I’m happy,
I’m happy,
I’m happy,
I’m happy,
I’m happy,
I’m happy,
And I’ll punch the man who says I’m not.

xx

Nice people – horrid location. My wife frequently describes Fed Square as totalitarian, in that it dwarves the individual and is an extravagant demonstration of the power and wealth of the state (it was commissed by the Kennett government in the wake of the Melbourne casino).

The Atrium itself is both physically and metaphorically cold (it often gets a winter wind blown in from the street, it gets little natural sun, and has a grey metallic colour). You just have to do your best to bring human warmth to the location in the circumstances!

Locations can matter a lot. What is it real estate agents say all the time? ‘Spot spot spot…’

Jurassic Lounge is an experiment. One of its objectives, certainly, is audience development. What’s been interesting is seeing just how much visitors are engaging with the collection, the displays and the special exhibitions (on top of the karaoke, the silent disco etc).

There are no 100% satisfactory way to make museum more accessible and more relevant to new audiences, but there’s lot to be gained from the attempt. I’m genuinely curious about your thoughts on this… I’ll come down to the cave for a chat!

M

I did see on the Museum website that your organisation was involved in programming the Jurassic Lounge, and to be honest I didn’t investigate you guys before writing this post, which was stupid of me. But despite what your intentions may be – and I don’t question for a moment that they come from a good place – my concern (perhaps ‘concern’ is too strong a word – it’s interesting, that’s all) is that when zines are encountered in the context of big galleries and museums it really does have a strong effect on the way people receive them and the ways they then think about zine culture and their (potential) involvement in it. And despite my own personal feelings about all this, I have no idea how to maintain the integrity, as you put it, of zines in such contexts, or whether it’s even worth worrying about.

I’m sorry if my post gave the impression that I am totally down on the whole idea of the Jurassic Lounge – the point was really to take the piss out of myself by suggesting that I could have such stong feelings about something but be won over by the opportunity to sit in a cave, which I am genuinely excited about, zines or no zines. But I have to stand by my assertion that the Jurassic Lounge is, whatever the Festivalists ‘programing philosophy’, a way for the Museum to market itself to a youth/young adult demographic, with all the risks of cultural appropriation which that entails. Cultural appropriation in a museum – that’s never happened…

But really, we were very excited to be invited to run the workshop and for the opportunity to cyncially use it to advertise our own zine fair, so hopefully we’ll see you there.

We have 4 members of staff, we’re passionate about what we do and none of us are especially cool nor hip.

The Zine workshop is part of our programming philosophy, which encourages visitors to express themselves and interpret their environment creatively (in this case the Museum and its collection), looping some of that expression back into the displays. It’s not just a cynical audience development exercise. Like most of what we program at Jurassic Lounge, it’s just a slightly different way for people to engage with the Museum and the exhibit.

We’re thrilled to have you and hope you’ll have a blast! If you’ve got any suggestions and feedback as to how zines can be brought into large public institutions without compromising the integrity of zine culture it’d be great to have a chat!

Cheers,
Matt Ravier
Artistic Director
The Festivalists