deal.

SO BUY IT HERE!

Below you can see some of the Q&A.





And here's the trailer for the movie!!


BUY IT HERE TOO!!

Do We Have a Fan?

A book came for me in the mail on fatherhood called Fact.File For First-Time Fathers. It was sent by Richard T------- from L.A. The package was waiting for me at Black & White Bar. I work there on Wednesdays and saw the package but didn't know if was for me until Richard called me and told me. I never get things sent to the bar and most of my friends know where I live. I didn’t recognize the name, but I am a bartender so I could have met him and it just slipped my mind. Either way, I'll claim him as our first fan from the blog. That's the only place I have been writing about becoming a dad. Thanks. Send us more stuff.

-Ethan H. Minsker

Stockdale Takes New York City To The Comic Side Of Tragedy | AHN

Stockdale Takes New York City To The Comic Side Of Tragedy | AHN

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New Shirt!

I spent all day hand-printing the new shirt. The entire time I had Brother Mike hovering over me, asking me questions while I was trying to print. "Fuck man, I just don't get this. When I was in school, we had typewriters." Mike is working on a script for an animated pilot, based on Mike's crazy life, called "Somewhere between a Punch and a Handshake". Mike hates computers and would rather write everything out on toilet paper, like he was in prison.

The new shirt was designed by Doug McQueen during the Antagonist Beach Retreat in '07. Doug is a talented apprenticing tattoo artist. His work is a mix of odd pop images with elements of white trash. The artist's retreat is modeled after the vacations, written about by Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway, in which a group of painters, dancers, writers and all sorts of creative types would vacation at the shore. Change your environment, relax and bond with other artists; drink and be merry. On our artist's retreats, I always bring a large pad of sketch paper and leave it in the screened-in porch. One night, in between shoot-gunning our seven mini-buds, Doug started sketching the work. By the next night, there were more than a dozen images of our logo. I picked this one since it reminded me of Rat Fink. This logo has a special meaning for me since it was designed in the same year that I asked my wife to marry me. But that's a different story.



Every few years, we redesign the Antagonist ninja logo but a few elements stay the same. The colors are always black and white with a red background. It's a black, masked ninja within a circle, with the text "Antagonist Movement" in a band.




You can pick up one of our new shirts at 99x, located at 84 East 10th Street NYC between 3rd and 4th Avenues, or come to one of our art shows. The shirts are in all sizes for men and women. The money goes right back into making more Antagonist Art. I've got to go. Mike is bothering me about format even though I have already shown him 10 times. I think he just likes having me lean over him so he can sniff my stink.

-Ethan Minsker
09/03/2009

My Film is Cursed!

In 1996, I finished a film called "Anything Boys Can Do..." It is a 71-minute documentary exploring feminist issues in the women's underground music scene of NYC Lower East Side. During production we had the same problems most indie filmmakers have: cameras failing, audio that was unusable and, on one of the days we were shooting Bikini Kill, Kathleen Hanna took off her shirt during the set and told us to stop shooting. But these are all expected for no-budget films. The curse started shortly after production when two other films with similar themes came out. On the festival circuit we still did well, playing in over 50 and winning a few awards. The film was written up in TimeOut NY and Bust magazine and it had a small mention in the Sunday New York Times. This is back when films were still being distributed on VHS and we sold about 500; then Facets Multimedia added the film to its catalog and we started selling a few more each month. After that Chris Gore came along and wanted to distribute "Anything Boys Can Do.." through Film Threat. So we had to stop selling through Facets. Nothing happened for years. Finally we found out that, apparently, Film Threat had no money to distribute our film and it looks like its magazine may have closed too (although Film Threat now has some type of online presence). We got back the rights to our film and, again, nothing happened for years until Troma came along and sought to purchase the rights, except it forgot to sign the distribution contract. Again nothing happened for years. Once again we found out that the film distributor was low on money, at least when it came to distributing our film, and had done nothing, at all, to get our film out there. We reminded Troma that it forgot to sign the distribution contract and had no contract with us. So, once again, we re-asserted our rights to the film.



Last year we finished "This Is Berlin Not New York". This is a 70-minute documentary following 15 Antagonist artists who went to Berlin, did art in a gallery, put up art in the streets and, in the middle of the night, broke into an abandoned building, turning it into a large piece of art. This time we put the new film out ourselves and have sold more than 800 since October of last year. We were contacted by Emphasis Entertainment which took on the film (non-exclusive) and helped us with distribution, getting us listed everywhere including with Netflix. On October 20th of 2009, we will re-release a revised "Anything Boys Can Do..." along with "Mark of the Ninja", a 49-minute documentary on what it means to be an Antagonist artist. This short documentary won best documentary at the Evil City Film Fest and was showcased at the Anthology Film Archives during its new director series. Working on the new DVD, we've had plenty of problems. First the compression was off, the audio levels were too high or too low and the buttons went to the wrong menu. But now the DVD is ready and we hope the curse is over.

-Ethan MInsker

Dolls Of Lisbon

What are the Dolls Of Lisbon?
It’s the next overseas art show in Portugal.
The plan: 10 to 20 artists, musicians, and filmmakers travel to Lisbon
for 10 days of creative events. Ted can give you more on the artist’s
statement. For my part I’m working on the film that documents the
event. I’ve already been shooting for 8 months.

