Sydney Writer's Festival: MCA Zine Fair 2017

Zines as far as the eye can see. Or, more accurately, to the edge of this image.

Last week I caught the train to Circular Quay and visited the MCA Zine Fair, which was running as part of the 2017 Sydney Writer's Festival. The fair runs yearly out of the Museum of Contemporary Arts, with each featured table a little extension of a zinemaker's art and work.

Coming from a background of writing/contributing to zines, self-publishing, and distributing a variety of materials of this kind (in a life before teaching), I felt like the MCA Zine Fair was a step back into something that had moved on without me. I felt like a man released to the outside after a long stint in gaol; each zine familiar yet alien, and disconcertingly unrecognisable. I found myself squinting into this room... where were the titles I'd known? Was this fair an extension of the zine world I was once so immersed in?

I picked up a $15 A5 zine and flicked through it cautiously. This already felt very removed from the zines I'd grown up with. When did something so punk, so do-it-yourself and independent, so agency-stimulating, also become so artisanal and profitable? 

The genre has evidently transmuted into something completely different to what I'd collected and absorbed as a teenager; gone are the $2 self-made diatribes on local music, cult movies, and satire. In their place is a vast array of expressionistic art, no less interesting but a helluva lot more expensive. I dare say the audience and purpose of this text type has changed.

That aside, I still found plenty of cool stuff hidden away at the fair.

Dulwich High School stall

My absolute favourite was a stall that represented Dulwich High School of Visual Arts and Design, easily the stall that - in my eyes - represented the true ethos of what zines were and can continue to be. The creativity and passion of the teacher and her students was more than evident in the colourful array of anarchic, freewheeling, hilarious, and heartfelt zines on display. They ranged from micro-zines for under a $1 to more in-depth zines for $5.

'Digital Bread' was one of my favourites; a micro-zine on the evolution of bread-graphics in computer games. Yes, that title is not ironic or metaphorical - this zine does exactly what it says it will, and I found it hilarious.

Microzines!

A robot and its dreams.

This microzine featured finely-observed line drawings depicting different facial expressions and eyes. I really liked the artwork - clearly a talented student!

More great artwork, and experimenting with comic narrative and frame arrangement

This one featured a variety of short comics, all of which were really funny.

It's been a while since I incorporated zines into my teaching. When I first started teaching English I did a short zine-focused unit a couple of times with Year 10, and saw the students create some really amazing things. The medium of communication offered by zines is a free-form approach in which anyone who ever had anything to say can express themselves. The beauty of the genre (and its various subgenres) is that it revels in breaking rules, subverting code and convention, and highlights the independent voice of the writer. 

I don't object to the artistic, artisanal connotations of the zines at the MCA Zine Fair. It's just that some of the extreme prices jar with my understanding of the non-mainstream nature of zines... $10 or $15 is okay for a magazine or a book or whatever, but when it's a couple of home-made pages stapled together I think that you're missing the biggest (and largely-marginalised) sector of your demographic. Zines have and always will appeal to those at the margins of society; the young and the punk, the unrepresented and independent. The moment a zine goes above the price of a couple of coins then it suddenly becomes something else - something that appears to be more about making money than expressing a previously unheard voice.

That's why I loved the Dulwich High School zines so much - they represent the joyful, unabashed creativity of youth who have been given the means of expression. The traditionally low price of zines demonstrates how easy it is to exist in the economy of the zine world, and will hopefully encourage some of the Dulwich High students to continue creating on their own terms in a way that is readily accessible to those who will listen most closely.

Merida (Day 20 - 17/1/14)

Merida; the White City

Our accommodation is a sweet, hidden little treasure in the back alleys of Merida. A mix of Spanish and French, all black grills and doors that open 12 different ways, the Duck and I find ourselves cosy and comfortable in this quiet bed and breakfast chalet run by a diffident French woman. It's just what we need after an uncomfortable 8 hour overnight bus ride.

Our accommodation in Merida

We have now left the rainforest states of Chiapis and Campeche and have made it to the coastal state of Yucatan (at the top of the much larger Yucatan peninsula, the bit of Mexico that juts out into the Atlantic and Caribbean). Merida is the state's capital.

