Interview with Elke Zobl

PLEASE, INTRODUCE YRSELF
My name is Elke. I grew up in the mountains of Salzburg, Austria, and have always been interested in art and radical literature. Three years ago, I moved to San Diego, California, to see more from the world - and also to get a bit more sun… I really enjoy the alternative scene over here. I get to go to great concerts and festivals with grrrl bands, for example I went to the Ladyfest in Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In August there will be a small women's festival here in San Diego too. I really admire how active and creative young women are in the US! It's a shame that this country is run by the republicrats and their egoistic war capitalism… Right now I am mostly working on my web site which is called Grrrl Zine Network. I list and link grrrl, lady, queer, and trans folk zines, distros and DIY projects from around the world. I have created it 2 years ago and it is growing immensely. For the web site, I am also conducting interviews with grrrl zinesters and distros from around the world. So far I have done around 40 and they are archived at the web site. Some grrrl zinesters and me got into conducting DIY zine workshops for girls and young women. So we are doing a lot of these now! We have also created a West Coast Zine Archive here at the university library. So, a lot of what I do in my life is connected to zines!

WHEN YOU HAD READ THE FIRST ZINE?
I read my first zine 5 years ago in Vienna, Austria. A friend gave me a grrrl zine called “Annikafish”. It talked about the thing that we all wanted to be Pipi Longstocking but in fact we live lives like Annika's. I was thrilled! And since then I am hooked to zines! After that two friends and me decided to create our own zine, called “female sequences:FrauenlesbenkulturHEFTig”. It was a magazine for and about women and lesbians in Austria interested in contemporary feminist art, music, pop culture, literature, and youth culture. I left after the first issue but it is still published and now in its 5th issue. At the same time, I got interested in feminist art and comic zines in the German speaking area. I found that quite a few women use zines as a forum to exhibit their art instead of having to struggle with the male dominated gallery system.

WHAT ZINES MEANS TO YOU?
I appreciate zines so much because they allow you a window into another person's life. This person shares his or her most personal experiences that one sometimes couldn't get to know otherwise, such as the experience of growing up transgendered in the US or being single mum in Malaysia. In zines you can read about what it means to grow up and live as a woman or queer in different parts of the world, what you have to fight against and go through. I would like to change the things that are still oppressing women (or people in general) today – and zines document these things in the first place. I think zines are just the most honest, direct and most important media form today and in our society.

WHAT ARE THE ZINES YOU MOST LOVED AND WHY?
There are so many! I really like Venus zine, it's a zine from Chicago on women musicians. Amy Schroeder started it as a small copy-and-paste zine in high school and now its all color, internationally distributed, and just very well written and thought of. I also love the personal zines which are done all over the world, such as Trippers Zine that talks about being a lesbian punk rock dyke in Singapore or the zine Anti Muse that is about being a riot grrrl in Germany. I also love zines like Women's Self Defense: Stories and Strategies of Survival or Bendita: from Brazil which share important information on self defense and sexual assault among women. I also admire those who are running distros such as Pander Zine Distro (USA), (her) riot distro (Sweden), Moon Rocket Distribution (New Zealand), Smitten Kitten Distro (Australia) or Livinghood Distro (Hongkong). I think they are such an essential part of the whole zine community since they distribute zines all over the globe. I just find it very exciting to get to know so many revolutionary women from all over the world who do zines and share what they think!

WHAT INSPIRED YOU SO MUCH TO MAKE YOU START A WEBSITE?

I just love grrrl zines and looked around on the web. Soon I had all these bookmarks of zines on my computer and there was no central resource site, so I decided I needed to create one. I really wanted to share what I have found and provide something like an online archive for grrrl zines from all over the world. Many people think that grrrl zines are almost exclusively done in the US but in fact grrrls all over the world create them – and that's what I would like to document. It's also that I would like to support the network and make it easier for zine makers, distros and interested people to find and spread the word about their zines.

HOW IT'S DEVELOP AND CHANGIN' YR WEBSITE BY THE START?

It started with a few pages but the concept was the same. Now it has grown into many, many pages. I am listing new zines from all over the world every week – there is just so much going on that it is hard to keep up! but that's exciting too!

HOW WAS AND CONTINUE TO BE THE RESPONSE OF GIRLS?

It has been great! I get many emails from all over the world, it's overwhelming. Girls tell me that such a resource site was really missing - and that's really why I am doing it.

WHAT ABOUT ARE YOU MORE SATISFIED ABOUT GRRRLZINES.NET AND WHAT YOU DON'T LIKE MUCH (IF THERE IS) AND YOU WOULD MAKE BETTER?

I love getting to know new zines, distros and DIY projects and the meet the grrrls and ladies behind. It's very exciting, especially when you travel you can visit all these cool people! What gets sometimes tiring is to keep the web site in order and the mechanical work of listing and reviewing the zines. There are just so many that I am always behind! But I guess that's part of the zine world too…

GRRRLZINES.NET WILL BE FOREVER OR YOU'LL START ALSO, OTHER GRRRLS-NETWORK PROJECTS?

I definitely plan to continue with Grrrl Zine Network. I would love to expand the site with grrrl DIY projects, music, poetry etc. networks. I think grrrls from all over the world create these amazing things with a feminist viewpoint but there is no easy way how to find out about what's going on. So that's a big future project that will focus on DIY feminism around the world.

FUTURE PROJECTS?

There are many more! When I go back to Europe I would like to put together a zinemobile and travel with it through Europe. Here they have something called Bookmobile and it's an airstream trailer that was transformed into a traveling zine and artist book exhibit. I would love to do something like that in Europe and go from town to town! Also, when I go back to Austria I would like to create a zine and youth culture archive to introduce zines to young people and especially women in Austria. Zines are not now very well-known there and I think they can give you such a great empowering outlet when you grow up. You can also get to know like-minded people from all over! And in the near future I would love to put together an anthology of grrrl zines from all over the world. It will have parts of zines, interviews, comics, drawings, resources. I am looking forward to work on that a lot! So if you are publishing a grrrl zine or are running a distro and would like to be included, please email me! I also plan to start publishing something like a newsletter. It will be some kind of print-version of my web site for those who have a difficult access to the web. I'd like to announce new grrrl zines and print the interviews I did with zinesters and distro grrrls and just establish connections between grrrls all over the world.

SOMETHING YOU WANT TO ADD?

Somehow there are not so many people in Europe doing zines. But I really would like to encourage everyone to just do it! Just sit down, think about issues that are important to you and start. Write it out there, we really need your voice, experiences, opinions and love! Please email me for listing new zines, distros or DIY projects!

www.grrrlzines.net
elke@grrrlzines.net

Thanks for inviting me to the interview!