Zines, Technology, and Ethics of Care
We talk to the organizers of Tiny Tech Zines about their first zine fair, which centered technology-focused zines by BIPOC creators. We discuss the history and purpose of zines as well as TTZ’s intentional emphasis on care as part of their work
Connect with Tiny Tech Zines:
Email: us@tinytechzines.org
Instagram: @TinyTechZines
Twitter: @TinyTechZines
Tiny Tech Zines Go To’s:
Transcript (Please Excuse Errors)
[Music Intro ♫]
LaToya [LS]: Hey listeners, welcome to Abolition Science Radio. We're your hosts, I'm LaToya Strong.
Aderinsola [AG]: And I'm Aderinsola Gilbert, and we're here to discuss science, math, technology, and other things.
LS: And their relationship to colonialism.
AG: Oppression.
LS: Resistance.
AG: Education.
LS: And liberation.
AG: All through the lens of abolition.
LS: Join us as we learn and unlearn.
AG: Critique and create.
LS: All while building community.
[ ♫ Music fade out.]
[00:00:57]
AG: All right.
LS: All right.
AG: Here we are.
LS: Hey listeners.
AG: Hello, hello.
LS: Yes. So we're here for our first episode of, if we're keeping with that same language, I guess it's season four, which I don't know how you are feeling about that word. Season, just I don't got no better word, so that's what we call it.
AG: I love it. I'm with it. I'm excited.
LS: Yeah, it's your first episode.
AG: Oh, yeah. Hey you all, hey listeners, this is AG here.
LS: In theory, I just want to let our listeners know, I want to know what you've been listening to.
AG: I have been listening to group. It's so new. It was introduced to me by... Did you catch, I May Destroy You, which Michaela Coel?
LS: I want to, but I need some time to be able to watch that.
AG: Yes, definitely, amazing series. I'm not going to go into it too much but also the soundtrack on that series, amazing. It's this group called the Sons of Kemet. It's mainly instrumentals.
LS: And there's a lot of sax in that, so...
LS: Ooh, I like this saxophone.
AG: Yeah. I think you have your alto, you have your tenor sax, but it's my jam. And the song in particular that I'm thinking about is My Queen is Albertina Sisulu, but I could have been... We'll put it on and most of the songs on this album style, My Queen is, and there is a name.
LS: I like it.
AG: Yeah. So if you get a chance to check it out, definitely get the vibes of afrobeat instrumentals, let's say. A fusion of afrobeat instrumentals and jazz. It's just, I don't know.
LS: Oh, I love it. Okay, I wrote that down because I love new to me music. I've been listening to a group called Sault, spelled S-A-U-L-T, they're mad mysterious, who are you. Is it going to just, yeah.
AG: What? Okay.
LS: So in 2019 they dropped two albums. One is called five and one is called 7. Seven is actually written as the number seven, and the five is the roman numerals, the little tallies. But in 2020, just in time, I think it came after the pandemic started. They dropped an untitled album and it's called Untitled, and then in parentheses it's called Black Is. Oh my gosh, when I tell you it's music for soul, it is music for your soul.
AG: That's what's up. Okay.
LS: So good, so good.
AG: Yes, love it. I'm excited. Yes.
LS: Yeah. So all you all go get life and put that album on.
AG: Okay. Oh, what was that again?
[00:03:23]
LS: Sault, S-A-U-L-T. They're little thing is, put a little Sault in your life.
AG: I'm all right with it, I can't wait to listen.
LS: So good.
AG: Yes.
LS: But what's on your mind and what's been on your mind.
AG: What's been on my mind? So much. With everything going on, I feel like there's been time to think and also not think, if that's possible. And I think what's been on my mind has been a lot around just information, right? Information, knowledge, sharing and discerning between how much is being thrown at us. Okay, what am I going to take up? And what am I going to leave? And the mediums in which we share this information, that's been on my mind a lot and trying to get things started up with my schoolwork. I don't want to talk about schoolwork.
LS: What even is a school, in a pandemic.
AG: Wow. That's a whole ass conversation right there. How about you? What have you been thinking about?
[00:04:27]
LS: So what's been on my mind. Everybody knows I am a Megan Thee Stallion stan.
AG: Hey
LS: I will stan her all day long. And so when the whole incident happened with her... So trigger warning, if gender-based or domestic violence isn't something that you can sit through, that's what's been on my mind, so I'm going to talk about that for just a bit. So when it happened, because Abolition has been coming to the forefront and she just stayed silent. And even in her silence, people were distrusting of her. We need to know what happened, you was upset because Tory Lanez was probably talking to this girl. What's that girl name? It don't matter.
AG: You know me. She should not be named.
LS: And now when Megan Thee Stallion came out on her Instagram live and was like, "No, Tory Lanez, he shot me. We were arguing, I was done with it, I got out to the car to walk away and he shot me." And her, in that moment, being like, "Oh, the police pulled up, and so I'm not going to say actually happened because we all gone die, because we all in here and we all black." And just that protection of black people, a cis-gendered, heterosexual, black man who really doesn't care. And just the backlash that she's getting right now is just, this is disgusting.
LS: So a lot of you all just need to say you all hate black women and go. Just say you hate black women and keep it moving. And not funny, so maybe that's not the word, but I don't know what the word I'm looking for is, but people's reaction to her and being like, "Oh, she's a snitch." Again, just say you hate black women and go.
AG: Wow.
[00:06:07]
LS: But the people calling her a snitch, you all are not from the streets, so what is you even talking about? So that's what's been on my mind. So just sending her, and just all women, femmes, non-binary folk who have to deal with gender based violence and are forced to choose silence and have to deal with that because they know that the police is just going to inflict more harm. So that's what's been on my mind.
AG: Can we just hold that for a minute right now? Because I'm so glad you brought that up with the gender-based violence going on, especially with what happened with Megan Thee Stallion, because we're seeing different expressions of that throughout, right? That has been a constant on top of this damn pandemic, is really a whole bunch of people coming out their face and really showing their hatred for black women.
