Unit X - College Four

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Group Work

As a way of keeping in touch and making sure our ideas are always shared, as a group, we decided to set up a Facebook page as a way to stay up to date with anything that is happening. It was also a way to post images and suggestions about the zine.
After a group meeting, which I couldn't attend due to illness, my group decided that the punk zine was very much in danger of becoming just the same as all the others that have been published before, something I agreed with. They decided that we should focus on the people that made the whole movement of punk come to be, all the way back 500 years, focusing on the people that rebelled before the rebellion was deemed cool. This is something that really drew me in and I was excited to get started.

Unit X - College Four

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Group Work

After the lectures with Simon, we were put into groups and told to come up with and idea of a zine. I thought the group work was very interesting as it gave a wide range of ideas and inspiration and it meant that jobs were divided up making the zine a team effort. My group met in the special collections, where we were allowed to look through zines that are in the special collection and books that featured a wide range of zines. This helped with inspiration and easier to decide on an idea. 

Our group decided on the idea of creating a Punk zine, as the lectures has inspired us all and it was something that was an interest of us all. We started our research by just collecting general information about Punk zines; the style, the content, the illustrations, the distribution.

These were some of my research mind maps on the idea of Punk.

During the visit in the special collections, I found a book called 'PUNK' which was a book dedicated to the Punk zines and included photographs of the zines and the productions of them. 

These are some images that I felt most inspired by to help with my idea of the Punk zine 

   

 

Unit X - College Four

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Simon Faulkner Lectures

The lecture that were put on by Simon Faulkner were very appealing to me. The topics brought up in his lectures were very interesting and really appealed to me.

The first part of the lectures; Zines as Counter Culture. The first point that I was interested in was the history of the zine and what the zine was actually used for. ‘The Situationist International’ (SI) was a group, formed by Guy Debord, who used the zine as a way to rebel against the norms of society. I really enjoyed learning about this side of the zine and seeing how it can be used in a way to convey a message to the people without using the idea of mass-production and ‘selling-out’ just for the message.

            Another point that I really enjoyed, focusing on the first part of the lecture, was the section about Laura Oldfield-Ford. Her zine, ‘The Savage Messiah’ and was very psychogeographical. It tracked Oldfield-Ford’s travels squatting around London during the 1990s, each issue was a different part of London. What I really liked about Oldfield-Ford’s zine was that it showed that you did not need a fancy production team or a wealth of machines to create a good zine, with good material and beautiful illustrations. She created her zine whilst on her travels.

            Finally, my favourite part of the lectures came from the second section of them, ‘Punk’s Messthetic’. These lectures focused on punk, its history, the movement, the fashion and the music. I cannot say how much I enjoyed this lecture. I was really interested in the zine ‘Sniffin Glue’ which was produced by Mark Perry from 1976-1977. This was the ultimate zine of punks. Perry was right in the middle of the punk generation and wrote first-hand about his experiences. It was the punk’s ultimate guide to being punk. With only a limited edition copies, and them being produced with a ‘kids typewriter and a felt-tip pen’ I was drawn to Perrys passion about his zine and the punk movement.