latest zine

Taking Cultural Production Into Our Own Hands.
A collaborative zine, made for the discussion group on Creating Our Own Culture that I'm running at London Zine Symposium this Saturday.

It's a big bunch of info from a host of *amazing* people on the hows and whys of creating culture yourself... inspiring and skills-sharing.

Thanks to the contributors for writing about:

Starting your own clubnight
Making your own animations
Organising Comedy Nights
Starting your own publishing house
Setting up a zine library
Starting your own theatre company
Recording albums
Creating your own independent gallery space
Writing and publishing your own book
Making zines
Opening your own shop/cafe
PUtting on gigs
Starting your own record label
Screenprinting
Starting your own band
Booking and organising spoken-word tours
Curating art shows
Running a magazine
Making your own (documentary) films
Making comics
Making poster artwork for gigs and events.


£1.40 (or free if you contributed!!)
If there's any left, I'll put copies for sale online after the symposium.

More info on the LZS website

more UK zine fests...

As well as London Zine Symposium this Saturday [see you there], Zine Fest at the Women's Library, London on 12th June, and Leeds Zine Fest on 27th June [EDIT: This event has been cancelled], the following Summer events have also been announced:

Bradford Zine Fayre on 20th June 2010
Join us for a day of stalls, workshops, performances and overall DIY lovliness.
Interested in getting involved? having a stall? performing? helping out? email us! bradfordzines@hotmail.co.uk or bradfordzines@northern-indymedia.org

Birmingham Zine Festival in the planning stages... see: http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=104056762967490&v=wall&ref=ts

queer zine festival in brussels

From my inbox...


Hi,

I received the mail below about a zine festival on June 26th-27th in Pink Ponk, a queer space in Brussels (Belgium)!

If you are interested in going there with your zines or do something else, mail to freefree@laposte.net. Apart from zine selling, zine showing, zine making and zine reading, there wil be an open stage, performances and a queer party.

It would be nice to see your zines too! If you've never made a zine before, now is the time! If you've ony made zines in a long-forgotten dark past, you should dig them up, or even better, start making zines again!

There's no website for the festival (yet) as far as I know, so you should ask more info or mail your questions to freefree@laposte.net

See you there hopefully!

Nina


---

From: freefree
Subject: 26 et 27 juin festival intergalactique du fanzine à bruxelles

hola
voici un appel pour vous invités à venir au local pink ponk à bruxelles le 26 juin
dans le cadre d'un festival inter galactique du fanzine venez avec vos table de presse !
vos zine et autre réalisation votre matériel !
découpage !collage !cadavre exqui !sont au programme!
dès 14 h ensuite vers 20 h scène ouverte pour vos performances ! lecture de textes ! et tour de chants suivi d'une queer party le tout prix libre une photocopieuse sera à disposition au bunker à 200 mètre du pink ponk ou de nombreux fanzineusEs exposeront et comploteront de nouvelles page en votre compagnie le 26 et le 27 juin
local pink ponk 2 rue marie popelin bruxelles à 100 mètre de la place rogier
nous annoncé votre présence peux nous aidé à évalué le nombre de table à prévoir n'hésité pas

leeds zine fest

There's gonna be a Leeds Zine Fest on 27th June at Brudenell Social Club. I don't know much about it, but the organiser, Katie is still looking for distros and zinesters to have tables (and I think she's still looking for bands to play afterwards too)

Email her at: katie_thirkill@hotmail.co.uk to get a table/state your interest!

More info here

[EDIT 25/5/10: I heard today that this event has now been cancelled]

henry and glenn

Henry & Glenn Forever comic by Tom Neely looks so totally great.

Buy Via: Microcosm

Starring super-notorious musclebound punk/metaldudes Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins (with a little help from super-notorious soft-rockdudes Hall and Oates) Henry & Glenn Forever is a love story to end all love stories! The premise of this Cantankerous Titles-released comic is explained at the front of the zine: “Henry and Glenn are very good 'friends.' They are also 'room mates.' Daryl and John live next door. They are satanists.” What follows is ultra-metal violence and cryfest diary entries, cringing self-doubt and mega-hilarious emo-meltdowns. Who knew Danzig was such a vulnerable, self-conscious sweety-pie? Who knew Rollins was such a caring spouse? Who knew Hall and Oates were so infernally evil—yet so considerate? Well, illustrating/writing team Igloo Tornado (featuring super-awesome comixdude Tom Neely) did and they kicked down 64 fully-illustrated pages with it. Genius on all fronts. Terrifyingly cute. Cutely terrifying. As the real-life Rollins says, quoted on the back cover, “Has Glenn seen this? Trust me, he would not be impressed.”


EDIT: I just read a rad interview with the creator, Tom Nealy, who was asked:
Personally, I see the comic as a brilliant commentary on the fact that metal and hardcore scenes are incredibly homoerotic. Agree, disagree?
Yeah, I think that’s definitely part of it. But there’s also a lot of homophobia in the metal scene that we’re making fun of. Henry and Glenn are easy targets because they are both such strong personalities who take themselves very seriously. They’re also beefy attractive dudes, so the strips almost write themselves.
For my own part of the book, I drew a lot of inspiration from past relationships and my own neuroses. There's a little bit of me in both Henry and Glenn. And there’s a little bit of my ex-girlfriends in both of them, too. There’s even a few in jokes about me and my wife as well. I’m making fun of myself as much as either of them.
There’s another side to the book for me, though. With all that’s gone on with the Prop 8 out here in California in recent years, I really wanted to just present them as a normal couple (although kinda neurotic). So, I actually hoped that it would come across as more of a pro-gay comic rather than making fun of anyone.

creating our own culture

I'm going to be running a discussion group at this year's LONDON ZINE SYMPOSIUM (Sat 29th May) with Patrick, Debi, and Em. It's on: 'Creating Our Own Culture'

Creating our own culture
A discussion group with zinesters Melanie (Colouring Outside The Lines), Patrick (Ricochet! Ricochet!), Em (The World’s A Mess & You’re My Only Cure), and Debi (Self-Publishing and Empowerment) talking about taking the DIY ethos of zine-making and applying it to becoming creative producers and creative consumers.
They will discuss:
- Organising gig and spoken word tours
- Setting up independent gallery spaces
- Forming bands
- Launching own publishing houses
- DIY Book publishing
- Exhibiting art communally
Come and hear how and why they are creating their own cultural environments/cultures/worlds, and discuss how you could too. Feel free to bring examples of what you’re up to, and/or ideas, plans, and projects that you’d like to put out in to the world

aorta #3

Aorta Magazine #3 is back from the printers. Order your copy online at Aorta's website

Issue 3 features my interview with the wonderful Marci Washington amongst lots of other equally rad things!