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DIY culture: what is the point?

  
  

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Rage
23:51 / 10.12.02
Do you know anyone who actually reads zines?
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
00:19 / 11.12.02
God help me, I do.

Know someone, that is. I never touch the things m'self.
 
 
Jack Fear
02:44 / 11.12.02
Yup. And off the top my head I can think of about a dozen people on this board alone who create and trade them. Grant B, for one, will be weighing in shortly, I'm sure...

I'm digging HipMama right now, for one, and there are others that cross my desk occasionally.

Zines are old media, perhaps, but their aesthetic is very much alive on the Web: zines are websites on paper.

I see other aspects of DIY culture migrating to the Web, as well--MP3.com, for instance, has become the new cassette-trading.

Any particular reason for asking, Rage? What are your feelings on the subject, beyond the sneering/baffled one-liner? Do you think paper zines are played out as a cultural force?
 
 
Pepsi Max
04:43 / 11.12.02
Zines are narrowband micropublishing. They exist somewhere between the mass media and a letter sent to a single individual.

Hell, even the reach of the printed mass media isn't that impressive these days. The biggest selling US newspaper has a circulation of under 3 million.

Blogs are probably the latest incarnation of DIY publishing.

And most blogs/zines will be a pile o' crap to most people. So what? They allow their producers to get themselves out there, have a larf, and maybe learn something about writing and themselves too. Some gems might even be *gasp* readable.

The entry costs to the world of media production are plummeting (altho they've never been as high as most people think in the first place). Get out there, and hack out yer writing, yer music, yer films, websites, video games, etc.

If we want community then we have to have communication. And sometimes, the act of communication is more important than what id communicated. Content isn't always king.
 
 
Shortfatdyke
12:49 / 11.12.02
What is Barbelith if it isn't part of DIY culture?

I've just 'diy'ed a collection of short stories. It's sold rather less than the latest Jeffrey Archer novel. Does that automatically make Archer a better, more worthy writer, or person?

Plenty of people I've known over the years have published magazines, released their own records, organised gigs and events and festivals. Less people went to Queeruption, say, than the Reading Festival. Does that make Queeruption invalid? Why?

Many people don't believe that established political parties can or will save the planet, so go about doing their own political thing. Are they wasting their time? Or, how dare they create something of their own?

How much longer would you like me to rattle on?
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
13:38 / 11.12.02
I think the value one finds in 'zines has a lot to do with where you are and who you know -- though I guess that's true of just about everything. The counterculture rhetoric around them in the '80s and early '90s was immense, but a lot of their energy got sucked up into the internet. So, if you're reading something about 'zines that hasn't been memetically updated since then, it'll seem pretty irrelevant.

On the other hand, you could live in a place where 'zines are rife and are, moslty, not much more than an organ for some punk's (and I don't mean that in a good way) egotistical splatterings. I know for a while there every NYU or Cooper Union student with a dorm on St Mark's Place considered it revolutionary to proclaim their queerzine, full of typos and bad art, the ultimate in self-expression.

In other words, Rage might know some zinesters who are assholes.
 
 
Persephone
13:49 / 11.12.02
Do you know, Tom wrote something about this on plasticbag a couple of weeks ago & it was distinctly like someone reaching into my head and turning on a light:

Why would someone built a model of the Enterprise out of Lego? Or perhaps I should ask (because I spent most of my early teenage years building Lego models of TV and movie space-crafts and vehicles) why would anyone decide to make a scale model of the Enterprise, investing considerable money and effort in the process and putting detailed pictures of the whole process online? I think the answer would be something like micro-fame.

Before this weird online culture fusion called the internet happened, individuals were forced to seek the approval of their peers by conforming or by accomplishing things that their real-life friends and family thought were valuable. This low-level success was based on a narrowly focused set of criteria set by your upbringing, your neighbourhood, your school or job... And if you wanted to take it further then you were forced to somehow breach the membrane that separated the 'ordinary' from the 'famous' - something that only the incredibly talented or incredibly lucky could do...

