This spiral is a promise. Tell me again how it goes
This spiral is a promise. Tell me again how it goes
Venom Zine Library
1.
Here we are. Again. Here, where the persistence of time is the persistence of movement. The eternal now. A place we are constantly reminded of is not linear. Though mostly said about things that suck, like heartbreak, grief, losing and searching for your mind. By sifting through archives of anti-racist DIY publications from the 70s, 80s, and 90s we found ourselves attuned to a constant recurrence of words. Tragedies and calls to resistance that seem cyclical, too close, their patterns blurring and bleeding into the present. The spinning imprints of past grazing up against the future. Enough to send you spiraling.
The recent past is a paradox—pressing so insistently into the present that it refuses to be ‘past’ at all (Christina Sharpe). There are endless desires in these pages, and so many things that never materialized. Subscriptions that were never renewed (IT IS TIME FOR RENEWAL!!!), publishing collectives that dissolved, injustices that happened, despite. Kara Keeling talks about futures past, collective hopes and dreams that never came to be but that nonetheless reverberate in the now. Absent but not lost, still. Reading, the same staggered ground shifts beneath us, these materials twisting at the precipice, the unknown just around the curve.
| If time is a spiral rather than a line, then how might we “remain faithful to this movement?” How can we access creation through memory, as Ocean Vuong says? Instead of hurtling forwards in search of the new, we instead tried to create room for return. A space to spend time with publications, feel them, sift through past imprints, and make connections. Gathering material from publications such as: FOWAAD!, Mukti, Black Feminist Newsletter, BLGC Newsletter, Blackout, In Print, Speak Out, Grassroots, We Are Here!, and other zines, pamphlets, posters and flyers from local archives, we invited people to go over fragments that resonated, to explore repetition by tracing over words and images. Not repeat as in replicate—same same but different—but repeat as in ritual, as a way of confronting once more, a practice that might allow us to begin anew. |
In archives there is this sense that repetition disintegrates, that each touch ruins or frays what is preserved a little more. But touch can also be an act of intimacy, of marking where we feel a gravitational pull. To leave something of ourselves in that encounter and imbue it with new meaning. How might we offer back our responsiveness and responsibility, by way of return? By layering these acts we want to create a movement of repetition that doesn’t erode but instead reorganizes and reorganizes and reorganizes (Natalie Diaz). A boundless spiral.
2.
Letters to the archiveWe spent some time with your publications; it was a surreal feeling? So much of it felt familiar, calls for submissions, calls for actions, calling out the government…Yet your material spoke to a specific moment in Britain, a specific audience too. Not being of your time made us feel hesitant. There’s something intimate about seeing your everyday organizing, your resolution, your desire—all in print—while holding our perspective of how the years would unfold, that some things wouldn’t end/well. Is there such a thing as a temporal trespass? That would be the feeling of us now, sensing in the material the possibilities of the (back then) future (that is our present), and knowing there’s a dissonance. It can give the material a new meaning, reminding us that the past is never really over—it’s a spiral of arriving again (and again).
We wanted to understand more about how you used self-publishing, especially zines, pamphlets, or DIY publications, during a period when these mediums became increasingly formative to counterculture and anti-establishment movements. The amount of material was overwhelming, we tried to be intuitive with it, and respectful—there was something wrong about trying to get through everything quickly or scan every single page. Your publications felt precious, to be handled carefully, it was easy to forget that they were made to be carried under your arm, read, put to use.
After a while, we started to seek you out. Moments when your voice as editors came through in the break of narrative—this would happen often. Moments of being addressed directly, being asked to show up to a protest, told about reasons for delayed publications (the bloody computers again), threatened to pay a subscription (OR ELSE this is your last issue!!).
We heard something the other day about how when we are lost, we intuitively tend to move in circles instead of straight ahead, and it made a lot of sense? An emotional logic of orientation. Of tracing back what happened, reckoning with where we’ve been, pasts in motion and then somehow finding a way in it—perhaps this little archival research has been an exercise in exactly that. Thank you for the guidance in this maze.
Yours truly.
3.
Spiral poem
I got up in the middle of the night to re-read parts You know who you are If you haven’t renewed… do it now Precious life Have you heard about the head count? Upon absolutely no evidence Lies and myths Who is documenting your history for posterity? Yet we continue to survive Another name, another face, another place You have been warned Last hired, first fired Some more subtle but nevertheless Just won’t die In emotive words The right to enter and settle Living on a knife edge Refusal of the union Now comes the ‘interesting bit’ Shhhh….they don't believe we exist! Led blindly down Screw the waitlist Fire! fire! fire! Fire! Don't you know that we need you to be committed to the center now more than ever The time has come for renewal Each other and all life forms; the rhythms, cycles and seasons of life The myth of the vicious cycle Keep your ears to the ground The real rice and peas In struggle & disbelief If you can’t look back and feel the reasons My people still shine Don’t be fooled…! Refuse to cooperate, the community to spy on itself Don’t answer any questions Any and all anger is wholeheartedly justified Never again You can always say to friends who spotted you “it wasn’t me” So goodbye mother goodbye Who exactly are they trying to kid? This cessation is due to over-extension Starting from “go” Disruptive influence A fallacy Dare to scale the heights Dare to swim against the tide They would have to drag me kicking
4.
These words are a collection of fragments from self-published materials of Black and Asian groups organizing in 1970-90s Britain. Words that contract and expand with the pressures of their becoming. These materials were created during heightened state surveillance, racial violence, police brutality, the Section 28 Act (banning the promotion of homosexuality), immigration and asylum crackdowns. In them we feel an undertow of sly and slippery rebellion. They circulate information on dealing with the police, avoiding identification at protests, DIY healthcare, funding community centers, squatting rights, striking workers, handwritten phone numbers for support groups, offers to carry books and other material across borders, calls for internationalist solidarity; they encourage readers to refuse government demands for scrutability (do not cooperate…DON’T BE FOOLED!), to not invest in the same structures that uphold the wreckages of colonialism.
We think of how collecting and gathering can be a brutal tool, how knowing is connected to control; to material disappearances, felt omissions, and violences. The survival of marginalized communities has always necessitated circumvention, and documentation of these lifeworlds is inevitably tied up with the ephemeral—that which is not made to last—that which evades capture (José Esteban Muñoz).
Zines and self-publishing have, and continue to be, an important way of challenging the parameters of official record. Offering unruly, autonomous, and anti-institutional spaces for self-expression, organizing and knowledge sharing, especially by and for marginalized communities. A mode for alternative narratives of memory, history, and time, they don’t coalesce into neatly legible forms. It’s through their transgression, their refusal to be conscripted into certainty, their multifarious truths and covert disseminations that we might find their life-affirming potential.
5.
Venom Zine Library is a DIY BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) zine library and platform for exploring self-publishing by Maya Acharya and Janna Aldaraji. Building on this lineage of printed resistance, we are collectivizing access, sharing resources, and ensuring these radical publishing traditions remain alive, defiant, and in motion.We would like to thank 56A, The Feminist Library, MayDay Rooms and The George Padmore Institute for generously sharing their knowledge and access to archival materials for this project. @venomzinelibrary