Lecturer launches 50th issue of zine

In a world of easily published online blogs one man is still cutting and pasting images on to paper.

On the eve of the launch of the 50th issue of his personal zine, Massey University lecturer Bryce Galloway held a workshop at Wintec’s SPARK festival on how to make one.

What is a zine? It is a collection of self-published work including original or reproduced images and text put together using a photocopier rather than professional printers.

In an act of cheeky self promotion, Bryce, a musician,  created his first  zine Incredibly Hot Sex With Hideous People as a way to get press for his recently released  solo album. He had been in a band called Wendyhouse, but no one knew him as a solo performer and his album release had been largely ignored, he said.

He arranged for an article to be written about his album, and filled the rest of the zine with content on bands from Wellington.

“I sandwiched the article about how good my album was between these other Wellington bands,” he said.

He distributed his zine throughout local shops, and it was scary fun he said.

“I really felt like an interloper, I was uninvited, and I’d made these things so I’d put them down and race out of the shop. It was a bit of an adrenaline rush. I had a taste for it,” he said.

Although it started as a fanzine, over a couple of years Bryce’s zine turned into a personal zine (per-zine).

“It couldn’t carry on being journalism, I couldn’t carry on writing about music,” he said.

The workshop was based on the collaborative approach used at zinefests.

Bryce said there’s usually a table at the back of the venue loaded up with old magazines, glue sticks, scissors and stickers, where people can go and make a page for a fanzine. The pages are compiled together into a fanzine and then sent to all of the contributors.

Picking on politicians, giraffes or, less specifically, tall things,  and fishing were  suggestions for the workshop’s zine. Following  a vote, two groups  created a zine on hating politics and a zine on tall things.

Bryce notes it  is important to announce your intentions to the audience otherwise the zine ends up a scrapbooking nightmare.

Bryce hoped  the workshop would lead to a discussion in Hamilton about zines, and that contributors would go home to make their own . He is planning  a Hamilton Zinefest next year and will be back at Wintec before then to hold another workshop and talk.

Before he left he had a quick chat about the launch of issue 50 of his zine which will be celebrated with a launch party in Wellington.

For a lowdown on the New Zealand’s zine scene read Bryce’s NZ zine round up.