Zines have always been a form of critical intervention, especially for minority or marginalized groups and voices. This quote:_ “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”_ was written by an American journalist – a writer for the New Yorker – A.J.Liebling in 1960 and summarizes very neatly the importance of publishing, whether it be independent or not. The ‘right’ to say what one thinks – under, for example the laws of a free media – is not necessarily the same as the ‘ability’ to do so.

Freedom of the press is, in this way, a double-edged sword – while it allows for an endless number of voices to be heard in theory, in practice it gives the printer or publisher exclusive control over what gets published, including the right to refuse to print anything for any reason. This capacity for refusal is ultimately why so many in the past have turned to self-publishing, especially those whose words have rallied against mainstream culture, its values and its ideals.

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Blast! From Morris to Modernism

Who here is familiar with the work of William Morris? Morris was a designer, artist and writer operating in the UK (mostly London) during the late 1800’s. He is well known for his pattern design and his association with the Arts and Crafts movement. Morris & Co, which some of you may be familiar with, began as a furnisher for churches around the UK and later evolved into a more general commercial enterprise selling patterned fabrics, wallpapers and carpets. It is also well known for its desire to bring art and design closer together – in conception, production and reception as well.

However, later in his life – after his days at Morris & Co – William Morris turned to publishing. In 1891 he founded the Kelmscott press through which he published thousands of books until his death in 1896. This is our first publication, a spread from one of the last books he ever printed, in 1895, reflecting on the aims of the Kelmscott. It is useful to read as it is indicative of Morris’ critical intentions more broadly:

“I began printing books with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read and should not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity of form in the letters. I have always been a great admirer of the calligraphy of the Middle Ages, and of the earlier printing which took its place.”

While a socialist and a political progressive for his time, Morris’ aesthetic sensibility was very much rooted in ancient, medieval and gothic traditions. For example, in almost all of his work he chose to use the ancient technique of hand woodblock printing over the then new method of roller printing – a technique which had almost completely replaced woodblock printing for commercial purposes. As a side note: If we think back to the Leibling quote I started out from, Morris was only able to use the press ‘freely’ in this way, because he owned one.

So, this somewhat backward-looking sensibility is indicative of the Arts and Crafts movement more generally – it was conceived as a reaction against a perceived decline in standards (standards of quality, beauty, integrity, etc) which had resulted from mass production, factory manufacturing and new machinery. In this way it was an aesthetically and culturally mediated critique of the conditions of production in the late 1800’s. However, instead of looking forward for inspiration, Morris and his colleagues chose to look back at the past, into history for inspiration.

In this way we might say that Morris was the very last of the pre-modern artists and designers. His solution for the grievances he felt and experienced in his work was to look more deeply into the history of Europe and reject the new modes of production and consumption springing up around the tumultuous industrial revolution of Victorian England. We might say that this kind of critical nostalgia was, in the context of our unit, Morris’ ‘critical perspective.’

While perhaps the most well known today Morris & Co was not the only Bloomsbury based furnishers dealing with these issues of a new aesthetic sensibility and a new hyper-mechanized world. The Omega Workshops opened in 1913 led by the designer Roger Fry. Here we can see an invitation to a private view at their workshops produced in 1913. In the design we can see a similar sensibility to Morris’ designs – the recognizable, figurative image of the person dividing the sections, the old-fashioned gothic calligraphy and in the text itself, the emphasis on ‘hand-dying’. However something has changed, the drawing is much looser, the colours are fewer and less refined. This is an image which we could argue displays a kind of transition from that ‘pre-modern’ sensibility to a more ‘modern’ approach.

I think it’s worth noting here that Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ was produced in 1907, 6 years before The Omega Workshops opened and only 10 years after Morris’ death. So, things were rapidly changing in the aesthetics of cultural production at this moment in the run up to the First World war. What was emerging was a critical perspective that I’m sure everyone here is familiar with: the ‘Modernist’ perspective.

However, while everyone is familiar with it, Modernism is a tricky thing to define – who can give me some characteristics of modernism, as an approach or as a style?

