|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| GRRL ZINES A-GO-GO |
 |
|
|
Come to our zine meetings every 2nd Thursday of every month (in San Diego)! And join our mailing list!
|
* * * * * |
|
How would you decribe GZAGG Kim: I would describe GZAGG as a female consortium/ collective that came together to empower young women particularly in independent media and education, radicalism, zines and Do-It-Yourself ethics. How long has GZAGG been running? ? Kim: We’ve been running since 2002, I believe. Summer 2002. How does GZAGG work and what is the decision process like? Kim: We work as a collective unit. So, there is no real hierarchy involved. We come together and decision making is done mostly by consensus. One person might put out an idea and the others will either modify that, or come to universal agreement. Who is involved right now? Kim: The participants are myself, Kim, a.k.a. Riot Shwank, Margaret …and Ariana Perez Diaz. |
 |
Kim: I personally went to the bookmobile because I was interested in getting back into the zine scene in my local community; I was out for so many years. I went to the bookmobile that came through town and met Elke, Claudia and Brit Briton (Newbocker) and just started talking about zines. I think Margaret and Elke had already been talking before and had done a workshop previously. The idea just kind of spawned out of that need to educate people and introduce zines to individuals and people in the community. How do you balance your work at GZAGG and the other projects you are involved in, like your zine project? Kim: Well, I have a day job like most of us. So, I tend to work on GZAGG stuff in the evening. We do a lot of communication and decision making by email because its easier. Then we hold monthly meetings, or try to stick to our monthly meeting plan, and have an agenda for that so that we can knock out a lot of points. I realize that paying the bills is kind of first right now, but GZAGG is very high on my list of priorities in my life. So, I try to just really plan ahead. I have a planner in which I have to pencil stuff in and see when there’s open space to do everything. It actually seems to work out really well between GZAGG, work life and then personal life. Kim: Probably in the late 80’s. In high school, I met a couple of other young women friends of mine who were putting together a zine, or what they were calling a radical newspaper, not necessarily radical, but a sub versus newspaper they were going to put out in high school. And then from the punk scene. Subsequently, later in the early 90’s in the riot grrrl scene, I learned about zines through people handing them out for free at shows or on the street or wherever. That’s probably how I learned about it, just networking through punk community. Kim: Well, I went to college, and so, I was in a different city. But at that time there were a lot of shows going on and I just ended up going to a ton of shows. It seemed that there was a large population of other young women at these shows. Then I actually read about riot grrrl through the music scene in a magazine. I think it was Option Magazine. Option Magazine did a whole article and I think I still have this. It was called “Fox Core”: F-O-X-C-O-R-E. They were talking about Bikini Kill and some of the other bands; Skrawl was another one. I was always going up to Chicago a lot because I went to school in Indiana, and that was huge up in Chicago. The riot grrrl scene was huge in Chicago. So, pretty much through the music, I learned about riot grrrl. Then I had a straight edge friend who introduced me to zines because he was doing a zine, again because I did it in high school. So, I kind of helped him out because I was working at Kinko’s all the time. And so, he introduced me through music to alternative eating and health habits. So, it was probably through friends at that point. |
|
 |
Kim: I started helping him. Then I did a mini zine at that time. And so I was doing a co-collaboration with him. This was early to mid 90’s. I didn’t do another zine again until I moved to San Diego, which would have been around 2002. So, there was a long period of about six years that I didn’t physically do a zine because of personal issues in my life. I had a hiatus. Then, when I met other people that were doing zines, I became inspired again to do a zine. Which zines have you been doing since? What are you doing now? Kim: I have Grrrl Noire, and that’s grrrl with three R’s, reflecting that riot grrrl terminology. Originally, it was just “girl” but I changed it to reflect that because I had grown up in it and had been exposed during that time to zines. I am also doing Cyclette, which is a pro-women rider zine for both motorcycles and alternative transportation on bicycles. I did a split zine with Ari and it was called the Sugar Skulls Split Zine. It was a half hers and half mine mini zine. Other than GZAGG produced zines, that is all I have in the works right now. Kim: I would say the majority of the women respond very positively, very inquisitively. They want to know more. They want to know how they can do this. The ones that have had exposure, kind of get inspired to produce something else or keep going with this. Then there is that small percentage of them who may or may not pick it up again or do anything about it. But at least they are exposed to the idea and later in their life they might remember and say , “You know, I remember doing that zine workshop and it was a positive thing in my life. Maybe I will pick that up again and/or do it some other time.” |
