What is the "new Zine" for artists?

while1malloc0 · 2024-12-01T20:35:35.160Z

I feel like it’s hard to pick something today that has a lot of same cache as zines because many of those qualities largely don’t exist for media as a whole. They were local, but because of the internet persisted media doesn’t have a ton of locality anymore. They reflected their low budgets, but because of how production tools have been democratized the lower bound of quality is still pretty high regardless of budget. They were small batch, but again because of the internet, having one copy of a piece of media usually is the same as having almost infinite numbers of it. They sometimes discussed topics that were taboo and hard to find in mainstream print, but because of online anonymity, shifting social acceptance, and plenty of other factors it’s hard to think of topics that aren’t openly discussed somewhere online. The list goes on. My point is mostly that I think what makes a zine a zine are a bunch of qualities and constraints that largely don’t reflect our current media landscape at all, so it’s hard to draw the comparison.

That said, I do think it’s interesting to look at it from the lens of what zines were in comparison to mainstream print at their peak. They were usually self/community funded vs ad supported. They were usually supported by folks who were passionate about their niche. They usually had a more esoteric and DIY design sense than the mass appealing mainstream print magazines. There’s more I’m sure.

Taken from that perspective, it’s hard to find one “new zine,” but relatively straightforward to ask “what’s the zine version of ”. For instance, forums such as this fine space feel a bit like the “zine version” of mainstream social media. Indie web projects like Faircamp feel like a zine version of streaming platforms (not the cleanest comparison I admit). There’s a bunch of projects in the small web/tiny web/indie web space, and a lot of them feel like they’re shooting to be the zine version of something larger that’s become enshittified.

TelevisionName · 2024-12-01T22:05:46.486Z

Back when I was in school one of my teachers would go off on this sort of mini-rant about how whenever a form of media becomes dominant all previous forms become the new basic units of its content form leaving the previous media to find their own ideal form.
For example: early tv was pretty much just radio but you could see the people talking. Eventually tv absorbed all the aspects of radio that weren’t an essential part of the medium. So now radio is just music and “information” for the most part. The internet has essentially made all former mediums into its “content” leaving everything else free to do what it does uniquely well. Theatrical movies are just big budget spectacles, new broadcast tv is just reality and game shows, etc… This all seemed a little bit half baked stuff to me (and I guess in this model advertisements are like extremophile virii or something ) but it is at least an interesting thought ?

McLuhan would probably say that zines are no longer the medium and are now the message itself, and the choice of zine as the format is as much or more important than what the zine is even about but hes dead so who cares what he thinks.

b_a_d_fruit · 2024-12-02T02:03:55.216Z

I’m not actually a part of it in anyway but the implied promise of the fediverse- things like Mastadon and Write Freely seem like the contemporary version of zines.

I think a case could be made for individual Patreons and Substacks functioning like a close relative to the zine- perhaps even more so than podcasts. Looking backward a bit I think the same can be said of things like Tumblr and Live Journal before it. The limitation of all these things though is that they are all platform dependent. One of the unique aspects of the zine is that it is essentially its own platform.

I’m also very interested in izzzzi.net and seeing where that goes.

All of this said, and I realize I’m skirting that actual question here, I’d like to put a plug in for actual zines. They still exist and they’re great.

melo_ewfoe · 2024-12-02T02:20:32.301Z

Came here to say something similar to b_a_d_fruit.

I’m very pro fedi, but these days am leaning more towards the nostr protocol than ActivityPub (Mastodon etc), mostly because of the integration of zaps.

One of the things about zines back in the day was that they allowed fans, who were often fellow starving artists, a low cost and grass roots way of supporting their favourite creators.

Nostr allows this in an even more fine grained way. Not only can you purchase the eventual output / finished product by purchasing it via Bandcamp or etsy or whatever we might be doing now, but it affords us an easy way to support the creative process in the same way Patreon does, but without a centralised authority or the possibility of censorship.

I’d also to second b_a_d_fruit’s other point too. I don’t think the existence of a new medium need render the old one obsolete. Long live the zine!

while1malloc0 · 2024-12-02T04:35:27.934Z

Mastodon is an interesting case here, speaking as someone who’s dug into it on a technical and social level. On one hand, it has a lot of “zine qualities” as compared to larger social platforms: you can self host, many instances exist to serve niche interests, a lot have low user counts, etc. On the other, a pretty decent majority of users are on the largest instance, which is backed by a small company. So it’s kind of like a bunch of indie zines are using the printing press of a small quarterly publication.

trunnion · 2024-12-03T21:33:05.228Z

I’ve lurked lines for a while now, but izzzzi was the catalyst to register an account. I’m also registered there under the same handle as I’ve got here.

andy_b · 2024-12-04T10:40:22.838Z

TelevisionName:

McLuhan would probably say that zines are no longer the medium and are now the message itself, and the choice of zine as the format is as much or more important than what the zine is even about but hes dead so who cares what he thinks.