Well, instead of writing one myself, I turned to the Tate for assistance, they’re definition is as follows:

“A rejection of history and conservative values (such as realistic depiction of subjects); innovation and experimentation with form (the shapes, colours and lines that make up the work) with a tendency to abstraction; and an emphasis on materials, techniques and processes. Modernism has also been driven by various social and political agendas. These were often utopian, and modernism was in general associated with ideal visions of human life and society and a belief in progress.”

Modernism encompassed many different artistic styles and sensibilities, including the cubism of Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles…’, Russian constructivism, Dutch ‘De Stijl’, a more amorphously constructed ‘Dada’ and Italian ‘Futurism’. However, as I said before, The Omega Workshops perhaps represent a more transitory moment – a slower progression from the pre-modern, traditional sensibilities of the past, to this brave new world – not such a ‘clean break’ as the Tate’s description suggests.

And this pace of change was not enough for one member of the workshop more committed to the then contemporary, yet still somewhat unfashionable modernist ideals. Wyndham Lewis a painter, writer and critic, inspired by the Italian futurist paintings which visited London in 1910, grew increasingly frustrated with the pace of change in his work at The Omega Workshops. He split from the workshop taking a number of artists with him, forming the breakaway group called ‘the Rebel Art Centre’ where a new Modernist style, Vorticism was developed.

While futurism set out to make Italy modern by attacking its traditions – to, 'free Italy from her innumerable museums, which cover her like countless cemeteries' – Vorticism attacked traditional British culture. Futurist imagery celebrated the power, force and speed of the machine. Futurists glorified war because they saw potential for freedom in its power to destroy. They admired the militarism, modernity and patriotism of Italian Fascism which, according to Marinetti, was the natural extension of Futurism.

The Vorticists were clearly influenced by Futurism but they also insisted on their differences: while Futurists celebrated the motion and speed of the modern machine, the Vorticists focused on the pure potential of its energy. Wyndham Lewis saw the 'great English vortex' as the centre of a whirlpool or the eye of a storm, a sense of which you can get from this painting of his produced between 1914 and 1915.

Here we have our second publication – the Vorticist journal Blast was published only twice; BLAST appeared in July 1914 and BLAST: War Number in July 1915. The first issue was a vehicle for the Vorticist manifesto and a long list of things to BLAST (the mild, domesticated and provincial) or BLESS (distinctly unromantic ships, English ports and bridges).

Here we can see very clearly the modernist sensibility, the modernist ‘critical perspective’ coming through. As we can see, “these were often utopian” visions, here of a Britain untethered from its provincial past. This belief in progress is expressed at the expense of everything else.

In this spread we can also see how far the graphic design has moved on from Morris’ ornate layouts. Nevertheless, it is clear that the design is still heavily considered, the typographic layout works in tandem with the writing itself – both in its critical perspective and practice there is a break with the old forms here. And this is also a useful moment to pause and reflect on this idea of a ‘critical perspective’ at all – often we can fall into a tendency to describe any ‘critical perspective’ as in some way inherently ‘good’. However, here we have a perspective rooted in the outgrowth of the Italian Fascist movement – a fact that in my reading of this history noticeably gets scrubbed over. It is important to remain critical of the critical perspectives we are dealing with and also not to gloss over facts that may be inconvenient for a certain narrative.

However, back to our story, in spite of it’s politically skewed beliefs – this journal, this self-published magazine is a symptomatic, if not a slightly extreme example, of the naïve, modernist ideal. And we can see a similar thought process going on in other publications following on from Blast, such as the design of the Dada bulletins. This mixture of new typographic styles, facilitated by increasingly advanced technology, seeking a radical new visual language that completely breaks the old, established modes of thinking and making...

So hopefully now everyone has a slightly more nuanced understanding of European and specifically British modernism and self-publishing in this transitory moment from the late 1800’s through to the 1920’s. But why is this important for the cultural, contextual history of the zine? And for critical theory in institutions such as this one?

