Friday, October 16, 2009

What exactly are "Recession-Era Indie Publishers" publishing?

BOMB just posted a terse interview with three up-and-coming NY indie publishers.  They're talking about the survival of the zine in the recession era.  It's not any new news that a zine will thrive with little money, and it's not any new news that zines tend not to compromise their aesthetic, because they're not concerned with a larger return and print run.  I was hoping this interview would cover more about the aesthetics of these indie publishers, though.  I've looked at interviewees' respective websites, and I still can't figure out what their aesthetic is or what they actually publish.  All I know is that Megan Plunkett is possibly sassy when saying, "I guess it’s up to the intuition of whoever is making the decisions—that’s all you really have—your feelings. If you’re fine with it, fuck everyone else over, but as long as you don’t feel like you’re making a shitty compromise."  But what the hell are they publishing?!  It seems these young artists are more concerned with the act of making a zine than they are with what a zine might mean to a culture.  A zine, as I know it from my youth, was a form of media to represent an under-represented, passionate group of people.  If I don't know what they're publishing or what their aesthetic is, then I'm afraid I might have to call this talented group of people the Anti-Zine.  (I'm using Anti-Zine, because I'm really excited about the new Lars von Trier movie, Antichrist.)  What do you think?  Zine for zine's sake?

5 comments:

  1. I. Hate. Von. Trier.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dogville made me want to rip out my eyelashes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. But that would've only taken up, say 30 minutes of the 5 or so hours of the movie!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dogville is where we all live when we let society dictate propriety without accountability.

    Maybe we're not supposed to like the film - but see it, get angry and then live or lives free from complacency. If the world is a stage and that stage is full of terrible things. Redesign the stage. (It's easier to do then redesign the world... and yet in the film it really doesn't happen UNTIL the end when the stage gets redesigned by another complacent society.)

    I actually really like this sort of frustration in films.

    ReplyDelete
  5. http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2009/10/21/antichrist/index.html?source=rss&aim=/ent/movies/btm/feature

    Follow link for more on Anti-Christ, if you're curious.

    ReplyDelete