Zines

As the curator of Zineopolis-Art-Zine collection at the University of Portsmouth, I set the aim of the collection to archive and reflect the diversity of thought and talent that exists outside the traditional publishing arena. Zines are one of the few areas left where creative people can speak without censorship to an audience beyond the gallery. This makes the world of zines new and exciting as well as challenging, with Art-Zines especially-the tactility and aesthetic of the self-published artifact is an important consideration. The nature of production, often cheap and quick, means these Art-Zines reflect the thoughts and hopes of the day (quite literally). Zineopolis is located within the School of Art and Design so it was a deliberate choice to focus upon image-heavy zines, although we have examples of poetry-zines, personal-zines and fan-zines. The culture of zines shows us that people do still have opinions, it also shows us that traditional conduits for sharing thoughts are probably not as accessible as we'd like to think. The Zineopolis collection seeks to archive and celebrate the self-publishing boom. Zineopolis is primarily a non-virtual collection where items can be handled and flicked-through, many have novelty items, unusual packaging, unconventional bindings, or unusual materials, this collection (although archived online) is sensorial delight in the 'physical'. This paper will show examples of what, zineopolis considers, constitutes the Art-Zine.

Ethnologies, 1997

2019

Zines are small, informal, non-professional publications; creative outlets devoted to idiosyncratic self-expression, and are often used by members of different minority groups and subcultures as methods of cultural expression and communication. By their very nature zines are hard to pin down, but distinguishing common characteristics of zines include a small circulation (sometimes via subscription but often distributed informally among interested parties) and a raison d'etre stressing free expression over profit. The zine collection started at the archives is designed to preserve these alternative voices and provide users a new and deeper understanding of different cultural experiences. This poster will show how zines in library and archival collections can be used as an effective medium for giving a voice to the joys, concerns and beliefs of outsider cultures and communities.

Zines are increasingly becoming seen as legitimate subjects of collection development in libraries and archives. In this article, the author expands on a poster he co-created for the 2014 ALA Annual Conference that discussed the genesis and development of a zine collection at Cushing Memorial Library, Texas A&M University. This process involved the creation of a workable collection policy that slotted into existing library collection strategies, the initial and ongoing acquisition of zines, and the development of a promotional event that publicized the zine collection and brought to Texas A&M’s campus several zinesters and examples of their alternative voices.

2015

Zines (as in magaZINE), are independent self-published, Do-It-Yourself (DIY) magazines, created out of a desire for self-expression rather than profit, and distributed in small runs. They’re highly personal, can be on any subject imaginable, and are made with an eclectic variety of materials, such as twine, string and glitter. Zines are awake and immediate in a manner that is unlike any other medium. To me, they are powerful tools used to represent the underrepresented in society. They offer a platform to people on the fringes, whose voices are ignored or misrepresented in mainstream publications and traditional libraries.

This project aims to build a profile of Murdoch University's unique collection of science fiction fanzines. The project supports the notion that zines are defined not just by their content, but by their materiality and their networks – that is, their practices. Contemporary research on zines often look to publications from the 1990s to the present, and this project will highlight the importance of considering zines from the 1930s onwards, as represented in the Murdoch collections. The project will also map the correspondence networks of the Leigh Edmonds Fanzine Collection, recognising the importance of networks to how we understand and work with fanzines. The project will result in a number of publications on the collection and a seminar and online publication for Murdoch University. The project aims to showcase the collection and highlight its importance to scholars of Australian literature and cultural studies. 3. Project Description We can look to the literature of sub-or counter-cultures such as (fan)zines as primary texts and source material for new knowledges and teaching, but by their nature (fan)zines are difficult to define. This challenge opens up new ways of thinking about genres of literature as entities that can be identified through their practices. I propose to survey the material elements of Murdoch University's fanzine collections, and map a series of correspondence networks that reflect fanzine

Punk, Fanzines and DIY Cultures in a Global World, 2019

The term fanzine comes from the words 'fan' and 'magazine' and is used to describe a wide variety-in both form and content-of independent self-publications of specialized cultural interest. The origins of fanzines (or just zines) are often located in the participatory dimension of American science fiction magazines of the 1920s, the political character of the samizdat publications that were handed out illegally in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union, the self-published texts of the beat generation, the famous underground press of the American counter-culture, and the homemade photocopied magazines of the punk subculture

Popular Communication, 2004

The Internet seems to promise the producers of zines-independent publications characterized by idiosyncratic themes, low circulation, irregular frequency, ephemeral duration, and noncommercial orientation-an irresistible alternative to the medium of print. However, this study finds that many zine editors have resisted migrating to the Web and that those who have published online remain ambivalent toward this new communication technology, in large part due to perceived deficiencies vis--vis their established circulation rituals. I argue, based on in-depth interviews, that interactivity is a mental and social characteristic of these self-publishers, who believe that paper and xerography work better to achieve their goals of hands-on participation in a subcultural community.

2014

Despite the Internet and the world of bloggers, Fan/Zines, consisting merely of several photocopied ages stapled together by the author and containing anything from comics and art to poetry or political discussion, are still much alive. “Savage Messiah”, this black-an-white, cut and paste style zine produced by the artist Laura Oldfield Ford, in which she traces her psycho-geographical drifts around London’s grimy underbelly, has achieved cult status in art circles since its first issue in 2005. A near-complete run of the Punk fanzine “Sniffin’ Glue” has been auctioned for £2,000 by Bonhams in 2010. The London Zine Symposium or the Manchester Zine Fest, to quote just but a few events dedicated to fanzines, attract crowds of more of a thousand and these handmade one-offs are now collectable items to be kept and cherished. Since a decade or so, various well-established European Libraries or local repositories have also embarked on the laborious task of tracking down and cataloguing the countless thousands of fanzines published here and there over the past 60 years.

Independent DIY publications and the Underground Urban Cultures, 2021