LS: Wow.
AG: I mean, you said it all. And I think this is where the conversation around me with information, right? Is, how much do you really feel entitled? The entitlement around information people need and the use of that entitlement to try to justify whether or not someone deserves justice or even deserves to be supported, and heard, and loved. And it's just, what? When that story broke, back when folks were having conversation around cancel culture, I'm just like, Tory Lanez done. Whatever I'm reading or listening to of you is just, how are you enacting violence on a black woman, especially black women who've done so much already in terms of abolition and furthering of beginning free. I don't know, is it even disappointment at this time point when these people are coming out their face and showing that they hate black women, is it disappointment at this or?
[00:07:56]
LS: Maybe it's confirmation or we know, we been knew but every once in a while you just like to remind us. Just so we're clear when we say woman, we mean cis and trans.
AG: Facts.
LS: Yes. So just making that clear.
AG: And the heteronormative expectations, just letting you know, this is where the sand is. But-
LS: Oh, you said something about cancel culture. There's a difference between, I don't know, where this language of, God damn, cancel culture came from as opposed to accountability culture. Like no cis hat man or no white person is really ever going to be held accountable for the harm that they cause when specific people. So maybe if you're causing harm on a fellow white person who white people deem should never have something bad happen to them, maybe something happens then, but generally outside of that, no. So what does it mean to "Cancel" someone in a system where they're never going to be held accountable? I'm always like weary of the language of cancel culture, especially when it comes up against someone who is not showing that they're willing to learn and grow, just in general.
[00:09:17]
AG: Yeah, yeah. I think when it seems to come up right away when people are asking for accountability or even just, when there's a call for accountability, then it's just, "Oh, so you're not going to listen to this person or we're not going to..." So what is the ask? First thing first, let's see what the survival of that harm needs right now and I think we can start with, I don't know, believing what they are telling us and not feeling entitled to details. That's one thing. The details of the encounter and everything that goes along. Now with Megan, when she went on her IG and she shared what she shared, she didn't owe that to nobody.
LS: Not nary a Negro.
AG: Exactly. Did not owe it and just this is continuously expectations for survivors to have to share in a way relive that traumatizing experience by sharing what has happened. And just first things first is, when there's this call for accountability is, can we start with believing the survivor of what has happened? And let us go from there.
[00:10:22]
AG: There's too much of this. Everybody's tightened out, now everybody turns into some detective or whatever. I don't even know what it is. I don't know, try to decipher all the different, what led up to the events and so it was just like-
LS: You all weird. Why are you all so weird?
AG: You do everything BUT hold this person accountable or you call this person. What is also mad discouraging about this is the number of other entertainers who are just flat out silent about this.
LS: So much silence blue check marks. You know blue check marks is the loudest—
AG: Thank you.
LS: —and now y’all silent. Get outta here.
LS: Get outta here.
AG: Seriously just like what? So we going pretend that this, you're just going to hide away. And it's just, "Oh, okay, I see you. All right." So I will say for myself, I will be looking side eye at folks who are going to continue to work with Tory Lanez after this.
[00:11:17]
LS: Facts. All facts.
AG: It's just what it is. From concert promoters, to other artists working with him and all of that. And anybody who was in his crew that didn't... Because we don't know. That's another thing too about this. We don't know the personal workings that are happening, but I think there's another thing about if your harm is so public, how much would that work that you're doing...should it be public too? Should your apology just be as loud as the harm that you've enacted or? But right now the silence is, I'm going to say, is not where it's at.
LS: Not at all. Not at all.
AG: Okay, but yeah. Thanks for giving that space here.
[00:12:03]
LS: Yeah. Because that's what's been on my mind. So we're gonna segue to what we talking about on this episode.
AG: Oh, yeah. Tiny Tech Zines. I am curious. We're about to join them? How did you come across Tiny Tech Zine's and why?
LS: We got connected on Instagram. And so it was just this small community of folks who are finding themselves on social media. That's also how we got connected to Color Coded collective, if you've been able to listen to that episode and some other folks. And so shout out to these…social media is such this other place of existence, but it does allow people to come together to build community.
AG: Yeah. I definitely love it. It sounds like the Gram was your-
LS: The Gram, yeah.
AG: ...meeting place. That's exciting. What has been your, could you say your experience with Zines prior to this?
LS: Oh I'll also say they also were doing, I don't remember who they was, and they being Tiny Tech Zines who they were collaborating with. They were going to do a workshop, which I wanted to attend because it sounded dope, but I got my time zones mixed up, so I couldn't actually attend. But my relationship with Zines is one of consumption. So I do appreciate Zines. I think that they are powerful tools that can be used by so many different people for so many different reasons, but I've never created one or been part of any collective that makes them organizes around them. It’s consumption, that is my relationship with them. What about you?
[00:13:49]
AG: I think both consumption. I have been a part of a Zine. The name of the zine was All Black Zine and it was based in Duluth at the time, yes. And it was with other community members who had been organizing around racial biases, racial injustices happening in and around Duluth and Minnesota.
LS: Sorry, I was just going to ask if it was Duluth in Minnesota or Duluth in Georgia?
AG: Oh, yeah.
[00:14:16]
AG: No, the Duluth, Minnesota. It was a dope organizers who had been just at the time, just a lot going on and it was used as a platform to really uplift at that time black voices in the community because news stream was trash and it probably is, it's a white publication. So even in how they're telling our stories, and then there's a whole bunch of these non-profits talking about racial justice and just calling them off their bullshit really.
AG: So it's a source of space for black voices to be heard and not through, oh, you need to use a certain type of English or whatever. It's okay, how do you want to express your voice? Whether it be by way of art or whatever and so I was invited to be a part of it. The person who led that charge, the initial charge was Jordon Moses, who is now the also co-owner of BlackBird Revolt with Terresa Moses too, as well, both doing a lot of stuff with zines. And just I think media and branding in that area. And then it later grew more into a visual zines, still with techs, but had more a deliberation around the visuals. And at that point it was in a collaboration with Matshosi I'm blanking on her last name. But Matshosi is also by trade a graphic designer, works UX, creating virtual worlds and they lean more on their visual representation of those voices in sharing what's happening in community.
