What is a Zine? A zine is a self-published booklet or magazine. Unlike traditional magazines, zines are commonly made by hand or with digital tools for the purpose of publishing/circulating ideas on a small, local scale. Because of their DIY nature, zines can be made on almost any topic of the maker/s choice, from personal stories, art, music, or specific educational topics. All someone needs to create a zine is access to paper and a copy machine. They can be fast and simple, or complex labours of love. Zines can be dated back to the early 20th century but gained significant momentum during the punk rock movement of the 1970s and 1980s, becoming a crucial medium for alternative culture and underground communities.
In this semester-long project, I worked collaboratively with two other classmates, Jenna Downs and Jasper Morris, to produce the following 26-page abstract calendar zine. This zine is the extension of work made for La Raza Media Collective (RAMC), a student group, founded in the 70's at the University of Michigan, that focused on uplifting and advocating for Latino/e/x and Chicano/a students at that time. This zine is a reinterpretation of George Vargas’ original “El Calendario Hispano de Michigan,” located in the Bentley Historical Library, which contained documentation of historical dates related to Latino/e/x history of the Midwest, particularly Michigan. Our zine is an extension of this calendar, taking imagery and text and recontextualizing them, contrasting them against more recent events in Latino history. This calendar zine is intended to be non-linear and abstract, able to be examined from many angles and in any order, representing the generational, continuous history of the region.
As a three-person group, we distributed the design and research process amongst ourselves, each in charge of creating two spreads for four months of the year. We worked together to create the circle zine's formatting, an unconventional form, but one we thought was necessary to convey the cyclical expression of history. Below are the spreads I designed.
By the end of the course, my small group printed and folded 70 copies of the zine and exhibited them at three events. The University of Michigan Museum of Art, or UMMA, hosted a "Behind the Zines" workshop and exhibition showcasing a number of different artists and zine makers. Additionally, UMMA displayed and handed out zines from our class and the previous semester's zines in collaboration with their limited exhibit featuring the work of RAMC. The RAMC exhibit brought the collective's work back to the surface as issues like immigration and protest have become relevant again on and off campus, and even bringing some of the founders of RAMC back to the University to give special lectures.
