The World of Zines

For the past eight years, Milwaukee Zine Fest has brought together like-minded artists, authors, and poets to display, sell, and trade their works. With a safer space policy encouraging attendees to treat each other with respect and to be assertive when oppressive or aggressive situations occur, it’s an event for participants of all ethnic, gender, religious, and cultural backgrounds to gather and share their works. While many prints and different artist books such as comics were being sold, a majority of the works being sold at Milwaukee Zine Fest were zines.

Zines, in their most common form, are self-produced publications, usually short in length, that are hand crafted and typically photocopied for distribution. Zines typically contain anything from collages of images, short stories, poems, essays, or a combination of them all. Forms of zines were first being used in the 1700’s for marginalized citizens to express their beliefs and concerns and have been a way to spread word since. They were picked up by the punk scene in the 1970’s and used for sharing social commentary and punk music related articles or reviews. Zines continued to gain popularity until the rise of the internet, which made it easier to share stories or pictures. However, DIY communities have kept the practice alive, with events like Milwaukee Zine Fest proving that people are still interested in the physical aspect of sharing art and spreading social awareness.

One particular zine on display, Basements and Living Rooms: A Zine About DIY Music and House Shows, is a zine that focuses on the DIY music scene in Milwaukee but also runs submissions from people outside of the city. Shannon Connor, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee graduate, is the creator of Basements and Living Rooms and also a key member involved in organizing Milwaukee Zine Fest.
“I think one of the most powerful things about zines is that they are actually printed, physical objects,” Connor said. “They’re DIY; they don’t cost a lot to make or acquire and zines can be about absolutely anything you want. I once made a zine with a friend about hot dogs!”
Basements and Living Rooms is on its sixth issue and is printed annually.

Every summer, Connor puts out a call for submissions to her zine, and puts everything together by fall in order to be photocopied and distributed. The zine discusses various DIY music related subjects and house shows but also includes articles and stories by her friends. Issue six features an article by a friend from France about touring Europe and a story by a friend from Canada about a fest that he and some friends put together in New Brunswick.

“I really like collaborating on the zine, especially since it’s about DIY music because there are so many voices in the DIY scene,” Connor said. “I can’t accurately talk about it all on my own, and I like working with friends and meeting new friends.”
Connor first learned to craft zines during an internship she took with the Queer Zine Archive Project in Riverwest. There, she learned about the history of zines, how to make them, and how to add them to the digital archive of zines that the QZAP has compiled on their website.

While Connor’s zine focuses on the DIY music scene, the subject of zines greatly varies. Many times, they’re used to discuss social issues that marginalized peoples might not have very many alternative outlets to express their beliefs and opinions through. Brett Suemricht, another zine creator, has created his own small press called Genderfail that aims to create networks between other queer, transgender, and people of color making art books and zines.

“Genderfail looks to provide resources to artists, writers, poets, activists, and other creative projects centered around issues that matter most to everyone involved,” Suemricht said. Suemricht, who is originally from Milwaukee and attended the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, moved to Philadelphia to start Genderfail. He was invited to Milwaukee Zine Fest to show off some of the projects he’s been working with. Genderfail allows submitters to choose an organization of their choice where a portion of the money made from their zine will get donated to. One particular zine for sale at Genderfail’s table was titled It’s Fine.

Through a series of poems, it told the story of an African American frustrated with the way media was dealing with all of the killings of unarmed black citizens by white police officers. The zine raised $40 for BLCK, the official campaign for the Black Lives Matter movement.

“The format gives voice to people that may not always have the opportunity to create the type of work they want to make,” Suemricht said.

“This is one of the reasons I started Genderfail. I didn’t want to wait for opportunities, I wanted to create them for myself.”
Zines will continue to effectively share art and spread social awareness as long as there is still an interest in the artistic and physical aspects of zines. The fact that someone took the time to lay out a collage of cut out images a certain way or reach out to a variety of artists and story tellers just so that they could create a 15- page zine that will be sold for $5 proves that there is much more behind it than just the sale of the zine. Zines are about the art and the message. “I think it can be more powerful when you have a physical copy of something, whether it’s personal or political, that you know was put together, printed, published and distributed by a person as opposed to a company,” Connor said.

Suemricht agrees.

“When you hold a zine in your hand, you can tell that an actual human being made whatever you’re holding. It’s this personal touch through the craft of each zine that really draws these connections between personal narrative, social issues, and community,” Suemricht said.