Being a sunny, provincial, colonial sort of town, the Duck puts on a dress before we head out into Merida for the day and pops her hands into her pockets. She absentmindedly pulls out a handful of black pebbles.

"What's that?" I ask.

She looks confused for a moment and then a realisation dawns on her, "It's volcanic rock!"

"Where from...?"

We both put two and two together. It's from Sunset Crater in Arizona. Duck was wearing this dress when she tripped, her pockets having accidentally filled up with bits of the crater. A week or two later, she still wears the strap on her foot that we picked up in a drugstore.

The Duck looks sad, "But it said in the park 'do not take the rocks'..."

I laugh and the Duck puts them aside, unsure what to do with them.

Merida boasts some very pretty architecture

Merida is known in Mexico as 'the White City'. Many of the buildings are blocky and European, shades of sandy grey and white and a few crumbling pastels. It's busy and metropolitan but lacks the dangerous edge of Mexico City. It's colonial but it doesn't really sell itself as a historical place of heritage in the way that Oaxaca or San Cristobal de las Casas do. There's a bit of a metro-hipster element - little stencils of birds are to be found all over the laneways, there's a few indie craft shops, and I even see a guy in a Descendants shirt. As we walk towards one of the big churches a guy standing on the corner hears us talking in English and jumps into action, keen to practise his own English on us (we've met a few Mexicans like this now so it doesn't seem strange to us). He helps us work out a few places to visit and animatedly recommends a restaurant.

We scope out the 'Mayan' markets found on the 2nd floor of a building after two more locals direct us there. The salesman inside looks more Mexican than Maya, and there is a surprising amount of penis-related sculptures dotted around the building. I don't believe this an authentic Maya market.

After this I lead the Duck to the Museo de Popular Arte, which turns out to be small but free. The curator tells us very sternly and slowly about each of the rooms before letting us in. The art is from all over Mexico, mostly sculptures. The best is a room that contains 32 separate models of the Nativity Scene from all different parts of Mexico; some carved in wood, some woven into rugs, some Asian in style, others indigenous. The unifying theme of Christianity is fitting for a Mexican art museum but the scope of interpretation represents the full complexity of Mexican cultural identity.

I have to be honest, today I felt homesick. One of the sculptures (a pumpkin) randomly reminds me of something from home and I begin to think of all the things I'll be glad to see and do when I get back to Australia. Even at the age of 34 I've never been overseas before, let alone to a non-English speaking country. It's been an amazing experience but the culture shock isn't something that I was prepared for.

Mexican art and aesthetics seem to predominantly (and paradoxically) reflect a preoccupation with death and the radiance of nature in all its colourful hues.

My ambivalence towards Merida is compounded by a trip to the city's zoological park. This is a large park divided into an empty fairground and a free zoo. I'm not sure what the deal is, but the fairground looks like it used to be part of the zoo and is now just these fading, kitschy statues. There a bunch of fairground rides that no one is interested in. Two of the statues are highly racist African-American caricatures. I feel like it's been a long time since this zoo ran at full steam. The actual zoo makes me sad.

There's one giraffe in a sandy enclosure that resembles a basketball court, its companions two zebras and a bunch of ostriches. One of the ostriches has a disturbingly bad case of hemorrhoids. There is a white tiger pacing a small cage while a child taunts it. Jaguars and other tigers also pace their tiny, cages, growling loudly. An overweight chimpanzee rattles the bars of his enclosure. These animals shouldn't be in such old-fashioned cages... why not charge entry for the zoo and use the money to do it up? Merida Zoo is a stark contrast to the nature-driven, conservationist agenda of the Palenque Ecoparque. Both institutions represent two sides of the same coin, the two extremes of how a zoo can be; the best and the worst.

The zoo actually had an enclosure with a couple of regular pet-store rabbits in it.

Raccoons!

The Coati is a long-snouted relative of the Raccoon found in Mexico

 

In the bed and breakfast we stayed at.

 

This didn't photograph very well but it was delicious. Slow-cooked pork wrapped in a banana leaf with some kind of chili-pineapple marinade. The bright pink stuff was very sweet.