Photocopier art

I moved house recently so everything’s been a big shambles, but I’ve finally had a chance to make some pictures to send out to zine subscribers (look here, scroll down). Below are some scans of the pictures. They were all composed in-photocopier from black and white originals, relying as much on chance as deliberate compositional decisions. Each colour is a different layer. I’ll be using these as masters to make some (photocopied) prints on acid free, light-weight card stock. If you’d like one you must subscribe! If you have already subscribed, thank you! You’ll get one of these in the post soon…

This one’s about A4 size, eight separate photocopies on one piece of paper, only jammed the copier once…

This one’s four layers, about A5 size. First I did a yellow background, then copied the crystal twice, first in cyan then magenta, which made green and red. Because I was lining everything up by eye it’s slighty off register, so I actually unintentionally made a 3D image. But then I did a negative copy in blue over the top and ruined it. Oh well.

I think this is my favourite, it reminds me of the cover of ‘The Future Crayon’ by Broadcast. It’s also approx A4, but slightly smaller than the first one. Again, it’s four layers: black, cyan, magenta, yellow.

The images of crysals all come from various encyclopedias and look and learn books I’ve collected over the years. The bigger project I’m working on at the moment (and which the harmonograph that I mentioned in an earlier post is part of) is based on a book Anwyn gave me that was at her mum’s place about exploring caves – ‘The Marvellous World Beneath Our Feet’, I think it was called. So I started sifting through my books for images of crystals and and geological formations, and have been working on some paintings and collages, hopefully to be exhibited somewhere this year, if anyone will have me, sob.

Anwyn also alerted me to this rather amazing place in New York, the Reanimation Library! A home for unwanted books. It was rather uncanny to hear about it, because Tim and I are doing a work at this year’s National Young Writer’s Festival with books that have been ‘weeded’ (that’s the technical term) from public and university libraries, or  that otherwise fall out of circulation, or are deemed unuseful, unproductive. Of course, the Reanimation Library is much better than our project is ging to be, but if you’re planning on heading to the NYWF this year, you should keep your eyes peeled for paste ups and walls that have been papered with the pages of books.

Speaking of libararies, Vanessa’s excellent new project, Biblioburbia, is to visit Sydney libraries, check it out.

Non-work

The idea of non-spaces or in-between spaces is one that seems to crop up a lot. I seem to come across it regularly without looking for it. Most recently I found it in a book called ‘Non-Stop Inertia’ by Ivor Southwood, which I started reading yesterday and finished today. It’s about post-Fordist work and ‘non-work’ conditions: the casualisation of labour, the transformation of unemployment into its own kind of work category, where you can even be fired from the dole (which, of course, isn’t called the dole anymore), and the general precariousness – or precarity – of contemporary work/life. It’s an interesting book, especially because its author is in the position of having to work – live – in the type of poisonous conditions he describes, which gives the writing an open, sort of zine like quality, a grounding in the everyday. Southwood mentions this in the introduction – you don’t read with the bitter knowledge that the author is just participating in some experiment in being broke for the purpose of researching a book or article, later to return to ‘normal’ life: this is normal life. I appreciated it, because I am on the dole at the moment, trapped in exactly the same bipolar frenzy of job-seeking and thumb-twiddling that the book describes. Feeling guilty whenever I am not ‘being productive’ – working, whether in paid employment or on my own projects, or looking for a job or writing exhibition proposals – feeling wound tight and unable to let myself enjoy any sense of leisure because there is nothing to demarcate leisure from work anymore. Feeling like I must always be accruing worth, simultaneously feeling worthless. Feeling depressed, despondent.

On the train home from the MCA where I paid for our booking for the zine fair next week I got stuck in a carriage of school boys whose caps read ‘CBHS’ – Canterbury Boys? Croyden Boys? Wherever they were from, one boy had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Canterbury Bulldogs, and recited all of the grand finals they have ever won to the back of his bored teacher’s head. ‘That’s very interesting’, the teacher said, sarcastically, but the boy didn’t gauge the sarcasm, or didn’t care. He was simply too pleased with his Canterbury fandom to give a damn whether anyone else thought it was important. When he’d finished reciting the list of Canterbury’s grand finals, he started on the names of the teams that they had beaten in those grand finals. I tried to admire his propensity for retaining this highly useless information, and hoped to myself that memorising football results was pushing the neo-liberal school curricula out of his brain, and tried to will the kid to pursue a life of specialised interests and pointless facts that cannot be quantified or serve any purpose in a job interview, and not to let himself feel like he’s being screwed into the dirt by the heel of shitty social consensus, but I couldn’t. Actually, the sound of his voice got on my nerves, and I had to try very hard not to turn around and tell him to shut up.

