Psychogeography Zines - Limited Edition Copies Available

STEPZ II: Between the Rollerama and the Junk Yard (2016)

This is the special exhibition edition. It was specially created for the Loitering With Intent Exhibition which took place at the People’s History Museum in Manchester in the summer of 2016. The zine has been edited and designed by Tina Richardson and Ally Standing. STEPZ II is inspired by the city of Manchester, Northern Psychogeography and the work of the Mancunian Punk Poet John Cooper Clarke. It combines written pieces with visual elements and is produced on a Risograph machine, creating a unique and vibrant aesthetic. Artwork and zines were made available at the exhibition, but ran out quite quickly. Due to demand we have produced some more of these not-for profit zines. The writing takes the form of poetry, prose and includes images throughout. Size A4. You can find out more about it here, or order a copy for £3.99 here.

Urban Gerbil Zine Bundle

This bundle of psychogeography zines includes STEPZ II, STEPZ I: A Psychogeography and Urban Aesthetics Zine, and Twenty Six Psychogeography Stations:

STEPZ II: Between the Rollerama and the Junk Yard.
See above for info.

STEPZ I: A Psychogeography and Urban Aesthetics Zine
This is a grassroots zine about urban life and city aesthetics. It is written by creative writers, creative non-fiction writers and also those not from a professional writing background. As well as short essays, interviews and poetry, it also includes images specially created for the zine which appear in the form of cut-outs, maps, montages and photographs. Subject matter includes: CCTV surveillance, mountain climbing and W B Yeats. The publication is now in a specialist zine library in the USA and has been included on a course at Bowling Green State University. Edited by Tina Richardson. Size A4.

Twenty-Six Psychogeography Stations
This artist’s book is by Darrant Hinisco (artist and photographer) and is edited by Tina Richardson. It is based on the famous artist’s book by Ed Ruscha Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations. This is a truly psychogeographical artist’s book – just look up ‘Artist’s Book’ on Wikipedia. It faithfully follows Rushca’s format and style. It includes photography and captions throughout, plus an enclosed note from the artist himself. Size A5.

This bundle of three psychogeography zines costs £6.99 and is available here. For further information please contact Tina Richardson here.

Announcement: 'STEPZ II: Between the Rollerama and the Junk Yard'

STEPZ II has gone to print and will be ready for the Loitering With Intent exhibition this summer. Here is a taster of what is to come from this second edition of STEPZ - this one focused on Northern Psychogeography, Manchester and John Cooper Clarke (please click here for the pilot edition). Above is the front cover, designed by my co-editor Ally Standing.

Below you can have a sneak preview of the editors' letter from the new edition of STEPZ!

Dear Reader, 

Historically zines have formed a key part of the lineage of psychogeography and still do today. Since the time of the Situationists (1957-1972), and with the zines of the London Psychogeographical Association in the 1990s, we see these self-published fanzines taking on the culture and politics of the day. So, too, with the punk zine which was popular in the 1970s. Indeed some zine makers, such as Tom Vague, combine both punk and psychogeography. 

The first edition of the East London Section of the London Psychogeographical Association Newsletter (1993) declares: “We’re Back. After thirty-five glorious years of non-existence, the London Psychogeographical Association is well and truly back”. It goes on to say: “The revival of the LPA corresponds to the increasing decay in British culture, and indeed of the British ruling elite. It has been, in fact, an historical inevitability”. Here we can see the continuation of the Situationist project of the critique of the spectacle. 

STEPZ first landed in the psychogeography arena in the summer of 2015 with its inaugural edition. Having made an especially significant impact in the United States, the pilot edition is now on the syllabus of a course at Bowling Green University and in a specialist zine collection at the University of Kentucky. This upcoming special edition was created as a response to a call for submissions for the Loitering With Intent exhibition at the People’s History Museum in Manchester (summer 2016). STEPZ: Between the Rollerama and the Junk Yard appears at the intersection of psychogeography and the work of the Mancunian punk poet John Cooper Clarke. It is a response to Manchester and Northern Psychogeography. 

Edited and designed by Tina Richardson (academic and psychogeographer) and Ally Standing (artist and psychogeographer) this edition includes a varied selection of writings from a diverse selection of contributors. Come with us on a trip through contemporary psychogeography! You can discover urban phenomenon such as night buses, public conveniences and abandoned playgrounds. You can amble through Salford, Driffield and Ancoats. And you can dérive with us through distant, imagined and virtual places such as Osaka, Xanadu and Google Street View! 

But, let us not forget this zine is also inspired by the great punk poet John Cooper Clarke, whose lyrics geographically situate his place in Mancunian punk history. In his introduction on the inside cover of Cooper Clarke’s Disguise in Love (1978), the punk music author Alan Parker gives us an insight into someone who was known to many of us as a music legend, but really was actually a psychogeographer: 

“It’s winter in 1979, the rain is falling hard onto the North of England’s already grim looking streets. Tonight…we are going to attend a gig by a man who is fast becoming a music press legend…Before the punk wars are over, John Cooper Clarke will have more than carved out his place in the story of Manchester…Legend has it he once walked the darkest of Manchester’s moors, simply to record silence!” 

We hope you enjoy the zine! 