AG: So my experience with Zine is like it was a way to share thoughts, knowledge, and information, and that text didn't have to be the dominating medium. And then as a consumer one experience that definitely stuck with me was I took a class with a common canard. It was called Black Girl Magic. I'm sure there's more in the title, but first day of class walk into class and she's handing out her syllabus and the syllabus is a Zine. I was done at that point.
[00:16:40]
AG: So the syllabus in these be these dry ass one page or two pages that you probably never really go back to unless you're trying to calculate your grade to be like, "Oh shit, where am I at?" Or deadlines. It was text and also art, but it was used in a way to outline the blueprint of what some of the learning objectives, all it was, for the course. And I don't know, for me, it was a new medium of vehicle of which to present and share information with each other that is much more accessible and much more, I think, connected to the communities in which the information was for. I think what I absolutely love about Zines. It's a break from all the academic jargon that we did.
LS: But still just as informative?
AG: Yes.
LS: If not more.
[00:17:30]
AG: Yes. Agreed. I'm doing a quick search. I'm seeing more and more people try and integrate into education in the way they work with students. In a way in which we share and tell our stories. So that's been exciting as both a consumer and a producer of Zines is that the possibilities are endless, what you can do with the Zine, and yeah.
LS: Thanks for sharing. So with that, we're going to get into our conversation with Tiny Tech Zines, and we hope you enjoy.
AG: Yes.
[00:18:08]
LS: Thank you all again for being here. With us we're here with the folks from Tiny Tech Zines and before we get into actual some back and forth conversation, if you all could briefly take the time and share with listeners your name, a little bit about yourself that might help them navigate this conversation or anything that you just want them to know in general and a song or artists you are currently listening to.
Rachel: Hi, I'm Rachel Simanjuntak. I am a co-organizer with Tiny Tech Zines. I'm not really associated with the tech world right now. I'm working as a crew member at Trader Joe's. And the song that I've been listening to right now is A Moot Point by Melanie Faye.
AG: Okay.
Tristan: Hi everybody. My name is Tristan. I use he/they pronouns. Right now I'm just tending to my art practice as best as I can. I'm also a student at UCLA in their design media arts program, a second year in the MFA. I guess, since I'm starting to work on things and transitioning into thinking about school, returning to UCLA in the fall, I've been listening to just the Steven Universe soundtrack on repeat.
AG: That's a good soundtrack. Solid soundtrack.
Tristan: Right?
AG: Yes. Seriously, yeah.
Tristan: It's just, I don't know, makes me, and I think just listening to it on repeat. It helps keep me concentrated and also just really beautiful. It makes me happy. Yeah, for sure.
[00:19:50]
Rachel: Well, yes.
Tyler: Wonderful. Hi, my name is Tyler. I use he pronouns. I am also an artist, but more recently I was a tech worker. An ex tech worker. I am currently in the Bay Area on Tongva land and a song that I've been listening to more recently has been Water Me by FKA twigs and I'm really obsessed with the intro, sequence and just the sounds. It's like always catches me and I'm really into it.
LS: Thank you all for sharing. Okay. So we're excited to have you all, as I have said, but if you could let us and our listeners know who and what is Tiny Tech Zines, and if you could tell us about your specific roles within your organization.
Rachel: Yeah. So Tiny Tech Zines is a collective, we are based in LA, but one of our members Tyler is in North Cal currently and we started as a Tech Zine fair, which is a Zine fair. We wanted to center around marginalized communities and their stories because technology is becoming this ever increasing presence in our lives and right now the folks that are making tech are by and large white cis heterosexual men. And a lot of folks that are using technology right now are not that. And so as people of color, we wanted to bring together folks in our community around us that want to share their stories and how technology is part of their lives and what they might need from technology in the future. And also explore how can we come together to create our own technologies? And so our Zine fair was a platform for that.
[00:21:48]
Rachel: As we move into 2020, we're evolving into more of a collective rather than an event-based format where we're just focusing on community and care and how to tell stories and how to build each other's knowledge and as a team, our specific roles are pretty fluid. We rise up as different needs go on, but generally I run the social media and I organize our meetings. Tyler helps run workshops and also helps on the tech side a bit and Tristan is the keeper of the array, which was our absentee zines where folks sentencing from out of the state and also does a lot of beautiful writing for our org. He's written guidelines and our code of conduct for us and is very talented speaker.
Tristan: Thank you.
Rachel: And so we're all pretty close and we function as a little family almost.
Tristan: Yeah. And I feel like family, we are there to, we think about each other's needs and capacities in the moment and pick up whenever there is... We observe or witnessed somebody is needing help. In that sense our roles are very, we have a really fluid relationship with each other in terms of what needs to get done. And we try to keep things horizontal in terms of the decision-making. I think that works really well because there's only three of us. I imagine this would be something difficult to do if we're trying to organize even five or 10 or more people. But because of the scale of our team, we can work through a lot of issues together and quickly ascertain who is best equipped right now to resolve or respond to this thing. And then how do we work together to anticipate our needs in the future and stuff like that.
[00:23:55]
AG: Yeah. You share a lot there. Right away, this piece around evolving into this collective. I'm curious though, because you're talking about examining your relationship with tech, what is your working definition of tech and where do you feel the general conversation right now is missing even with the ever-growing presence of technology in our lives?
Rachel: Tech, is this amorphous thing where right now in our present time, technology is probably us thinking about our cell phones, our laptops, our TVs and so there are these very hard concrete things. But for us, we're also trying to extend that definition of technology, where it's more about technologies or things that humans make outside of ourselves to help us accomplish different tasks. So almost like tools. What are these tools that we're creating? Who are creating these tools? Who are they for? These are the questions that open up these conversations for us.
