Antlered Life

A'yan Tran's blog will help you plan your weekend, keep you politically informed, and show you some interesting photos.

But what exactly is "life between the antlers"?  And how does that fit into the blogosphere?







You post about bike culture, politics, womens right to choose, art, concerts, and parties, but what is it that really gets you off?

All these things are meaningful parts of my life, but right now I'm really amped on giant art projects and making impossible shit happen. Me and 25 amazing artists and intrepids and kids who build stuff are building rafts made out of scrap to float down the Mississippi River for the month of August on. The major craft will be 60 feet long and 20 feet wide. I'm gonna do an oral history project along the way with folks on the river. [missrockaway.org]The other stuff is part of my life right here in Brooklyn, all the things that make up antleredlife.

What? You’re taking a bunch of people down the Mississippi?
 
Yes! We're a group of intrepids and artists rolling up our sleeves, building a giant raft powered by biodiesel and veggie grease and we're floating for all of August. We're called The Miss Rockaway Armada.

December 2004, you wrote:
 "This is my first foray into blogging. I'm biting the lame bullet, or cannon, or whatever and jumping right in. Well, it's good I suppose to have a place online to say things that matter to you that don't require you to represent an organization or company. I'm eating vegan pizza right now at work and thinking about how public this all is. Breathe in the self indulgence and love it. Art's not art without an audience right? So maybe I'll make art again in anticipation of an audience.”

What of this whole blogging explosion? What is a blog anyway?

The popularity of blogging has had some really great effects like the democratization of publishing, and offering a place for people to put personal reflections online anonymously or not. The postsecret.blogspot.com blog and erotica blogs are a great example of that. It's a way for strangers to connect with other individuals on a really personal level, barely edited and in real time that would otherwise be impossible. Because of blogs and other super-accessible online publishing tools and content management systems, there has been an exposion of content: it's easy to put out there and people do it. This is what's so amazing about instant publishing, you have access to otherwise completely inaccessible people, the riverbend.blogspot.com blog from a girl in Iraq is a great example of that. While issues of verification become difficult, access to narratives of people being spoken for by mainstream media sources is precious and powerful.

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Why should I check out your blog?

You should check out my blog to learn about projects happening at the intersection of art and media and politics, to get current events every once in a while, to read and look at pictures from a social diary which may include events you attended, and sometimes to hear the news straight from the horse's mouth. Last year I posted some pictures a soldier friend from high school sent me of where he was in Iraq. It was a lot of tanks and children playing and it was a direct link to one vision of what the war looks like everyday. For the most part I think my blog is a social diary and an events listing. I sometimes send out the Antleredlist, a curated list of upcoming events usually

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brooklyn, the lower east side and sometimes chelsea; elsewhere if there's something really rad going on. A tagline I use to describe the site is "documenting life between the antlers." The concept with antleredlife is that it's a social document which talks about upcoming and past events in my social life, not my innermost personal life or my outermost professional life (life outside the antlers), but my life as a part of different social communities and all things relevant to those communities.


What sites do you check out?

For the most part I use sites that are online tools like backpackit.com, del.icio.us.com, gmail.com, myspace.com and stuff like that. For pleasure: missrockaway.org of course, woostercollective.com, visualresistance.org, edzipco.com, suckapants.com, williamsboard.com (less so these days), nytimes.com, deitch.com, untitledname.com, ephemeroi.com/windchill, toyshopcollective.com, gawker.com, seenster.com.

One thing that Ive yet to see you post about is your sex life. What’s up with that?

It's not a sex blog, so why would I post about my sex life? Seems a little out-of-genre for my blog, which is more if a social diary—it takes on a more public character. There are parts of my personal life which are very public, but they are intentionally so and are in the service of a greater political goal—like my publicly speaking about my abortion experience because I feel like the subject is extremely taboo and that social stigma is the political tool of shaming women for their experience. There seem to be so many good liberals out there who are explictly pro-choice but cannot and will not be open about their abortion experience because of the extreme social stigmatization around it.

What pays the bills? You got a job?

