Spells, Buses, and Swaps: Sydney's MCA and Other Worlds zine fairs

‘Have you got any more Rappers With Money?’

She wears a blonde fringe and glasses. Later, when I do the rounds, I see her sitting at her own stall selling zines with an arts-and-crafts aesthetic.

Sam shuffles on his seat and adjusts his beanie.

‘Na man,’ he says, almost sheepish. ‘We sold ‘em all.’

  

It was a last-minute joke that made the Facebook page of the MCA Zine Fair 2015: an A5 publication made entirely of pictures of rappers, holding wads of cash up to their ears, miming the use of a mobile phone. Sam still has piles of ‘serious’ zines—photo essays, design work, skater magazines—but he has sold out of Rappers With Money.

At Circular Quay the MCA Zine Fair is hosting their annual collection of stalls and workshops, amidst the beginnings of the blinking dazzle of Vivid Sydney. And in Glebe the Other Worlds Zine Fair is hosting their second annual collection of stalls, discussions, and workshops.

The MCA fair is brightly lit. Its stalls line the walls of two floors of gallery space. Artists’ places are demarcated by pins on a map distributed at entry. The map also features artist bios, a national index of zine stockists, and a helpful paragraph for new initiates: ‘Wait... what is a zine?’ Its workshops carry innocuous titles such as ‘The World’s Largest Ever Zine!’ and ‘Seeing, Drawing, and Publishing’. There is no eating inside.

The Other Worlds fair is sweaty. From Glebe Pt Rd or Parramatta rd, you walk a few blocks to get there. Five rows of stalls fill the floor of one large room of the Glebe Town Hall. There is no map, no bios. (‘Just grab whatever table space is left,’ says someone who may or may not be an organiser.) The room is sliced into alternating wedges of blinding brightness and sweaty shadows, depending on the position of the floor-length curtains. Workshops and discussions, held downstairs, are both practical and political: titles include ‘Self Care and Zines’, and ‘From Trouble To Trouble’ (presented by the Refugee Art Project). Through a canteen-style cutaway window in the corner, a man is selling vegan hotdogs with hot chips and salad for $5.

Notable finds at the MCA are Mechelle B’s risograph-printed The Joy of Public Transport series; Richard Tipping’s ad-mimicking artworks; and Dover Zelig Dubosarsky’s crossword story that unfolds in poetic autobiographical clues. Notable finds at Other Worlds are Vanessa Berry’s psychogeographical stories and maps; an Australian Gothic ‘anthology of locative horrors’; and Sarah McNeil’s Peach Spell, a 3x4cm delight filled with illustrations and modern incantations. At both fairs, there are stalls run by the anarchists from Black Rose.

 

Several people mention Melbourne.

‘Are you guys from Newcastle?’ I ask one stallholder.

She looks up.

‘Melbourne,’ she says, but it sounds more like ‘Mahlbahn’.

The Sticky Institute, famously located in the underground arcades of Flinders St Station, take up two or three stall spaces.

Later I overhear someone else saying, with a touch of sourness: ‘It’s all a bit Melbourne, though, isn’t it?’

  

Both fairs are a meeting point for nerds and the highly fashionable. Radical queers with multicoloured hair ply their political zines next to graphic novelists and artists in expensive-looking glasses. It reminds me of the strange melting zones of high school drama classes and university arts societies. Each group displays a certain uncertainty about the other. Each seems to want to say, ‘I belong here—and you might not.’

Can graffiti and Gertrude Stein inhabit the same space? Regardless of our preferences, I suspect that any attempt to monitor zine production and distribution would be both fruitless (how do you govern the use of a home printer?) and at odds with the key features of zinemaking as an alternate mode of creation; as a diverse range of voices; as a response to the perceived failings of capitalism in regards to the arts.

I want to fault either or both of the fairs for their trendiness, for their Melbourneity, for their inherent hierarchies in design and printing values. But I can’t. The majority of stallholders and visitors I encounter are friendly and open. They speak about their studies; about their feminisms; about their skating zines; about their ‘Westie’ cultures. They buy my zines, or swap me for something they’ve made. My zine fair anxiety (will nobody stop at my stall? will they laugh at my poetry? will they refuse to swap?) dissipates.

I think of Walter Benjamin’s description of an artwork’s ‘aura’ as its originality and authenticity; something that mass production removes (‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, 1936). I see how the zines are mostly bound by hand, whether that be staples, stitching, or glue. I remember the timbre of the zinemakers’ voices, the colours of their lipsticks. I touch the smooth or thick or textured paper they have used. I relish not the ‘artistic rigour’ of their work, but its whisper of cultures and histories. I learn about Hawaiian graffiti, Parramatta slang, destroyed Californian art communes, and poetry slams in Canberra.

The MCA and Other Worlds zine fairs exhibited certain exclusivities based on subcultural codes and trends. In some cases, the works on offer appeared slapdash, vacuous, or unskilled. However, my stash of findings from the fairs is well picked-over and now makes up a valued section of the bookshelf. At future zine fairs I attend, I’ll eagerly watch out for my favourite makers from this year. I hope they will have something more to swap.