The teacher was about the same age as me, give or take a couple of years, and had that vague 30ish look – confidence, sadness and resignation. ‘At least you have a job’, I thought, dissecting this for its wrong-headedness even as it formed in my mind. ‘Look at you,’ he might just as easily have been thinking, ‘on a train in the middle of the day, no obligations, no responsibilities – all you have to do is successfully defraud Centrelink, which is, frankly, quite easy, then you’ve got all the time in the world on your hands. You don’t know how to use freedom.’

If only it were as easy as that. And I’m not even the kind of person to think you need heaps of money to get by – I’m DIY, man, anarcho-punk and all the rest of it. But even with these handy critiques of work, productivity, capitalism and the rest of it, I’m not immune.

But anyway, back to my original point –non-places. I partially grew up in a non-place, and I’m going to write a zine about it, because Tim just took a lot of really great photos of the area in question, and I want to do a split zine with him. So, I figure if I write this here it might motivate me to get it done by the MCA zine fair on the 22nd of  May.

Fanzines by Teal Triggs, or, Old News

I think I’ve already noted here that I’m rarely, if ever, on the ball. I live in a daydream most of the time, which is alright to the extent that I’m rarely bored with my own company, but it can lead to trouble. Yesterday, for instance, I left a folder containing nearly all of the work (collages and collage materials, zine masters and so on) I have completed over the last two years (while studying a Master of Fine Arts) on a bus, and only realised about two hours ago. Needless to say, I nearly died on the spot, but it’s amazing what panic does for your memory. I went from not even remembering having been on a bus yesterday to plotting that day’s movements and conversations to the minute, thus arriving at the conclusion that the only place I could have left my work was the 11:50 inward bound 440, and that the precious folder, if it was anywhere, would be at the Leichhardt bus depot. Which, fortunately, it was.

It’s not surprising then that back in August when the zine world was discussing the ins and outs of Teal Trigg’s book Fanzines, I had spied the book in the window of a certain yuppie designer book/gift shop on King St, Newtown, and smugly thought to myself that, being in said shop, it would be of little interest to me, and promptly forgot about it. Turns out of course that one of my zines is in it, a fact that the author rather dubiously failed to convey to me.

So, in researching (googling) the book I came across this discussion on We Make zines, which pretty much sums up all of the arguments, for and against. To sum up even more succinctly my own views on the matter I can borrow the words uttered by someone at the recent ANG zine fair in Canberra: Triggs fucked up. She only asked a few people for permission to use their stuff before the book was actually published and she rather tardily informed a few other people of their inclusion in the book after it had already gone to print. But it seems that a lot of people, including me, were not contacted at all. The general consensus seems to be that people don’t necessarily object to having their zines published or reprinted, but that it was pretty bad form of Triggs not to get permission first, and that not doing so has led to the inclusion of a lot of factual errors in the book, which people are understandably upset about (my own zine, By The Time You’re Twenty-Five, is a rather trivial example of one such error: it’s described as a ‘music zine’, but ‘perzine’ would be more accurate. The book is full of lazy little errors like this, but there are quite a lot more serious ones, too). When I emailed Triggs to ask why she hadn’t contacted me, I was fobbed off with some line about ‘not having my details at the time’. She even threw in a story about a neglectful assistant who was responsible for contacting me but didn’t, to which I say: bollocks. My address is in the zine, and Triggs even linked to the Take Care site on her blog, so she obviously had some inkling of who I am and how my details might be summoned out of the internet ether. It’s a shame, because as others have also pointed out, and even though my initial reaction at seeing a coffee table book about zines was to scoff, on finally receiving my free ‘contributors’ copy I actually do think it’s an attractive book. Of course, it had the potential to be so much better, if only Triggs had gone about it properly. But if you can ignore the more or less trite and occasionally plain incorrect essays, and the clumsy system of categorisation Triggs employs, apparently for the sake of creating seamless chapters (in which the Zine World blog is described as an e-zine, and nearly all post ’90s zines are lumped in with the ‘crafting’ phenomenon, a ‘phenomenon’ I generally feel about as much enthusiasm for as the idea of stabbing myself in the eye with a crochet hook) it does feature a lot of zines (or zine covers at least) from the ’70s in particular that I was very excited to see…