Tyler: Yeah. And I would add that it's very tempting to see technology in the framework of what we know of today and what we use today as Rachel had mentioned. But if you really think about it, tech has really been mostly analog for a large part of human history. And tech can also include things that are created by non-humans. It really depends on your definition. So that's a really good way for us to think about if tech is not our laptop in front of us or the algorithms that we use or are operating within, that's part of the work of imagining what tech can be and what it can do for us. So, yeah.
AG: Oh wow.
LS: Yes. So thank you for bringing that up. So there is, especially in education, a completion of digital technology with technology in general. And so you'll see black communities, Indigenous communities will often times be referred to as, oh, this is a low tech area or this country is a low tech country when really what we're talking about is we don't have the digital technology that the capitalist western world can make money of, but there's an abundance of other types of technology that helps us live our life.
[00:26:32]
Rachel: Yeah, one of the things that I really loved about the interview with Color Coded is their acknowledgement of Indigenous knowledge as technology.
Tristan: I was reading an article recently to, about how scientists are starting to understand now how the Amazon was shaped by people and the Indigenous communities that were already there. The abundance and expansiveness of the Amazon was intentional and guided by the Indigenous college that was there in cultivating these different working in colleges together. And so I feel like that really opens up ways of thinking about technology that aren't limited to laptops, rare earth minerals and things like that. And instead focus on how do we make technologies that would sustain us better, that would heal our communities and put us in right relationship with each other.
AG: This interrogation of what tech is and even extending the definition of tech. How we come to even define tech brings us to this place of the dissemination of information as a form of technology and you all have chosen the medium of Zines. So maybe run us through for folks who may not even really be aware, but what is a Zine and specifically what is a Tech Zine.
Tyler: Yeah, Zines are basically self-published magazines or books or pamphlets. Generally speaking, they're often associated with a smaller circulation or like underground distributions. So in that they generally resist mainstream or popular culture. I believe they started because of communities who were really interested in sci-fi and interested in creating fan Zines and that evolved and it grew into to encompass more types of communities, including like activist communities, artists, and cultural workers and Tech Zines specifically, at least to us is basically any Zine that is developed with, or around technology in mind. It's a rather broad definition and it doesn't really need to be rigid, but this can mean a Zine that is made with some technology developed for a digital platform or maybe even a traditional Zine with paper, but containing a narrative that is informed by tech culture. It can be many things.
[00:28:58]
Tristan: I also feel like part of the reason we were attracted to Zines as this vessel for communicating information and stuff. So we had met in UCLA, during Processing Community Day was just a day-long events for a software tool called Processing, which makes creative coding more accessible in a lot of different ways to designers, artists and people who aren't just computer science majors. And so this context of meeting each other within an institution, we have to respond to this question of what does it mean to take this knowledge outside of this context so that we aren't just stuck circulating this knowledge and information within the ivory tower.
Tristan: And Zines are really attractive because they're autonomous form of publishing that doesn't need to be connected to institutional resources for the state it's something that you can do on your own with materials that you have. And there's also this kind of fugitivity, fugitive aspect to it and that it's like Tyler mentioned in direct opposition to mainstream forms of publishing or information dissemination. And we felt like that was really important to take this position against dominant mainstream modes and frameworks of technology and learning about it and teaching it and engaging with it. We try to emphasize various specific, extractive frameworks, if that makes sense.
[00:30:31]
Rachel: And if I could add to that a really big part of our origin is the original Tech Zine fair created in New York by Mimi Onuoha, Taeyoon Choi, Ritu Ghiya. They initiated this gathering around Tech Zines and we wanted to explore what that Tech Zine could look like when it was contextualized in Los Angeles and the voices and the stories here as this in between of not Silicon Valley and not New York but we're still getting this trickling of folks and artists from New York and also technologists from Silicon Valley and the creation of Silicon Beach down here, that's starting to grow and grow, or that has been growing here.
Rachel: So what does that in-between space look like of folks that are consuming technology and starting to create more technologies here. Partly, we are inspired by the Tech Zine fair and then in New York and for Zines also, they are, as Tristan was mentioning this very personal thing for artists where they spend a lot of time to make this very small batch of Zines and just sharing their stories of what they've experienced with folks, it felt like this gift that artists give and we wanted to create care and a really supportive space for that.
Tristan: Yeah, for sure. Rachel, you had said something about Zines being a lot more personal. And I feel like that's really important to emphasize because even in the creation of these technologies, there's no consideration of lived experiences of situated knowledge and Zines, there's an opportunity in there to transform this embodied experience into information and knowledge that can be relatable and accessible and something that you can anchor into. And I feel like that makes it more urgent and immediate, which is missing from a lot of these ambrosial, this is a cure-all techno solutionism that gets applied to the tools that get created.
AG: Oh.
AG: Oh, so much..
[crosstalk]
LS: I know so much content.
AG: Right? Just oh my goodness.
[00:32:58]
LS: Okay. I'm going to start with, for me, it's like the easiest one that... You all know it takes me a while to process. I'm going to start with the one that is easiest for me right now to digest. But for me, I feel like community is so important and they think when you're pushing against the grain, sometimes people are isolated and it's hard to find that community or those people. So you were inspired by the New York Zine Fair, but could you talk about specifically, how you three came together and how in that coming together the tech Zine fair on the West Coast was born?
Tristan: Yeah. So I had mentioned that we met during a conference at UCLA, and that was that first day. I think it was maybe a Friday or a Saturday, but that was everyone we were first introduced to each other. Rachel was actually speaking at this event and she gave this really moving talk about care and family. And then the next day there was another event called Learning to Teach. And it was focused more on education and pedagogy, especially when it comes to teaching computational concepts. And that was when we all were forced to find each other, if I'm going to be dramatic about it and, put a little drama. And we realized this shared interest that we have in thinking about this experience and creating a more open and vulnerable community around it. And then also having similar disillusions with tech as a whole and our relationship with it. So I think there was something about recognizing these shared traumas with technology and envisioning what was already there that we could maybe work with and extend.
