Blogs and zines work with different methods, materials, and time spans through
which they complement each other. Zines like to be real, tangible media, to be read
in the bathtub or handed out at gigs. They are proud to be flesh.
Blogs are direct, fast, worldwide, but also trapped in dependencies, technologically
as well as design-wise. Zines offer another form of transparency and independence
not possible for most bloggers who need a lot of coding and design skills to get an
unconventional layout of their site and are still dependent on hosting services.
Yet the question remains, what form of other vectors can there be for designers to
work with and how would they become independent and unique and at the same
time communicate a special message to the reader, similar to the zines. Another
central question is how to escape control from yet another editor, webdesigner or
gatekeeper, but still use the channels and intensities of the big system. To explore
this I set off an experiment with a “radical democratic local fashion magazine” –
Syntax/144.
syntax/144
Syntax/144 is an exploration of how an egalitarian fashion magazine could be set
up and run. Syntax/144 is not a physical magazine per se, but a method of how to
make one. The outcome of the method is an editorless magazine, a collective work
without one dominant will or one artistic auteur. Quite like as in the “bazaar” dis-
cussed in the previous chapter, it sets out to offer an alternative to the dominant
understanding that production requires a leader. If home-produced zines tradi-
tionally bypass gatekeepers, they usually also create new ones; the founders of the
zine. Even the most subversive bulletin usually becomes an edited cathedral, ap-
proving some content and refusing others. The aim with Syntax/144 is to take edit-
ing away from the editor and to put all emphasis on the temporary alliance be-
tween the actors who produce the zine.
Syntax/144 differs from other zines distribution-wise in that it is using the existing
vectors of established fashion media to reach out. After production it is inserted
stealthy or parasited into the big fashion magazines as a local appendix to the glo-
bal fashion. The zine is riding the built up expectations of the host to intensify its
homemade content in the eyes of the reader. It also works as a local attachment to
the otherwise global documentation of the fashion magazines. In this way it is a
symbiotic complement and appendix to its host, an editorless incarnation of a
temporary alliance covering an ephemeral scene untouchable by the host.
In one way it is indeed a parasite in that it uses the energy from the exciting global
fashion to divert some of the attention down to the local street. If it turns out to be
successful we can imagine customers especially wanting to have the zine and look-
ing through the established magazines in the store to find an issue with a Syntax/144
inside.
The production process of the zine aims to be radically democratic. Every partici-
pant contributes with an equal amount of input and copies, one sheet of paper
made into 144 copies. Every contributor also gets an equal amount of finished
zines, and the whole group shares the distribution. The reason the zine is made in
144 copies, is because 144 is a “democratic” number – equally dividable in 4, 6, 8,
9, and 12 – a feasible amount of members in a group where every member can each
have the same number of copies.
The Malmö issue caught in the act of distri-
bution, as an unofficial appendix to Vogue
and I-D magazines at the local press shop.