This made the world relatively predictable - relatively safe. Ideas were constantly created and constantly abandoned as ever, but there was the continual encouragement of environment not to be one of the people who did anything 'odd'. The internet has changed all that. There's now an audience for the strangest and smallest little projects. All the disconnected people around the world who might find a Lego Enterprise cool are suddenly connected up. It's worth making that tiny little thing you thought would be quite cool once, it's worth writing the dumb ideas down that you thought no one would ever listen to. Because the odds of finding people who will care about them, will gel and relate to you, will celebrate your idea or project and make you famous (tiny-fame, micro-idol), is radically improved. The future will be full of dumb projects, tiny ideas, silly concepts - each celebrated by their own bespoke fan-base... And human creativity will have taken a massive leap forward...

My bold, as the kids say.

And I say, yes yes yes! It's really hard for me to express ...but it's what I've been doing with the theater, and the stupid t-shirt company... but I have typing and stuff to do, I'll think more...
 
 
A
13:51 / 11.12.02
I personally know dozens of people who read zines. Even my mum reads zines from time to time.
 
 
rizla mission
14:27 / 11.12.02
Do you know anyone who actually reads zines?

Some.

NOT FUCKING ENOUGH THOUGH!

"DIY culture: what's the point?"

Don't even know where to START answering that one..

I'm very much into a kind of DIY ideology at the moment - I generally buy every single homemade comic/zine/whatever I see, which isn't half as many as I'd like to see..

And hopefully I'd not just talking some kind of militant outsider rhetoric when I say that the vast majority of them are a far more worthwhile read than just about anything you can buy down the Newsagents.
 
 
grant
14:39 / 11.12.02
Actually, I'm not really a zine maker as much as a passive consumer of zines - and that, oddly enough, is either predicated on the products of my friends here (microcomics & Rizla's zines) or on cassette-trading stuff from the mid-90s (mostly died out now) and zines from the local record store.

I love cassettes.

I love DIY culture.

The point is that you make it because it's what YOU want to hear, what YOU want to see - all the stuff that's missing from the mainstream (and the mass-marketed "indie" flavor-of-the-season). If you can't find it, just... do it yourself.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
15:49 / 11.12.02
I read zines. I also (used to) make them (just ran out of free time). As sfd says, what is Barbelith if not DIY culture?

I can recommend Godhaven and Morgenwaffel (but I don't think there're links for either).

Punk, mail art, zines, self-publishing, fucking online bulletin boards- it's all DIY culture, and it's ALL necessary. Otherwise the only culture we get is pre-packaged bollocks. (A lot of which I like, I hasten to add, before being accused of hypocrisy for being into Buffy, but you don't want that ALL the time.)

A lot of what's now mainstream was once DIY culture- look at all your co-opted bands, and remember the 70s when people used to think it was hilarious that the Germans had a party called "The Green Party" which was into the environment...

YES. I read zines. I also read topic abstracts. When I can find 'em.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
17:10 / 11.12.02
Zines rock my world, although I don't read enough of them. I also haven't yet got round to making one, though I keep saying I will. I'm a prognasticator or whatever Kit-Cat Club called it.

There's this supposed truism that zines or small-press/self-published stuff suffers from the lack of quality control that comes from 'professional' editing, but I find myself increasingly doubting that. Once you find out a little about the processes that make up said editing, you realise it's less like quality control and more like an arbitrary series of aesthetic judgments, many of which are questionable and a good deal of which will be dictated by the demands of the 'market'. Now, I'm no 'keeping it real' purist, and I think it would be a mistake to ascribe any kind of moral value to zines and DIY stuff, but the fact is, they do usually provide something (viewpoints, styles, whatever) that you can't find elsewhere... Also, it's worth noting that most zines are pretty much a medium in themselves - what's the 'mainstream' equivalent? Some kind of massively overpriced 'art' mag with a picture of Harmony Korine on the cover? No ta.

[militainment rant mode GO!]It kind of pisses me off when I hear whiny haterz talking nine kinds of ass about stuff that other people have taken the trouble to make and that doesn't impinge on their life one jot, but they feel the need to sneer at. Whatever. DO SOMETHING yourself and then tell me why your shit rocks harder than those assholes' zines, but in the meantime, stop taling shit about the work of people who have the cunt to put their own stuff out there.[/off]
 
 
Persephone
18:56 / 11.12.02
*seriously*

That is the most excellent usage of "cunt" that I've ever read.
 
