DiY Culture


Book Description

Editor George McKay claims that popular protest today is characterized by a culture of immediacy and direct action. Gathered here is a collection of in-depth and reflective pieces by activists and other key figures in Britain's DiY culture. From the environmentalist to the video activist, the raver to the road protester, the neo-pagan to the anarcho-capitalist, Britain's youth forge a new kind of politics. 16 photos.




DIY Cultures and Underground Music Scenes


Book Description

This volume examines the global influence and impact of DIY cultural practice as this informs the production, performance and consumption of underground music in different parts of the world. The book brings together a series of original studies of DIY musical activities in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Oceania. The chapters combine insights from established academic writers with the work of younger scholars, some of whom are directly engaged in contemporary underground music scenes. The book begins by revisiting and re-evaluating key themes and issues that have been used in studying the cultural meaning of alternative and underground music scenes, notably aspects of space, place and identity and the political economy of DIY cultural practice. The book then explores how the DIY cultural practices that characterize alternative and underground music scenes have been impacted and influenced by technological change, notably the emergence of digital media. Finally, in acknowledging the over 40-year history of DIY cultural practice in punk and post-punk contexts, the book considers how DIY cultures have become embedded in cultural memory and the emotional geographies of place. Through combining high-quality data and fresh conceptual insights in the context of an international body of work spanning the disciplines of popular-music studies, cultural and media studies, and sociology the book offers a series of innovative new directions in the study of DIY cultures and underground/alternative music scenes. This volume will be of particular interest to undergraduate students in the above-mentioned fields of study, as well as an invaluable resource for established academics and researchers working in these and related fields.




Punk, Fanzines and DIY Cultures in a Global World


Book Description

Since the 1970 and 1980s, fanzines have constituted a zone of freedom of thought, of do-it-yourself creativity and of alternatives to conventional media. Along with bands, records and concerts, they became a vital part of the construction of punk 'scenes’, actively contributing to the creation and consolidation of communities. This book moves beyond the usual focus on Anglophone punk scenes to consider fanzines in international contexts. The introduction offers a theoretical, chronological and thematic survey for understanding fanzines, considering their contemporary polyhedral vitality. It then moves to consider the distinct social, historical and geographic contexts in which fanzines were created. Covering the UK, Portugal, Greece, Canada, Germany, Argentina, France and Brazil, as well as a wide range of standpoints, this book contributes to a more global understanding of the fanzine phenomenon.




DIY Citizenship


Book Description

How social media and DIY communities have enabled new forms of political participation that emphasize doing and making rather than passive consumption. Today, DIY—do-it-yourself—describes more than self-taught carpentry. Social media enables DIY citizens to organize and protest in new ways (as in Egypt's “Twitter revolution” of 2011) and to repurpose corporate content (or create new user-generated content) in order to offer political counternarratives. This book examines the usefulness and limits of DIY citizenship, exploring the diverse forms of political participation and “critical making” that have emerged in recent years. The authors and artists in this collection describe DIY citizens whose activities range from activist fan blogging and video production to knitting and the creation of community gardens. Contributors examine DIY activism, describing new modes of civic engagement that include Harry Potter fan activism and the activities of the Yes Men. They consider DIY making in learning, culture, hacking, and the arts, including do-it-yourself media production and collaborative documentary making. They discuss DIY and design and how citizens can unlock the black box of technological infrastructures to engage and innovate open and participatory critical making. And they explore DIY and media, describing activists' efforts to remake and reimagine media and the public sphere. As these chapters make clear, DIY is characterized by its emphasis on “doing” and making rather than passive consumption. DIY citizens assume active roles as interventionists, makers, hackers, modders, and tinkerers, in pursuit of new forms of engaged and participatory democracy. Contributors Mike Ananny, Chris Atton, Alexandra Bal, Megan Boler, Catherine Burwell, Red Chidgey, Andrew Clement, Negin Dahya, Suzanne de Castell, Carl DiSalvo, Kevin Driscoll, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Joseph Ferenbok, Stephanie Fisher, Miki Foster, Stephen Gilbert, Henry Jenkins, Jennifer Jenson, Yasmin B. Kafai, Ann Light, Steve Mann, Joel McKim, Brenda McPhail, Owen McSwiney, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Graham Meikle, Emily Rose Michaud, Kate Milberry, Michael Murphy, Jason Nolan, Kate Orton-Johnson, Kylie A. Peppler, David J. Phillips, Karen Pollock, Matt Ratto, Ian Reilly, Rosa Reitsamer, Mandy Rose, Daniela K. Rosner, Yukari Seko, Karen Louise Smith, Lana Swartz, Alex Tichine, Jennette Weber, Elke Zobl




