Notes from DJ SpinOza

There is a clear punk aesthetic though, with a dash of Duchamp. All the material used counts as a ready-made, and was put together with common technology. Punk has been mistaken for a sound - you know, loud guitars, shouting - but it is an ethos. Use what is available, do it yourself.

Scissors and Glue: Punk Fanzines and the Creation of a DIY Aesthetic

Teal Triggs

Journal of Design History, Vol. 19, No. 1, Do It Yourself: Democracy and Design (Spring, 2006), pp. 69-83

Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Design History Society

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3838674

Triggs looks at various fanzines and suggests that the aesthetic of punk fanzines is a mixture of the music's raw aggression and the techniques first espoused in the Situationist International, Debord inspired anarchist artists who were attacking consumerism's ability to complete devour 'the real', replacing it with the spectacle. The essential aspects were detournement and 'recouping' images or, as Shane McGowan from The Pogues put it 'all the photos are ripped out of other mags.' This collaging added conscious theft and retooling to the vbasic Duchamp idea of the 'ready-made.'