Making zines that matter

“We have student contributors from many different disciplines and backgrounds who are there with a shared purpose of creative expression but with specific ideas to express,” Roger says. “Some students were using their zine to challenge ways of thinking, such as gender stereotypes, while others focused on communicating ideas about science and creative writing.”

For JCU English and Sociology Student Zoe Hull, the Zine Club was an opportunity to explore how we express our relationships with each other. “I thought, ‘what can I do in just nine pages?’ and the answer was a love story. It features three people in a relationship, and it alternates on every second page each person’s journal entries, which are their intimate expressions of their experiences.”

While Zoe was excited to sharpen her creative writing skills, she was unsure about how to design and create her zine. The Zine Club is a collaborative one, though, so two other contributors helped her to construct the zine in a way that physically reflects the story with different handwriting, different types of paper, different pens, and even purposely designed as slightly fragile in its construction, similar to the situation of the story’s characters.

While zines are typically small-circulation, self-published works often produced on copy machines, the JCU Zine Club also used a small 3D-printed etching press to help produce one of the zines. There is something undeniably impactful about creating a physical artifact, as opposed to a digital work, and that is exactly what Roger aimed to capture for the Zine Club’s members.

Though we may tend to think of print as a dying technology, it is a thriving art form. “Printing and constructing — whether that involves paints, inks, stamps, or other tools — provides us with the opportunity to learn with our hands as well as our minds. Even the smell of the paper and the ink imprints on our memory of the event, which is an event of imagination,” Roger says.

The “event of imagination” is a concept that Roger is eager to help his students explore. “Storytelling has a long history, of course, and so does printing,” he says. “Now, as we create our own works, we are a part of that history. We can ask ourselves where we are in that moment of the tradition. Are we just having fun or is this a more significant cultural event than we realise? Are we participating in a tradition or are we continuing it, ensuring its survival?”

While most of the semester one Zine Club contributors are undergraduate students, JCU Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr Emma Rehn, joined the Zine Club because of the appeal of not only creative expression, but creative communication.

“I liked the idea of it being a creative club for students, and that it facilitates creating something new and unique,” Emma says. “My zine is based on my work, which is a database of radiocarbon dates for archaeological sites. Often when I talk to my family or friends about what I do, they don't understand how it works. So, I wanted to create a fun way of explaining it.

“Rather than having to sit through a lecture about the chemistry and physics of radiocarbon, you can just read my zine for a very brief introduction in cartoon form. It explains everything you need to know to understand the concept without getting bogged down in details or technical terms.”

“Creative spaces foster spontaneity, experimentation and maybe stepping out of your comfort zone to try something new and experience growth because of it,” Roger says. “That’s what I’ve tried to foster within the Zine Club, and we saw a really positive response to that.

"We’re all excited to continue next semester, and we invite everyone to come see what we’re doing and maybe join in. It’s a great way to create connections and friendships as well as learn about yourself.”

If you are interested in contributing, you can make an expression of interest by emailing roger.osborne@jcu.edu.au