Under the Radar
Underground Zines and Self-Publications 1965–1975 Published by Spector Books.
Edited by Jan-Frederik Bandel, Annette Gilbert, Tania Prill. The mid-1960s witnessed a boom in underground and selfpublished works. Hectographs, mimeographs, and offset printing not only allowed for the production of small, lowcost print runs but also promote a unique aesthetic: using wild mock-ups, messianic amateurs combined typescript aesthetics, handwriting, scribbled drawings, assemblages of collaged visuals, porn photos, snapshots, and comic strips. The typography consciously frees itself, in parallel to a liberalization of linguistic and visual forms of expression in the name of a new sensibility. This book (which appears in conjunction with an exhibition at the Weserburg in Bremen) is the first to present the underground and self-published works that came out of West Germany in such depth, while also showing the internationalcontext in which they emerged: not as an anecdotal history but as an attempt to tap into the aesthetic cosmos of a Do-It-Yourself rebellion, one that also challenges us to take a new look at the current boom in independent publishing, the risograph aesthetic, and so on.
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