Zines: Agency and Dissent - Camden Art Centre

Zines: Agency and Dissent

Saturday 5 January 2019
2.00 – 4.00pm

Organised with BOOKS Peckham, this event poses the question ‘what social and political agency do zines and zine culture hold in our contemporary moment?’. We invite artist, writer, activist and curator Hamja Ahsan, artist and publisher Cherry Styles, and writer, researcher and educator Anna Feigenbaum to discuss their work, research and positions. 
Presentations will be followed by a discussion between the contributors.

Books Peckham will have a selection of zines available to buy from the Camden Arts Centre bookshop on the day.
 

Hamja Ahsan is an artist, writer, activist and curator based in London. He is the author of the book Shy Radicals: Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert, and founder and co-curator of the DIY Cultures festival of creative activism, zines and independent publishing since 2013. He was shortlisted for the Liberty human rights award for Free Talha Ahsan campaign on extradition and detention without trial under the War on Terror. His recent writing was anthologised in No Colour Bar: Black Art in Action 1960-1990. He has presented art projects at PS1 MOMA New York, Tate Modern, Gwangju Biennale, Guild Gallery New York, Shaanakht festival Pakistan and Shilpa Academy, Bangladesh. His practice encompasses all media: conceptual writing, building archives, performance, video, sound and making zines.  He is currently working on a project on the role of zines in the Hillsborough Justice campaign, Britain’s largest police cover up. He has been selected for the Ljubljana Biennial 2019. Read more

Anna Feigenbaum is a writer, researcher and educator working on communication, technology and social change. She is the author of Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of WW1 to the Streets of Today published by Verso,  co-author of Protest Camps (Zed 2013) and a co-editor of Protest Camps in International Context (Policy 2017), which explore the media, governance and social practices of protest camps around the world. Her work has appeared in Vice, The Atlantic, Al Jazeera America, The Guardian, Salon, Financial Times, Open Democracy, New Internationalist, and Waging Nonviolence. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University. Read more

Cherry Styles is an artist and publisher based in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. She regularly leads workshops in both informal and academic contexts around zines, self-publishing and DIY culture, alongside co-organising peer support initiatives and consulting on artists' publishing projects. In 2012 Cherry founded Synchronise Witches Press, championing new writing by women and distributing experimental work from around the world.  Cherry is ¼ of Salford Zine Library and Northwest Zinefest and part of the queer artist collective Strange Perfume. Her current project co-run with Esther McManus is The Feminist Print Network, a platform for artists, writers and publishers to work collectively and make print practices in the UK more sustainable. The network engages with the creative and political importance of self-publishing, and the legacies of radical print. Read more

BOOKS Peckham is a second-hand book and zine shop run by Peter Willis and is based off Rye Lane in Peckham, London. Read more