Courtesy of Alexa Horochowski
Scorched Feet Zine
In 2018, Mia became the first art museum in the country to add a zine archive to its permanent collection, and now, starting Thursday, it's showing it for the first time to visitors. The free Fly Zine Archive exhibit includes a selection of more than 60 zines across major urban areas in the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s, out of the hundreds collected by the artist and activist Fly NYC. In line with the social justice and counterculture that zines have been known for since the late 1800s, the exhibit highlights squatting and urban homesteading, protest and radical history, punk rock, and sexuality and gender identity.
"The stories and experiences shared in zines and underground comics can only be found in zines and underground comics; the medium holds many untold stories, so I hope visitors are excited to see something new in a museum space," says Ian Karp, Mia's curatorial fellow for the exhibit.
Still, while Mia's collection is sure to be a treasure trove of history, zines are still important here and now in the Twin Cities.
Courtesy of Mia
Greenzine
An encyclopedia, a how-to, and a work of art
Before the dawn of the internet, zines were often the only source of information for different subcultures, and although they have changed over the decades, makers are perpetually drawn to their low entry costs and versatility. As Twin Cities Zine Fest co-founder Erik Farseth says, "The focus has shifted somewhat over the last few years. There's still a need, but it's a different function. It's not so much a necessity and more about the craft."
People only need a pen, paper, Xerox, and maybe some staples to make a zine, and its potential simplicity leads to infinite possibilities. For instance, Farseth's own work has changed from a high school political zine in the '80s to his current work showcasing his paper collages, many of which also have a political slant. As another example, artist Heather C. Lou may be most known for her "love letters," poetry and watercolor-filled pages confronting topics like White supremacy, gender inequality, and late stage capitalism, but her ranging interests are reflected in her future zine plans spotlighting mochi recipes and all the dogs she's met.
"I was so impressed when I moved here because there are multiple zine fests and comic-cons and spaces for zine makers to gather and exchange and check out each others' work," says Ellen Mueller, zine maker and the director of the MFA program at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. "When I moved to town, I did some brief googling [on the zine community] because I wanted to seek it out, I was looking for it, but I think once you go to one or two events you meet people. It's a very social activity."
Paper and ink still add up
Zines are built on a plucky, can-do ideology—or, as Karp puts it, they're "a democratic, unpretentious, and accessible medium that anyone can make and experience"—but the reality isn't always that easy. It takes money to print (particularly if you're going for higher quality) and a personal network for the most reach. Despite places like Boneshaker Books, Hennepin County Libraries, and Midway Contemporary Art having a bounty of zines, overall, Mueller says the best way for people to pick up your work is word-of-mouth.
For Alexa Horochowski's recent zine, a collective piece she co-led with R. Yun Keagy called Scorched Feet/Pies Quemados, the artistic vision and COVID-related disruptions affected distribution. Because the bilingual zine focused on the parallel social and environmental unrest in Concepción, Chile, and Minneapolis, they wanted it to be free. They also wanted to think outside the box with a professionally printed broadside featuring a remixed American flag commemorating George Floyd on the back's center spread.
"Some people will make homemade little zines and they distribute them everywhere," Horochowski says. "I'm more interested in thinking about the arts, an experimental magazine, you know?"
While Horochowski launched her work at the end of June, she wasn't able to secure grant funding for as many physical copies as she envisioned, in part because of how COVID-19 affected artists' funds. The center itself was also closed to visitors, eliminating any passerby who might stumble across it. Anyone can download it for free, but Horochowski readily admits that the 8.5-by-11-inch PDFs don't feel the same as the printed version.
In a way, Mia's exhibit deals with similar experience challenges for a different reason: Visitors won't be able to page through the Fly Zine Archives at will.
"The display case is somewhat foreign to the zine because of how tactile and interactive the medium is—zines are meant to be held, flipped through and read page by page—so my hope is that visitors to the exhibition discover an artist or writer whose work they connect with and that they seek out further experience with their artwork or writing," Karp says, noting that making appointments in Mia's Print Study Room would allow people to dive deeper into the archive.
Courtesy of Camila Leiva
Camila Leiva
Communities in time
Despite logistical hiccups, zines are intimate pieces of art that can break down big ideas into manageable chunks. On the more technical side, Mueller has used them to teach ideas such as social practice, or art created for audience participation, and she has created pieces to explain professional practice skills such as writing grants. On the more emotional side, Lou turned her most recent zine-making workshop at Mia into a way to help people process the disassembly of George Floyd Square.
Local artist Camila Leiva, who had an essay and arpillera (a Chilean protest-based embroidery) for Daunte Wright in Scorched Feet, is newer to the world of zines, but she can already understand their pull. "Zines, from what I've seen, there's less rules about how to make your comics. You can kind of push the boundaries in creative and different ways," she says. "At some point, I'm hoping that I'm sharing stories in order to connect with others who might feel similarly [and] sort of building a community that way."
Lou echoes the sentiment of community, which is woven into the forefront for many of her projects: "I co-create a lot, and Low [a.k.a. L. Kling of Picklewitch] and I are constantly brainstorming what kind of zines we want to make, and a lot of what we do are compilations and brainstorms, right? So it's like different BIPOC and queer voices together," she says.
Only time will tell if the zines created by Twin Cities makers now will make up the stuff of archives later. (We already have some in the Fly Zine Archive, and Farseth knows all too well how easily a personal collection can turn into something library-worthy.) For now, though, it's worth exploring zines along their continuum from the Fly Zine Archives (and earlier) to the local zines of today. Some trends may change, but the platform's ability to empower the marginalized will always stay the same, and these are some voices you don't want to miss.
