ARI REMIX + EXTRA ZINE WITH FRIENDS | Zines Are Tools For Memory Action | IMA Zine Fair Saturday 11 October 2025 10am to 4pm ~ Zine Launch EXTRA ISSUE # 110
Social Media Replaced Zines. Now Zines Are Taking the Power Back
At a time of fleeting memes and cultural platforms operated by multibillion-dollar companies, an old mode of creativity and community-building gets a second life.
See: https://www.wired.com/story/zines-social-media-power/
Zines help to strengthen artist-run communities. Zines are powerful tools for action because they deploy accessible, non-commercial platforms that allow individuals, artists and artist communities to write, illustrate and share stories, advocate awareness, inform, inspire and educate others, amplify and organize for social, cultural and political change, particularly from a range of varied counter-cultural or marginalized perspectives.
For ARIs and ARI members zines can function as types of community archives. Their grassroots DIY ethos, ease of production, and ability to bypass censorship, dominant narratives and mainstream social media or media outlets makes them effective for community building, direct democracy, cultural justice and advocating for issues like artistic pluralism, collectivising, public histories and social justice.
Zines have been essential tools for social movements, enabling affordable and accessible, DIY platforms for marginalized voices to share their stories, foster community, challenge the status quo where transformation is a shared goal.
Zines are well establlshed in the literature for social movements including the 18th-century abolitionist movement to the 1990s riot grrrl movement and current-day activism with analogue/digital archival projects like ARI Remix, zines provide a space for self-expression, collective identity, community agency and decentralised information transmission that bypasses mainstream media’s censorship, corporate/commercial focus and pro-elite bias.
Zine Launch EXTRA ZINE Issue 110 IMA Zine Fair October 2025
Image above:
Courtyard Zine Fair staged at the IMA on Friday 1 July 2022 depicting community documentarian Soggybreadissad bathed in light, and presented in collaboration betrween the IMA, community members and with Nextdoor ARI. People were able to zines, prints, stickers, small artworks, recycled tote bags, and more from Magandjin/Brisbane’s rich and culturally-diverse gathering of DIY zine makers.
See also:
IMA Zine Fair October 2025