Things that made my weekend

Hello!

So I thought it would be ridiculously and shamelessly self-promotional to mention this. And then I thought, if I can’t be self-promotional on my own blog where can I be? And then I thought, why do I keep arguing with myself, I must look crazy.

Anyway, Emma at Flying Machine has written a lovely blog post that mentions my zine Sutures. And it’s lovely because I too have been wondering about the place that zinemaking has in my life, even as I haven’t been able to stop writing them. I’ve only been involved in zines for two and a half years and already they’ve taken over so much of my time and energy that I’m not sure they haven’t just become another escape from making any kind of meaningful decision about what to do with myself. But then finding such a nice response to something I’ve written, especially from a zinemaker that I admire and respect, is pretty much all it takes to convince me to start secretly photocopying on the office photocopier again.

x Amanda

Festival of the Photocopier and other fun times

Miraculously, the first zine trip made by me and the fetus to Melbourne went remarkably well. Her artwork was installed without a hitch, despite some unexpected flooding in the Degraves St subway on Thursday, and is up til the 27th February if you’d like to have a gander.

 The finished artwork!

A giant thanks to Melissa Reidy who organised the exhibition, everything looked amazing and the Friday night opening (or what we remember of it) was filled with good times.

 Opening night

We may have also been a little bit overexcited following RZA’s signing at Wax Museum Records opposite Sticky earlier that afternoon and, personally, I thought the impromptu skateboarding challenge that followed lent an interesting flavour to the night. Keep an eye out for a series of zinemaker interviews conducted that evening for Channel 31 (of which Mary-Helen was one of the interviewees) – we’ll put up a link when we get more information.

Last minute photocopying, folding and stapling aside, the zine fair on Saturday was a bit excellent – made more excellent by deliveries of food and homemade ice-suckies to our table. I much prefer indoor zine fairs anyway, I often find the trade-off for non-zine people foot traffic when outside is unpredictable weather wreaking havoc with your zines.

And contrary to the photo above, the zine fair was still incredibly busy with lots of Melbourne and interstate zinemakers filling the subway.

 

Above is our table, you can just make out the felt doppelgängers made by Mary-Helen.

 

Look at all those zines! There’s nothing like fluorescent lighting to bring out the best in people. Thanks to everyone who bought off or traded with us, and once again massive kudos to the lovely people at Sticky for organising and setting up the fair, especially considering that they seemed to be constantly sandblasted by the forces of nature. Also, we don’t have a photo of the Melbourne Tramways Band but they were truly excellent.

I also left some of the new zine Sutures at Sticky at the end of the night, so it is now available from there and from Etsy.

Ok, that’s it!

x amanda

P.S. To the girl who indulged my rant about Pee-Wee, thank you, you made my night.

New Zine – Sutures

Hey kids!

It’s been a little barren on the zine landscape the last couple of months but this is the week it’s going to change. Firstly, Mary-Helen has her amazing artwork up in the Degraves St subway in Melbourne RIGHT NOW as part of the Undiscovered Press exhibition courtesy of the Platform Artists Group. There are some amazing zine artists involved so I highly recommend you check it out. If not tomorrow, then definitely at the opening this Friday 12th February from 6-7pm. I don’t want to make undue use of hyperbole but I saw the aforementioned artwork with my own two eyes, and was left a changed woman.

Secondly, Sticky’s annual zine fair is being run this Saturday 13th February in City Square from 3-8pm. Now reliable sources tell me that this is not the same as Federation Square but seeing as I have no idea about Melbourne landmarks either way…

Anyway, I’ll finally have a new zine for the fair which has been in the making since last July.

A5, 40 pages, b/w

I’m not going to lie to you, this is a personal zine of the most self-indulgent variety. Inspired by my mother’s recent move back to Lebanon, it’s a record of my parent’s memories of Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, a meditation on the role nationality has played in my life, an attempt to reconcile all the little parts of my life in light of her departure, and lots of other things as well. You can also play “See if you can find the mistake in page numbering” thanks to my butterfingers.

