This past weekend, physician the Institute of Contemporary Art hosted a pop-up zine library curated by Papercut Zine Library in conjunction with Amy Sillman’s One Lump or Two exhibit. Sillman produces a zine of her own, cialis The O-G, cialis and the ICA store has copies of the most recent edition for sale for $1.00. Papercut began in 2005 and now houses over 15,000 zines to pore over at their Inman Square location within Lorem Ipsum Books. At the event, they had their own November 2013 zine to give background on who they are, and Papercut librarians were at the event to answer any questions. For instance, I asked why there is a squirrel on the cover of their zine and duh, it’s their mascot. The original building that hosted Papercut Zine Library had a bad case of squirrel infestation, and it just stuck.
I flipped through a variety of zines, some rather eclectic or specialized. There was a zine entirely about maple syrup: its history, the grading system, and how to tap it from a tree. I even read a zine smaller than the palm of my hand about curry recipes, and there was a zine made up entirely of dinosaur illustrations. Papercut has a large selection of music zines in their library, and I was drawn to a particular one about hip-hop from Vancouver with interviews from various musicians. It reminded me of a print version of an article you would see here on Allston Pudding, and I felt inspired to write a zine of my own (probably filled with a lot of delicious vegan cupcake recipes). There was a riot grrrl Boston zine probably from the mid-to-late ‘90s that gave a great introduction to what the riot grrrl movement’s goals entailed, since Boston was fairly late to the riot grrrl scene.
Another of the best music zines in the small collection brought to the ICA was a Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls zine from 2005. Each girl contributed to the zine based on the assignment “today.” Many of the girls wrote about seeing The Gossip and The Donnas perform at the camp. One girl wrote about her love of Spongebob, and if I somehow meet this girl, we will become best friends. A lot of the girls wrote about food and other potential best friends. It made me wish I participated in Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls when I was younger.
From milkweed, a librarian of Papercut Zine Library, in the November 2013 Papercut zine:
“By touching, we can learn more than what the words themselves are telling us. And not just by touching, but with feeling through all our senses… You can smell a zine. I have suspicion that when we eliminate the multi-sensory experience of consuming media, our brain is left with fewer pathways to recalling the very content of what we’ve read.”
Why do we still need zines? For just this reason. The Internet is not stable. Blogs, Tumblrs, and web sites will not live forever unfortunately, and establishments like Papercut Zine Library are helping keep the almost unheard voices loud and proud. Zines are cheap to produce, and you don’t have to make a butt load to get your thoughts out there. Someone will find it and cherish it. Copies will be spread, and before you know it, a zine you wrote could make an impact on others in the future.