[00:34:56]
AG: Yeah. A story of coming together in the midst of just everything that was happening in that journey. A theme that I keep noticing too, in this conversation is that you all seem to have this very intentional, at least thought and conversation around an ethics of care and community, and then how you are weaving that not only into the work and creating this platform, but also in just how the fluidity of your roles and having this collective come together. Could you speak more about that and touch around there on the ethics of care as you are facing these traumas and also speaking out to these really systems of inequity and exploitation within tech.
Tristan: I have to think about that, but Rachel, Tyler, do you want to pick up on that question obviously?
Tyler: Yeah, sure. I think that's something that's really important to us that we've discovered. I still think that we're very lucky that we found each other to share these values, but something that was very important to us was caring for each other first and making sure that we as co-organizers and friends were taken care of before the work that had to be done because you cannot do good work if we are not healthy and not in the right space to make things. You have to take care of yourself and each other.
Tyler: It's interesting. I didn't come across writer and activist, Adrienne Maree Brown to work until very recently, but something she's written in the past really stands out to me now as something that describes the way that the three of us has been working together for the past year plus, and that's moving at the speed of trust. I think that's a really moving and influential thing to keep with us.
Rachel: Especially through the pandemic and through movement for Black Lives. We've struggled this question of what is our place in this movement? Is it important for Tiny Tech Zines to exist right now in the context of these larger things that are happening? And at the end of every conversation, really what it comes down to is, how can we offer that care? So it's started to manifest in things offering just an hour of a video call where people can come in and just have support, just be there with each other and talk about what they're feeling that day because a lot of our community is made of artists. What aren't you working on? That was an event that we made was, it's called Why Be Well? What haven't you been working on? To acknowledge that at the time of the pandemic you're in survival mode, you're not thinking about your productivity or you may be feeling bad about having worked on this art project, or I've paused on this.
[00:37:53]
Rachel: It's like making space for needing to take care of yourself and that's also extended to ourselves too we're giving ourselves time to attend a protest if we need to attend a protest or support our friends as they're going through things and not thinking about this as an organization, what can it do? Even though that's a question that's been going through our heads just giving us time to think about that. And as we're tending to other things.
Rachel: We started a reading hour that is intended to go through texts about, I feel like there are a lot of reading groups cropping up right now and so this is our offering. One that's not necessarily centered around discussion, but we read a text that's related to abolition or anti-racism or community and it's something you can just tune into and just listen to without having to necessarily actively engage in a conversation and feel that pressure but if you want to learn, here's a place where we can do this together. So as an extension of our learning as a team, this isn't us trying to say, this is the answer to what's going on, but how can we come together and be in this space of not knowing, but still being needing to learn.
Tristan: I love that. So you have these reading groups that it's open to the community, folks are able to access it through your site?
Rachel: Right now we're hosting it on Instagram live. There's one coming up tomorrow at, I guess if I'm going to plug it 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on our Instagram or 5:00 p.m. West Coast time and we're going to be reading a paper by Cheryl Harris called Whiteness as Property.
AG: Oh, okay. That's good.
Tristan: Give us the synopsis.
Rachel: What was that Tristan?
Tristan: I was saying give us the synopsis. What's it about?
Rachel: I think We're going to get through in the beginning because we only have an hour is the anecdotal introduction, but it's about Cheryl's relatives who are growing up as white passing black folks and the layers of what that has afforded them. And so understanding internalized whiteness, but also how you move through a society that isn't built for you and taking advantage of what you do have and understanding what those are.
[00:40:30]
LS: Yeah. It's a dense text, but it's pretty dope. And yes, it's dense for me because it's a lot of law stuff and I was like, "Oh, okay. This is the different world we're in here."
Rachel: I guess it's important to acknowledge that it's from the Harvard Law Review.
LS: It's a powerful text for sure.
AG: Yeah. It's definitely one that I've re-read on multiple times, but every time going back too there's something else that you pick up just because it's a dense texts. But the examples and how in really examining this concept of Whiteness as Property, even in the every day, it really helps to put the layers of really what we're fighting against today.
Tristan: What came up for the both of you when you were reading it?
LS: Right now for me, I'm going to throw the question back at you, but for maybe a later conversation. I'm curious to see how you all, with the work that you do with tech when you think about Whiteness as Property, how you start to look at it through tech as whiteness and tech as white property. But for me, I was looking at it specifically through the lens of science and science ed and thinking about science as white property and connect it to whiteness as we think about who and what knowledge counts and who and what knowledge doesn't count in the way that just, she goes through all the ways that whiteness can exist and how she gets to property. And so that's definitely science, especially we think about black youth in schools who do not generally fair well. It's like knowledge looks a specific way, it sounds a specific way and you should talk to me about it in a specific way.
AG: I feel like a lot what has already been shared. At the time, the first time encounter reading the text was looking at how student organizations on campuses gather if you will, or organize really and looking at this concept of Whiteness as Property and who's deemed the good student and how in ways in which there's a required performance in order to get certain opportunities and privileges afforded to you also then to, as Cheryl really engages it, it's also looking at this concept of property within the capitalistic society and how much of that is tied to whiteness and white privilege.
AG: So, yeah. I was curious in the way in which this concept impacted or the response to certain student orgs and certain types of organizing and the state's response to those groups. So namely at one point, this was really earlier on in my studies looking at the Black Panther Party and then looking at a later group that formed National Society of Black Engineers and just looking at those student narratives with the backdrop of Whiteness as Property.
[00:43:56]
Tristan: I feel like a lot of the things that you had mentioned or I'm thinking about tech as white property and considering what knowledge gets validated is really relevant in the context of Tiny Tech Zines operate because technology hasn't been exclusively white, if you start to consider a more extensive understanding of it. So thinking about ecological technologies or Indigenous technologies and how those have existed and there's a history to that.
