Portland Zine Symposium - June 25 - 27, 2004
Words: Maytina
Words: Maytina
A line from the site: 'The Portland Zine Symposium is a three day conference and zine social exploring facets of underground publishing and DIY culture, held each summer at the Portland State University (PSU) campus in downtown Portland, Oregon.' (here)
It's all run by a group of volunteers, one of them being Alex Wrekk (Brainscan zine *and a slew of others*, Microcosm Publishing), who answered a few questions for us, via email about organizing the symposium.
How would you describe the Portland Zine Symposium to people who have never been?
'There are a few different parts to the Portland Zine Symposium. There are usually events leading up to the symposium like bus and bike tours of Portland, band and zine reading performances, and picnics.'
'At the actual event there are two parts on the campus of Portland state university. One is the tabling, a huge auditorium filled with tables and those tables filled with zines and behind those tables the people who created the zines. Some people seem to spend the who symposium there but there is more! there are also workshops. lots of them where you can learn anything from the history of zines, to women in zines, how to book bind and screen print, copyright, zines and education, and lots lots more.'
'The feedback we have gotten is that it is all sort of overwhelming to walk into a huge room filled with people who are into zines, especially when creating a zine can be such a solitary thing. We expect to have well over 1000 people in attendance this year.'
Is there any big difference between what's planned for this year and previous years?
'The organization this year is being done by a Portland and a Seattle group to hopefully offset some of the burnout the organizers have felt in the past. Other than that we are just trying to figure out how to accommodate all the people expected to come.'
This year it will be June 25 - 27. We'll have a longer article up after that about how it all went.