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RNC Update: RNC NoPoster Collective Featured in NY Times.

The RNC NoPoster Collective hits the big time with a Sunday article in the New York Times
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  • About the No RNC Poster Project - Visual Resistance Against the Republican National Convention

    The No RNC Poster Project started when a small group of friends with experience in graphic design and independent media came together with the goal of collecting and distributing posters against this summer's Republican National Convention in New York City.

    Our original plan was to print a small number of posters in a newspaper-format booklet and then move on to a different project. The response to our call for submissions was overwhelming - who knew there were so many pissed-off graphic designers out there?! - and we've gotten such a wealth of great work from people around the country that we've been broadening our goals ever since.

    Our first project is still the free book of posters. On June 23, we got 2,000 sets of 19 different poster designs back from the printers. Titled OUR CITY, OUR WALLS, the posterbook includes beautiful designs in a wide variety of styles, techniques, and visions. The designs are funny and scary, ominous and hopeful.

    These posters will cover the city this summer. They'll be on the streets, in storefronts and apartment windows, on picket signs, everywhere you - or the invading Republicans - look. They'll show the world that New York is against Bush, the Republicans, and the RNC's callous exploitation of the memory of September 11th for political gain.

    And that won't be all. Throughout the summer, we'll be working in other mediums to get your messages and visions out there. Keep sending us your poster and sticker designs, keep checking out the site for updates, and keep up to date with what's going on with the project by signing up for our super-low-volume announcement list.

    In the meantime, check out the gallery, download your favorite designs and put them up yourself. Please consider making a donation to help us cover printing costs, and e-mail us if you're interested in designing, getting involved with the collective, receiving updates about the project, giving financial support, distributing posters, buying prints or pins, helping screenprint, or just saying hello.

  • Art Imitates Political Life, Anti-G.O.P. Posters Show
    Colin Moynihan, The New York Times, Sunday August 1, 2004

    In mid-June, posters promoting the Republican National Convention began appearing on phone booths and bus shelters around New York City. Featuring a photograph of former Mayor Edward I. Koch, they solicited volunteers to help at the convention and urge New Yorkers to "Be a part of it."

    Over the past several weeks, other posters that also advocate involvement during the convention have shown up on the sides of buildings and other places. They are, though, less official and less welcoming.

    Some bear an image of a Godzilla-size George W. Bush rampaging through Midtown skyscrapers above the directive "Fight Back!" Others use scraps of newspaper text and headlines to spell out the word "Lies" on a black background.

    The ads with Mr. Koch were commissioned by the New York City Host Committee 2004, a nonprofit organization created by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and were designed by the advertising firm Grey Global. The other posters were made by the No RNC Poster Collective, a loose-knit coalition of artists and designers, and were bought with about $1,500 in donations.

    The 490 Koch posters, which succeeded in attracting several thousand volunteers, at first outnumbered No RNC's, but recently the collective printed 38,000 posters featuring 19 designs, and they said similar runs were in the works. Visitors to its Web site (www.norncposters.org) can also download and print 36 free poster designs.

    "We don't have many resources, but we're resourceful," said Canek Pena, 19, one of the collective's seven founders.

    Another member, Leah Montange, 21, said, "We want to make it known that folks in New York are against the R.N.C." She added that collective members were opposed to the Bush administration's environmental and economic policies and to war in Iraq. Photo: Leah Montange and Canek Pena, members of the No RNC Poster Collective, with some of the 100 silk-screened prints they plan on selling to pay for posters challenging the Republican National Convention.

    Certainly not everyone supports the ideas expressed by No RNC's posters. They have been discussed on conservative Web sites and a recent comment on one, www.slantpoint .com, referring to a secret plan to tear the posters down wherever they appear.

    Ms. Montange said her group's project was conceived four months ago, after a meeting at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery, where several dozen people had gathered to discuss plans to protest the convention. She and others who had some experience putting out an underground newspaper, N.Y.U. Ink, eventually decided to put out a publication consisting solely of visual messages. Part of the goal, they said, was to respond to the tens of millions of dollars that the Republican National Committee and the Bush-Cheney campaign have spent on ads.

    Posters criticizing the convention are not limited to the host city. A contributor to the collective project, Eric Drooker, whose paintings have appeared on the cover of The New Yorker, said he had seen posters voicing dissent on walls and lampposts in San Francisco and Lawrence, Kan.

    "I've never seen such an outpouring of art based on one event," said Mr. Drooker.

    On Norfolk Street, for instance, a row of posters that feature helicopters hovering over Midtown with the legend "Resume All Major Protest Operations" are pasted to the wall of a storefront church.

    Liz McQuiston, the author of "Graphic Agitation 2: Social and Political Graphics in the Digital Age," (Phaidon Press) said that using Web sites to disseminate political posters was a relatively new phenomenon.

    "Before the posters were always in printed form," she said. "But now you can get droves of posters produced electronically, and you see large groups of people producing comment on one issue."

    In early May the members of the collective called artists and dropped off descriptions of the project at bookstores and theaters. One member, Ryan Nuckel, 23, created a Web site inviting people to submit art.

    By the end of May, about 150 pieces of work had been collected from artists, some of them obscure, others known. Group members say they sought posters for the Web site that expressed a clear message that would stand out visually, mostly simple black and white images with an iconographic aspect.

    "We were looking for boldness," said Frank Reynoso, 27. "We looked for images that would catch your eye from 30 or 40 feet away."

    Mr. Reynoso said that some designs, like one that included swastikas, were rejected, because the group wanted to avoid antagonizing people by appearing overly radical. Others though, like a poster that portrays Mr. Bush as a cheerleader for the Republican Party, were welcomed because they included some humor.

    The collective also wanted posters that would stand out from the myriad advertisements that appear on walls and signs throughout New York City.

    Toward the end of June, members selected 19 images. Two thousand copies of each were printed on 22-by-15-inch newsprint sheets, and then made into tabloids. The title page reads "Our City - Our Walls," and the back page bears a message saying that it is unlawful to paste flyers on public or private property without permission. Copies of the tabloids are sent to people request them from the Web site.

    On a recent night, Ms. Montange and Mr. Pena met at ABC No Rio, a community center on Rivington Street, where they have been using a silk screen workshop to print poster designs on 90-pound watercolor paper. They said that they planned to sell 100 silk-screened prints for $20 each to pay for the next round of posters.

    Ms. Montange said she hoped the posters would provoke discussion about political issues, but that the project's main goal was to encourage demonstrations against the convention.

    "In the end, there will be one way to show that people are angry and upset with the Republicans," Mr. Pena said. "That'll be the numbers in the streets."
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