Of course, if you’re not going to be in Melbourne this weekend I am, as always, down with trades. Address details are to your right, otherwise I’ll put it up on Etsy as soon as I can!

And also, if you’ve read our zines and want to say hello this Saturday, please do! We (by that I mean I) may look incredibly socially awkward but we’re actually good people. Really.

x amanda [panda]

Submit to PIE zine

PIE is a new Sydney based zine and they want you. Check out the blurb below and get in contact with Maisie via e-mail to submit pie_zine [at] hotmail [dot] com. The theme of the first issue is WASTE, interpret as you will. Deadline is for the first issue is Feb 16th so get your creative juice… juicing?

PIE wants your:

stories – poems – recipes – articles – artworks – designs – photography – musings – riddles – questions – answers – reviews – lyrics!

PIE is a new Zine based in Sydney that will feature local and international contributors. PIE will be an independent, not for profit publication. It will feature art, photography, articles, reviews, illustrations and more from various people in the community. There will be a concept suggestion for each issue which contributors can take and interpret in any way as inspiration, however this is optional. It is intended simply as a jumping-off point for ideas. PIE supports sustainability and will be printed on recycled paper. There will be a limited number of copies printed and distributed each month. This is a personal project of passion for me. With your help, I hope to make it an intriguing and stimulating new collection of creative and intellectual debris, brought together between the pages of this modest, young Zine.

There will be segments including film, music, gig, exhibition reviews and Q&A, where you can ask any question that’s on your mind and answer other people’s queries. If you have an idea for your own personal segment in PIE contact me with the details, i’d be more than happy to have you as a regular contributor.

If you know about or are involved in upcoming events (music, art, performance) and want them advertised in PIE contact me with the information and attach an image or flier.

If you have something to sell or there’s something you need; furniture, a housemate, a room- anything! You can advertise it in PIE.

We are also initiating a community sharing forum, promoting recycling and re-using objects. If you have something to give away out of the goodness of your heart, tell us about it and hopefully it will be just what someone out there is looking for!

PIE # 1: WASTE
PIE #1 will be launched in March. Email me with contributions and be a part of the PIE.

Check them out on Twitter: http://twitter.com/pie_zine

Spread the word, re-blog, get involved
Fetus

Take Care Distro Update

Take Care Zine Distro will be officially opening on the 1st of January 2010. You’ll be able to buy a wide variety of zines and comics etc from them online.

Check out their site on the 1st of January takecarezines.org

Take care Zine Distro

I found some very exciting news this morning when I opened my google reader, a new zine distro is starting up in fair old Sydney town. Take Care Zine Distro will be the combined efforts of Emma D. from Flying Machine and Tim who plan to have a regular stall around town as well as a mail order system for buying zines. They are looking for zine makers to send them zines, so this is a big old call out to all of you zine makers out there to get posting.

Find out more info by e-mailing Emma and Tim at takecarezines(at)gmail.com

Check out the original post here

Most importantly, spread the word! Feel free to repost the info!

That’s it
From your long lost blogging brother/sister
Fetus

New zine – Panacea for Loneliness #4

I mentioned to a friend yesterday that if it wasn’t for the stress of impending exams and essays, and subsequently an increase in my procrastination activities, I’m not sure whether I’d ever get around to writing zines. But considering that it’s the end of semester, and despite all intentions otherwise, I’ve managed to watch enough interesting films in the last couple of weeks to inspire a new Panacea for Loneliness.

A6, 20 pages, black and white

I wasn’t particularly aware of it whilst writing this zine but this issue contains some of the stranger films I’ve seen lately –  from The Piano Teacher to The City of Lost Children; from Wings of Desire to See the Sea; from Repulsion to The Vanishing. 

I’m going to send it out to Sticky on Monday, otherwise it’ll be on Etsy or as always available for trades.

x amanda

Epitaph for my Heart #6

It’s amazing what a zine fair deadline can do for your word count. Another T.I.N.A., another Epitaph for my Heart: a survival guide to being social.

