Friday, April 22, 2011

Zines, and More

cover, Artaud-Mania
We are always trying to impress on people that the Riot Grrrl Collection at Fales is not simply a "Zine Library." Rather, it is a group of small personal papers and archives that include (but are not limited to) correspondence, artwork, journals and notebooks, audio or video recordings, zines, photographs, clippings, and flyers, as well as any source materials relating to the creation of artworks, writings, zines, bands, performances or events. Of course, zines were very important to the movement, and almost all of the individual collections contain zines. We're very lucky that they also often include the zine "flats", or masters. And sometimes, they include the source materials that either informed or physically went into the zines.


original paste-ups; ticket; zine components


Johanna Fateman's Artaud-Mania is a great example of a zine in our collection that includes all of the above. It also happens to be one of my favorite zines in the collection, and is currently available to read with other zines from Fales by Johanna and by Kathleen Hanna at MoMA's Music 3.0.

original drawing for page 19 of Artaud-Mania
And just as, from our Downtown Collection, Richard Hell was inspired by the French symbolists, and David Wojnarowicz famously paid tribute to Arthur Rimbaud in his "Rimbaud in New York" series, Johanna continued the Francophilia-punk-in-revolt tradition in her appropriation of Antonin Artaud. Make sure you make it to MoMA so you can see her amazing double portrait of Susan Sontag and Richard Hell in situ.