Zines are Punk Culture not Documentation of Punk Culture

It is not hard to see why those interested in social and cultural movements would be interested in zine archives. When studying a particular subculture, one might focus on overarching themes and the governing ideas behind the movement. For example, the history of activism is often taught largely through the “big” events, generally embodied by large protests or events. Zines can be a means of documenting cultural and historical events. More, they do so in a way that humanizes those events with an individual perspective. Given their tendency towards DIY practices, zines carry a lot more of the individual in their presentation. Individuals create and sustain zines and offer a rare glimpse into individual desires and individual ways of interacting with other members of a subculture. So perhaps what zines bring to our study that other materials may not is the documentation of individual activities within subcultural communities.

But if it is true that zines are intimate and offer more than just a document of communication in which punks speak to other punks, one must take seriously the importance of zines for a subculture. Stephen Duncombe calls zines the social institutions of punk culture and this perspective seems exactly right, to my mind. These pieces of folded paper are never just an attempt to communicate, they are the carriers of culture. They express the values, norms, habits, anxieties, and desires that make up so much of punk culture. Zines are not just words; they are the manifestation of a culture. They are a language of sorts and a key part of the lifeblood of punk.

Zines instigate intimate, affectionate connections between their creators and readers, not just communities but embodied communities that are made possible by the materiality of the zine medium.

Alison Piepmeier

People are joined together into a community by reading and interacting with the same material objects of a culture, whether this is zines or music or concerts. Zines create community. The significance of zines lies, in part, in their material nature. It matters that you can touch them, open them, and see how they were created. They exist not only as finished products but also scale-model introductions to Do It Yourself culture. There is nothing intimidating about a zine: to see one is to learn how to make your own zine. Piepmeier notes, “in a world where more and more of us spend all day at our computers, zines reconnect us to our bodies and to other human beings” (214). With print books becoming less prominent, and face-to-face interaction less constant, zines provide a space for people to live an embodied existence in the presence of others and act as a powerful reminder of two things: the value many see in connecting with others and the idea that if you can create a zine, so can I.

Zines are dense pamphlets that spark collective action and reaction. They can be artistic expressions of politics that inspire others to be active and inspire them to change their values. Read in a digital archive, one can see that this is true. But one might not be moved by this reality either. One might simply see the zine as an interesting artifact, not something that continues to express a culture. A digital zine does not feel like something I can create myself. It feels twice removed, at least, from the process of creation and the person who must have folded and stapled the zine I am holding.

When an archive collects and reproduces a zine, it creates a document that can affect others, whether by inspiring them or documenting a moment in time and the desires and anxieties of a subculture. But it does not create community and it does not engender a recognition that I can contribute to this zine culture, at least not in the same way. A zine in an archive is no longer a carrier of culture. It becomes a document divorced from the people and the culture that created it and as such it loses its most important quality as something that builds community.

Does this have to be true? Can a digital copy of a zine still reach across the emptiness of the internet and connect people to something bigger than themselves?

The issue here is what one does with an object and what an object does to me. Does digitizing a zine and making it available online control what it will do and what it will mean for someone?

I often worry that any talk of archiving punk begins from the premise that punk is dead. But punk has been outliving its death for its entire life and will continue to do so. If it is done badly and in the wrong spirit, I think that archiving can help to kill punk culture by making it old, irrelevant to the contemporary moment, and appear like some fascinating artifact that belongs to another generation. Part of the power of punk has always been its ability to change and respond to the needs of those whose sweat and heartache makes it vital at any given present moment. There is no essence that must be respected. It lives and breathes for those who bring it to life. They work within a tradition and are maybe they are inspired by the past; but it is up to them to define punk and put it into practice.

An archive of zines can make punk appear as though it happened a long time ago. This might inspire, but it might also stunt the growth of punks in the present. This is one of the reasons that I find the archive of Inside Front from Crimethinc so impressive. The authors recognize that an archive has to be oriented toward inspiring individuals to take from the past what they want and need!

There is no way to guarantee how an archive will be used. How an archive is framed and what sort of context is given along the way can make a huge difference. An archive must inspire a DIY spirit that supports individuals to build the world they want. An archive should build the capacity to make readers into the next generation of creators of punk culture.

By Francesca Gimson and George Grinnell