Tina and Ally

Between the Rollerama and the Junk Yard

Myself and Ally Standing will have a submission at the upcoming exhibition at The People's History Museum in Manchester, Loitering With Intent. The exhibition runs from 23 July to 13 October 2016 and our contribution is a John Cooper Clarke inspired zine and artwork. Below is the abstract we entered in response to the original call for papers:

An intrinsic part of the heritage of psychogeography are the zines it has bequeathed us, such as the Situationist-inspired On the Poverty of Student Life (1966). Also, the 1990s resurgence of psychogeography is well-represented by the post-punk fanzines of Tom Vague, for example London Psychogeography: Rachman Riots and Rillington Place and the newsletters of the London Psychogeographical Association. In contemporary times this format is well-represented in Laura Oldfield Ford’s book Savage Messiah (2011).

In 2015, following the release of her edited volume Walking Inside Out: Contemporary BritishPsychogeography (2015), Tina Richardson edited and produced the zine STEPZ: A Psychogeography and Urban Aesthetics Zine in order to acknowledge the current ‘moment’ in psychogeography (what she has termed ‘The New Psychogeography’) in a traditional way – not just in a text-book, but a grassroots zine. STEPZ has proved to be popular and now appears on the syllabus of an undergraduate course at Bowling Green State University in the US, acknowledging its significance in contemporary psychogeography.

The academic and psychogeographer, Tina Richardson, and the artist and psychogeographer, Ally Standing, propose a new edition of STEPZ for the exhibition, along with supporting artwork. Inspired by the lyrics of the Mancunian punk poet, John Cooper Clarke, the zine will be Manchester and The North influenced, in particular looking at themes that are consistent across urban space in this geographic region. The zine will combine written pieces with visual elements such as photography, illustration and collage.

The artwork itself will take the form of two framed prints of pages from the zine, enlarged to poster size. The zine and accompanying posters will be printed using a Risograph machine, which is a type of stencil duplicator designed for use within a community setting. Risograph printing - often likened to other real-ink printing processes such as lithography and screen printing - produces a unique and vibrant aesthetic, which calls to mind a time before digital, making it an ideal method of printing considering the context of the zine. The Risograph machine was developed in Japan during the late 1970’s - a time which is temporally relevant, in terms of the work of John Cooper Clarke and the punk movement which partially inspires the zine. As well as being contextually and aesthetically ideal, Risograph printing is also a very environmentally-friendly method, requiring much less energy than standard photocopying, and using soy inks which are completely free from Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) the polluting chemicals which are used within most conventional printing.

This special exhibition edition of STEPZ will respond to a number of the themes set out in the CFP: psychogeography, Manchester and The North, the Situationist legacy and creative/DIY. We believe that this new edition of STEPZ will also help mark the exhibition itself and suture it into the history of psychogeography, as well as in Manchester’s rich zine production heritage.

You can download a free copy of the pilot edition of STEPZ here.

Call for Papers – Psychogeography Zine for Manchester Exhibition

Special Edition of STEPZ for the ‘Loitering With Intent’ Exhibition at the People’s History Museum in Manchester (UK) from July to September 2016.

We (Tina Richardson and Ally Standing) will be editing and designing a special edition of STEPZ and providing accompanying artwork for the above exhibition. Please consider this a CFP for written content for STEPZ, the first edition of the zine since the pilot in the summer of 2015. Inspired by the lyrics of the Mancunian punk poet, John Cooper Clarke (JCC), the zine will be Manchester and The North influenced, in particular looking at themes that are consistent across urban space in this geographic region. We are looking for short text-based submissions based on this subject and within the broad realms of psychogeography. They can be directly inspired by JCC’s lyrics, about Manchester itself, or more generally about Northern Psychogeography. The working title for the submission is currently - ‘Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies, in a box on Beasley Street’ – but this may change. Please also consider the context of the exhibition in The People’s History Museum (in other words, we are also interested in texts that represent ‘the people’, are radical and/or are about historical working-class struggle, providing it can be loosely tied to the city or urban walking e.g. the Jarrow March).

Below is part of the original CFP for the exhibition itself. We have included these themes to suggest ideas that can be tied into the overall theme of Manchester/The North or, indeed, JCC:

• Psychogeography (however you choose to define it)
• Creative walking, walking art and walking as a cultural or political practice
• Public/private space and the right to the city
• Radical, emotional and hidden histories, especially of or linked to Manchester
• The Situationist International and their legacy
• Critical geographical responses to urban issues and inequalities such as surveillance, gentrification, homogenisation, etc.

Final submissions should be no longer than 1000 words and can be commentary, psychogeographical accounts, poetry or short essays. If you wish to supply photos to accompany your work you can, but we will be treating/reappropriating them in order to fit within the overall design of zine if we use them, so please bear this in mind. Images will need to be your own so that there are no copyright issues. We will acknowledge your images if we use them, but please be aware that they will be changed to fit the aesthetic of the zine. You are not required to submit photos to accompany your final text, though, and artwork on its own is not a part of this CFP. If you are interested please supply a 200 word abstract plus a 100 word bio about yourself, to Tina Richardson by using the contact page on this website schizocartography by 28 February.

TIMELINE:
Abstracts in by: midnight 28 Feb
Replies re: submissions returned by: midnight 6 Mar
First draft to editors in by: midnight 3 Apr
Edits returned to authors by: 17 Apr
Final draft to editors in by: midnight 8 May
(please note, these deadlines are subject to change)

Needless to say there is no fee for your contributions, sorry, and Tina and Ally will not be receiving payment in any form for the production of the zine, the artwork or the final submission. We are hoping to be able to apply for a small amount of funding to cover the physical cost of producing the zine and artwork.

If you have any further questions please contact Tina at the above website.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you, Tina Richardson and Ally Standing