FAQ

Interview with Ethan Minsker, founding member of the Antagonist Art Movement:

Q: What exactly is the Antagonist Art Movement?

EM: I think the name says it all. The Antagonist Art Movement. We’re a group of artists in New York City who are trying to push art and ourselves and each other forward. And we share in the belief that art requires a little conflict. It’s like your little brother slapping you in the face then running away. Your mad at him for a second but still love him just the same. Well, not exactly. We want people to be inspired to make art whether or not you think you can. Money and education are unimportant. Just create. It’s as important as breathing to us.

Q: How long has the Antagonist Movement been around? And how did it start?

EM: It started in 1988 with the fanzine “Psycho Moto.” Then a bunch of us made a film “Anything Boys Can Do…” in 1996. Then we did an art show in 2000 and some public access TV stuff, and then started this open-mike reading in 2001. They were all separate elements but they came together under the banner of the movement. In 2000, Sergio Vega, a musician, Anders Olsen, a painter, and I, a filmmaker, worked together at a bar. The Lower East Side was full of creative people looking for something to do. We knew actors and had stories. So we made a movie. Sergio did the soundtrack, and I wrote a story every month. We shot for two hours every week. It took 4 years to finish “The Soft Hustle,” and by the time it was done we had broken a dozen laws. The guns in the film were real since we didn’t have the money to rent and it was easer to borrow from our gangster friends. After the film, Anders and I came up with an art show at the bar where we worked, which was owned by another AAM member, Johnny T. He liked the turn out and asked us to keep doing the art shows. Seven years later, we have shown more than 3,000 artists.

Q: What are these art shows, exactly? Who are you showing?

EM: Every Thursday night we do a one-night-only art show downstairs at Niagara Bar in the East Village (112 Avenue A). There’s also live music, but the focus is the six to eight artists, many of whom are showing for the first time in New York. We’ve shown some well known artists like Richard Hamilton, Arturo Vega (who created the Ramone’s logo), Ted Riederer, Lee Harvey, but the Niagara shows are more about giving artist’s a chance.

We also do longer, two-month shows upstairs at Niagara. These are based on a central theme, and you have to have shown in one of the one-night shows to be eligible. I’ve found that a theme often pushes artists to go in a new direction. Past themes have included: The Obscure Dictator, The Photo Booth (portraits of the photo booth repairman), The Box show, and we are currently working on the New York Under Water Show.

Q: But the AAM is about more than just art shows, right?

EM: Yeah, we do lots of other stuff. We do an open-mic writer’s night at Black and White (86 East 10th Street). Every night has a theme. A lot of the readers write on the spot and then step up to the mic. We’ve been doing these since 2001, and had some strange successes, like Jonah Hill (actor in I Heart Huckabees and The 40-Year-Old-Virgin) got his start here. Recently, we started publishing some our favorite writers, like Brother Mike Cohen, whose chapbook “Somewhere Between a Punch and a Hand Shake” is awesome. I think Mike’s a good example of what the Antagonist Art Movement’s about. He was the deejay at Niagara back and one day I asked him to read at our writers’ night. He showed up with a boombox and played these old secretly recorded tapes of him and his father fighting when he was a teenager. The crowd loved it, and Mike went on to write dozens of great stories. He’s a great AAM success story.

Q: What do you do to get the word out there about the AAM?

EM: Stickering. We put our stickers everywhere. Two of the Antagonists were even arrested for stickering. But we don’t put our web site on the sticker. I think that would make it commercial, instead of art.

Q: That makes sense, but you do have a website, right?

EM: Yeah, definitely: www.antagonistmovement.com. It’s being redone as we speak. But you can find out about all the things going on with the movement and also buy some merch. We’ve got a ton of cool merch: hats, bags, shirts, wristbands, masks, anything we can fit our logo on. The different designs are made by new artists each season, and we limit everything to 200 items. All the money we earn goes back into making more art, like our films. If you’re not an .. kid, and you’re are in New York sometime, you can also buy AAM merch at 99X (10th Street between 3rd and 4th avenues). They have a lot of our old prints and are good about supporting us.

Q: You mentioned your films. What are those?

EM: We’ve completed four films. Anything Boys Can Do…, which is a documentary on women’s underground bands in New York, circa 1996. Then we did The Soft Hustle, about the low lifes of the lower East Side. Then Touching a Van Gogh and Mark of the Ninja, self-produced documentaries about the Antagonist Movement. Mark of the Ninja won the grand prize at the Evil City Film Fest. We film most of our events. Some of it goes on our public access show, “Antagovision,” which airs Tuesday nights at 11 in New York (Ch. 67 on MNN; Ch. 110 on RCN), but most of it goes into our films. All of the films have shown at film festivals around the world, and this year, an anthology of them actually will be released by TROMA DVD titled Films of the Antagonist Art Movement.

Q: Sounds like 2007 will be a good year. What are the plans for the future?

EM: The thing I’m most excited about is a group show in Berlin, Germany. It will be a retrospective of the Movement. But more importantly it will provide us with the fodder for our next documentary. We always screw something up, so it should be pretty funny and compelling. Other than that, I’m working on a novel set during the rise of the AAM. The 2007 issue of our zine, Psycho Moto, is finished. And we plan on launching a new magazine later this year. We also have a new film in the works and one of our writer’s Mike Cohen’s stories, hoping to make the pilot into an animated series. It’s all very exciting.

Q: Cool. Good luck with all that. Obviously, the strong connections among the artists of the Antagonist Movement is paying off.

EM: Yeah, I think collaboration is the key. We all support each other and the community we’ve created. Keep watching and see what they come up with next.