(The above was written last November, before my friend Ned passed away and things – like the goings on of the zines community – which now tend to strike me as infinitely insignificant, seemed rather more important. But I am aware that my current lack of interest in things that other people seem to care about is a consequence of grief, so I thought I would go ahead and publish this, primarily to draw your attention to the recent Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Zine Podcast in which various zine luminaries discuss the various problems they have with the book, problems I basically concur with but haven’t had the energy to voice, and am therefore thankful that they, and others, have. There is also the anonymously edited fanzinesbytealtriggs.weebly.com, which heroically aims to document all of the errors that appear in the book and to give proper credit where it is due, something which Triggs and her publisher have so far refused to do. It also includes all the contact details for Triggs and said publisher, whom you can write to and request a free copy of the book if your zine appears in it. A complete list of the zines is on the site.)

Just step s’ways?

I was reluctant to post this, thinking that it might make me look like a giant stick in the mud (a tree in the mud?). Then I remembered that I probably already am one, so it doesn’t really matter. The day after I wrote this I had a discussion with my friend Anwyn about similar concerns, and I think that sort of convinced me that it is worth throwing this down to see what, if anything, comes of it. First off, here’s a list of the things that inspired all these thoughts:

1. A comment on this blog from a person who asked if I’d be able to suggest writers for a new online magazine, which they described as ‘the love child of Frankie and Vice’. My reaction to this was, ‘how have I given this person the impression that I would be at all interested (and not completely appalled) by Vice and Frankie magazines? Are my politics so invisible, so lacking? Or is this person completely oblivious?’

2. A bit of discussion on Ciara Xyerra’s blog regarding changes in the zine world in general, sparked in part by the increasing propensity for folks to send PDFs for distro consideration. I have noticed this since we started the distro. The only thing that really bothers me about it is that we have to send an email requesting a hard copy, and thus waste time that we wouldn’t have had to, had the person actually read our submission guidelines. While this is irksome it’s not a serious indication of the impending end of all things good. What’s more worrying, for me, is this:

3) The enormous number of highly polished, professionally printed, full colour magazines (many with ISSNs or ISBNs) that are sent to Take Care for distro consideration. I’m not even sure how to describe these; they’re so outside my experience and the small pockets of the world that I try to inhabit. I suppose they’re like compilations of graphic designer’s CVs, with advertorial content and the added fetishism of being ‘limited edition’. This leads me to:

4)Further discussion on Ciara’s blog about the number of newbies in the zine scene who make zines with an apparently wilful disregard for what a zine actually is, or to their history. And finally:

5) The zine making day at Mag Nation in Sydney.

I will now wade into the murky waters of my own befuddlement to deliver what is probably not an incisive critique, but hopefully still a useful contribution to a discussion of these things, were that to happen.

Okee Dokee! First, as I just used the phrase ‘complete disregard for what a zine actually is’, I should clarify my position on this, and give a little context. It’s difficult, because zines can be many things to as many people who make them, and have almost as many historical antecedents. To name but a few: Sci Fi fanzines, artist books, punk and riot grrrl zines, political pamphlets, underground comics, chapbooks and on and on. So when I say ‘zine’ I’m really talking about the specific type of zine that I make, read and, lately, distribute through Take Care. I think most people, to some extent, will agree with what this is and how it evolved. What I call a zine – the photocopied, cut ‘n’ pasted thing with typed and handwritten stories that are generally about everyday life – is a direct descendant of 90s riot grrrl and, before that, hardcore/diy punk zines which originated in the States, and perhaps the zines of 70s UK punk. The sort of distro that I run is also a throwback to the various models of distribution that were undertaken by diy/indie record labels of the punk and post punk eras, and by those who adopted their ethos; and later distros like Pander in the States. So we see (if you squint a little) there’s a sort of holy triangle between zines, music and a hazy concept I’ve just called ‘diy’ which is a sort of code word that is meant to encompass some degree of radical, possibly anti-capitalist, critique, but is just as often a way to avoid such a critique. I suspect that my generation is perhaps the last (born late 70s, early 80s, give or take) for whom these three things, when we discovered them, were inextricably bound up. The idea was that we could build a culture that could somehow circumvent the logic of capitalist modes of production, distribution and exchange, in favour of something more human, that we had more control over, with the aim of building communities that would prove that we’re capable of organising our lives without a state or government. I suspect that encountering these sub-cultural forms together is not something that happens so much anymore, if at all.

