When Language Runs Dry: Self Expression and Personal Zines
The aim of my PhD research within the project Back to the Book is to examine self expression in personal zines, and to look specifically at the proliferation of zines in these digital times. Zines are hand-made, non-professionally, non-commercially produced and distributed personal manuscripts. Distributed on street corners or through regular mail, personal zines are paper-based modes of networked self-expression with their own matter, infrastructure, and modes of distribution. Zines constitute a verbal-visual medium in which the style and formatting of text (original or appropriated) is an integral narrative device, with such techniques as cut-and-paste, handwriting, and innovative font layouts that mediate the experiences of a subject.
During the course of my research I became struck by the number of zines I found which sought to describe the inexpressible: zines like When Language Runs Dry which describes experiences of chronic pain, and This Frantic Silence which describes experiences of depression are just two examples of a proliferation of perzines that express experiences of pain and disability. The titles of those zines allude to silence, but their existence is an expression of communication. To understand how zines might be able to express experiences for which there are no words would lead I think to a complex investigation into the page as a bearer of visual text, and the zine as a sculptural ‘text object’.
Taking the framing metaphor of the paper trail as a starting point for this research, I aim to examine zines as paper trails in two senses: firstly as an object that calls attention to its ‘paper-ness’ everywhere it goes it illuminates a very contemporary preoccupation with the endurance of the analog in relation to the digital. This trail that the zine leads us on is a one which traverses questions and debates of materiality, and the changing significance of paper-based literature in the digital age.
Another sense that I consider the zine to act as a paper trail is that through its migratory, nomadic nature, it leads us into many community constellations such as memory projects, festivals and archives. An understanding of the changing cultural significance of zines as a medium of personal expression would also entail an understanding of these constellations.
Sara Rosa Espi |
Utrecht University |
Promotores: Dr. Kiene Brillenburg |
Wurth (Utrecht University), Dr. Anna |
Poletti, Monash University |
Looptijd: 2011-2015 |
E-mail: s.r.espi@uu.nl |