Alex and I set up our magic shop-esque zine stall at our first zine and makers market at TINA (in Ghetto Town- a carpark..) a few weeks back. Being behind the shop was a surreal and exciting experience, the most valuable gain that of being part of a lovely community of mostly diy lovers. We brought with us our full collection of ALGAE RHYTHM back catalogues, Know Your Mushrooms, Snippets (mini-zine bundles--> one young man exclaimed "wooooh there's some crazzzzzzy shit goin on hereee!!!!!") and matchbox treasures. More excitingly, we launched two new zines (made just days before) entitled Future Portal Artefact and My Celium (File A) as well as the Snippets mini-zines: (click on any images for larger preview..)
Future Portal Artefact was born from A.R 0.05: PORTALS. Each algae groover was given a playing card in their portal survival pack and asked to find the double of their card (located in a guest book in the future portal). Each was to write to themselves in the future, as themselves in the future or to just make a mark. The result is this (possibly my favourite zine so far and very popular at the zine fair):
We shared our table with Newcastle sick chicks Sarah, Hannah and Lisa- very cool, laid back but painfully hilarious girls who were also kind enough to let us crash on their sofa for the weekend. Sarah's 2 zines Time Based ticket feature true stories of Sarah, the freak magnet and bizarre encounters with locals on buses, at bus stops or on her way to get the bus.
Our favourite part of the day was playing Swapsies. We didn't want to go home with a bunch of our own zines- we wanted people to have them in their houses and we wanted to add theirs to our growing collection. So Alex ingeniously hung a SWAPsies sign around his neck and we waited for the offers to come to us. Easy!
* To our suprise a seven year old boy offered to swap his 2page 10cmx5cm zine WEATHER BOOK hand drawn in led pencil and featuring a tsunami and a torpedo and a small picture with the words "oh no" on them. Genius! Too clever for us because he ended up donating it and discarding our inferior zines.
*My good friend Irnin from Irninology had a mixture of crafts and her first zines. Devastatingly (but awesomely for her) she sold out of The Western Line featuring "Will the real slim shady please shut up" and other stories of her mostly unpleasant Sydney Western line train adventures. Luckily we were able to swap some zines for one of her beautiful postcards and her pocket zine The Post Modern Photographer's Manual.
*oh but you were so sweet, a stream of consciousness rambling on beautiful typewritten pages was offered up to us by a quiet, young man (not sure of his name) wandering around the stalls. Very mysterious but very lovingly made.
*The good people over at UTS Writer's Society gave us 3 of their Streetcygnes and a recipe book! They were a little overwhelmed by "how much was going on" in our zines, thrusted at them in bulk but pleasantly grateful we responded to their swap call.
* The beautiful Rizzeria co-op from St. Peter's led us to their table by our SWAPsies sign to do a swap. Emergency Poncho was donated, a hilarious tribute to the rain poncho, printed by the famous Rizzeria printing press in gorgeous greens, blues and oranges. "I'm experiencing emergency poncho envy!" We also snagged a beautiful black and white poster of a magical but dark wonderland, portal-esque landscape and told we must come use the riso stencil press ASAP (and by god we must!)
*Sarah, a pretty young lady from the stall opposite ours wandered over to us, telling us she'd been trying to see what was happening over at our stall all day but had really poor eyesight. But with Alex's sign on, she had to immediately come and swap some zines with us! Her two zines blew me away: King of Hearts featured old photographs of lovers matched with verses from 'The Song of Songs' and her second small square zine (both hand sewed at the spine) was a letter to different people she knows (Dear Greg, you look like a bounty hunter, Dear Jonathon, the reason you were so good at mario64 was because tim was playing behind you (you're controller wasn't plugged in)). So sweet! We gave Sarah five of our zines including Future Portal Artefact because it also had a playing card on the front. Sarah then became our favourite person when she rocked back over to our stall with a little gift- a small zine on pretty yellow paper which folded out onto an illustrated picture of alex with his swapsies sign around his neck. She said she really liked to draw beards.
*Famous Sydney zine-ster Vanessa Berry bought one of our zines ( which was pretty damn exciting). She was wearing an amazing spotted outfit and looked intently at each of our zines trying to decide which to get. She chose Future Portal Artefact and politely thanked me. We've seen her zines sold at MCA and had to go and get some for ourselves. They are perfect- June Graveyard is about her journey with her mother to Sylvia Plath's grave- exquisite!
* I wanted to show you three of the free zines we got from the fair. Firstly WordPlay, a Melbourne Collective's collation of poetry, hip hop and spoken word from live WordPlay events. A luscious coloured zine, funded by the Literature Fund of the Australian council. Hilarious: see 'The True Story of Easter.' The Other is Nano Works, the 2008 Nanoworkshops from TINA showcasing some amazing talent and also showing off the Rizzeria printing press's beautiful work once more. Along with Above Water (free creative writing selections book), Melbourne Uni union really show us up!
*double click to read this page in particular (= hilarity)...
The TINA fair was a success- we sold about 40 zines, swapped about 15 and gave away about 15 to zine libraries around the country (such as Newcastle's Octapod and Melbourne Uni student union zine library). Where is Sydney's zine library?? I also got to see about 3 willies as the girls toilets weren't open and the boys continued to use the urinals whilst we waited.
Lastly, heres a sneak peak of our next zine Moss Jig, all hand illustrated and with haiku's, poems and sentiments.
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Glad you had fun at the zine fair and hope to see you there again next year.
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Susy Pow!