This weekend, Bombay Underground will organise its second zine fest in the city in an attempt to make physical books popular again
Acqui Thampi and Himanshu S
The tangible joy of flipping through pages has arguably been diluted in the age of the Internet. But it is something that Bombay Underground - an independent publishing project - is hoping people will rediscover. One medium they're using to reach that end is zines. We ask co-founder Himanshu S what a zine is, and he tells us more about it over a cup of tea.
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Covers of zines
"Even you can make one. It can be about your day-to-day life, or about the people you have met over the course of the day. It's also made in a very simple manner. So, you think about one, create it, photocopy it, make a bunch of copies, hand it out or sell it, and stuff gets around like that," Himanshu explains.
He adds that Bombay Underground will display 100 zines for sale at the second installment in the city of their exhibition, Z is Also for Zines. The biggest of these will be up to 70 pages long, while the smallest is around 16 pages.
The price for these ranges between Rs 100 and Rs 400. Some will also be contributions from the UK and Europe, since the founders (Acqui Thampi is the other one) reached out to people whose work they admire, which is something that will help them towards their end goal - a physical library for zines.
That, Himanshu hopes, will provide people with an opportunity to slow down the frantic pace that's a part and parcel of the 21st century. He says, "In the 1990s and early 2000s, the printed media kind of went down. Even now [after two decades of the Internet being around], people want to believe that blogs are similar to what zines might be. But it's a lot different today.
People who understand what it means to..." and at this point, he rubs his index fingers to his thumbs to mimic the action of flipping a page, before continuing, "Everybody wants to get back to that world. Somewhere people understand that it's time to rewind the years. So it [a zine] is a nice way to put out things. Also, when you are selling it from person to person, it has that human contact that's somewhat missing these days."
Making friends that way is what the purpose behind the weekend's event is, since, as Himanshu admits, 'commerce' is not a big thing in the zine scene. The studio in Bandra they have rented out is also suitably intimate, fitting around 25 to 30 people. So head down there to try your hand at making a zine - because that too is something that will be encouraged at the exhibition - and also to experience the tangible joy of going through printed material, such as, well, this newspaper.
On: September 1 to 3, 3 pm to 9.30 pm
At: What About Art, Baitush Apartments, 29th Road, Bandra West
Call: 9821209085
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