Ari's Quaranzine
My senior thesis focuses on the early punk subculture that formed at NYC's CBGB in the early 1970s. In the absence of mass media coverage and artistic homogeneity, zines provided an underlying thread of aesthetic recognizability that encompassed every aspect of subculture aside from sound. As a medium, the zine is the ultimate symbol of the DIY ethos that is embedded in punk subculture; free from the design standards and content censorship that characterizes mass media publications, zines allow for producers to create freely for specific underground audiences. Through a series of six zines, each profiling a prominent punk performer, I explore the way in which the variety of styles and aesthetics presented at CBGB can be tied together by a single unregulated medium.
