Notes from the Underground

‘Zines and self-publishing are a bone of contention in my house. “I don’t have much time for self-publishing,” says my flatmate who works for Bloomsbury, “if it was any good it would have been published properly.” I, however, am in love with the idea that if anybody wanted to make a book or zine themselves, they could, quite easily, and control every step of the publishing process.

So on Saturday I left her reading ‘proper’ books and took myself to the Publish and be Damned ‘zine and self-publishing fair at the ICA. Self-publishing is an inherently self-indulgent pursuit, and I will concede to my flatmate that it is not unusual to find inane haikus spread over five pages, essays with titles like “On the essence of whimsy”, and straight-faced ‘zine readers grumbling “This is SO funny”; but it is also a platform for innovations too brilliant and daring for the world of mainstream publishing.

Artist Sara Mackillop had produced a variety of books playing with our abstract notions of time. The One Day Diary divides the day up into compartments of between a minute and half an hour; her calendars of individually glued, different sized raffle tickets gives prominence to Sundays, “I like the way the semi-transparent paper means that you are always looking through to the next month,” she said.

Ex-St Martins lecturer Dan Mitchell was selling his anarchic ‘zine Hard Mag. In exploiting and exploring the rising accessibility of photoshop and glossy printing, car crashes, hardcore porn and appropriated brand logos are luridly pasted together and printed onto heavy shiny paper. He showed me his Plymouth Special, the sale of which had been prohibited by an injunction from the Daily Mail and General Trust after pirating the logo of the Plymouth Herald. The latest issue of Hard Mag gives a similar treatment to the Top Gear and Rolls Royce Logos, though Mitchell seemed to be rather looking forward to the inevitable lawsuit.

As well as a bustling black market of underground publishing, were a series of talks under the heading “I don’t want to make a book”, exploring the roll of publishing in (or as) art. Nick Thurston, of York publishing house Information as Material, discussed the possibilities of originality beyond the narrow requirements of the “myopic publishing industry”, but lamented the emphasis of design over content that new editing technology has created. However Lynn Harris of AND Publishing was all in favour of the digital options now available to conceptual artist/publishers. Max Herbst, editor of the LA Journal of Aesthetics and Protest began by posing himself the humble question, “What if my words could have meaning?” before discussing the significance of magazine distribution around the Occupy Wall Street movement.

While the digital age has opened up new vistas in the world of self-publishing, the more traditional productions are still more fun to read. The collage, cartooning and risograph printing lend that irresistible DIY quality to Landfill Editions’ and Ditto Press’s output. However, the strength of ‘zines is that they can take any form; from Grantchester Pottery’s lavish exhibition catalogues, to the Paper for Emerging Architectural Research (PEAR), the Publish and be Damned Fair proved that self-publishing is only limited by the wild imaginations of absolutely anyone who cares to have a go.

Published on the Spectator Arts Blog.