Year Date Project Unit
Rationale
1 13 November 2017 Brief G – Psychogeographic Zine Developing Thinking
Psychogeography is “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.” (Guy Debord). It is an approach to the lived environment that attempts to reveal aspects of it that often remain unnoticed or unseen. These impinge upon us, and affect us in ways that we don’t often notice: barriers, barbed wire, closed-down shops, new developments, posters documenting the future commuter, revolving advertising spaces, scuffed bits of grassland, brooks, old wells, shut down asylums now papered over by new developments. In this brief, your subject is ‘The Home’ – think of this as broadly as possible, from home as national identity through home as a particular shop, bar, or cafe, to home as your childhood home, or your personal space in your flat, halls, or even your car. Consider in particular: 1. Boundaries – where do you feel at home? Where don’t you, and why? What about other people? 2. Space / place & nostalgia – how do you fashion your environment? Are you nostalgic for home? Are you nostalgic for an imaginary home for your future, or past? What objects make you feel nostalgic? How do space and place make certain people feel at home and others strangers? 3. Domestic space – does home follow you around? What makes you feel at home? How does your home express your identity? Collect, collate, and document your findings and thoughts, and use this research to drive the content to create and produce a zine. Zines are self-published, small-circulation, often non-profit books, papers, or websites. They usually deal with topics too controversial or niche for mainstream media, presented often in a neo-punk aesthetic. Commonly a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images usually reproduced via photocopier or more contemporary modes such as the Riso printer. They are low cost and a significant medium of communication for subcultures. The object is to use the aesthetic of the zine as an antidote to the shine of advertising, in order to move beyond and question the way that advertising and branding shapes our experience.
Brief:
Constraints
Produce a zine that documents the psychogeography of your experience of ‘the home’ to sell as part of a Zine launch. This could be a limited edition run or just an edition of one. 1. Your zine should contain a minimum of 500 words (Includes quotes) 2. Your writing should draw upon academic research, historical and contemporary research about the home, as well as psychogeographical reflection. 3. Use a minimum of 2 academic sources in your writing, and the source of all of your research should be identified using a suitable referencing system. 4. Rather than writing a standard academic essay, think about including narrative, reflection, overheard conversation, text that you find in the environment, as well as research from academic and historical texts and your reflection upon them. 5. You must create an engaging and imaginative piece of work that shows an in depth analysis of the subject and engages the viewer in a dynamic way. This zine will be made up of image and text. It should be designed to unravel you content in an appropriate and meaningful manner. It can have as many pages as you want. Colour or no colour.
Outcome
Printed or digitally published zine
Schedule
Monday 13th Nov – Briefing & group critiques Tuesday 14th Nov – Riso Induction – See blog for details Thursday 16th Nov – Group Critiques & Workshop Monday 20th Nov – Group Critiques – YOU MUST BRING MOCK UPS.
DEADLINE
Thursday 23rd –9.30am> 23rd Nov – Design & Build of book launch / Final Critique
: Referance
Guy Debord / Iain Sinclair / Will Self / Mark Fisher / Laura Oldfield Ford Ditto press – http://www.ditto-london.com / Hato press – http://hatopress.net Behind the Zines, Self-Publishing Culture, Editors: Gestalten, Liz Farrelly, Zines, Booth Clibborn Editions, 2002 Riso Mania – The new spirit of printing, Niggli, John Z. Komurki LOOK AT MY UCA – JAMES HAS PUT TEXTS UP FOR YOU TO READ
READ THEM!