DIY House Shows and Music Venues in the US


Book Description

DIY House Shows and Music Venues in the US is an interdisciplinary study of house concerts and other types of DIY ("do- it- yourself") music venues and events in the United States, such as warehouses, all- ages clubs, and guerrilla shows, with its primary focus on West Coast American DIY locales. It approaches the subject not only through a cultural analysis of sound and discourse, as it is common in popular music studies, but primarily through an ethnographic examination of place, space, and community. Focusing on DIY houses, music venues, social spaces, and local and translocal cultural geographies, the author examines how American DIY communities constitute themselves in relation to their social and spatial environment. The ethnographic approach shows the inner workings of American DIY culture, and how the particular people within particular places strive to achieve a social ideal of an "intimate" community. This research contributes to the sparse range of Western popular music studies (especially regarding rock, punk, and experimental music) that approach their subject matter through a participatory ethnographic research.




Exploring Ibero-American Youth Cultures in the 21st Century


Book Description

The authors collected here address youth street cultures in different cities from the Ibero-American world, bringing together contributions on Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Portugal, Spain, and beyond. This overseas approach bridging the European and American contexts is justified by the range of (complex) social, cultural and economic relationships that have shaped this transnational geographical space since the beginning of the colonial period. The chapters collected here focus on three key concepts—creativity, resistance and transgression—that form a threefold dispositive to locally and globally confront, contest and even fight against the hegemonic, punitive and oppressive powers (re)produced by (white, male) dominant classes of the city. The book ensures a high diversity of geographical and social/cultural research contexts by focusing on one, two or multiple spatial contexts (the public space, the street, the city) and, at the same time, by emphasizing the different economic, social, cultural, symbolic specificities of youth cultures (including gender, sexuality and race) in their particular urban contexts.




Lockdown Cultures


Book Description

Lockdown Cultures is both a cultural response to our extraordinary times and a manifesto for the arts and humanities and their role in our post-pandemic society. This book offers a unique response to the question of how the humanities commented on and were impacted by one of the dominant crises of our times: the Covid-19 pandemic. While the role of engineers, epidemiologists and, of course, medics is assumed, Lockdown Cultures illustrates some of the ways in which the humanities understood and analysed 2020–21, the year of lockdown and plague. Though the impulse behind the book was topical, underpinning the richly varied and individual essays is a lasting concern with the value of the humanities in the twenty-first century. Each contributor approaches this differently but there are two dominant strands: how art and culture can help us understand the Covid crisis; and how the value of the humanities can be demonstrated by engaging with cultural products from the past. The result is a book that serves as testament to the humanities’ reinvigorated and reforged sense of identity, from the perspective of UCL and one of the leading arts and humanities faculties in the world. It bears witness to a globally impactful event while showcasing interdisciplinary thinking and examining how the pandemic has changed how we read, watch, write and educate. More than thirty individual contributions collectively reassert the importance of the arts and humanities for contemporary society.




Coverscaping


Book Description

Focusing on the semiotics, poetics, and rhetoric of album covers, Coverscaping gives a serious study of this neglected art form. Working from the assumption that record sleeves may be found to represent a visual genre in its own right, the essays in this book engage in various ways with the analysis of what one might call the pictorial component of recorded music. The contributions, from scholars in many different fields, run the whole gamut from close readings of individual covers to more theoretical or philosophical explorations of the aesthetic nature and artistic value of album covers.




DIY


Book Description

A history of 'zine' fanzines, since the 1930s and DIY publishing.