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do it yourself ethos.zines



However varied, anarchic and obsessively individualistic zines are, together they form a significant, expanding oppositional culture model; zine producers, weaned on the soup of pop culture, underemployed as an effect of the widening divisions of wealth resulting from economies of scale and consolidation of ownership, are electing to operate outside the mass market instead of seeking a microniche in it. The most activist of these do-it-yourself producers also boycott consumption of corporate product - some drug and alcohol-free urban vegan punks do not buy or sell books, films or music by artists who have 'crossed the line' of independent production.

Zine culture is an alternative - not a stepping stone - to the mass market. Zine producers opt for dissemination outside the retail infrastructure - mail, handouts between friends, small zine fairs, listings in other zines and 'catalogue' publications like Factsheet Five. Zines are vertically-integrated, but on a micro-scale. Usually, the core of participants numbers five or less. Often, one person is responsible for every aspect of creation, production and dissemination. Contrary to vertically-integrated mass media, there are no economies of scale to the photocopied print runs. Rejecting or abandoning the goal of remuneration for cultural labour (art work for pay), most zine-makers try to break even on production costs, ironically comparing the time spent to leisure activities like golf, or more politically, to anarchist street activism. Unlike 'artist union' initiatives or proto-business industrial culture, it is part of the zine ethos that people are unpaid for their creative labour; on the "take" end of this ethos of exchange, zine culture flagrantly violates copyright , reproducing, effacing and violating mass culture images, reprinting, recycling, rewriting and responding to material from other zines.


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