Kim: Well, definitely Grrrl Zines Network has been a very, very positive resource for us. O ther published monographs and serials, reading other zines -individual zines, either perzines or resource zines, looking at websites of say, Microcosm Publishing, AK Process, and seeing what people are doing have also been positive resources for us. But really its more so the feedback. That has been our biggest resource from the actual participants. We have been trying to get feedback from them in the form of an actual form we give them to fill out at the end of the workshop- What could we improve upon? What kind of time did you have? Did you have a great time? What would you like to see in the future? Would you attend another workshop? – things like that. We also went through the grant process. So, we had to really analyze our function. Grant writing is a very valuable resource be cause you really analyze your mission statement. So you mention you got a grant. Is that your first grant? Kim: We got our first real grant from the San Diego Foundation for Change. We went through a lengthy process where we had to answer a bunch of questions following a format, an outline. It really got us, again, focused on what our mission was. We had to analyze and sort of break down and zero in on our goals, our function, and our end results. And it’s all non-for-profit. Kim: Exactly. We don’t make any money. Everything, the grants and any other revenue we take, goes back into the function and the running of the organization; I shouldn’t say organization; it’s more like a collective. |
|
|
Kim: I think that young women become empowered because they realize that -1.they have a voice and 2.there’s a lot of stereotypes that the media presents that they may not question before. For example, on a lot of highly produces young women’s magazines, there’s always the issue of body image. I know that in other issues, it’s not just that; it could be drug abuse or suicide. I think that never before had they been allowed to voice their opinions. This is definitely one of the ways that they could start to question those things society instils in them to believe. Who attends the workshops you organize? How do you reach out to “soon-to-be” zinesters? |
|
 |
|
| What struggles and lessons have you experienced while working in the group? What have you learned about it? Kim: Well, I’ve learned how to organize as a group consensus. The decision making can be difficult sometimes and also the actual participation because we all have our lives, you know- our work life, our personal life- outside. So, sometimes there may not be the full effort by some of the members because we have prior commitments. And that’s been difficult – to get people involved in the actual function and administration of our group. That’s been very difficult. We try to get volunteers and people are very busy or they live very far away and they can’t attend meetings. That’s been one thing, to try to actually recruit people to come help. But for the most part, I have also learned that it’s really difficult to re-educate people and to try to get them motivated in general because they have such ingrained values in their heads. I think San Diego has a tendency to make people feel sort of comfortable. So, I think people get really comfortable within their community and either they don’t want to seek outside of that or improve it, or they just don’t know. People are resilient to learn something new when they’re comfortable. We try to not to assume that people do know what zines are be cause we’ve had to re-educate so many people and educate, period, on issues that we have been learned in for years. What role does feminism play in your life? Kim: In my life, I would say my feminism comes out in my zine making be cause through zine making I feel empowered. What does feminism mean to you? Kim: It’s hard for me because I’m such a non-label person. But I think I feel, with that issue in mind, being able to have a dialogue with other women and to educate other women and to have support and just to want to create safe and equal spaces and environments. I guess that would be the main thing for me . And just so you know, I don’t have a problem with speaking. I know where my issues lie; I know where my opinions lie and it’s been difficult to be comfortable and safe about expressing them. It’s frustrating at times, but for the most part I feel I have grown with the contact to the zine community. There’s a whole resource of support there. So, it is feeling safe enough to reach out to that community. |
|
* * * * * |
|
info: postal address: |
|