 
Jack Fear
19:15 / 11.12.02
Baby, you're beautiful when you're angry.
 
 
Persephone
19:54 / 11.12.02
And besides, you wrote Shifter #1. That's not prognosticating.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
20:54 / 11.12.02
When we say "prognosticating", do we actually mean "procrastinating"?
And yes, big respect to Flyboy for innovative use of the word "cunt". Oh yes.

And also a big "oh yes" to the idea that it's not quality control that differentiates zine output from mainstream output; a lot of the time it IS actual content. C'mon, there're bestselling authors who can't spell, punctuate, or wipe their own arses unaided. Because they shift units, someone comes in afterwards and sorts out their spelling etc. Doesn't make the books any better.
 
 
Rage
23:03 / 11.12.02
Zines are beautiful. I know lots of people who make them, yet I can't seem to find people who actually sit down to read them. The DIY culture is about creating our own shitalia, so it's sometimes hard for people to do any receiving. This phenomena can be difficult for individuals who are trying to get their word out to people who are already wrapped up in getting out their own word out. Sometimes it seems like everyone is so enthralled in their own shit that they neglect to see anyone elses. Websites and blogs can link to other websites and blogs, but zines are more personalized and self linkified. We can look through zines in the St. Marks record stores and weed through all the carbon cut scenster publications- finding well written gems amongst piles and piles of DIY dillada- but can we do more than stroke our own social/political/musical ego in a culture of "everyone creates their own?" Maybe we'll make a new friend or two, but I don't see any major social change coming out of this. Many people see zines as a gateway to the next stage of social evolution, and I ask them who's gonna be doing the reading. It's like a network of people making websites, where everyone is so absorbed in making their own that nobody has a counter hitting past 25. The shit that we're writing isn't being read by enough people.

I'm simply doing the objectivity thing. Barbelith in itself is DIY culture, and as I stated a few days ago: we're creating it as we go along. I feel this urge to deconstruct ideas that appeal to me. The DIY culture appears to me, and I think that it's one of more interesting reasons for being alive in the millennium.

Do I have a solution? Maybe a bunch of people could make zines together and form one meta zine. We could circulate it around the cities, establishing a new piece of classic reading material for la culture. It would be the first big thing to come out of a culture based on a bunch of little things. Let's take the DIY dance to the next step- you know? What would happen if all zine creators got together?
 
 
Persephone
02:38 / 12.12.02
*clears throat*

I may as well mention that I am setting up something on the Queer Granny website for the distribution of DIY comics and zines. I hadn't meant to say anything until it was ready, as I am still wrestling with the design. But yeah, I was thinking along the lines you say... and you know, this is what people like me are good for. I guess you could say that I'm a person who's enthralled with other people's shit.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
03:22 / 12.12.02
Has it occurred to you, Rage, that perhaps the intimacy of audience is part of the allure in creating and reading zines? In some ways it's more like buying homemade food or crafts, but it's ideas and pictures on paper, made and slaved over by a person with very modest ambitions.
 
 
T
07:36 / 12.12.02
what isn't DIY culture? insofar as we all have agency in our authoring of our worlds, isn't even main stream media a DIY culture of sorts? flux introduces the problem of the audience which i think sends things in a more useful direction. as audiences we all consume stuff, but not passively. we have agency and in our acts of consumption, readig the zine, reading these posts, we respond, in our thoughts, in our written words, in our publications. transaction models of communication are kinda boring, but it demonstrate that diy is not some isolated thing, because if you're not doing-it-yourself, you're a vegetable!
 
 
Rage
08:59 / 12.12.02
Persephone: Can't wait to see how it goes.

Flux: "Let's take the DIY dance to the next step- you know? What would happen if all zine creators got together?" Where's the shallow cynicism that you're talking about? You mentioned shallow cynicism and Stereolab in the same thread. This just isn't on now, is it? I'm not trying to be cynical with my "what's the point?"- I'm simply expressing some valid objectivity.

I'm all about the intimacy of the audience, and I understand/appreciate your parallel to homemade food or crafts, but I'm not going to deny the large number of zinesters complaining about their lack of readership. In fact, readership lack alone has caused many individuals to stop publishing zines. This principle goes against the culture, of course, but is it not something to consider?
 
