What is zine culture?
A website might not seem like a zine.
You can't pick it up and put it in your pocket.
You can't print a limited run.
So how does this e-zine fit with wider zine culture?
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Molly Drummond, PhD Candidate at Keele University,
gives us some insights into what it means to be a zine,
and how zine culture has changed in
an age of new technology.
The zine form emerged as a “fanzine” in sci-fi and fantasy fan communities around the 1930s, and their “look” and the kind of content they explore has been influenced by histories of independent publishing, the politics of the communities who mobilized these ways of publishing, as well as the counter- and subcultural communities they predominantly circulated in. Zines’ DIY, political, and critical ethos re-emerged as part of the punk scene, where their raw, cut-and-paste aesthetic that we see today became the go-to (it’s cheap and it’s emotional). However, punk became this dominant narrative about zine history and culture, and a lot of the time that narrative was itself dominated by white men, and their stories, which eclipses the diversity and strangeness and potential of the zine as a form of expression and creativity. When I started to look at zines as a researcher rather than a participant in the community, as a maker and sharer of zines, I found many of these histories wanting because they didn’t explain or represent the kind of community I was involved in.
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The zine community are adept at adapting technology to reach their audience, to make their zines, and to explore new ways of saying what they want to say. E-zines and digital spaces have become a big part of this, allowing archives to be made and shared and existing networks of zinesters to engage with the form in different ways. For example, Stolen Sharpie Revolution was a long-running resource for people to find out about how to make, share, and discover zines and was available as a book as well as a constantly updating online resource. Some existing physical libraries, like Salford Zine Library, are archiving their collection. Other online archives have addressed the representation of zine culture by focusing on underrepresented and deprioritized voices. The People of Color Zine Project (POCZP) is an example, not only receiving new zines but also developing and engaging with longer histories of independent publishing led by authors of colour. The reason the zine community is so wide-ranging in terms of politics, aesthetics, and interests is because there is a tangible sense that anyone should be able to make and get hold of zines, but no specific rules on how this should be carried out.
From this ethos of do-it-yourself, accessible, creative expression has emerged these practices of cheap, accessible making and distributing practices and this amazing range of creativity and passion, and a willingness to share it.
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Molly Drummond has been studying zine culture since 2016. She has a personal collection of more than 100 zines, which inform her research. She also draws from her experiences in the zine community.
It’s really difficult to describe zines as a physical or digital object, because what they are really is a form of expression. They challenge understandings of art and cultural production through their content, style, and the do-it-yourself practices through which they are made and circulated. They are very accessible, primarily traded, given away for free, or sold for the cost of production. The idea of zines is that anyone can make them, and they can be anything you want to say.