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Counterblast! From Pulp fiction to Punk theory

Taking a trip across the Atlantic for a moment we come to a publication that might be familiar to a few of you. I showed this to you in my initial, very brief introduction to zines around 6 weeks ago now. ‘The Comet’ was the first ever ‘fanzine’ or simply ‘zine’ to be produced, published by the Science Correspondence Club in Chicago, in 1930.

The context for the emergence of these publications comes from the period during and succeeding the Great Depression, so... from 1929 through until the late 1930s. The editors of "pulp" science fiction magazines such as ‘Amazing Stories’ – which were a much larger operation – became increasingly frustrated with letters detailing the impossibilities of their science fiction tales. Over time they began to publish these scrutinizing letters, complete with their return addresses, somewhat accidentally generating a community of critical readers and writers. As I said at the start, zines have always been a form of critical intervention – whether that intervention is based in political unrest or sci-fi fantasy. Often it is the case that it will be both.

This tradition of sci-fi fanzines continued in full force for decades after its inception in the 1930’s. For example, in 1967’s Spockanalia, the first Star Trek fan-fiction ever produced. The author Joanna Russ who was involved in the culture at the time, later wrote an analysis of the subculture in an essay entitled ‘Concerning K/S’ (Kirk/Spock) detailing that there were 500 core fans and that the group was 100% female.

“K/S not only speaks to my condition. It is written in Female. I don't mean that literally, of course. What I mean is that I can read it without translating it from the consensual, public world, which is sexist, and unconcerned with women per se, and managing to make it make sense to me and my condition.”

Here we see the potential for the critical perspectives exercised through these self-publishing efforts (such as the fanzines) not only to carve out new conceptual territories, but also physical communities in which marginalized people can congregate, share grievances and develop ideas.

And as these zines were developing, so too were the interests of those making them. In the 1960’s the rock n’ roll movement began picking up steam and with it came a whole new iteration of zine development. Many people already involved in the sci-fi fanzine subcultures of both the US and the UK started up self-published zines in order to review, interview and explore these new musical genres. One of the earliest examples comes from the zine ‘Crawdaddy’ which, according to The New York Times, was "the first magazine to take rock and roll seriously."

Also, in these covers we can see some of the earlier visual language of the Dada bulletins and Blast coming back into play. This is no accident and the designers of these zines took direct inspiration from those earlier modernist publications, especially the experimental typographic layouts along with the cut-and-stick, collaged imagery. However, as we will see, in a more general context we might describe this as closer to appropriation than inspiration.

This was only further developed when, in 1970, the Canadian cultural theorist and media critic Marshall McLuhan published Counterblast, a zine which positioned itself in direct response to Wyndham Lewis’ ‘Blast’. In the introduction to the book McLuhan writes:

“The term counterblast does not imply any attempt to erode or explode Blast. Rather it indicates the need for a counter-environment as a means of perceiving the dominant one. Today we live invested with an electric information environment that is quite imperceptible to us as water is to fish. At the beginning of this work, Pavlov found that the condition of his dogs depended on a previous condition. He placed one environement within another one. Such is Counterblast.”

Here we can see, in almost perfect symmetry, another shift in critical perspective. A shift away from the modernist ideals developed in the early 1900’s into a different frame of reference, a different cultural sensibility. In this writing McLuhan encourages a suspicion of ‘dominant environments’ of grand collective projects, idealized by the modernist tradition – he suggests the need for a counter-environment that can provide ‘critical-distance’ from the mainstream culture.

Maybe some people can sense what I am building up towards. Just as Wyndham Lewis’ ‘Blast’ signified a significant shift from a pre-modern era into a modernist one – McLuhans ‘Counterblast’ signifies another shift, this time from a modernist to a post-modernist one.

Turning to the Tate for a definition once again:

“While modernism was based on idealism and reason, postmodernism was born of scepticism and a suspicion of reason. It challenged the notion that there are universal certainties or truths. Postmodern art drew on philosophy of the mid to late twentieth century, and advocated that individual experience and interpretation of our experience was more concrete than abstract principles. While the modernists championed clarity and simplicity; postmodernism embraced complex and often contradictory layers of meaning.