One of the things I hear thrown around about this nebulous idea of diy and of zines is that they’re inherently political. Like I said, I think ‘diy’ is something that a lot of people hide behind as a substitute for having clear politics. ‘It’s diy man!’ can be pulled out to demonstrate the allegedly latent politics of anything from making zines to knitting tea cosies to selling cupcakes. I’ve always thought this was an immensely lazy oversimplification, but it’s only recently, dunderhead that I am, that I’ve realised what the consequences of this oversimplification might be. The argument that people site when they make this claim about zines, and I think this is true, and sort of crucial, is that zines’ potential for politics lies not only in their contents but in the manner (or ‘spirit’, if that word doesn’t seem too trite) in which they are made and exchanged. So a zine is political, supposedly, because when you ‘do it yourself’ you form a space outside capitalist modes of production, which is inherently subversive. As Anna Poletti rightly points out in her thesis-cum-book Intimate Ephemera, at best, zines (can) exist somewhere in the gift economy, where they’re not quite at ease in the world of commodified ‘things’. But that’s only potential. It’s not inherent, or intrinsic, or guaranteed, in any way. That little patch in the gift economy is an anomaly, and as such I think it has to be continually fought for if we’re to make any claims for the politics of zines, or ‘diy’ as a broader concept. That’s to say nothing about the extent to which capital is capable of, and has, and will continue to, encroach on those areas that we consider to be ‘ours’ and outside its logic. This may be an oversimplification itself, but I think it’s good to remember that we are within the culture and logic of capitalism to such an extent that to suggest that there is any way of completely escaping it would be naive. But I don’t think that means we should throw up our hands and embrace its logic as wholeheartedly as we desire to reject it, conceding that resistance is futile. This is where the beauty of zines can lie. They allow us to build our own ephemeral spaces (or ‘annexes’ as Anna P describes them) in which we may be able  to write, think and learn in ways that are, as Ciara mentions, dialectical. But again, that’s entirely predicated on context, on how and why we make zines, and, I repeat, not in any way intrinsic to their form.

A little while ago I was with some friends in Melbourne who were talking about how strange it is that Banksy’s graffiti is so collectable among Hollywood millionaires. My ever wise friend Anwyn responded that it’s actually not strange at all: when your work has no politics it can be appropriated by anyone. Graffiti is a useful analogy when thinking about zines. For years I’ve been annoyed by righteous claims of graffiti somehow being the most cutting edge, political art. But, like zines, it only has potential, which is entirely dependent not only on its content but its context. And here, as with zines, I am not just talking about a literal, sloganeering politics, but rather the form an artwork (for want of a better word) takes, the mood it captures, the thoughts it inspires, and, most importantly, its historical context. So when graffiti is relegated to certain, prescribed areas (like Sydney’s May Lane), or when it is shown in galleries (as with Banksy), it’s much harder to argue that it retains an inherent politics. It might still be good art, it might be challenging and inspiring and so on. But more often than not it becomes purely decorative, all about surface, and far more boring, I think, than any ‘conventional’ art that appears in a gallery, because it often doesn’t even pretend to deal with ideas. It becomes, to use the prevailing catchphrase of people who are apparently bereft of principles and are involved in making the kinds of art that I’m talking about, reduced to the purely ‘creative’.

The idea of ‘the creative’ is a symptom of a wider cultural malaise related to late capitalism, where every inch of our lives is colonised and measured in terms of productivity. There are many people who have far more learned and articulate things to say about this than I, but I guess you could sum it up as the tendency for ‘work’ to subsume our whole identity, where in every moment of our lives we are meant to be promoting ourselves in terms of what we have to offer, or have ‘achieved’. Networking replaces friendship, so ‘friends’ become ‘contacts’ and vice versa. Self marketing and promotion increasingly becomes a substitute for what was once ‘leisure time’. This is related to the general phenomena in late (or globalised, post-Fordist, whatever you want to call it) capitalism of ‘precarity’, a neologism that describes the increasingly precarious nature of work: the casualisation of labour, the disappearance of the concept of a ‘job for life’, the expectation that we’re all meant to be ‘flexible’ and ready to hop to it at every moment of our lives, for work that offers no security, satisfaction or even reasonable remuneration. In other words, it’s the absorption of everything we do into the logic of capitalist productivity: our art, our friendships, our ideas, our private thoughts and desires; our inner lives, the places that are supposed to be untouchable.

