Tot zines!

I must admit it felt a bit strange to be walking around in leopard print at at car tuning convention one day and to be standing in front of a group of art school students the next. Welcome to the world of Dutch Dolls...

After a very enjoyable 'project week' about zines at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam in April we had the opportunity of doing it all again last week (read the blog post about the first one here). In small groups, or individually, 25 students from various departments worked on little booklets WITHOUT TOUCHING A COMPUTER. They were free in their choice of subject matter, because that's what zines are all about: a medium to express yourself, your opinions, your obsessions, your artwork, your comics, your poetry and whatnot.

So we ended up with a wide variety of zines: about superstitions, everyday annoyances, skateboarding and zine-making itself, the differences between the left and right side of brain and traditional German hunting imagery and terms, just to name a few. We were delighted that in times like these there was at least one zine that was political and critical. It was called "Wilder dan ooit" ("Wilder than ever") and it included fragments of an inspiring speech by Johan Fretz on the planned cuts in the government's arts budget, plus a plan how to fortify the art school should things get really bad and of course lots of very wild appropriated images of Geert Wilders.


There was a zine "Meisjes poepen niet" ("Girls Don't Poo"), filled with cut out images from glossy magazines of women in difficult poses. Just by combining them in a certain way, or altering them with little scribbles these perfect women, who supposedly are unable to poo or fart or to have hairy armpits, were put into perspective. Neat detail was the silkscreened poo-colored cover with a toilet paper banderole:


We were happy to see the return of the guys who made "A Sick Zine" during our workshop in April. They had continued working together since on an animal-themed second edition and decided to finish it the during our class (very clever). The lovely lads even included an 'ode' to Dutch Dolls, of which you can see a blow up in the upper right corner of the picture above. We are still debating who is who.. Meanwhile here's a selection of their original collages:


They made so many pages the zine turned out too thick to staple, so they had to glue it...


... 55 times...

More pictures of the making of A Sick Zine #2 can be seen on their Facebook page (yes they have a FB page, and a website, and they're on Twitter!). It was sold out in no time, so we suggest you become a fan or start following them to make sure you don't miss out on issue #3!

More 'filth' was produced by an exchange student from Switserland, Luca. Be honest, when someone tells you he "wants to do something with porn and vegetables and machines" you don't expect him to come up with something as tasteful as this:


He used a duplicator or ditto machine so he could print two colors in separate layers. We must say, big up for Wilco at the graphic studio at the Willem de Kooning Academy! Silk screen printing, letter press, typewriters, folding machines.. it's all there for the students to use.

Part of the assignment was to organize a 'zine jam' on Friday afternoon to sell and swap their zines. They failed miserably on this part of the assignment, but we'll forgive them because they worked so hard to have their zines ready on time. They camped out in the foyer of the school, we wheeled in Blanche for some background music and we had a ball anyway.


Still it's a shame they didn't promote this little event, because I know you, dear reader, would have loved to come and I know you wouldn't have left empty handed!!