Artist brings back popular zine culture

Revolutionary movements that sprung up in the 60s and 70s made self-printed publications to communicate with people. One of the most popular self-printed pamphlets is called zines. It is a self-published work that includes texts and images. Though zines were popular in the West, in India, only a few took it up. Arvind Sundar, a former professor at Loyola College, is now popularising zine culture among the youngsters. “Zine is similar to citizen journalism movement. It is a safe, independent platform of expression. A zine can be made using an A4 paper — you need to make one master copy and get a few photocopies according to the need. Usually, the zine will have eight pages. While working at Loyola College, to introduce and popularise zine culture among students, I started a zine club,” says Arvind Sundar.

A full-time artist, Arvind has made zines for CN Annadurai, Vladimir Lenin and BR Ambedkar. “For CN Annadurai’s zine, I have added his quotes. Until the 90s, we had kaiyezhuthu pathirikai (handwritten magazines) in Tamil Nadu. But after the development of technology, that culture vanished. By re-introducing zines, I wanted people to express their thoughts freely,” he adds.