Zine Revue 09

This weekend at the zine library I had a volunteer shift where I helped sort zines into the correct collection category boxes. Of course, that also involved some casual browsing! So here are a few I took some notes on while I was sorting. These won't be out in the library's reading room for now, but they did have a recent reshuffle so there will be all sorts of new titles if you go to check them out...

Title: PPOOEEMMSS

Author: Jason Kerley

Category: Writing

This is a fun booklet of poems "meant to be read as loud as possible." I liked how these kind of had the quality of an internal monologue, little bits of everyday observations plus rhymes and wordplay you roll over and repeat in your head like a nice smooth pebble. Plus I also liked the crunchy clip art like illustrations that went with the poems!

Title: Pulled You In

Author: Livy No Life

Category: Art

A zine exploring the artist's process of making colorful sculptural works based on soda or can pull-tabs, and then leaving them in public places and recording how willing people are to notice and take a free piece of art home. I think the risograph printing used for this zine is really effective at capturing the vividness of the work but also for giving texture to the banal places, like electrical boxes, stairways and sidewalks, that the pieces are left to be found.

Title: Glossary of Terms

Author: Anonymous

Category: Art/Activism

A small booklet elaborating on some terms that have become almost habitual in art world language and grant applications: artist-led, interdisciplinary, local community, alongside some others I wish would appear more: DIY, commoning and so on. The definitions articulate ambivalence about the gap between what organizations can say versus what they mean or how they meaningfully play out ('in-kind' and 'precarity' also make appearances), but also point towards ways artistic practice can be reoriented to being more accessible and sustaining rather than simultaneously exclusive and teetering on the edge of burnout. Food for thought!