When you live in the creative world, it’s hard to imagine a life without zines. Since becoming involved with the music scene when I was thirteen, I’ve encountered them everywhere. Whether it’s a poetry zine at a festival or a political zine at a punk show, zines are integral to the creative ecosystem. They can really be anything you want:  One of my best friends, Lily Sekeres (or @www.moss.edu on socials) creates beautiful art zines with song lyrics and illustrations. As long as you have a “yearning to do something creative” there is a zine to be fabricated, says Elise Anderson, who will lead a zine-making workshop at The Porch on July 13. where she’ll cover everything you need to know about zine creation and distribution. 

A bit of history: The modern-day zine movement can be traced back to 1976 with a punk fanzine called Sniffin’ Glue… and Other Rock n’ Roll Habits which featured commentary on bands like The Ramones and Blue Oyster Cult and featured other various punk rock-related reviews. This zine came into being in the early days of the punk movement, further urging forward a counter-culture which thrived on a do-it-yourself mindset. This first zine was handmade, stapled together and scrawled with black marker. Sniffin’ Glue and the zines later inspired by it were sold at gigs and record stores, exchanged by hand among punks in the scene. 

After the initial focus on music, the zine world expanded into politics, with groups making their manifestos in zine form. Zines have remained mostly true to the DIY model, with many artists and art-lovers handmaking and distributing their zines themselves. After Sniffin’ Glue, zines took off, expanding into areas other than the punk counterculture and fanzines with an explosion of art zines, an alternative to traditional art books. Stephen Duncombe asserts in Notes from the Under-ground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture that zines are “non-commercial, non-professional, small-circulation magazines which their creators produce, publish, and distribute by themselves.” 

In short, the zine umbrella contains multitudes, as a zine really can be whatever you want it to be. The persistence of the analog, grassroots nature of zine-making is really a wonder in a world which continues to lean more towards internet distribution, where many artists' voices are lost in the fray of a constant stream of information. I like to think of zines as a model for what the art world should look like: information exchanged by hand among friends, with collaborative efforts made by artists independent of corporate influence. 

In advance of her class at The Porch, Elise Anderson was kind enough to answer my questions about zines and her love of the form: 

What is your relationship to zine making, and what got you started doing it?

I started making zines in my late teens/early twenties and never stopped. It's become one of my favorite ways to process and engage with ideas, experiences, and other people around me. The first zine I made was a collaborative project with my bandmate and partner at the time, who was an artist, screenprinter, and drummer. I was feeling stuck post-undergrad, working at the mall and frustrated with everything, and he suggested we make a zine. I don't think I realized it at the time, but in hindsight, I think a deeper part of me was yearning to do something creative, but I felt lost as to where or how to even begin to scratch that itch. Humans need to make things. We ended up creating a little zine about our neighborhood and selling it to our friends. I would visit locations and write short poems about what I found; he would illustrate the poems, lay out the pages, and screenprint the zines at his shop. I was super-proud of the final project, but even more satisfied with the process itself. Using my hands to create something real, concrete and shareable made me feel connected to my city and community in a way I didn't know was possible before. That sense of connection---which comes through the work of paying attention to a particular scene/aspect of life and responding to or engaging with it---is the reason I still do this, even decades later. 

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I was super-proud of [my first zine], but even more satisfied with the process itself. Using my hands to create something real, concrete and shareable made me feel connected to my city and community in a way I didn't know was possible before.

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Are there tidbits of zine history you find interesting that you would like to share?

There are a TON of fascinating moments and trailblazers in zine history, and many arguments about when and where zines really started. (Some timelines go back to Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, for example. Some begin with Kathleen Hanna's "Riot Grrrl" era and skip everything that came before...) I like to go through a loose timeline in the beginning of my Zinemaking 101 workshop and discuss early moments of zine-making history with students, with a focus on these questions: What bold, creative moves paved the way for zine-makers today? Why were these acts radical? Why might one example of an early zine be included in most histories of the form, while another example is skipped over? There have been multiple waves of zine-making popularity over the years that align with different political and cultural movements as well. I find it most interesting to consider what makes a zine a zine, then to use that as a lens to consider how the features and practitioners of the form have evolved over the years. 

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What kind of zines are your favorite?

I'm a sucker for wildly creative ideas. I love zines where the visuals are cohesive and resonant with the topic. I also like to be surprised. It's such a flexible form, so I'm always looking for ways to have more fun with it or do something new. My favorite part of teaching zine workshops is hearing students' ideas for their own zines during the brainstorming session. Once, a student cut out a series of bird heads/beaks from a birding catalogue, then hand-illustrated different bodies to complete each bird, creating a narrative that was funny, unpredictable, and quite beautiful. Another student dreamed up a "bodies" zine that matched fashion tips with body shape --- on pages shaped like whatever body type was being celebrated. I love these ideas, and I never would have thought of either one. Any time a person feels pure freedom to express themselves combined with the will to create a form for that expression, magic happens. I've seen some truly brilliant work spring up out of seemingly nowhere. 

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Do you have any local zines running right now to recommend, and where can we find them?

Honestly, the public library's zine, Panel Discussion, is wonderful. And free. And produced regularly. Highly recommend picking one up at any library branch. The guys at local print shop Risology Club always make really cool stuff as well, and they're wonderful at helping zine-makers with layout and printing. They offer small, intro-level and advanced printmaking classes, too!

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What tips do you have for people who may want to start their own zines? 

DO IT. Don't overthink it! Just see what comes out when you let yourself play. You have to let your ideas escape your head before you judge them. 

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Sources:

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Creasap, Kimberly. “Zine-Making as Feminist Pedagogy.” Feminist Teacher, vol. 24, no. 3, 2014, p. 155, https://doi.org/10.5406/femteacher.24.3.0155.

Duncombe, Stephen. Notes from the Under- Ground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture. Microcosm Publishing, Dec. 2017.

Thomas, Susan E. “Value and Validity of Art Zines as an Art Form.” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, vol. 28, no. 2, Oct. 2009, pp. 27–38, https://doi.org/10.1086/adx.28.2.27949520.

Worley, Matthew. “Punk, Politics and British (Fan)Zines, 1976-84: “While the World Was Dying, Did You Wonder Why?”” History Workshop Journal, vol. 79, no. 1, 7 Mar. 2015, pp. 76–106, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbu043.

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