I have two really intense half-time jobs. I am a PR and New Media Associate for the non-profit organization Seeds of Peace. We bring together young people from conflict regions like Israelis and Palestinians, give them leadership training and do the hard work of dialogue around co-existence with them. My second job is equally wonderful. I am the Managing Drector for the African-American Policy Forum bringing together scholars and advocates around issues of race and gender discrimination and give media messaging trainings to activists. In my spare time (ha!) I work on the Miss Rockaway Armada—floating down the Mississippi on sixty feet of scrap rafts we're building and doing an orla history project on the river. I also volunteer for VDAY, Eve Ensler's organization for ending violence against women.

A little bird told me you had an abortion. True story?

True. Two in fact. As a rule I'm happy to talk about them and be a resource to anyone with questions about the abortion procedure and what your options are. It's important for me to be public about this fact. I feel very strongly that women should be permitted to have a complex range of emotions around the abortion experience and not be forced into an experience of shame and silencing. Furthermore, we need to put a face on the women having abortions, to make clear that millions of women have them every year. Right now approximately 80,000 women die annually due to lack of access to safe abortion options, clearly we need to speak out. I've spoken about my experience in Our Bodies, Ourselves, or Glamour (August '05), and in the film Speak Out: I Had an Abortion (speakoutfilms.com).

In terms of your pro-choice advocacy and volunteering for VDAY how would you describe the current social status for women? And how does VDAY and such events matter?

VDAY does amazing work to end violence against women and girls. They fund local grassroots anti-violence initiatives and activists, as well as staging thousands of productions of the Vagina Monologues each year which fund local organizations working to end violence against women. My pro-choice work comes from a long history of organizing abortion clinic escorts and of speaking out about abortion to destigmatize it. My involvement with both VDAY and the Speak Out: I Had an Abortion project both stem from a desire to use art and media to effectively communicate what I believe in.

Is America fucked?

Nope. We're in a pretty bad place right now, but I believe in people. There are so many systemic changes that need to happen, from major reform of the electoral system, to social services, to restricting corporate control of government and media, to making abortion available, safe and legal without restrictions, to expansion of affirmative action programs, to seriously reforming prisons, to ending violence against women and changing the way courts treat sexual assault and domestic violence survivors, to our hegemonic foreign policy. In 2004 I did a lot of field work in Ohio with an arts PAC called Downtown for Democracy. While I have spent my life in New York, I talked with a lot of Republicans and swing voters during that time. I learned that most people are driven by two things (at least): fear of not surviving and good will toward others. I think Americans genuinely support U.S foreign policy and conservative domesti policy because they worry about their own families (fiscal conservatives) and because they truly believe the U.S is doing an act of Imperial good for the world: spreading "democracy" by any means they see fit, usually violence and economic control via structural adjustment. And why shouldn't they believe as much? The media they are reading, quite possibly aol instant messenger welcome screens and cnn.com are showing them that the U.S is only doing what's necessary that's best for the world. Therefore, if we can change the messaging that people are recieving and expose the horror of war and poverty, perhaps people would be slower to support those policies.

Tell us a bit about your childhood.

I was born in Toronto, but only lived there until I was two. Moved to San Fran for a few years and moved to Brooklyn at age six. From there I moved around a lot, like every year, but always stayed in the new York Metropolitan area. I was raised by a single mother who is an interior designer and had little contact with my dad. I went to high school in Nyack and finished off at a Waldorf School (alternative school) called Green Meadow. I went vegan and joined PETA at age nine. In high school my friends and I started a night club in Nyack. We had local bands play. I was the MC and sound board engineer and that was how I lost my stage fright. The band Coheed and Cambria came out of that. I was a photographer, snowboarder and skateboarder (I was terrible at it). Freshman year the police were harassing skateboarders all over my town so I photocopied the ordinance regarding skateboards and made little copies for everyone to carry around. I dropped out of Nyack High the first days of Junior year and after some searching I found an awesome Waldorf school and finished up there. I used to go to hardcore shows and take pictures a lot too. When I graduated high school I went to the New School and transferred later to Columbia. I used to help run a poetry reading at a squat/artspace called Bulletspace in Alphabet City and help edit a lit mag called a Gathering of the Tribes. What else? I worked at Giant Step Records in college and interned at VDAY. Since I've graduated college I have done work in lefty media and a few years ago I was introduced to the artist Swoon by Marc and Sara of the Wooster Collective. She has really profoundly changed my life and the way I see art and possibilities and is one of my favorite people in the world.

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Website

http://www.antleredlife.com

Photos

Ed Zipco
A’yen’s US Marine friend

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