So, what has all this got to do with zines? You have to return to what I suggested earlier about the generation who were born after people my age (and it’s a weird thing to realise that the people who are younger than you are actually a separate generation). They were born and brought up in a world in which capitalism is more consolidated than ever, and in which that particularly nasty and virulent strain of capitalism – neo-liberalism – was at its nadir. They didn’t have the spaces that I and my contemporaries had in which to encounter radically oriented sub-cultures. And it shows. Now, this is not anyone’s fault (except in the sense that it’s sort of everyone’s fault). Like I mentioned, all these thoughts were sparked to some extent by Take Care receiving an increasing number of really, and I’m sorry to be mean, but really naff ‘zines’ that had obviously been made by graphic designers to bolster their career portfolios, and sent to us without any regard whatsoever to the other zines that we stock, or our stated interests. Now, maybe that’s our fault for not being clear enough about our aims for the distro, in the same manner that it’s due to my own flaky, non-committal principles that led to someone approaching me about starting a Vice/Frankie style magazine. I acknowledge that’s a part of it. But it’s too great a phenomenon for that to explain it all.

And this brings me to what could probably be interpreted as a controversial point, and which I’m pretty loath to write. Today (I write this on the 6^th of March) there’s going to be a zine making day at the recently opened Mag Nation on King St in Newtown. Mag Nation is a chain magazine store that has 6 shops along the east coast of Australia and in New Zealand. While I admire the enormous amount of work that the organisers of this event have done in pushing the Sydney (and Newcastle) zine scenes and introducing zines to a great number of people, for me, having a zine making day in a commercial magazine shop is like having a coffee appreciation day at Starbucks. Or a zine making day at Starbucks, for that matter.

But as I’ve said, when I first got into zines there were many shops in Sydney that sold them on consignment. They were the sorts of places – record stores, mostly – that simply don’t exist in Sydney anymore. Gentrification, the advent of chain stores and changes in the way music is distributed, among many other things, has completely changed the world that I first encountered zines in. So, since that’s the case, and there’s no public space that has not been colonised by capital, no where left for us to meet and chance upon sub-cultural forms, should we use spaces like Mag Nation if the opportunity arises? My gut reaction says no. And when I think about it, I still think the answer’s no. Hopefully I’ve made my reasons for thinking this clear in what I’ve just written. I’m not entirely sure what the solution is.

To be honest, despite the length of this post, I’m not actually riled up about this at all, I’m just curious about what it means for the zine scene as I know it. Maybe I’m just making a big deal over nothing. There have always been a multitude of different ways of making and thinking about zines, and all this might just be the result of my happening across a part of the zine cosmos that I’m not too fond of. Also, debates about ‘upstarts’ and newbies in the zine scene have been around for as long as zines themselves. A few years ago some folks made a comp zine that they distributed in McDonalds stores in Melbourne with the very aim of reaching people who might not otherwise encounter zines (a page from one of my old zines was included in one issue), and that never bothered me (though, thinking about it now, it seems patronising. Was the assumption that people who eat at McDonalds aren’t cool enough to know what a zine is?). Any number of galleries host zine events, which I happily participate in. Kinokuniya, another commercial chain store that I would never associate with zines, was having zine fairs a few years ago, which failed to rip a hole in the cosmos, or even really garner my interest. Shortly after my first encounter with zines the infamous The New Pollution came out, followed by a flurry of complaints that it had led to the creation of a whole lot of crap zines and generally signalled the coming day of judgement. But how many of those makers of crap zines went on to make good zines? Don’t people need a place to get started, practice, get better, do their own thing, not give a toss about what people think? Certainly. I’m not the boss, I don’t want to be. But I don’t know if this new trend in zines fits in to this ‘natural’ pattern of new generations discovering the medium, or if it is indeed an indication of how depoliticised and immersed in the logic of capitalism those new generations are.