 
.
09:27 / 12.12.02
I love zines. I used to read loads and loads from about 92-97... Then zine production just seemed to disappear, at least in the UK. I'm guessing that the internet was to blame. I think that zines still have a few things going for them though, over websites or blogs:

1) In creating a zine, you've created an artifact. It's something solid, something that people can pick up and hold. It will last far longer than a website, and no matter how crap it might be, it serves as a document of the times. I have about 500 various zines from the 90s, and already I can look back on them and get a sense of what made those times unique...

2) Creating an object is harder (well, in many ways, including financially) than knocking up a quick website. So it's a labour of love, and it's easy to love something that has been loved during it's creation. There is also a little bit of quality control there too, since it is harder work to produce a zine, the very worst stuff gets filtered out. OK, so there are still some crap zines, but the worst zines are still better than the worst websites.

Looking back, I'm sad to have lost touch with the zine scene really. If anyone can point me in the direction of some good UK-based zines I'd really appreciate it...
 
 
rizla mission
13:20 / 12.12.02
Morgenwaffel

That's the comic zine that that anarchist girl in Brighton does, right?
That absolutely rocks. Definitely one of my favourites.

What with all the zine-enthusiasm being expressed here, I think it's an opportune time to mention that I've got plenty of copies of Stereo Sanctity left..
 
 
Shortfatdyke
14:45 / 12.12.02
Answering one of the points Rage made, about zine writers getting together - in 1999 a whole bunch of women (writers/photographers/performers/activists etc etc) got together and put a mag/zine out called Dummy. I was lucky enough to be asked to participate. Because loads of us were working together, we came out with quite a mega zine, that was pretty nicely printed, with a pro looking cover. There must be loads of other examples.

I think it does matter to make these things good. I got so tired of anarcho zines that were virtually unreadable, it was a waste of the work that had gone into them.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
17:47 / 12.12.02
Rizla- indeed it is. And boy does it rock. Me love it muchly.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
15:41 / 13.12.02
"Let's take the DIY dance to the next step- you know? What would happen if all zine creators got together?" Where's the shallow cynicism that you're talking about?

Well, the way I read that is - "well, there's some nice zines out there. wouldn't it be better if someone got them together, edited their stuff for them, and put it out so lots of people can read it?", which is, y'know, a standard magazine. Not a zine. The intentions of a zine is based on autotonomy, and your idea takes a lot of that away from them. Your idea sounds like the typical corporate model. You even use corporate jargon when you talk about it - "taking the next step", you may as well be a middle manager talking about "taking it to the next level".

Your whole attitude sounds very corporate to me.
 
 
The Apple-Picker
15:42 / 13.12.02
In reference to the lack of readership/lack of exposure thing, there are distributors out there. I occasionally mosey on over to Five Minute Romance occasionally to lust--Suds is distributed by them.

I admit I don't read many. I loved America's Dreaming #5.

And Pin was supposed to send me one but never did. Meanie.
 
 
rizla mission
15:59 / 13.12.02
Ooh - thanks for that FiveMinuteRomance link .. I may be tempted to buy some of their stuff..

..and, in fact, I reckon Barbelith as a whole should be put down for several boxes of these!

Out of interest, has anyone got any links to other distro type websites?, as they're often hard to find etc., but I'm almost obsessively interested int his kinda thing..
 
 
Rage
03:11 / 15.12.02
That rocks, SFD. What you guys did is exactly what I'm talking about.

Flux, you're obviously angry about something and taking it out on me. Looking for a fight? Go find someone else. If the "way that you read that" caused you to think I was talking about editing the writers material, you're reading Go Ask Alice and attempting to interact with the Chesire Cat. Not even, actually. You're reading The Catcher in the Rye and wondering what the hell happened to Big Brother. "Taking it to the next step/level" sounds a lot more like transhumanist jargon than corporate jargon, though it could mean anything from being in a rehab program and getting enough point to advance to level 7 (discharge time!) to climbing up the staircase of your mind. You're starting to remind me of one of those psuedo-punk kids who acccuses everyone of being corporate so he can affirm his subcultural identity to his friends. What happened to you? You used to provide interesting thought.

