Son[i]a #288
Teal Triggs
This podcast is part of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. Library music produced by Lucrecia Dalt at Ina GRM (Paris). Interview and script by Maite Muñoz. Produced by Anna Ramos.
Trained as a historian, curiosity about punk and participation in the Riot Grrrl movement turned Teal Triggs into an avid fanzine collector. A researcher and educator, she currently teaches graphic design at the Royal College of Art, London, where she is Associate Dean in the School of Communication. As the author of several books on fanzines and an indefatigable communicator, she has become a touchstone in the study of feminist self-publishing.
Having acquired a vast knowledge of punk publications, Teal Triggs witnessed and participated in the underground feminist movement of the early nineties. Riot Grrrl emerged as a response by groups of women who were close to the spirit of punk but did not feel represented in the eminently male scene and decided to speak out and organise their own spaces and networks. And they did so by adopting punk modes of production while developing their own aesthetic and using zines as a means of spreading the feminist revolution.
In this podcast, Teal Triggs talks about the historical background of zines and their key role in generating communities outside of the mainstream, from community newsletters to dada publications by way of science-fiction, 1950s rock and roll, and activist zines. Triggs also looks at the relationship between technology and aesthetics, and discusses the Riot Grrrl movement and the language and visual universe that opened up as a result of the cross between music, DIY, activisim, femininity, and feminism in the self-publishing world. We consider as well the displacements, amplifications, and resignifications of zines as a result of the arrival of the internet and of collectionism, of their inclusion in archives and libraries and/or their transformation into artistic artefacts in the white cube.
Susan Bee
New York artist Susan Bee defends the political and subversive potential that develops when art and pleasure unite. Which is why imagination, poetry, humour, subjectivity, textures, colours, lines, and matter play an essential role in her work, both in her collages and paintings and her artist’s books. As an art student in the late sixties, she first came in contact with feminist activism and other social movements such as black power, gay rights, and protests against the Vietnam War. In 1986, she embarked on the project M/E/A/N/I/N/G, a self-managed art magazine that she co-edited with fellow artist Mira Schor for thirty years. In this podcast, Susan also shares the particularities of being a woman and an artist who has passed the age threshold of 65 in New York’s artistic ecosystem today.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with New York artist and editor Susan Bee that we were unable to include the first time around.
Peter Downsbrough
In FONS ÀUDIO #49, Peter Downsbrough takes his works from the MACBA Collection as a springboard to talk about a relationship with photography spanning almost half a century, and about how it fits into the jigsaw puzzle of techniques and disciplines that make up his artistic vocabulary. We talk about space, cities, invisible lines, and the critical attitude that runs subtly through his practice.
Some reflections on the small press boom in the art world
Independent publishing is experiencing a boom in the art world. Before the bubble bursts, we speak to Kit Hammonds and Bernhard Cella about the boom, the recovery of supposedly obsolete printing techniques, the risk-aversion of institutional art collections, about professionalisation and about digital generation.
Maite Muñoz
Maite Muñoz, Head of MACBA Archive, talks about how the material in the Archive is organised, strategies for dissemination, and how it all contributes to redefining the boundaries between art and document.