Fanzinet, what stage is the project at? Paul Shiva speaks

We announced it a few months agoand I’m pleased to update you on the evolution of the Fanzine project created by Paul Shiva, who below updates me on the news in this regard.

I started developing the project “Capit Mundi?“moving from the assumption that, since we are our own paths, to understand the present more, it is often inevitable to have to rewind the existential tape. This is why I like to define it as a “anthropogenetic rewind”.

Ultimately, it is not simply a question of understanding the present more but also – above all – identifying any “missteps” made, sine qua non condition in order to be able – rightly – to hope not to repeat them: after all “who doesn’t know the story” Not “And” Always “condemned to repeat it”?

In the early 1980s I contracted, like millions of other teenagers, the virus ofPunk-77 pandemic“Punk, with its watchword”Do It Yourself” it was that spark that led me to create musical groups (Negative Existence, No Existence, The Bathroom Flowers And Hard Score Rage) without ever having studied any instrument before: because the content was – it had to be! – more important than form.

That virus then never left me again and the pathology therefore became chronic. This was the fate not only of me but of a good part of my generation.

This is why I believe I am not only and exclusively rewinding my personal “existential tape”. “Capit Mundi?” is, ultimately, a sort of biopsy – in persisting in considering them still alive! – of those very creative 80s.

As I progressed with my project I inevitably came across the media-fanzine. Inevitably because those paper self-productions were able to create creative interconnections between people scattered in every corner of the planet in a truly incredible way, if we look at that phenomenon with today’s eyes. So much so that I ask myself: what have we been capable of?

In fact, even I, who – an analogue native – in those years could only use a ‘landline’ telephone (or coin-operated telephone booths) and letters on which to stick stamps (posted with fingers crossed so they wouldn’t get lost), now accustomed to the instantaneous communication of the truly global village, was invaded by a profound sense of amazement in revisiting those documents.

A section of “Capit Mundi?” was, therefore, dutifully dedicated to the “mapping” of the fanzines of the 1980s since (between photocopiers and stamps) they managed to create, to paraphrase Pierre Lévy, a widespread “collective creativity” based on a deep desire to “use your head”.

To date I have registered 696 self-productions and I have uploaded and made available, on my website, free of charge for consultation and/or download (in the full DIY spirit with which they were created) 719 complete copies in PDF format.

The project is receiving a lot of appreciation, truly unexpected for me, even outside national borders (but evidently, precisely because of what has been described above, it is a topic that is by its very nature ‘transnational’). In fact, there have been several posts or articles on blogs, social networks and websites interested in cultural studies and which direct attention to the phenomenon of self-production. For example, the inclusion of the link to “Capit Mundi?” is very pleasing. in the “Zine Libraries” of Barnard College of Columbia University in New York.

As I said, this “mapping” of the fanzines is only one section of my overall project of which the next step (scheduled for this spring) will be the publication of a compilation on vinyl entitled “No Capitulation”.

Plausibly the artists who will be part of it were selected from a completely unknown block of audio and paper documentation (K7, vinyl, fanzine, flyer, photos…) given to me by a girl who, having seen my work on the web, contacted me via email introducing herself as Karen Eliot. When we met she left me a bag full of material and to my question about its origin she, in an almost mocking tone, replied “from another dimension”.

The names of the bands turn out to be, in fact, all absolutely enigmatic: Punkiderma, Miss Antropussy, Jim Secjelagotch, Tom Binou and the Ratlickers, Noir Honey, Sonic Barabba, M’INCUL POP, TCYTUAH so I first proceeded to ‘catalogue’ them on “Capit Mundi?”.

The vinyl compilation will be attached to a single folded ‘sheet’ fanzine (style for the first issues of Archeopteryx), also found in the bag given to me by Karen. Since its title was indecipherable, I re-titled it “Capitzine?”.

To be fair, it must be said that the most disparate theories have already begun to circulate on the web regarding the genesis of this compilation, some of which I would even define as ‘conspiracy’.

The objective is also that “No Capitulation” can represent a gust of “80s Zeitgeist” that can ignite some spark of creative subversion in these, somewhat (euphemistically) stale, 1920s of ours.

And, given that its producer will be Brain Ano (the very first stage name I used in 1981) it can only be the “No New York of the Third Millennium”, if not from a purely aesthetic point of view (these are very heterogeneous bands from that point of view), certainly in the deepest spirit that pervades it.

A further step forward is the essay on fanzines and punk subculture that I am writing for the volume “Feelings/No Feelings. For a Phenomenology of Punk and Post-Punk” edited by sociologists Alfonso Amendola and Linda Barone of the academic platform Punk Scholars Network. The book will be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in the series “Multidisciplinary approaches to discourse and sociology”.

TOOther new features are already on the horizon… but I hope there will be other opportunities to illustrate them!