Tristan: And then the shift of power from Indigenous to white men or from any minoritized group to just had able-bodied men and the appropriation or coaptation of power and language that happens there and this transformation of knowledge into property or into something that can be extracted and quantified. And I think there was also a footnote in Whiteness as Property where she had to specify her usage of using Black women as the term for a cure as part of this longer thread of intersectionality and considering the interlocking systems of oppression that Black women face. And how just that analysis is really present in tech and its implementation of it and its uses and the way that its social media platforms operate. I feel like that really reminded me to come back Combahee River Collective statement where they spoke to this need of developing their own black feminism because they weren't seeing it in their own organizing groups. And I feel like that spirit is something that we're trying to develop a relationship through.
Tyler: Yeah. And on top of this, even in the early history of computing, thinking about the role that women played as the first programmers and computer operators and during a war time era and how that's the gender distribution within the tech space has changed once tech became more profitable and lucrative, it got reclaimed as a white male space. And as tech evolved, computation got more and more complex or more and more abstract and it became you needed to have a degree in order to get a job in the industry. You need years of education and as we know that disproportionately those were the legacy of wealth in America, specifically white men have much easier access to that kind of education and that career.
[00:46:42]
Tyler: And that has extended to today, even though we see some forms of progress, it's still very much a disproportionate distribution of white men in management of technology companies. Very, very, very few black engineers in tech companies. A lot of the minority populations are not even working in the tech side of things. They might be in other aspects or parts of the company. It also reminds me of the history of Silicon Valley, even though tech did not start in Silicon Valley. It started long before that, but a lot of times we think about Silicon Valley as the center of tech, but Silicon Valley was built on top of Indigenous land but also many layers of colonizers. So yeah, this history of immigrants coming in to help build the missions and then the orchards and eventually what became Stanford and all these institutions that popped up. I don't want to say that they've been completely erased because people are thinking about it, but it's often neglected in the discussion of Silicon Valley.
AG: Thank you for bringing that and sharing that piece about the legacy of Silicon Valley because so often I think people just think about what's present and the major tech giants right now, but not that there's a whole community of people there prior. I think earlier in trying to talk about the... I want to make a brief footnote about the Whiteness as Property, it's connected to a larger body of work of critical race theory. It's one of the tenants, our tenants. And so I think Whiteness as Property is number two, but I didn't want to get into a whole history lesson about it but just to give that a heads up.
LS: Throughout the conversation, we've been talking about the way that tech and the tech world and tech industry marginalizes BIPOC, and I want to go back to Rachel, I think you mentioned when you all started the Tech Zine Fair, it was supposed to be this in between place. So I want to go back to that in between place and if you all could speak about in that space that you were intentionally creating for folks who are going to be marginalized from New York or from Silicon Valley who was showing up and what are some of the things that they were sharing about tech and the Zines that they were making. So I'll leave it. That's part one of the questions.
[00:49:24]
Rachel: When we put out the call, we were hoping to just surface the community in LA and who is talking about these things. So we had Free Rads, which are an org that is based around science and creating a more just science. We had an artist named Linhtropy at the time who was taking over the genre of cyberpunk and rather than talking about white people and their stories, but the marginalized communities underneath who are queer and trans and who are just thriving in this society. And so it was naming all of these different identities and personalities that are living in the cyberpunk world and just thriving. So those two folks were largely Asian and we had also Jamie Renee Williams who is a tech worker here in LA who brought a plantable Zine that you could plant and it would grow into-
LS: Oh, cool.
Rachel: Which was really cool.
LS: So, cool.
Rachel: Jamie served tea and talked about AI in that Zine. And we also had the array which Tristan can talk about, which was our Zines that came in from other states. Sorry, I'm just recalling everybody that was there but we had a swath of folks if we're talking just about demographics, we have a couple of tablers from the black community. We had quite a few Asian and folks that were represented there. We had a couple of-
LS: Yeah, that sounds dope. So, dope.
[00:51:27]
Rachel: We put out a call for marginalized communities. They came is the main point. We had also, Nahee.app who creates work around... Could you talk more about Nahee, Tristan?
Tristan: Yeah. Nahee was making these themes that were about using technological metaphors, computational processes or technological terms and constitutional processes as metaphors for how we might understand the sexuality, love and intimacy. There are these really ripe, beautifully illustrated graphics and zines that are accompanied by… I don't think I have the text with me so I can't quote directly, but I know that Nahee is also doing this residency where they had opened this call for a potential partner to help raise this baby that she's planning on having, and then structuring that as... I'm going to have to think more about this, but, yeah.
[00:52:46]
Rachel: We also had Amy Wibowo who is making Zines about computational concepts, but doing it from the lens of femininity. So it's like a really, really cute table of Zines about computing that are in pastel colors or she also made these alligator clips that are used in physical computing to make connections between different hardwares that are also in pastel colors. And so it was really talking about softening computation. So it's not so male.
Rachel: One of the other Zines I really loved was a Zine about fishing and fishing for passwords, but it was written for an older community because those artists had their grandparents scammed through a phishing scam and so it was cool to see that intergenerational knowledge sharing. Free rads and has this really, really great series of Zines about Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos is my interior decorator. And that Zine is about how this one couch from Amazon has been, they found it in living rooms of their friends of multiple friends and how is it that Amazon is selling this particular couch to so many of people that they know. And we also had workshops. Tyler, if you want to talk about the workshops because you led that section. We had some really cool workshops.
[00:54:19]
Tyler: Yeah. Well we had a lot of amazing submissions for workshops and we ended up having time for four and they were led by Casey Reas who did a workshop about using processing, which is the creative coding software to think about making Zines and we had a speculative camera filter workshop, which was led by Lilyan Kris. This one was really interesting because it was getting your hands on crafts again and creating very analog filters. So it's rethinking what a filter might look like. We often associate that with Instagram or Snapchat filters, which are very digital and AR led and this is going back to, when we were in elementary school and we were working with glue and feathers glitter, googly eyes, all kinds of like little trinkets and that was nice.
