COP3 - edited plan

Due to current methods of production, distribution and social practices, do fanzines have a place in today's society?

Introduction – tell them exactly what it is you’re doing/investigating

Content

Chapter One – context, what is a zine, production, distribution

Content

WHAT IS A ZINE

“A novel form of communication and creation that burst with an angry idealism. A medium that spoke for a marginal, yet vibrant culture, that along with others might invest the tired script of progressive politics with meaning and excitement for new generation.” – Stephen Duncombe

- “Zines are one of the liveliest forms of self expression for over 70 years” Teal Triggs

- “Zines are quirky, individualized booklets filled with diatribes, re-workings of pop culture iconography, and all variety of personal political narratives” Alison Pipemeier

- “They are scruffy, homemade little pamphlets. Little publications filled with rantings of high weirdness and exploding with chaotic design.” Stephen Duncombe

- They are self-produced

- Anti corporate

- Production, philosophy and aesthetic are anti-professional

- Subject matter is varied as passions of their creators

- Range across music, comics, lifestyle, typography, animals rights, politics, alternative lifestyles, clip art, thrift shopping, beer drinking

- Media created by consumers rather than by the corporate culture industries

CONTEXT

- Been liveliest form of self expression for over 70 years – Teal Triggs

*Graphic Language of punk 1975 – 83*

- Difficult to identify specific moment it began

- Started with depression and drought of 76 and ended with death of Sid vicious in 79 - Hebdige, Subculture, p.g25

- punk not only about music but about class politics

- Also had impact on fashion, fine art, film, comics, novels and fanzines
- Mark Perry – own brand of ‘punk journalism’

- Actively encourage people to participating in having a go themselves

- Zines considered by fans as only reliable way of disseminating information about the music and the movement itself – Teal Triggs

- “You didn’t know where to look in case you were being ‘sold out’. You could actually trust that they were going the whole way. It gave you The Word and put what the press said (which you always did suspect) in a rigid perspective” – Dave Mcullough, Underground, Overground, Wandering Free p.g. 34

- Driven by political agendas, including class politics and critiques of mainstream political ideologies

- Also reflected fact punk had emerged from a position of knowingness about artistic practice and history

- A graphic language of resistance

- Freed from limits and constraints of dominant culture, experiment with new ways of seeing and being

- “Offer fans a free space for developing ideas and practices and visual space unencumbered by forma design rules and visual expectations” Duncombe, Cultural Resistance Reader, p.g 5

- Unique visual identity emerged with own set of graphic rules and DIY approach, neatly reinforcing punks new found political voice

PRODUCTION

- The production of zines - irregular print runs, limited editions, hard to estimate

- Most remain hidden, flying beneath radar of mainstream publishing and conventions

- Self produced - production, philosophy and aesthetic are anti-professional

- Small press publications

- Methods of production allow for freedom

- Break conventional design rules or aesthetics

- Relationship formed between producer and reader, readers may also be producers

- Zines are virtual spaces where producers and readers unite in communities of interest or dissent e.g. in football, each club has a separate fanzine title, but have a collective voice that can have a real impact on club decisions

- Fanzines designed to be ephemeral, produced quickly, cheaply, using copy paper, lo fi production and printing processes, irregular publication and limited print runs

- Leads Duncombe to state that the form is operating ‘against the fetishistic archiving and exhibiting of the high art world and for the for-profit spirit of the commercial world’ (Notes From Underground p.g 127)

BUT... are zines becoming mainstream/lost authenticity?