Finally, you might be thinking, why do zines, or paintings, or knitting or cupcakes or any of the things I love that make it easier for me to live in this world have to express my, or anyone’s, political convictions? Why can’t I just enjoy these things without you coming on all heavy? What next, the Marxist critique of sunshine? Of kittens? Of cute little fluffy ducks? Stop enjoying organic peppermint tea because the world’s about to end? No, that’s not what I’m saying. I like crafts, silly zines, nonsense stories, comics about cats, cute animals, songs about riding colourful bicycles and highly decorated cupcakes as much as the next person. And I would be as bereft as the next person if those things didn’t exist, or weren’t a part of the zine scene. All I’m saying is there has to be some balance. Cupcakes are great, but you can’t live on them. You need roughage, or you’d never have evolved to the point where you could invent cupcakes (I am not suggesting that you, reader, invented cupcakes). Likewise, you need mental roughage. You need to be able to think and talk about hard, chewy, tasty questions, even if you don’t really know the answers, and I’m just worried that the space where that can happen is getting smaller and smaller. Perhaps what I’m talking about here doesn’t necessarily have to be called politics. Maybe it’s convictions, principles. In my experience the people who’ve held onto their principles with the most determination are the ones who end up ‘achieving’ the most anyway, not the people who spend every second of their lives ‘networking’ to get their names noticed. As one of my favourite mad singers once noted, you can just step s’ways from that grubby place…Yeah! So shut up, Emma!

As you probably guessed from the last paragraph, I’m getting hungry. Just shy of 3000 words! Holy sandwiches! Ok, I’m going now.

As promised

I’m sick and good for nothing. Here are those zines I mentioned. They were all purchased from Vampire Sushi, a small but quality UK-based zine distro that I highly recommend. It’s not often I get to read zines from the UK. I got:

not one,

not two,

but two and a half issues of Tukru’s excellent personal zine, Your Pretty Face is Going Straight to Hell. She continuously apologises for being ‘mopey’, but hell, what are zines good for if not indulging a bit of mopeyness? Anyway, while Tukru’s zine are very personal, in an unedited diary type of way, they’re never overwrought or melodramatic. The angst is all positioned in the everyday things – work, family, ‘relationships’ – that tend to grind at us in similar ways. Which is why they’re so good, even when the things she describes are private and heartbreaking. It occurs to me that finding relief in other people’s misery is pretty shit, really, but like I say, I’m sick and can’t make it sound un-shit at the moment.

Also, Tukru hand colours her covers, which is excellent.

Fanzine Ynfyntyn consists for the most part of a fairly long and amusing story about ‘Mr C’, one of the author’s school English teachers. I have to admit that I felt a bit sorry for Mr C, as bonkers as he clearly was.

A Music Paper contains little comics that lampoon ‘indie’ music lovers, from the experience of being an ‘indie’ music lover. On the whole, I thought that this comic spoke much truth about the pretentiousness that sometimes accompanies an overzealous attachment and commitment to discovering and uncovering new music. Though the division between the ‘music loving’ men and the ‘radio listening’ women annoyed me a little. It’s probably just part of the joke stereotyping, but some jokes wear thin (I say, flipping the fifth record in a row to side B, checking that I’m still a woman. When people who don’t know us very well come to mine and my boyfriend’s house, they generally assume that all the records belong to him. Is it just competitiveness, petulance,  that makes me want to correct them? I think not).

Rum Lad is written and drawn by Steve Larder, and an excellent draw-er he is. I mean, he’s one of those people who can actually draw a picture of someone and make it look like a picture of them, not just some random, generic person. I think that Vampire Sushi described this as a ‘graphic zine’, in the sense of a graphic novel, which is a good way to put it. If you can imagine the layout of, say, a Harvey Pekar comic – not necessarily panels, just a mix of text and drawings – that’s Rum Lad. It contains an interview with Marv of Gadgie, a zine from Steve’s hometown in Lincolnshire, an account of the Mulheim zine fair, and a particularly great, short day-in-the-life type comic to finish. This zine’s so well done, and has already accompanied me on numerous train/bus trips (note dog-eared cover).

Ok. That’s enough advertising for zines you can get from Vampire Sushi. What about that notable Sydney based zine distro, Take Care? Well, I just uploaded a bunch of new stuff to the site. I haven’t done all of the descriptions yet, but they’re all worth checking out. Here are a few of my recent favourites.

Culture Slut‘s made by Amber in Montreal, and this full colour issue has just been added to the Take Care site. I’m not normally much of a fan of colour photocopying. It tends to highlight imperfections – like bad fitting room lighting – rather than obliterate them in the pleasing, graphic manner of a black and white copy. But this really works. It reminds me a little of probably the only thing I can stand about Sonic Youth these days – their album artwork (Amber mentions being a fan of SY in another of her zines, if you’re wondering where the hell that reference came from). Culture Slut #18 is a collection of polaroids, which of course have that special hazy, candy cane glow, like the cover of Sister or Daydream Nation. Yes, daydream: that’s the right word to describe this zine. It’s like participating in someone elses day-dream, colourful but wistful, and as if it happened another world away.