Tyler: And then Rachel Joy Victor led imagining tech futures and then Critical Theory Index led a collaborative research workshop. So these ones are a little buried, but a lot of these mentioned to the speculative fiction territory, thinking about maybe what power we have as individuals or as a community to make our own or think about our own technology and maybe resist the tools that are presented to us larger corporations.
[00:55:47]
LS: This sounds like a dope ass fare. I mean, and it's like all of these individuals in these orgs that were there exists within their own communities, but you really created a space for these folks to come together, which is dope. And so as you transitioned, as Tiny Tech Zines being event-based into a collective, I know you mentioned the reading hour, but what are some ways that you're hoping to... How do you keep that same energy. I think that is my question. As you go from an admin space to collective, how are you thinking about what that could look like for Tiny Tech Zines?
Rachel: One of our big, big tenants is care. And I love that you all recognize that in what we were talking about before we actually named it as something, which is hopeful for us that folks can read that. But, yeah. Sometimes we struggle with like centering care because it can see and sounds so idealistic. But really care has such a transformative power. Like when you have felt that love from a family member and when Tristan mentioned my talk was about recovering from familial abuse and how my siblings gathered around me to take care of me and heal and how the traumas they had been through, they had recognized in me. And so together we came together to heal. So the future is still a big question, but for us as we keep having these conversations, but what is guiding us is care and how do we offer that? How do we build a strong community and maintain each other's mental health and create space for learning. So we have care as our guiding light.
Tyler: Yeah. And I would say that's been very wonderful to experience. And also it's a nice little surprise that's yielded some really nice collaborations where people reached out to us, we would come together and organize these workshops together around topics that we're both interested in. And we're still in the process of doing this with organizations that we feel a strong kinship to, and that we've had past relationships with and ultimately what it comes down to is, if we sense that there's some trust between the two of us and we do working with other people a lot and something that we're thinking about as well as we move forward is what Tiny Tech Zines can look like as a collective, as we grow and invite more people to either work with us or be a part of our family.
AG: Wow. Again, thank you for sharing that and really against around this intentionality around care. I think it's a conversation. And even what you've shared in terms of how you all are moving by with care and also with Adrienne Maree Brown words of moving at the speed of trust is something that so often gets pushed off to the back burner so that it does really, it's just this ideal that you are projecting rather than living. So I just wanted to say that is also inspiring and also motivating and undertaking this work.
[00:59:18]
LS: I bet I could keep you all here for the rest of this Sunday, but it's a little after two and we want to be mindful of your time. And so we'll start to wrap up. And so if you could just let folks know, how do they find you? Where are you at on social media? Do you have anything upcoming? You mentioned the reading hour maybe you could restate that info for everybody.
Rachel: We're on Instagram at Tiny Tech Zines, that's where we're the most active. We do have a less active Twitter and our website is tinytechzines.org, where we need to update for where we're currently at, but you can go through tinyzines.org to see all of the tablers that we had and the workshops that we posted. And just to get to know a little bit more about who we are. There's a little more reading there about our origins and come check us out tomorrow. Come read with us, Whiteness as Property at our reading hour, that'll be at 5:00 p.m. PDT on our Instagram.
AG: That's what's up. I had one quick question. So if you cannot attend your Zine's right? Do you have a digital archive of the Zines that have been present at your events?
Rachel: What we do have is the list of the tablers, but if you would like to read any of the Zines from the array portion, which were our absentees zines, we do have a small archive of those that are accessible.
[01:00:52]
AG: Okay.
Rachel: If you contact us.
AG: Yes, thank you.
Rachel: Thank you.
Tyler: Thank you so much.
LS: No, thank you. We hope you enjoyed everything that Tyler, Tristan and Rachel had to offer from Tiny Tech Zines. I enjoyed that conversation, but I could definitely have stayed on a call with them and ask several more questions and took up their whole Sunday.
AG: Seriously, yeah.
LS: But Aderinsola. How did it go? It was your first episode.
AG: I don't know. This is still all surreal. My mind is exploding with all sorts of ideas, questions. I felt in many ways spread by that conversation. My nerves are still there. I still have new person jitters in a way, but so much to think about, so many things in terms of... Anytime we're expanding a definition, as we know, in a way creates new worlds. And I'm still in this standing, in awe of these worlds after that conversation.
LS: Congrats. It was a dope conversation. I appreciate having the call because at first I did think that I was going to end up doing this alone, but here we are.
AG: Hey, here we... Oh, no. I'm not going to sing. No, you all don't want that.
LS: Take it to church. Take it to church.
AG: No. I want to make sure I'd leave our listeners with their eardrums intact. I don't want to...
LS: Okay. So we have a song recommendation. So Rachel recommended a... How do you say-
AG: A Moot Point.
LS: Mm-mm. That's not how we say double Os in Baltimore. That's a hard one. A Moot Point by Melanie Faye, Steven Universe soundtrack, which we would pick a song or Water Me by FKA twigs.
[01:02:58]
AG: Such great selections. I'm divided between the Steven Universe and this A Moot Point. Now I'm thinking about how I'm saying my double Os, but yeah. I'm also curious about that. So I can go either way. We can pick some from Steven Universe or-
LS: A Moot Point. Because what if you haven't seen Steven Universe? Does this soundtrack giveaway spoilers?
AG: It does not, I will say that. The soundtrack does not give away spoilers, it just gives you a taste if you will, of the roller coaster of your emotions that Steven Universe will take you through and it's amazing. Steven Universe soundtrack, especially that first season, you can't stop nothing to sleep on. But I am curious about Melanie Faye, was it? A Moot Point.
LS: Melanie Faye. Yeah.
[01:03:45]
[♫ Song begins playing: “Moot Point” by Melanie Faye.]