- DIY becoming mainstream

- Question of high-end zines

- 1997, individuals within DIY community accused of selling out by trading DIY ethos for commercial gain

- 80s, 90s, new genres piquing interest of mainstream

- Co-option by mainstream culture industry very commonplace

- Process of moving away from ‘below critical radar’ into mainstream publishing houses - how this was criticised and why

- Using zines as a testing ground before entering professional careers

e.g. Jon Savage = Bam Balam and London’s Outrage to weekly music press to The Face and then national press and television

Danny Baker = Sniffin’ Glue to NME and BBC Radio

- Fanzines and their producers became absorbed into consumer culture and mainstream

- Questions around selling out

- Producers have become their own makers of cultural meaning

- Construction of the very pop culture that they critique

- Mainstream publishing would ‘endanger the alternative, anti establishment viewpoint that makes zines unique. Are these the last days of Pompeii for the zine world?’ - Futrelle, Been there, zine that

HOWEVER...

- Still maintain enthusiasm for and commitment to fanzine form as way of expressing individual concerns, rants on politics, loves and hates, desires, disappointments

- Authentic resides in authorial voice where personal is political and not beholden to global corporation (Fanzines, Teal Triggs)

- Don’t conform, define and manufacture own identity represented through writing and DIY image making

- Fanzine editors have simply become producers or makers, which introduces way of thinking about the producer as a ‘popular author’ and the fanzine as an ‘autobio/graphical’ objects - Jenkins, Mcpherson and Shattuc, Hop on Pop p.g. 161-62

- DIY nature of production leads to enhanced value in how they contribute to and reflect a broader everyday cultural experience

- Wertham, 1972 study, fanzines are a ‘novel form of communication’, have a unique place in history of communication, design, journalism, publishing and popular culture

- Wertham observes fanzines ‘exist as human voices outside of all mass manipulation’

DISTRIBUTION

- Overview of distribution, by hand, via independent music, bookstores, fairs

- Gift culture

- Primary distribution versus online distribution (distros)

- Distribution within subcultures and genres (Punk, Riot Grrrl)

e.g. Punk 1975 - 83, zines only reliable way of disseminating information, David Mcullough (1979) distribution of zines against the mass media

- Immediacy of message, truth of message, reinforced by methods and processes

- Individualistic medium with the primary function of communication - define a community (chapter 3 of Duncombe’s text)

CASE STUDY 1 - DORIS #4 (1994)

- Creation of community through distribution

- Immediacy of person-to-person distribution

- Offering zines to strangers - how this counters cultural messages

- How this exchange is different from financial exchange, capitalist distribution

- For-profit entities

CASE STUDY 2 - Girl Zines - Making Media, Doing Feminism p.g. 78

- Intimate medium

- Small print runs, particular aesthetic, structure - made for individual

- Process of hand delivering = enhances intimacy and creates meaningful results

- Zine distribution differentiates them from other media is particularly visible in envelopes

BUT... change in distribution

- Social networking now part of new media landscape

- Concept of information economy is commonplace in 21st century

- Gutenberg printing presses sparking literary revolution / online publishing services providing cheaper forms of printing and distribution

- This has changed business models

- Now have ‘print on demand’

- Digital medium is immediate, inexpensive and widely available

- New modes of distribution

- Can now be distributed online, through use of e-zines and blogs which is impacting the culture of zines both on and offline, underground and over ground

- DIY spirit prompted migration of print fanzines onto the web

- Difference between them is in the mode of distribution ‘distributed partially or solely on electronic networks like the Internet’ What’s an e-zine anyway?

- There is an immediacy in technology that allows info to be distributed quickly and efficiently e.g. updating entries, providing feedback

- This creates a different sort of connection between reader and producer as this method of distribution allows for ease and speed of access and receiving feedback - more so than method of sending off for something in the post

HOWEVER... is this the best method of distribution?

