This Happened - Ferment zine

A talk I did for This Happened at the V&A about how I and my friends ran our illustrated literary magazine, Ferment - http://fermentzine.com.

The video of the talk is here: http://vimeo.com/51904714

Transcript

2. Born on a train
5. Posse in effect
7. Alright hear this
8. FERMENT No. 1 Winter 2010—11 £3 NAKED the issue Literature and illustration zine
9. FERMENT No. 1 Winter 2010—11 £3 NAKED the issue Literature and illustration zine No. 2 Spring 2011 £3
10. 7 7 Hero A knock at the door. I was excited. Harriet had a new boyfriend. She’d sent me an email saying she’d be bringing him round today. ‘I feel I should tell you, he’s a hero.’ A hero? Whose hero? One of our heroes?
11. FERMENT No. 1 Winter 2010—11 £3 NAKED the issue Literature and illustration zine No. 2 Spring 2011 £3 FERMENT No. 3 Summer 2011 £3.50 Literature and illustration zine
12. FERMENT No. 1 Winter 2010—11 £3 NAKED the issue Literature and illustration zine No. 2 Spring 2011 £3 FERMENT No. 3 Summer 2011 £3.50 Literature and illustration zine Literature and illustration zine Winter 2011—12 FERMENT 100 £3.50 No. 4
13. 4 Cambridge I stick a saltwater tank on the back of my truck and drive my octopus around the city; down Kings Parade, Market Square, railings clustered with plum-faced quartets, high bookshops, the delivery entrance of Dixons. Me, and the first octopus on Earth to ever see the spires of Corpus Christi, we crawl past picture-book parks, cyclists weaving diagrams around us. My octopus has never known the sun to burn so bright and yet so cold, his huge eyes rotating, taking in every dog, every crisp, every Medieval crack and splinter. I toot. He waves. Cambridge loves you, baby! You’re unscrewing this city like a jam-jar! And everybody out here knows the deal: how he could squeeze through a fissure no bigger than their thumb and be gone, suckering off over the high walls, rearranging those blue plaques into new historical assemblies. The arrogance! And who wouldn’t want a piece of it? Who wouldn’t follow this octopus deeper into the city, beyond those turrets where teenagers dream in a dead language, through ancient refectories, over suits of armour into studies once paced by Charles Babbage. Who could resist following that watery path? Somehow reminiscent of the ancient river that cuts this city in two; that endless, unquestionable life-force that every new generation relies upon to make them feel utterly stupid.
14. FERMENT No. 1 Winter 2010—11 £3 NAKED the issue Literature and illustration zine No. 2 Spring 2011 £3 FERMENT No. 3 Summer 2011 £3.50 Literature and illustration zine Literature and illustration zine Winter 2011—12 FERMENT 100 £3.50 No. 4 Literature and illustration zine Summer 2012 FERMENT 100 £3.50 No. 5
15. Get it together
16. Picture this
17. What comes around
18. It takes time to build
21. bergcloud.com/littleprinter
22. adafruit.com
23. Microprinter by Tom Taylor
24. gofreerange.com/printer
26. Song for junior
27. Make some noise
28. I don’t know
29. Stand together
30. Intergalactic
31. Shazam!
33. That’s it that’s all fermentzine.com @fermentzine James Weiner @jamesweiner