Petra van Cronenburg

After 40 years, I'm back in making zines (Wikipedia). My very hand- and human-made zines are quite a good kind of 'therapy' against the attacks by AI corporations steeling from creatives and destroying too much (including the environment). It began as a tiny angry protest: they'll never get the original to train LLMs with it. And if they scan my pdfs, they will train their slop with half-erased pencil strokes. Only real human fans can print a zine onto real paper. You need fingers to fold them, you can touch and caress them.

For my zines scroll down or look at my kofi!

Some History

The tradition of fanzines and zines goes back to the late 19th c. but became known mainly through two movements: the fanzine scene surrounding sci-fi and comics, and the zines of various protest movements. That's how I came into contact with zines: during my student days, they were used to spread political messages among the people or to distribute small instructions and reflections as cheaply as possible. Often handwritten, sometimes typed on a mechanical typewriter, then simply copied. Mainly for feminism and queer projects, or for environmental activism, you could find zines from baking your own bread to How-To's about women's health, zines about building the perfect compost heap or getting ideas for effective street protests and how to protect yourself.

And exactly because of this they have a tremendous come-back with own fests, fairs, workshops and even libraries. Everybody is able to make one, even children. It's easy, it's cheap and it can be copied. But you can also distribute your zines in photo quality from professinal printers. There are free zine swaps and even quite expensive zines: when your favourite cartoonist sketches one and you want the original. Sometimes these zines get more and more pages, grow in size and become real art books.

Here you reach a level that existed already in the 1970s when comic fanzines became "real magazines": The boundaries to self-publishing and cooperative professional publishing are becoming blurred as well as the boundaries to art journals.

The most simple zine is the 8 pages mini-zine because you need only a sheet of paper (DIN-A4). You fill it with 8 small pages, fold it origami-like ... tadaa ... ideal for beginners and children.

Or you go more "bookish", building pages with computer software just for printing - or using real paper for artist techniques like drawing, painting, collages, or even stitching some embroidery on paper. The easiest binding method are folded double pages placed inside each other. However, you can also punch holes in all pages and either bind them together or connect them with metal rings.

Everything is allowed, you can have every level from bloody beginner to famous artist. Often the making of zines is already a political statement: you keep the complete control over what you release into the world. And your fans print it out themselves or buy ready-made physical booklets.

My Zines

I start with the fun of mini-zines and you can find them in my KO-FI.

At the moment, I'm experimenting and playing with sketching and topics of nature, thoughts inspired by my podcast work. My first mini zine inspires you to become that curious alien shifting it's perspective to experience nature.

This is for my mini-zines or making your own ones (you can find lots of written or filmed tutorials online)