- As underground is discovered, paths toward wider distribution and contact are opened up to alternative cultural creators

- Whether for reasons of personal gain or public concern, zine writers and creators use these paths

- While message contained in content of zines is spread farther and wider than ever before, radical participatory cultural message of zines is muted

- In process of popularisation and distribution, real message of zines becomes lost

EXAMPLE in Notes From the Underground, p.g. 166

- Sent “The Curio Manifesto”, prospectus for a publication “part glossy, pat zine ... that will combine the traditional magazine format with the best of the zine world for a nationwide audience”

- “The best of the zine world” has always resided in the form of zines and the context of their distribution

- Even if Curio does contain words and artwork of zinesters, to sell a slick magazine with 50,000 circulation and a “corporate soul to foot our print bill” undermines the entire purpose and significance of zines

Chapter Two – now/culture, research/isms, ologies

Content

Chapter Three - technology

Content

For Technology:

- Advantages in terms of blogging and e-zines, and advantages in terms of what technology has done for print

- Hard to imagine world without Internet - constantly logging on and off etc.

- Virtual communities, new digital relationships

- ‘Concept of information economy is commonplace in twenty first century’

PRINT

- Paradigm shift taking place in mainstream publishing

- Has created cheaper forms of print and distribution

- Reach wider audiences

- Change in business models

- Print on demand

- Can print at the time of ordering

- Economic advantages for small press publishers

- ‘Self publishing website Lulu allows authors to retain direct control of both design and production - prompts comparison with DIY ethos witnessed in early zines’ - Teal Triggs

- Digital medium is immediate, inexpensive and widely available

E-ZINES/BLOGS

- Allows for greater flexibility to move in between texts

- Immediacy e.g. updating entries, providing feedback

- Dialogue between author and reader

- Ease and speed

Against Technology:

“In an age of electronic media, when the future of the book itself is often called into question, and when the visual and textual landscape is dominated by an increasingly voracious culture industry, zines endure.” - Girl Zines - Making Media, Doing Feminism

CASE STUDY - Victoria Law, Girl Zines - Making Media, Doing Feminism

- Created zine out of year’s worth of email correspondence between herself friend China Martens

- Zine format: codex, digest size, tan card stock cover, plain printed title

- Zine has no images, just email messages printed on paper, physically cut and glue onto sheets of paper and photocopied

- Content = one off zine, not intended to sell or be widely distributed but meant as an artifact that would encourage her friend and also document a year of friendship

- Emails themselves were deficient

- Wasn’t inspired to archive emails using digital means

- Makes explicit idea that many creators allude and adhere to: the notion that paper is better suited for facilitating human connection than electronic media

- Identifies a letter as a site of physical interaction

- Paper connects two bodies, bears marks of body that created it as well as carrying other sensory information to reader

- Paper is a nexus

- Zine creators know material matters

- “Zines are different from e-zines, which are ‘zines’ published on the Internet, via personal webpage or email lists...There are significant differences between the two genres, and we choose to retain the distinction. When zine World says ‘zine’, we mean something on paper. We only review zines.” - major zine directories

- “Real zines are Xeroxed.” - Lauren Jade Martin

- “People thought the Internet was going to herald the death of print, which was a crock even in the boom days. The feeling of a printed document is never gong to lose its appeal or be replaced by an electronic alternative.” - Lisa Jervis

- “Often people who have never ‘zined’ ask why I choose to print instead of publish online: I state that it’s obvious - how will we remember websites 5 years or even 20 years from now?” - Raina Lee

- Arguments from Chris Atton that e-zine appears less distinct, its culture more amorphous

- Duncombe’s point that the Internet has made communication too easy and that the deviant socialisation process of the underground might be lost as a consequence

HOWEVER... blogs and zines do have similarities

- Labovitz’s definition of e-zines showed they remain remarkably true to form

- One shared aspects of blogs and print = MOTIVATION - Jenna Freedman, online essay Zines Are Not Blogs: A Not Unbiased Analysis

- Many have both print and digital

- E-zines have facilitated some of the best work in the field: but the death of print is evidently greatly exaggerated

Conclusion – what do you think, statistics

Content

STATISTICS - Gross, ‘Ideas: zine but not heard’

- Late 80s, Guardian, more than 10,000 titles of UK football related zines

- 1994, Time magazine, 20,000 titles produced in US, growing at 20% annually

- 4000 sold in one month at branch of record chain Tower Records