“Maybe paranoia will keep us safe.”
“Kisi ke itne paas ho, ki sabse door ho gaye (You are so close to someone that you have distanced yourself from everyone else).”
These are three disparate, but not disconnected sentences. All of them are expressions of catharsis, at a juncture when a pandemic has taken over people’s lives. You will find more of such thoughts posted on the Instagram page of Zinedabaad Collective, a community of zine-makers.
Zine-making, a do-it-yourself publication — usually a booklet made by hand and photocopied for distribution in smaller numbers — can be traced to the US in the 1930s. Said to have been started by fans of science fiction to share their own stories, the publications were called fan magazines, later shortened to fanzine and eventually zine. Soon there were zines on music, poetry, art, and a host of other subjects. Being self-published, this genre lends itself to experimentation. It’s all about getting a good idea into the public domain.
An entry by Rizul Makkar from Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan, on Zinedabaad Collective is titled ‘Mindblowing Isolation’. A first-timer at zine making, Makkar has deployed bright-coloured fun imagery, including paintings, sketches and photographs, for a different take on the lockdown. Isolation, Makkar writes, is “Heaven for introverts — cancelling plans, avoiding neighbours, no awkward hugs, reading at home, fun with family and learning new things like zine making”.
Hyderabad-based Devashree Somani, who heads Zinedabaad Collective jointly with Mumbai-based Riya Behl, says the zine-making process — using one’s hand to craft a structure and narrative — is ideal to help ground and assimilate one’s thoughts, especially in the current upheaval caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. “Across the world, people have turned to art to make sense of the chaos around them — musicians are performing from their living rooms, poets are reading on Instagram Live, illustrators like Wendy Mac have art classes every day online. We think our submissions right now reflect the same need of catharsis.”
Zinedabaad Collective came into being in February-March this year, at a time of heightened political turmoil. “Our first gathering [in Hyderabad] was held right after the Delhi pogroms and then we found ourselves going live on Instagram when the pandemic was making itself felt around the world,” Somani says. Their zine-making workshops will continue online during the lockdown. There is no fee and each session ranges from half an hour to two hours.
“Zines have historically been the kind of space that validates every voice and every feeling; it does not ask who you are or what your authority is. We want to be true to that spirit of the zine, welcoming voices that often find themselves on the fringe of the mainstream,” Somani adds.
Self-expression and creativity are the most important requisites of a zine. Beyond that, all you need are paper, pen, and colours. The non-commercial zines are inexpensively reproduced in small numbers on a printer or made available online as e-zines.
In response to Zinedabaad Collective’s two calls for zines — on Covid-19 and Isolation, respectively — it received 30 submissions from around the world. US-based author and journalist Sarah Mirk’s work is a lighthearted look at her changed perspective of everyday interaction where a handshake became a trap.
Jasmin Kuhn from Enschede in the Netherlands made a zine out of the consent forms she had printed for participants in her study . Due to the lockdown, Kuhn’s thesis got cancelled and the material went into her zines.
“We want to use the Zinedabaad Instagram account as an archive; we have no plans of ‘publishing’ them,” says Somani.
On March 26, the group live-hosted scientist and artist Ipsa Jain — who produces zines with her reflections on cell biology — to share her journey with this art form, especially to communicate science. “Ipsa mentioned that an idea she’d been exploring was how cells remembered virus attacks, and we thought it would be informative if she walked us through her process of making that [idea] into a zine,” says Behl.
Anticipating questions about the pandemic, Ipsa and Zinedabaad put together a list of scientifically verified sources for further reading. “Some of Ipsa’s scientist friends also answered questions in the comments,” says Behl. After the session, the collective called for leads to scientifically sound zines in any language. “We’ve got a few so far and are uploading them.”
Describing her initiation into the world of zines and zine-making, Behl says, “I was fascinated by the ability of this space to be meditative, musical, reflexive, sweet and random, all at once.” Her involvement with community projects, the Bombay Zine Fest and exhibitions held by Bombay Underground, an artists’ collective in Mumbai, cemented her resolve further.
Somani found her inspiration in the wealth of zine archives from around the world. “I pored through resources such as The Queer Zine Archive Project and Solidarity! Revolutionary Center and Radical Library, amazed by the breadth of thoughts and ideas they contained in the most varied forms.”
The duo wants to encourage creative community spaces particularly for women, trans, queer and non-binary folks, and document the kinds of zines produced in India.
Shailaja Tripathi is a Bengaluru-based independent journalist