All I was trying to attempt was a solution to the kiddies complaining about nobody reading their zines, or at least a discussion on this subject. To those who have contributed, I thank thee.
 
 
bio k9
07:37 / 15.12.02
The DIY culture is about creating our own shitalia, so it's sometimes hard for people to do any receiving. This phenomena can be difficult for individuals who are trying to get their word out to people who are already wrapped up in getting out their own word out.

Maybe thats part of the problem. I'll be goddamned if I'm going to listen to someone that doesn't have time to listen to other people. Show me someone that comes up with creative shit in a vacuum and I'll show you someone thats living in space.

People that want to buy zines buy zines. There isn't a huge market for outsider lit/art. I'm curious how one would go about uniting zine makers under one cover without compromising someones work, creating a regular magazine or ending up with a RE/Search style book.



Flux, this ones for you:

"So, this Michael guy wants to 'take your zine to the next level'?"
 
 
w1rebaby
19:44 / 15.12.02
I certainly didn't read Rage's "collective zine" suggestion as involving any editing. However. If zines are going to be picked and chosen to be included, that's not quite the same as editing, but it's still defining content. But, if you're just going to allow any zine at all to be included, you end up with a five-hundred page edition.

Solutions:

- you could have a strict definition of exactly what zines would be allowed ("zines published by people living in this postal district") and from then on, anything submitted gets in;
- zine lottery. Ten zines get into each issue, all selected at random from what's submitted.

People that want to buy zines buy zines.

Not necessarily. I want to buy zines, and every time I get to a comic shop or place that sells them, I usually buy half a dozen that I've never heard of. But I live out in the suburbs, have no car and no way of getting to an indie bookshop without it basically being a whole day's trip. I don't get the chance to do this shit very often, and I live not too far from a major metro area. What about people in the middle of nowhere? If there was a zine sampler or collective that you could get sold in Barnes and Noble, or Tower Records, or whatever, it would do a lot of good.

Besides, even if I do get to a shop that sells zines, they're only going to have a small subset of what's available, possibly geographically-based.
 
 
A
14:21 / 18.12.02
some zine distros-

*electrocution distribution (australia)
*moon rocket (new zealand)
*vox populis (australia)
*stick figure (usa)

I know of a few others, but these are all non-elitist ones with a wide range of different types of zines.
 
 
illmatic
14:41 / 18.12.02
Late in on this thread - gotta say I love zines, read loads a couple of years back. Anyone remember Factsheet 5? Think it's a shame that that the explosion of creativity got sucked up in the Internet. The net so ... etheral I suppose, very easy not to read stuff (ie. whole threads on this place)- seems like theres more contact with something you can touch and feel.

With Rage's point about mass circulation - a lot of zines ocupy the space between normal media and small press. Thinking of the old Anarchist mag "Anarchy:A journal of desire armed" - still around I think - which used to have good production values and a mainstream look but very radical politics. Or graffit sines - high production because of all the colour repro. I suppose Borders and Tower stock tons of magazine - don't know if most of em fall into the zine category strictly speaking.
 
 
illmatic
15:01 / 18.12.02
Could even include Grand Royale in this catergory I suppose if we're really streching stuff, even if it is just a little more than a list of cool stuff.

Where is the boundary beween zines and the mainstream?
 
 
bio k9
07:11 / 21.12.02
See, when I think Zines I'm thinking made by one or two people who filled the whole thing with their own ideas and artwork then printed and delivered/sold it themselves. I know thats a really narrow view of zines but, to me, the whole "collective zine" thing reads "normal magazine with crap production values" and "zine sampler" reads "plastic sack full of zines" (which I would totally be down for). I printed up a zine once and dropped copies all over town. It was fun and cathartic and I'd do it again if I thought I had anything important or interesting to say. But...

Rage, do you have a P.O. box? I'm thinking you should make your own zine, fill it with your wacked out ideas and drop copies in every city you visit. Leave the PO box and a email address inside so you can get feedback from anyone that stumbles across it. Then you can find out who reads zines. And have them send you (the promise of) free stuff.
 
  

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