Recently I saw an information about a zine exhibition in Kraków. I was excited as I thought it was a great opportunity. Of course I had to go there and see it with my own eyes.
One Does Not Simply Make a Visit
Opening hours were the first obstacle in my visit. The venue was Apteka Designu (The Design Pharmacy). It is a building of a pharmacy within the old hospital complex in Kraków. The whole area is huge and has great potential, but the change of function from hospital to “culture district” takes a lot of time. The problem with the venue is that it is open Monday – Friday from 9:00 AM till 3 PM. The good part is that the building is also opened on weekends if there is some event. I was lucky, as in February there was another exhibition (in the mini Museum of Toys in the same building). Because of that the zine part available on the weekend.
One of the items on display.
So one Saturday I arrived on site and got inside. The space was nice but with no person near the entrance it made me feel a bit uneasy. I entered the building and saw the exhibition, but there was no one whom I could ask about anything. It was strange to walk around without anyone taking care of the exhibition.
Miniature Exhibition
When I planned my visit I didn’t expect SF fanzines to be an important part of the exhibition. In fact I even supposed that there may be no SF fanzines. What I was hoping to see was an interesting display of zines created by other groups. I expected comic zines, art zines, music zines, and maybe some political ones too. I was right – at least to a certain degree.
As predicted there were no SF fanzines. Having said that, there were also few other items on the display. The whole exhibition was contained in a kind of a cabinet. There were eighteen compartments with separate doors. They contained no more than one zine each. I am saying no more, as some contained other items. In total there was around a dozen zines on the display. Not a lot. Also it was not an extremely interesting or well curated collection. All the presented works seemed to be done within last few years. The collection seemed to be a bit random with a few pieces coming from one group of creators. Some of the works were quite interesting – especially “The renaissance of printed zines” (in Polish), which I plan ordering.
This large cabinet contained the whole exhibition. The poster at the top left corner is in Polish but it translates to:
Zine Reading Room’s Manifesto
– Zines can treat about anything.
– Everyone can make zines.
– Zines are one of the tools of unrestricted creativity.
– Zines can be be published on paper, digitally, or in any other form one could imagine.
– Zines are exactly what we want them to be.
The description of the exhibition was available within the same compartments as zines. There were A4 sheets of paper with a bit of information. The first was “What is a zine?”, another “What are the types of zines?”, two other treated about particular organizations – zinelibrary.pl and Metalabel, and one was a kind of manifesto.
Zine Reading Room
It seemed that the exhibition was part of the Zine Reading Room. Yet, I was not able to find information whether a whole collection was on display. Should there be anyone on the site I would ask, but I was the only person there.
Donating A~Zyn.
One of the compartments in the cabinet had a box to donate zines for the Zine Reading Room. After my visit I am sure that they have at least a few SF zines, as we (KSF – local SFF club) donated three issues of “A~Zyn”. I hope that over time there will be more donations. Having an interesting fanzine and zine library in Kraków would be very nice.
Some Hopes
I cannot say that the exhibition made a big impression on me. Having said that, I have some hopes for the future. The most important part is that I am very happy that an organization owned by the city has shown interest in zines. I would love to see the evolution of the Zine Reading Room in the nearest future. Preservation of this aspect of culture is, in my opinion, crucial. The fact that the government starts to see zines as an important cultural phenomenon gives hope for the future.
One of the art zines available on display.
Should the project continue, I will definitely visit it again, and donate more of my fanzines. So despite the fact that I was not impressed, I am keeping my fingers crossed for this initiative.
My next post will appear in around two-three weeks from now.