duplex lines
We have found earlier that hacktivism is based on a “talk back” initiative, and zines
are a means for creating a channel for your own message. What the zine mainly
does is to actualize potentials by the very act of dissemination, connecting sepa-
rated interests and documenting opinions and of manifesting them with printed
paper between people.
One example of this community function can be seen in the home-made Ameri-
can magazine “Duplex Planet” by David Greenberger. In 1979 Greenberger began
to work at the “Duplex Nursing Home” outside Boston and he thought of making
a small magazine for the institution in which the residents could share their stories.
The finished zine raised little interest among the residents of the nursing home, but
David’s friends showed a great curiosity about the stories told by the elderly and so
Greenberger continued his work. Since then he has released over 180 issues, always
focusing on portraying a wide variety of real characters who are elderly or in de-
cline.
However, the aim of the zine is not to focus on the past lives of the elderly, but on
who they are as individuals right now. Greenberger don’t want to let the elderly to
be stuck in an attitude of only looking back as if life was something happened
“back then”. Instead Greenberger’s aim is that the reader should get to know the
residents as they are in the present and to capture the essence of who they are,
without celebrating or mourning who they once were. The contents of Duplex
Planet are direct transcripts of conversations of the residents in the nursing home
in response to Greenberger’s quite quirky questions. With these tricky inquiries
they reconsider their viewpoints and in a way “short-circuit” their own memories:
“Which do you prefer; coffee or meat?” or “What did George Washington’s voice
sound like?” – but also more generative; “What does it mean to sell out?”.
The answers were often surreal, almost visionary at times. Using humour to get to
know the participants, and to encourage them to share their views, Greenberger used
the newsletter as a form of emotional exchange, a means of connection. (Spencer
2005: 21)With quirky questions such as these it might seem that Greenberger’s intention is
to put the elderly in an awkward situation and create some laughs at their expense,
but the effect is the opposite. Instead the residents come forward as real living be-
ings, still vibrant humans, with something to say, and with a voice that is worth
listening to. Their sense of humour has turned many of the residents into cult fig-
ures (Spencer 2005: 21)
Greenberger’s work resulted in unexpected developments. In 1983 one of the writ-
ers in Duplex Planet, 85-year-old Ernest Noyles Brooking, was “discovered” by a
publishing house and his poetry released in a book, We did not plummet into space
(Brookings 1983). Another of the residents, Ed Rodgers, came to design the letter-
ing of one popular REM album. Thus Duplex Planet became an energizing media
channel for its contributors. People who by modern society were forgotten and
considered “worthless”, as they were finished with their “productive” lives, were of-
fered a vector back into the world and to a scene of readers. They were to be seen
anew as individuals who were still very much alive and not condemned only to
their previous experiences and memories. With the help of Duplex Planet life at
the nursing home was no longer the anonymous and boring waiting room for life