Kathleen Hanna, Billy Karren, Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox. Bikini Kill: A Color and Activity Book, no. 1. 1991. Photocopy; cover by Hanna.
During the world premiere of Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour, which we screened in April in conjunction with Looking at Music: 3.0, we got a great response to the riot grrrl fan zines in the exhibition.
Miranda July. The Amateurist. 1998. Video still. Courtesy Miranda July
Before Miranda July became an acclaimed director, she was a film school dropout who moved to Portland and started a video chainletter for women, Big Miss Moviola (later Joanie4Jackie). My favorite chainletter intro opens with July in front of a skyscraper wearing a navy suit, demonstrating with delightful irony how her scrappy video ‘zine had grown into a corporate behemoth; a “monster-like force in the transnational lady-made movie scene.” In reality, July was dubbing over old VHS on outdated VCRs that she kept in the living room, and often struggled to get by.
In the video interview above, Gretchen Wagner, an assistant curator in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, talks about the essay she wrote for the publication Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art, titled “Riot on the Page: Thirty Years of Zines by Women.”
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