Anti-authoritarian by nature, postmodernism refused to recognise the authority of any single style or definition of what art should be. It collapsed the distinction between high culture and mass or popular culture, between art and everyday life. Because postmodernism broke the established rules about style, it introduced a new era of freedom and a sense that ‘anything goes’. Often funny, tongue-in-cheek or ludicrous; it can be confrontational and controversial, challenging the boundaries of taste; but most crucially, it reflects a self-awareness of style itself. Often mixing different artistic and popular styles and media, postmodernist art can also consciously and self-consciously borrow from or ironically comment on a range of styles from the past.”

This shift towards ‘deconstruction’, ‘irony’ and ‘remixing’ or ‘appropriation’ as critical methodologies are very clear even in this simple example of McLuhan's work. McLuhan takes the work of Wyndham Lewis’ and twists it into a new context through these tongue-in-cheek interventions, in doing so he exemplifies so much of the postmodern approach to critical thinking and practice. Similarly, taking the arrangement and design of the publication as a cue we can see Mcluhan borrowing self-consciously from a range of styles that have come before – cherry picking the ones that allow him to make a point or, perhaps, make a joke.

More generally Marshall McLuhan was inspired by the counter-cultural movement of the early postmodern period of the 1960’s and 70’s – the women’s liberation movement, suffrage, the hippy movement, etc. He wrote about these shifts in his now infamous book ‘The Medium is the Massage’( – who’s seen this book?) – which was a play on the well known saying: ‘The Medium is the Message.”

It was a time where two countervailing tendencies began to emerge. On the one hand you have these new networks of action radically rethinking social norms and the structures of society, especially in America; and, on the other, you have newly developed, digital mass communication devices such as television and radio which have, from McLuhan’s perspective, taken over the world and developed a previously unthinkable ‘mainstream culture.’ The link between the two is what McLuhan seeks to explore both – culture and counterculture – in the ‘Medium is the Massage’ and ‘Counterblast’.

Hopefully here you are beginning to notice some more recognisable aspects of how we tend to use critical theory here and now. How we are encouraging you to approach your topics and case studies. A technical definition of Postmodern critical theory is that it seeks to politicize social problems "by situating them in historical and cultural contexts, to implicate themselves in the process of collecting and analyzing data, and to relativize their findings." At this stage it’s my hope that this kind of thinking is no longer alien to any of you – and now you can see a rough version of _where, how _and _why _this kind of thinking emerged.

So, moving on from Counterblast, how was this kind of thinking developed further or manifested through zine production and culture? We have not yet reached the ‘punk theory’ that I promised or the kinds of zines that you most likely experienced down in the library’s archive.

The German media theorist Florian Cramer, in his 2013 book ‘Anti-Media’ describes the cultural function of the zine as a self-published medium during this particular period in great detail. Jumping off from McLuhan’s earlier work, he writes:

“While the World Wide Web was a DIY publishing medium in the 1990s, digital DIY has become difficult in a medium defined by only four corporate players (Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook) just like [mainstream] TV was defined by a few networks in the past. The publishing of self-made books and zines thus becomes a form of social networking that is not controlled … by those companies”

The medium, the theory and the social function of zines all work together to create this alternative space for an early, DIY form of postmodern critique. Especially in the post-punk zines of the 1970’s and 80’s, they acted as a forum in which artists and musicians fulfilled the modernist tradition of rejecting all that was traditional, hegemonic or by remixing material from _those earlier periods. Here you can see, with the designer and artists Jamie Reids’ work for the Sex Pistols a _reworking of the dada aesthetics developed during the Modernist period, parodying these styles and mixing them in with the new technologies of the day (photocopiers, letraset, etc). This process (of referencing, remixing, ripping up, defining a mood and an argument), this ‘self conscious assemblage’ is, in essence, what we are asking you to perform here in the academy as an approach to the development of your theories, ideas and arguments in the context of your essay or ‘literature review'.