[01:04:16]
AG: So you were just listening to it's A Moot Point by Melanie Faye. Thank you Rachel from Tiny Tech Zine for that recommendation. That was, yeah. I'm still floating. How are you doing?
LS: Same. This is my introduction to Melanie Faye. I had not heard of this artist until our conversation today and the way it opened, it just... Have you ever had a sound bath? Do you know what that is?
AG: Yes. But I've never had one.
LS: Okay. So my first experience with one, I go to these healing circles every other Sunday and the way it starts off, they do some stuff and then this healer LaChané, you can find her on Instagram is at Oak Heart Oracle. She does a 15 minute sound bath. This was my first time doing sounds or sound therapy. And when I tell you, it took me to another place and made me feel things I didn't know I could feel. The way this song opened up. And then, hold on, because she explained it to... What did she say? Sound therapy, you have frequencies, your body has frequencies and sound have frequencies. And so the sound bath use the frequencies of sound interact with your own frequencies to help do some healing. The way that this song opened, it hit me similar to like how a sound bath, when she makes different noise levels. I don't know the right terms. Frequency or yes, for music people when you go up and down and this is, I really like that song. I don't know.
AG: I definitely resonate with that. Because it was like, "Ooh, we were about to take off." We went somewhere. We were transported to a place. I'm still sitting with it. I'm just like, "Ooh!" I'm definitely rocking with that. I'm going to replay it.
LS: Say that again, my bad.
AG: Oh, no problem. I was about to hit that replay real quick. I'm like, "Oh wait, can we go back."
LS: Facts. On YouTube, when you're on her YouTube thing, when you click on, there's no video, it's just official audio and the image is really cool. There's these squiggly lines in the back that it looked they're, I don't know if they're moving up or down. They're just moving in a way. And it was really pleasant to look at with the music. It was good. Did it remind you of anything from the conversation that we had?
[01:06:37]
AG: Yeah, I think it made me think about this, how do you say? I'm having expansive feelings, right? It made me think about even Tiny Tech's journey and really expanding this definition of what we consider tech and technology and the ways in which it is presence in our life. It made me also think about just... I just felt good. I think with the ethics of the care, the theme around care came up, definitely was... Yeah, those were a couple of things. Feeling right after that. What about yourself?
LS: I was going to say one, that song just made me feel good. But also that idea of expanding our definition of technology connected to just care, just when it comes to medicine, what is considered valid and what is not considered a valid way of healing oneself. And so there's many ways that you can go on your healing journey, maybe using a combination of Western and whatever your traditional cultural healing practices are. This idea of the technology of sounds and the frequencies, I guess something that I can't speak to eloquently, as you all can hear but I felt it.
AG: Now you're taking me to a place. Oh, wow. Another mind blown feeling just in that description, that the technology of sound and holding this conversation about our wellness journeys, especially considering our wellness journeys in the midst of this pandemic right now. And also to really be in this place of where we are and doing the work and having to survive. Be led by what our relationship is with our care.
LS: That's a good question. What is y’all's relationships with y’all's care is, what is it? Right on that.
[01:08:32]
AG: Yes. With everything going on right now, wow. How much of that too is still maybe bringing some shame because I don't even know if I have that space to even have that conversation with myself right now. It's serene. But I think it's something that I've been wrestling with since we've been in this remote world for a bit.
LS: Indeed. One thing I want to talk to you about that came up in the conversation, but I think that so many things were coming up. We didn't get a chance to go back to it. So I don't remember who gave a little bit about the history of Zines, but I wonder if we could delve into that for a small little bit. Because I think this episode is getting to be a bit long, I think.
AG: Oh, yes.
LS: And this idea that the term first came about in the 1930s?
AG: Yes 1930s.
LS: 1930s, can you just talk about what we was talking about earlier?
AG: Yeah, really. And also pushing from this notions of "Discovery" when things are being leaked. It was just how really the dissemination of information by way of pamphlets or leaves to raise the consciousness has been a practice that has been a lot of different, especially when you think about black liberation or it has been integral to these movements, right? From newsletters that we've seen in groups, such as the Black Panther and even earlier before that, Nation of Islam and to look at the ways in which we just are knowledge sharing. And that probably the concept of the Zine has already been in practice long before the 1930s, when there was a name put to that concept. I feel as though Zine is a medium of many mediums, right? It's texts, it's art, it's so much and so much that is also reflective of the community and voices that are being represented in that particular thing.
[01:10:25]
LS: Yeah. And I like that you brought that back to the forefront that it's texts and art, which speaks to the fact that I think Rachel is a graphic designer and then Tyler and Tristan are both artists and the fact that the three of them have come together to do work around zines also highlights that aspect of Zines.
AG: Yes.
LS: Okay, thank you all for listening. Oh, we in the works. So what is today? You all know I like to tell you all the date. It is August 23rd, this episode is going to air the first Tuesday in October, but after the episode airs, we will be collaborating again with Tiny Tech Zines and we're going to be doing a Zine making workshop, which I think is useful for literally everybody. You heard them speak about the different themes that showed up and how they were used by teachers, activists, organizers. This is I think a tool that everybody can put in their little toolbox of communication of when you want to put something out, how do you do it since not everybody can have a publisher.
AG: You right. I mean, timely time in the time of this information age, how are Zines helping to hold some of that load in our ever demanding world of information and knowledge. But yeah, this was fun. I probably am going to go back and just sit in that good feeling, replay that Moot Point. And there's so much here in this conversation today.
LS: Agreed. All right. We hope you'll enjoy it. Until next time fam, until next time.
[01:12:24]
[♫ Music outro fades in]
AG: Until next time. See you on the Gram or Twitter.
LS: Ooh, we are very inactive on the Twitter. We're active on-
AG: Okay. So see you on the Gram.
LS: Yes. When we're active on the Gram, we're quite active but yes. You got to catch us.
AG: I love it.