Actually, this has been on the site for a while, but it’s still very much worth mentioning. The latest issue of Doris is the final in the famed ‘encyclopeadia’ series of the zine, where Cindy would dedicate each issue to a few letters of the alphabet. As she says in this issue, she would mostly just write whatever she wanted and then make up an letter-appropriate heading later. So like I say, this is the final – uvwxyz – issue in the encyclopeadia, and I’m curious to see where Cindy will head next with her writing. Cindy also runs a distro – called riot grrr – which I will order from as soon as I have some money to spare, because it looks like she has some awesome stuff.

Perhaps it’s only because it features the down pipe on the factory next door to the one that, until very recently, my dad lived in, and because it’s made by Tim, whose photos get progressively better with each roll he takes, but I love this zine.

When Ivana first stocked her zines at Black Rose Lou very excitedly told everyone about this new awesome zine maker in town. Feels Like Friday is still awesome, and we’re very pleased to have the latest two issues for Take Care. Issue 12 is about politics and feminism, full of breathless urgency to be a part of the world and to make a world worth living in.

Oh, I’m so ill.

Before I go, here’s one last zine that you can’t get from Take Care.  Sunil wrote this before leaving Sydney indefinitely. You might be able to pick up a copy from Black Rose if you’re in Sydney, if not, contact me and I’ll try to get you one. This zine is a sort of  farewell and fuck off to a place you can only hate so much because it was/is actually important to you. And it sort of responds to some of the things Anwyn, Lou and I wrote in Walk so Differently, so it’s special to me for that reason.

Now, off to blow my nose, profusely.

TINA 09 and other stuff

So, TINA, obligatory update: car park = good. Ratio of zines to other stuff = bad. solution = segregate zines fair from other stuff fair? I don’t know, maybe other folks’ experience was different, but this year was quite disappointing for me. Hardly any sales and even less trades. What did other people think? I did manage to meet a few letter writers and the zines I did get were great, so I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it, but the energy I’ve witnessed & experienced in other years seemed to be missing. I don’t think that this is the organiser’s fault – perhaps just a reflection of how many people are making zines?

Well, I haven’t updated this blog in ages, so here are a couple of new things I’ve done, which you can order directly from here, or from Sticky in Melbourne.

A choose your own adventure zine by Lou, Anwyn & me, based on our experiences of living and growing up in Sydney. Read from cover to cover at your own peril (though, in truth, you’re just as likely to get confused if you follow the choose your own adventure structure). This one’s also available from Format in Adelaide.

Another collage zine by me, similar to the Maps one I did a few months back, if anyone read that. This one is an entirely two colour risographed thing, complete with dodgy colour separation and covers folded slightly too small for the inner pages. Oh well, it was my first encounter with a riso. With many, many thanks to Jess and Leigh of the Rizzeria collective for their time, help and patience. Check in the side bar for prices and what have you.

New zines for Digging show

This is the zine for the Digging exhibition (see previous post), to be given away for free. As you can see, the cover comes in three eyecatching colours. If you’d like a copy, you must come to the exhibition.

It accompanies another zine, this one:

which will also be available at the show if  I get a chance to make more copies of it.

Afterwards both these zines should be available to buy/trade from this site.

More zine recommendations

Here are some amazing zines I received from the amazing Lucy Cheung a while ago but have been too lazy and stupid to post.

They’re beautifully crafted and the drawings are amazing (mmm, I seem to be having an adjective crisis today. But they are amazing!), invoking the pagan/ancient/otherworldly weird images she collects on her blog.

The one above is a miniaturised reproduction of a sketchbook full of what look like shy, incomplete monsters or creatures from another world. The world of Lucy’s head, I suppose. Gush. Anyway, like I said, I got these quite a while ago and don’t know if they’re still available, but you should definitely check out Lucy’s blog(s).

It’s been a good week for zine mail. Fergus has completed another Fergus and as usual it’s alphabetisedly great, and available for a small ritual offering: P O Box 132, Bentley WA 6982, Australia.

