Tutorial with Rachael House - W5

 Following the suggestion from Anna, I had a tutorial with this week's visiting artist, Rachael House. Rachael House is an artist whose work includes; creating events, making objects, performing, drawing and making zines. I really enjoyed Rachael's presentation and explanation of her work due to her work being so political yet still very accessible to the public. During her talk she defined zines as "a permission, zines allow someone to say whatever they like without being censored." I like this definition of zines as it embodies the history of zines and how politically charged they can be. This got me thinking about what sort of zine I would like to create, with Airspace and the students at Staffordshire University. To remain cohesive, the zine should have an overarching theme to bring everyone's submissions together.

During my tutorial with Rachael, she gave me a plethora of suggestions for inspiration regarding zine making. This included Jacob V Joyce, who makes political zines, Cool Schmool Zines by Holly Casio, Jade Montserrat and Big Book of Zines, a history of zines. Moreover, Rachael suggested these questions for me to think about before writing my proposal: Who is the audience? Will they be buying it? What will you offer the people who are making the Zines? Why does it have to be a zine?

Responding to some of the questions posed by Rachael House in our 1-2-1 tutorial.

After the tutorial, I ended up feeling very overwhelmed as there were a lot of aspects to zine-making I hadn't considered yet. I feel a bit out of my depth with this project and I'm starting to reconsider if this is what I should do for my placement as it seems like a huge project to take on, especially while I'm still so inexperienced. Maybe I should consider changing what I am doing to something simpler. The tutorial was still a positive experience, as I was able to get a good understanding of what I am taking on and some good reference points for me to research. I'm going to spend some time rethinking what I want to do for this placement and what I want to get out of it.

Examples of zines by Rachael House, taken from her Visiting Artist Presentation.