Dynamiting Misery!

Dynamiting Misery!
by Avery Cruikshank and Pollard Laine / Readers Digress! #13

A5, 28 pages, cardboard cover. 

£/$: exchange encouraged, and/or stamps to cover postage. 

Dynamiting Misery! is a layered narrative of scholarly faction. It is centred around the world of early animation, the rise of Disney and the company's links to fascism, and the support lent to the witch hunts of McCarthy era America. 

The zine consists of a fictual dialogue between legendary animator Pollard Laine and celebrated critic Avery Cruikshank, which analyses Pollard's career choices and his desire to undermine the dominant rhetoric of capitalist cultural production. If that sounds a bit heavy, it isn't. The writing is erudite, witty, believable and well researched. The simple format of the zine lets the strength of the writing breathe. 

Readers Digress! is the former incarnation of The Bubblegum Dada Corporation - a curiously offline enterprise based on the coast of England. If you'd like a copy of Dynamiting Misery! you can now contact them at their newly acquired email address - bubblegumdadacorporation (at) gmail (dot) com - with offers to exchange creative endeavours, or an offer of stamps to cover postage. Please say we sent you. 

Review by Nathan Penlington

A Conversational History: Roberts Street Social Centre

By Caleb, Nicole, Jyelle, and a whole bunch of other people
www.robertsstreet.org

The major reason as to why this site hasn't been that updated over the summer is that I moved to Halifax and developed a social life. I've also spent a lot of time volunteering at the Roberts Street Social Centre and the Anchor Archive Zine Library contained within it.

This isn't to say I haven't been writing things. I continued writing my column for The Beat until this month, I've made a couple of zines (mostly at a 24 hour zine challenge, more info soon!), and have also spent a lot of time updating the website, facebook page, and email announcements list for Roberts Street.

So it is with a fair amount of bias that I approach this zine.

The Roberts Street Social Centre is a space in a former house that houses a zine library, the People's Photocopier, a screen printing co-operative, a meeting space, and more! It's been around for about six years, and this zine (which was about a year in the making it seems) is mostly a transcript of a dinner conversation (from 2009?) between eleven (I think) people involved in the space, and their memories of how the space began, and how it's grown and evolved since then.

There's also an interview with the people that set up the website and online zine catalogue (really interesting to me, but possibly boring to everyone else), an interview with the owner of the house who we rent from (more interesting than it might seem), and flyers and posters advertising events from the beginning of the space.

As someone (heavily?) involved in the space, I find this all really interesting, but I'm not sure how interesting it would be to someone who has never visited. There are some problems (all of the pieces just seem to stop, with no real ending or conclusion), and there's some information that I would have liked to have seen included (why start a zine library at all?), but overall I think it's a really awesome zine, and the style of it (while a nightmare to transcribe I'm sure), is one that allows a lot of different people to tell their memories and opinions in an organic way.

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

DIY Zine Libraries

By Cheyenne Neckmonster
neckmonster@gmail.com
cheyenne's tumblr

I really love zine libraries, which if you know me you would already be aware, as I spend a lot of my time nowadays hanging out at the Anchor Archive Zine Library (you should come by!). One of the awesome things the Roberts Street Social Centre (where the aforementioned zine libray is located) is a summer zine residency program. This is where various zinesters and artists come and live in our shed for two weeks and work on art and zine projects.

So far this year we've had some pretty rad people come by, one of whom was Cheyenne Neckmonster, who finished her zine a few weeks months ago. It's kind of strange reviewing this zine as not only do I know Cheyenne (and hung out with her a bunch while she was here), but I helped her a bit in this zine by giving her the contact info of some zine library people I know (I'm even thanked on the back page!).

This zine combines general info about zine libraries with quotes from people involved with some libraries. The general info didn't interest me that much, but that's probably because I already know about zine libraries! I was interested by the quotes from various librarians and wish there was more information about them. In fact, I'd rather read profiles on each individual library, but that's me asking for a different type of zine than this is.

This zine is cool though, and I know Cheyenne is already planning a second edition (or a second issue), with information from more libraries. If you're interested in the idea of zine libraries and want to start your own this zine is totally worth checking out, though you don't have to take it as your bible. As Cheyenne says "Every zine library is unique.", and I wouldn't have it any other way.

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)