I must also tell you about this new (well, new to me, but I’m a bit slow) weekly zine from the creator of D90 (see elsewhere on this blog for a picture of that fine zine).  According to the author, dilettantes & heartless manipulators is an “anti-review”: “I listen to music & write about whatever else is going through my head. Wanky, huh?”.  To obtain copies you may send one 55c (Australian) stamp per however many issues you wish to receive to: Spurzine, P O Box 41, Flinders Lane P O, Melbourne, VIC 8009, Australia. (Sydney folk, there were a few copies at Black Rose last time I looked).

And I’d just like to mention that both the author of this zine and myself have touched Michael Gira (consensually, that is, and not at the same time).

Ziney goodness

I’ve read lots of good zines lately. So, while I listen to the Raincoats through the tiny, tinny speakers of my new portable computer (I feel just like Penny in Inspector Gadget! I’m from the future!) let me show you some of them. I don’t want to write too much, so just believe me when I say that they’re all great and you should write to their creators immediately to obtain copies.

Fergus #15, P O Box 132, Bentley WA 6982. FREE – but send a stamp or something.

Fergus’ alphabetised zine mostly concerns her home suburb of East Victoria Park in Perth. It’s small but wordy and features at least one swear word or reference to teenage recalcitrance per page, which I approve of.

Ampersand after Ampersand, tiny paper hearts

Tiny Paper Hearts are zine making machines and this one by Amanda is very pretty, contains more home town musings and references Curly Wurlys on the first page, which I approve of.

Your Pretty Face is Going Straight to Hell #2, available from Paper Trail Distro

I’ve read three issues of this zine now, but this is still my favourite, about Tukru’s extended job and house search. Also features Moomins, which, you guessed it, I approve of.

D90 #2, email spurzine at gmail dot com for address

Excellent. I got this today, along with issue one. This zine is about mix tapes and has a fluorescent pink cover featuring a photocopy of a tape, which fulfils all of the criteria for an excellent zine, in my opinion. It’s a great read as well.

So, thanks everyone who’s traded zines and stuff with me over the last few weeks. My letter box has been very busy. Please keep sending me stuff and make my walk up the hill to Enmore Rd something other than an excuse to buy coffee.

Fairytales in the Supermarket

That’s the name of my new zine, which is a bit different from my other zines. My usual approach to zine making is to sort of channel whatever I’ve been up to at the time into barely legible typewritten/collaged madness (but really! my zines are good and you should buy them), but this one actually has a point and that point is to bitch about the assorted shitty jobs that I’ve had. I stole the idea from here, with apologies. It was also inspired by Fergus’ alphabetical zines, which I will write about later, when I figure out what I’ve done with the address and so on. As usual you can read further details about Fairytales in the Supermarket somewhere over on the right hand side there. Ta-ra!

EDIT – In case you weren’t entirely convinced that it’s worth getting a copy of this zine, here’s what a reviewer for the Sticky Institute’s Sporadic Monthly Newsletter had to say about it:

Initially I was hesitant about the quality of this zine, given that it has a light pink cover and after reading Vintageland, I was ready to do away with all my pink-coloured possessions. But I was horribly wrong. This zine is amazing. Written after the author has received funding for her masters and thus, does not have to work anymore, she sets about reflecting on her decade spent in the retail industry, alphabetical style. Type written, it goes through the alphabet, from such topics as Annoying Friends, Late For Work and Why Work In A Shop Then, You Ninny? It’s a hilariously honest and at times, sort of depressing reflection on what it is like to work at Woolworths, a sock shop and a card store. Scattered throughout the zine are cut out pictures from catalogues, some with funny captions by the author, but it’s the tone of the writing that makes this zine amazing. For anyone who has any experience working in the retail industry, you have to read this zine.

Mmm. I hadn’t thought that people would be put off by the pink over. Are you? The whole cut up vintage advertisement thing was meant to be a piss take, but I suppose that’s not apparent until you open the cover. That’s why you have to open the cover! And to do that you must write to me and get a copy of the zine! If you still aren’t convinced I might post some of it up here for you to read, but not all of it, because then you’ll just read it here and won’t send me stuff in return for it. AND I WANT YOU TO SEND ME STUFF, DAMMIT. Oh, and incidentally, if you’re concerned about actually having to send money to get a copy of this thing, or any of my other zines, do not despair. I will happily, in fact preferably, trade it for other things, whether zines or something else. I understand that’s there’s been a bit of concern lately regarding the overpricing of zines, so, don’t whinge to me about it, okay? I’ve got it sorted. Look at the How To Order section for more information.