There’s a certain fascination in being able to publish and disperse your own written or visual material in good ol’ physical copies. This is, essentially, what zines cater for.
During my recent internship at Bunbury regional Art Galleries (BRAG) – see http://www.brag.org.au/, I found out exactly what a zine was for myself for the first time. The following is what Claire Pendrigh, Education Officer at BRAG, describes as her interpretation
A zine (an abbreviation of fanzine, or magazine) is a self-published, small circulation, non commercial booklet of original and/or appropriated texts and images. Zines are personal and idiosyncratic.
Thus, in the act of making a zine, one really has quite a bit of freedom and a lot of opportunity to cover their particular focus, however largely known or niche. Of course, this starts with a historical precedent in the early 20th century with Dadaists.
As my current work in progress is a draft, I only have written information and no final product to show you all. But, what I do have is an example of poetic-prose. This extends from my title, entitled “Corpuscular Moon”.
Corpuscular Moon is a collection of 10-13 stream of consciousness pieces, written at various times over the past few years. They all have similar themes running through them. Numerically, the 10 to 13 or so is apparent for the moon phases and, essentially, each piece is a slice of something small (corpuscular being small organism + moon = corpuscular moon), that results in the formation of the full thing, or the ‘moon’ in this sense.
These aligning elements extend into the pages of the book, which will utilise moon phases as page numbers, and varying tones of paper appropriate to the particular phase of the moon started from.
Below is an excerpt from one of my untitled pieces.
- 1: “Untitled 1”
A shattered mammal’s carcass leaks a plume in the petrified ocean. Dark violet viscosity. Solitude coats the lonely expanse, deep and impaling.
Rich air masks the world above. Sprawling bones stacked along shores of infinity, stretched and blurring beyond sight. A kingdom now dethroned
Constructs of creature upon beast upon man laid alongside each other in the whispering death of night. Wails of the anchored moon strangle shadows. Patterns of opal reflections sting the sand and bloody things become pure.
I will follow the results of my own zine in the blog once it is finally made.
So, what are your thoughts on zines? Any thoughts on what you would make or focus on? Let me know, and do comment if anything arises. 🙂
His Empty Space 