DIY feminist zines since 2001
It’s been a while since I posted one of these big updates with news and upcoming events. But I’ve got some exciting things to share with you.
So here is news about my newest zine/craft/music projects, radio shows that played my songs, libraries that acquired my zines, reviews, an upcoming exhibition, and more…
Continue reading “Echo news (March 2022) – Lost Luna, zine libraries, reviews, and exhibition”
A few weeks ago I visited the Kunstenbibliotheek or “Art Library” in Ghent (Belgium) to consult their zine collection. It’s a relatively new and small collection but it includes beautiful and interesting publications. I had donated some of my zines before and during the pandemic and felt excited to finally take a look at all the zines they have…
I’m not only celebrating International Zine Month this summer but also my zine anniversary (aka zineversary)! So for today’s prompt “HallowZine! Remember zines and zinesters that are no longer with us” I’m going to focus on some of my own ancient out-of-print zines. Let’s dive into my personal zine herstory again and take another look at my oldest zine series…
Continue reading “20 years of Echo Zines: the Flapper Gathering series”
I love today’s International Zine Day prompt because I’m such a zine geek!
“Organize your zine collection. Post a shelfie online.”
So thank you, Stolen Sharpie Revolution for inventing that prompt and the word “shelfie”! 🙂
I have a pretty large personal zine collection, from having acquired zines for more than 20 years (buying them, trading them, getting some for free…). Most of the zines I’ve read are stored and organised in magazine boxes on book shelves, and smaller sized zines in smaller boxes. The big boxes are arranged according to subject (meta zines, queer zines, self-care, witchy… and so on) and the smaller ones according to country (it’s just easier for me to find things that way). Some parts of my zine shelves look a bit messy I think. Time to tidy and reorganise those parts and also read more unread zines so I can put them in the pretty boxes (and so I can enjoy exploring those unread zines of course). 🙂
Here are some photos of my zine collection:
Continue reading “International Zine Month 2021 – my zine collection”
How is International Zine Month going for you? Today is a more virtual day with a prompt about ZineWiki:
“ZineWiki Day! It’s a wiki just for zines! Add to or update listings to the new and improved zinewiki.com“
I love ZineWiki! It’s a great resource to find out more about specific zines or zinesters and it contains a lot of entries and information about now out-of-print zines.
Anyone can add or edit pages! It’s really easy to work with the wiki system once you get the hang of it. You need to make an account and there are some easy tutorials to get you started.
The ZineWiki website crashed a while ago and recent edits had been lost so I decided to edit the pages of my zines that were still there today. Unfortunately my own zinester page which I had put quite a bit of work in, had completely disappeared and I don’t remember at all what I had written on that page. 😦
Check my zine pages:
And my new zinester page:
Maybe I’ll still keep editing a bit more today and in the next days. Once I get into it, I find editing and writing in ZineWiki quite addictive. 🙂
Do you have a page on ZineWiki too? Please share it in the comments! I’d love to check it out!
I’m going to skip a few of the next IZM prompts and take a little break but if you want to know what’s coming up, check out the list on Stolen Sharpie Revolution.
The Archive of Youth Culture (or Archiv der Jugendkulturen) in Berlin needs your help! Because they need to move soon they are looking for financial support. They’ve set up a crowdfunding campaign that you can donate to.
This archive is my favourite place in Berlin (which says a lot because they are a lot of great places there) because it has an awesome collection of books about subcultures such as riot grrrl, punk, grunge, hiphop, and more, as well as lots of boxes full of zines. It is a very welcoming place with super friendly and enthusiastic staff where you can browse and do (DIY) research at ease. It’s so important for places like this to exist to be able to preserve youth culture and counter culture heritage which might otherwise get lost and forgotten. So if you can, support them AND visit them!
(Some photos of my visits)
Last week, I went to Berlin where I visited one of my favourite zine places: the Archive of Youth Culture! Thanks to Guiseppina and her colleagues for the warm welcome and interesting chat! This place is a pure treasure cave so be sure to stop by when you are in Berlin.
More photos…
I was so excited to learn that my zine series Same Heartbeats is in WorldCat, thanks to the University of Washington Libraries who seem to have a few issues in their collection. I don’t know how they got there, but zines travel in mysterious ways…
My old zine series Flapper Gathering is in WorldCat too, thanks to the LSE Library in London. Yay!
❤
Here is a list of libraries (and distros and shops) where you can find my zines. But there might be others, you never know!
There exist a bunch of zine libraries in Belgium. I define “zine library” here as: “a library or archive that keeps zines in its collection”. Some are historical archives, some are libraries specialised in certain subjects, and others are part of DIY autonomous spaces. Some have mostly artzines and books, some focus on comics, and others collect mainly anarchist pamphlets and political zines. Languages may vary too. Here are the ones I know of:
Do you know of another zine library in Belgium? Please let me know!
I haven’t actually been to all of these Belgian zine libraries yet so I’d like to do a little “tour” to visit them to find out more about which publications they have and enjoy their zine collections. [Actually I really love the idea of a zine tour too, with zine readings and zine fests, as I wrote in a previous post. But in this case I just would like to visit the libraries one at a time].
Apart from zine shops and distros, zine libraries and archives also stock zines, and you can even read zines for free there! To celebrate all of their wonderful work and collections, July 21st is called Zine Library Day.
That’s why today, on July 21st, International Zine Month encourages us to
“visit your local zine library. Don’t have one in your area? Why not start one?”
And tomorrow, on July 22nd, we give some zine library love too by
“sending or dropping off your zine to a zine library to be included in their collection.”
Over the years, I think my zines got to live in quite a few libraries, I’m happy to announce. You can see the list here. Unfortunately this weekend, I won’t be able to visit a local zine library or archive because they are all closed at the moment. So I’ll have to donate zines another time.
What are YOU doing on this zine library weekend? Do you have a zine library nearby? If not, you can also check out some online zine archives:
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To read all my posts about International Zine Month, click here or here.
Echo Zines 