A5, 20 pages, b/w

This issue was several months in the making and is mainly the product of several embarrassing incidents I was involved in earlier this year that I thought could have some possible pedagogical function. That is to say, once again you might be able to learn from my social blunders. So #6 includes a discussion on the likely/unlikely social ramifications of casual profanity, the ethics and logistics of Facebook stalking, a little guide on how [or why] not to be intimidated by other people and a special A3 centrefold which is my own personal ‘Not That Social’ flowchart designed to help you predict the trajectory of your garden-variety night out on the town.

Epitaph for my Heart #6 will be available [along with all our other zines] at the T.I.N.A./NYWF Sunday Fair on October 4th after which I’ll put it online at our Etsy.

If you want to trade, please do! Send trades to:

PO Box 392                                                                                                                                                                                                          Newtown NSW 2042                                                                                                                                                                                      Australia!

x panda

Zines from NY [or in the general area]!

The other day we received a package from our lovely friend Hayley in New York filled with zines that she collected from the NYC Zine Fest held in Brooklyn in June. Since it was such a excellent surprise and because there were some amazing zines in there I thought I’d call out a few that took my fancy.

First up, a zinemaker who may be familiar to readers as Sticky newsletter’s Philadelphia correspondent, Katie Haegele. Secretly I have a zine crush on Katie, she writes wonderfully and intimately about a huge range of subjects, from church rummage sales to linguistic gymnastics. I hadn’t read the two zines in the package, though, which are part of her ongoing series about language – The La La Theory.

#6 is subtitled Always Already. There is a lovely section on the untranslatability [?] of the Portuguese word ‘saudade’ that made me feel as though in a conversation with a friend, the kind where you agree on something at exactly the same time.

# 7 is subtitled Nix Besser which means ‘none better’ in Pennsylvania Dutch [Deutsch] and includes sections about translating poetry, the basic history of Esperanto and a discussion on [and trial of] online reverse dictionaries. She also talks about the historical pathologisation of nostalgia as a ‘hypochondria of the heart’ [I love this line] and has an index to the zine at the end! 

You can find her zines online at her Etsy or email her at katie [at] thelalatheory [dot] com.

Another excellent zine was I Love Bad Movies which, as the title suggests, is a celebration of all bad films – whether they’re so bad they’re good or whether they’re so bad they’ve gone past good and are back to bad. Apparently Hayley had a discussion with the contributors about the absence of The Room in the zine [which I would have though was a perfect candidate] but they claimed that it was too popular for their taste. Doesn’t make it any less horrendous I would argue but their other choices seem pretty solid. Except for, however, their inclusion of Sleepaway Camp rather than the infinitely worse Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers. Winona Ryder’s post-felony career does seem to be disproportionately represented but I guess on second thought that seems pretty fair.

If you’d like a copy or to get in touch to contribute to the next issue you can email whoisksen [at] gmail [dot] com.

This last little gem, Is It Bacon? by Matt Wiegle, is one of the more amusing zines I’ve read in recent times. Claiming that “History is strewn with the bodies of those who took for bacon that which was not”, this beautifully illustrated comic attempts to aid those unfamiliar with the popular porcine product.

There is no contact information inside but some simple sleuthing took me to this website which I’m 99% is him. And there’s some good stuff there as well.

Have an excellent weekend readers, next week we’ll have some more updates about new zines for This Is Not Art  and the like.

x panda

New zine – A kind of obsolete vernacular

Well I don’t know about you kids but for me it’s midsemester, which means midsemester essays, which means looking for any excuse to procrastinate.

I’ve been thinking about this particular project for a while as it’s actually the kind of zine that I want to read other people’s versions of. Basically it’s a short list of words, terms and phrases that my closest friends and I use from day to day and where they come from. Most of them are appropriated from popular culture – some of which you’ll recognise, some of which you might not. 

A6, 16 pages, black and white

It has also has step by step origami instructions so that, you know, you’re having fun too. There’ll be copies at the This Is Not Art zine fair on Sunday October 4 or, as always, they’re available for trades.

Enjoy your weekend!

x panda