The Dolls
I’m making 100 dolls for artists to paint change and make their own.
We will then show them in Lisbon. It takes me about 9 hours to do one.
I start with a wire frame then take strips of cut up t-shirts and
build up the body, and then I cover it tightly with canvas. It’s hard
so the artists can paint it. I’ve made 64 dolls. 16 went to Lisbon, 6
Berlin, 2 Baltimore, 1 Roma, and the rest in and around NYC.

How do you get to work on a doll?

You have to show with us on a Thursday art show. If we like your work we will ask you to do a doll.

We were hoping to go in October or November of '09 but it looks more
like May of 2010.
What is the hold up?

We are waiting for written conformation from the gallery and city.

Bring on the bitching. Artists and other Antagonist keep harassing me about the date. I get it, you want to know so you can take off time from work and get a deal on a ticket. Well I could make up a date, but that won’t help you. When I know the dates you will know the dates.
Stop asking me.

You can see a selection of dolls at the Antagonist show on October 17th to November 12th at the Mindy Wyatt Gallery, 814 Broadway, 2nd floor, NYC.

If you are one of our artists who is working on a doll post a photo here.

-Ethan Minsker

The Antagonist Begins

Greetings all of you fabulous antagonists. For those of you who are unaware of what this blog is about (even after reading the profile page, which I'm sure all of you have done), then below is the entire manifesto of the Antagonist Art Movement. Read on for further enlightenment, stay tuned for all of our events, reviews, rants, raves and pure trash-talk.

Manifesto of the Antagonist Movement

The Antagonist is one in whom potential is provoked to creative
emanation, emanation that, in turn, provokes both the creator and
those with whom it comes in contact, to further authentic creativity.
Thus a powerful cycle is unleashed upon the world, one which is fueled
by its own unstoppable spirit, drive, and dynamic energy.

The Antagonist defines him-or-herself as one in opposition to the
natural order on many fronts. If that is a crime, then the Antagonist
is the criminal of art, one at war with a number of enemies.

One persistent enemy is the ‘If” – “If he fails,” “If she succeeds,”
“If they are laughed at.” Contingencies must not matter and must not
be allowed to take hold of the artist’s mind. The Antagonist must
become deaf to their whimpering and have the courage to make art in
spite of it.

Another ever-present danger to the antagonist is the artist’s ego.
When self-aggrandizement enters the creative cycle as a significant
player, satisfying its appetite soon becomes an end in itself,
stultifying and deadening creativity, making it impotent and incapable
of provoking more creativity, thus threatening the very life of the
creative cycle.

Commercialism and opportunism are perhaps the most virulent enemies of
the Antagonist. The exploitation of the creative is not an Antagonist
objective in any sense. Such behavior does not provoke true creativity
because material reward soon becomes an end in itself, the creative
cycle is interrupted, and, deprived of its soul, languishes and dies.
Witness the dead art that floods the commercial markets. Antagonists
do battle against “commercialists,” the parasites of the art world. If
Antagonists sell their work for profit, they must never make art with
material reward in mind even if they seize upon their power to use the
system against itself when necessary.

Not only is the Antagonist one who opposes, but also one who provokes.
He or she is bound by a most sacred vow to bring forth creative
potential wherever it resides, whether in the human heart or in the
soul of non-human material. The Antagonist pledges to do what he or
she can to assist any artist, in any field of art, to engage in the
creative process, and to destroy obstacles to genuine free expression
everywhere. In like manner, the Antagonist will bring into the service
of art any resource, material, or tool which would perpetuate the
creative cycle as described above, whether authorized by social
convention or not, no matter how great the resistance to doing so.

The words set down above constitute a Manifesto of the Antagonist Movement.

Members of the Antagonist Movement hereby underwrite and pledge to
live and make art according the principles outlined herein and to
further these principles whenever possible in their own community and
in the world at large.

The Antagonist Art Movement consists of crazies from all walks of life who gather to create art. We run several shows in the East Village area:

Alphabet City Soup is our Monday night music show that runs every Monday and brings you the best of new music in the NYC area. We've had some foreigners play our show as well. It's free, coupled with $4 Mojito Night and if you are a band, or know a band who wants to play, contact Marissa at alphabetcitysoup@gmail.com.

Art Show night happens every Thursday and always has different artists showing off their goods. Everything is put up and taken down in just one evening (think guerilla museum exhibition!) and there have been thousands of artists who have already shown their stuff. If you are interested in showing your work, or know an artist who you think is great, contact Ethan at antagonistart@aol.com.

Writer's Night is for the linguistically gifted artists and takes place twice a month at two different venues. Each writer gets 5 minutes to show off their shit, whether it be poetry, short story, music, silence, whatever. We've found some famous people at this night, so contact us at antagonistart@aol.com if you wanna be next!

We all hope you enjoy what you read here and that you, in turn, realize the power of your art. Come support us at any of our shows and if you want to get involved just tell us! We love giving and receiving support. Thanks all.

-The Antagonist Art Movement