CTS Task: Fanzines by Teal Triggs

For our homework task we’ve been asked to read chapter six of the book “Fanzines” by Teal Triggs, and respond to it on our blogs. We’ve also been asked to take a look at some of the criticisms that followed its publication. Just want to say on the sly that I accidentally stumbled across some of this criticism the other night, so I’ve formed some opinions already. Feel like Chetna in GBBO again – why does this keep happening to me?

(I wonder who’s hand that is?) This is what the front cover looks like just in case you didn’t know. Also just want to quickly say I don’t know how to properly “respond” to something, so I’m just going to say what it is and then give my opinion on it. Probably about to get this really wrong “haha”

“Chapter six – the crafting of contemporary fanzines”
Ok this sounds pretty relevant. We’re off to a good start.
Triggs begins by talking about how she was at a zine fair and sees a load of weirdos knitting in a circle, and then goes on to explain how crafts were linked to zine culture since the Riot Grrrl movement in the early 1990’s. Apparently women used crafts like knitting and stuff in a “third wave feminist position” whatever the hell that means. She then goes on to talk about “Craftivism” (activism through crafts) which seriously is the biggest load of tosh I’ve heard in my life, yeah it’s a nice idea but making a nice little crochet hat isn’t going to help social mobility or increase minimum wage.

From this she leads into the craft of fanzines (ah i see where this is going now) and to put a long story short – the DIY movement died because people wanted their zines to become intimate little graphic objects. They moved away from photocopiers etc in favour of letterpress, screenprint and other traditional techniques. She says zines stopped being nearly mass scale and went back to being numbered limited editions (I can believe that) as people began to value the time and effort gone in to making these beautiful products.

She finished off by basically saying that zines are an “alternative craft movement” because social media has taken the world by storm and it’s now easier than ever to share ideas and stuff. There was one quote I really enjoyed from this last part which was “a podcast today is what a zine was in the nineties”

In response to the book I’m inclined to agree with what she’s saying towards the end, about how people have moved from DIY to more artisan techniques. Because of social media, the new purpose of zines is something graphically beautiful that they want to hold and keep, the information inside has become more of an extra. The focus now is on aesthetics.

Ok that’s the first bit done, the reason I write it in such a skeptical tone is as I said before, I’ve already accidentally read some of the controversy surrounding the release of the book. Off the top of my head she basically didn’t ask any of the artists permissions to include imagery of their zines, she just emailed them saying “oh hi yeah I’m writing a book about zines and you’re in it l0l hope that’s ok” and apparently the book is literally full of inaccuracies and most parts of the essays are blatantly untrue. Now, I don’t want to be too rude because Teal Triggs used to work at my university, but doing that is pretty sly. I mean how would I feel if someone took pictures of my Foundation FMP, wrote a book on it that had information that was massively wrong, and didn’t even ask my permission? I’d be absolutely livid. On the other hand though, I can understand the motive for doing this. She would have had to have asked like over 100 people, and lets be honest, most of them would have said no. She would have ended up with no book at all!

Even though I kind of know about this I’m still going to visit the webpage that we’ve been instructed to look at – HERE which has (clearly) been set up by zinesters who have a fundamental issue with how Professor Triggs has behaved. They have a page which simply lays down all the mistakes she’s made in the book; such as miscrediting people (if credited at all), blatant copyright infringement and her sheer lack of respect. However, I know that it’s been written by people with a vested interest in making her sound like a terrible person, so I’m taking it with a pinch of salt.

All in all I think this book is pretty damn good, it’s the best and most comprehensive book on fanzines I’ve ever seen, even if some people got pissed off with her – but at the end of the day, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.