I reckon he would be both very right and very wrong.

Very wrong because interesting sentences can be heard or read anywhere. When they get trapped inside yr unconscious it hardly matters where they came from. Very right because paper has a distinct quality. Analogue. Tactile. It feels more permanent.

We are all moved in different ways. Voices can be very evocative, either in an audible format, or rendered on the page.

And, paper is a lovely and wonderful thing.

theskyis256k · 2024-12-04T11:30:16.714Z

Mind sharing what event that was? I’m in Montreal as well but I didn’t hear about a zine expo

Simone · 2024-12-04T14:31:12.353Z

It’s called Expozine and it happens once a year around November-ish. Super convenient for ‘more-thoughtful-than-usual’/ not too consumerist Christmas gifts.

I guess it’s a bit bigger in the Francophone scene but there’s plenty of bilingual and English language stuff too.

I’d recommend going early or late in the days as it truly gets packed with people, it can be a struggle to move around. Really impressive that the medium still gathers this much attention and excitement.

b_a_d_fruit · 2024-12-05T03:01:43.195Z

andy_b:

Very wrong because interesting sentences can be heard or read anywhere. When they get trapped inside yr unconscious it hardly matters where they came from.

The point of McLuhan’s famous axiom, as I’ve always understood it, is that the way something is ‘said’, meaning the medium in which it is communicated, determines exactly how it gets trapped in your unconsciousness. A few words delivered by an actor in a play are not going to have the same impact on you as those same words read in this forum or painted in blood on a church wall. Context shapes meaning and medium is context.

G4B3 · 2024-12-05T03:21:26.145Z

b_a_d_fruit:

painted in blood on a church wall

Now we’re talking. Lock the thread. We found the answer.

tehn · 2024-12-05T15:00:07.463Z

“which church do you read?”

Kheone · 2024-12-05T17:28:39.278Z

Kind of funny, in my Studio Art Junior Seminar (basically a critique class for visual art students), I have them make a zine. But almost always it is about a social issue rather than an issue about intense fandom or marginal issues.

But also, they have a hard time with folding and stapling.

theskyis256k · 2024-12-05T20:07:53.035Z

Awesome! Merci beaucoup🙂

b_a_d_fruit · 2024-12-06T02:49:51.161Z

Kheone:

But almost always it is about a social issue rather than an issue about intense fandom or marginal issues

I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.

Kheone · 2024-12-06T04:16:28.955Z

It’s definitely good, though sometimes a bit generic. It’s a push for them to say something from their own perspective. But, given the damage the insistence on individualism has done, that might be okay.

b_a_d_fruit · 2024-12-06T14:08:57.199Z

Generic is fine in that ‘crawling before you can walk’ sort of way. I’m just thrilled by the prospect of anyone saying something, anything, for themselves rather than spending creative energy on someone else’s work (which has always been my fairly un-generous view of fandom).

eblomquist · 2024-12-06T14:21:03.788Z

I suppose I’ve been really lucky in the sense that when I encounter something I really love, in addition to becoming a “fan” who loves that thing, my love for that thing also causes me to become inspired to do something myself. Hopefully not so much in the line of doing something like that beloved thing, merely inspired by it…

G4B3 · 2024-12-06T15:10:59.975Z

b_a_d_fruit:

I’m just thrilled by the prospect of anyone saying something, anything, for themselves rather than spending creative energy on someone else’s work

Spending creative energy on someone else’s work is often the first step of creating your own work. Pretty much all art is derivative. That isn’t a bad thing.

Not saying all fan art is high quality. But basically everyone who has done something interesting copied first. Oftentimes the interesting work is a copy. Like the whole history of folk music.

We should all care less about being “original” and more about making something interesting.

Jendrik · 2024-12-06T15:18:02.792Z

G4B3:

Spending creative energy on someone else’s work is often the first step of creating your own work. Pretty much all art is derivative. That isn’t a bad thing.

Take some Roland gear in my case and it instantly becomes classic techno, electro, if you dabble around for a while you can make something new and I have nothing against it.

Probably modular or live music is the new “zine” what ever that is and nothing beats real life interaction.

Trying to unite people through ideology has never worked and fails in turbulent times.

And then your back to the people you interact with the most.

Another thing that keeps things from getting out of hand is physical contact and body language.

We are all far too dependent on the devices we use.

Still while i got the “zine” wrong i think you get my point.