Punkzines

"Along with its long-lasting influence on music, art, fashion and culture, the punk explosion in the late 1970s also fuelled a thriving underground press. A physical representation of punk's DIY attitude, fanzines rebelled against establish forms of expression surviving outside of the mainstream media and providing a voice for a generation. Punkzines features interviews with leading figures from the scene, including fanzine editors, bands, DJs, promoters and journalists, to provide exclusive anecdotes from this momentous period."--From back cover.

The study of media, texts and culture(s) and especially the analysis of interdependent relationships between them has become a major concern in various academic fields, such as intercultural communication, contrastive textology, comparative cultural studies, historical and intercultural pragmatics. Starting from the observation that in contrastive studies of mass media communication not only the theoretical status of “culture” often remains unclear but also the interdependent relation between the theoretical conceptualization of “culture” and the methodological approach of text analysis, this volume brings together linguistic mass media studies with intercultural, diachronic, intermedia and interlingual perspectives. Apart from offering new empirical insights into the field, this volume’s aim is to advance and to broaden the methodological and theoretical discussions involved. Comparing such diverse formats and genres like newspapers, TV news shows, TV commercials, radio phone-ins, obituaries, fanzines and film subtitles, the contributions of this volume illustrate the complexity of the growing field of contrastive media analysis.

This book explores Alan Moore’s career as a cartoonist, as shaped by his transdisciplinary practice as a poet, illustrator, musician and playwright as well as his involvement in the Northampton Arts Lab and the hippie counterculture in which it took place. It traces Moore’s trajectory out from the underground comix scene of the 1970s and into a commercial music press rocked by the arrival of punk. In doing so it uncovers how performance has shaped Moore’s approach to comics and their political potential. Drawing on the work of Bertolt Brecht, who similarly fused political dissent with experimental popular art, this book considers what looking strangely at Alan Moore as cartoonist tells us about comics, their visual and material form, and the performance and politics of their reading and making.

Networking means to create nets of relations, where the publisher and the reader, the artist and the audience, act on the same level. The book is a first tentative reconstruction of the history of artistic networking in Italy, through an analysis of media and art projects which during the past twenty years have given way to a creative, shared and aware use of technologies, from video to computers, contributing to the creation of Italian hacker communities. The Italian network proposes a form of critical information, disseminated through independent and collective projects where the idea of freedom of expression is a central theme. In Italy, thanks to the alternative use of Internet, during the past twenty years a vast national network of people who share political, cultural and artistic views has been formed. The book describes the evolution of the Italian hacktivism and net culture from the 1980s till today. It builds a reflection on the new role of the artist and author who becomes a networker, operating in collective nets, reconnecting to Neoavant-garde practices of the 1960s (first and foremost Fluxus), but also Mail Art, Neoism and Luther Blissett. A path which began in BBSes, alternative web platforms spread in Italy through the 1980s even before the Internet even existed, and then moved on to Hackmeetings, to Telestreet and networking art by different artists such as 0100101110101101.ORG, [epidemiC], Jaromil, Giacomo Verde, Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici, Correnti Magnetiche, Candida TV, Tommaso Tozzi, Federico Bucalossi, Massimo Contrasto, Mariano Equizzi, Pigreca, Molleindustria, Guerriglia Marketing, Sexyshock, Phag Off and many others.

A visual history of the artists, fans, and fanzines of widely influential British punk. Zerox Machine is an immersive journey through the vibrant history of British punk and its associated fanzines from 1976 to 1988. Drawing on an extensive range of previously unpublished materials sourced from private collections across the United Kingdom, Matthew Worley describes and analyzes this transformative era, providing an intimate glimpse into the hopes and anxieties that shaped a generation. Far more than a showcase of covers, Zerox Machine examines the fanzines themselves, offering a rich tapestry of firsthand accounts, personal stories, and subcultural reflections. With meticulous research and insightful analysis, this book captures the spirit and essence of British youth culture, shedding new light on a pivotal movement in music history and offering a unique alternative history of Britain in the 1970s and ’80s.

Ripped and Torn was one of the first punk fanzines, and continued long after others like Sniffing Glue had stopped. Ripped and Torn began in in Glasgow in November 1976 and carried on into the next wave of punk. It ran for eighteen issues, all of which are faithfully reproduced in this book. By punks and for punks, Ripped and Torn is a fascinating document of the punk subculture and a sacred text of DIY culture.

In the middle of the night a taxi driver noticed a rumbling noise under his car during an empty ride. Whilst traveling down Fördestrasse, the taxi had caught a body on the road and dragged it along for almost twenty metres. The man on the street was already dead by that time. It was likely that another vehicle had run him over at the place where hitchhikers used to stand. For years, undesirable hitchhikers had been intimidated here with gestures and steering manoevers. Was it the brainless fascist skinheads again, who already before went on a manhunt in their car on the bicycle path towards the Olympic Centre? A 15-year-old pseudo-punk joins the Kiel punk scene and experiences a blatant and wired time, which culminated in the Hanover Chaos Days 1983. It is puzzling why he suddenly joined the new skinhead scene around the wicked ex-punks Gonnrad and the Konz brothers. What got him into it? When the teenager later realises that the first skins are taking on right-wing radical tendencies, he tries to break away from the scene, but that doesn't turn out to be that easy. Finally he pulls the ripcord after another incident, even if he would have liked to remain a skinhead – England-style and working-class just like in the beginning. He manages to get out after a brutal fight with Stidi, one of the chief skins. The price is high. His face is smashed and his reputation ruined. Many punks are resentful and can't forgive him for the excursion into the strange world of skinheads. Even for the skins it is not over and done with yet. There is massive trouble on both sides. It was the madness of the 80s, a time full of self-destructive punks, scolding old Nazis, marauding skinheads and streetclubs, aspiring young Nazis and overtaxed policemen at the Chaos Days. After a crime against a rocker, a disoriented skinhead ended up at a New Year's Eve party of ordinary people: I remember there was a lot of light in the flat. The bright light and the white wallpaper hurt in my eyes. In my booze state I scribbled something on the white wallpaper in the hallway: Oi! Oi! Oi!, the battle cry of the skinheads. But I was afraid that this could be brought back to us, and I painted a T before: Toi! Toi! Toi!