Features
2010
10 January
Geek Programming for Womin: An interview by Kate
Chickpea and Yossarian are two of the organisers behind a series of free programming classes for womin being held at Library House, a social centre in south London. They were kind enough to answer some questions about the origins of the project, technicalities and their future plans.
2009
19 September
Interviews Conserving fandom: an interview with Fan History by Kate
Fan History is a fan run site documenting the history of fandom. Established in 1998 and now in wiki form, all manner of fandoms are covered and Fan History makes a point of not specifying what qualifies (which makes the random button particularly fun). Most recently, they have been leading the Geocities preservation project, saving fan pages before Yahoo pulls the plug. The founder of Fan History, Laura Hale, was kind enough to answer some questions about the site.
25 February
Feature Essays Underground, Overground: the State of Zines Today by Kate
Zine publishing seems largely to have survived — touch wood — the current troubles facing independent magazine publishing and, if anything, there seems to be more talk of zines in the air. With this in mind, I asked zinesters Melissa (Cherry Bomb Comics), Lizzy (Marching Stars Distro ) and Davida (Xerography Debt ) about how they saw the zine world developing and whether there was any truth to the rumours.
2008
03 December
An Interview with the Queer Zine Archive Project: 5 Years On by Kate
The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) was started in 2003 as a way of preserving and promoting queer DIY publishing, making queer zines available across time and space. From an initial 15 zines, the QZAP has continued to expand and recently celebrated its 5th birthday! Check out the website to find out about recent additions to the archive, ways to contribute, info about new projects (including the QZAP:Meta zine) and other ways to support this awesome archive.
Milo and Christopher were kind enough to answer some questions about the project.
11 March
Feature Essays Fangirl Project: Geek girls united by Kate
From the days of usenet groups and bulletin boards, fandom has been what the web has been made for (well, that and p0rn). From the time when Deadheads converged on The Well, the web has been a place for fans to congregate and discuss the lucky subjects of their fandom. In very minute detail. A lot of this has proved some of the most innovative of online communities while other have just been.. well.. deadheads.
And all that is great about persnickity and dedicated online fandom is coming together as the Fangirl Project .
30 January
Feature Essays Dandizette's Year in Review of 2007 by Nick
(Subtitle: this is not about facebook)
In response to the many breathless odes to social networking tools (and who can compete with news ways to play Scrabble), we offer our hazy recollections highlights of 2007. And apparently you can make friends online now.
2007
30 May
Interview with Radical Reference by Kate
Radical Reference is a group of radical librarians and information workers who provide reference and research support to activist communities. They first formed as a support service to activists at the Republic National Convention in Washington (US) in 2004 and have more recently been present at the NY Anarchist Book Fair.
As well as street reference, Radical Reference also provide reference services to activists and independent media via their website at www.radicalreference.info. James Jacobs (one of the founders of RR) and Lia Friedman (a RR volunteer based in San Diego) kindly answered some questions for DZ.
25 April
Interview with TravelQueeries by Kate
Elliat Graney-Saucke is a radical queer artist and the director of an upcoming documentary, Travelqueeries. The film explores issues of identity, gender, creativity and geography through the experiences of queer activists and artists in various communities throughout Europe.
2006
07 November
Age Sex Location: A Guide by Kate
One of the missions of Dandizette is to chart the interesting and peculiar adventures of freaks and geeks both online and off. But being the total geeks that we are, we occasionally only notice one or the other at a time. The internet is a largely vacuous and lonely place and claims that its sole existence is based on/around the distribution of porn are very, very true.
There are always fun, creative, challenging people and events who exist and operate online and this is by no means a definitive list — it’s more like a starting point. So, on this exploratory quest to discover whether the web really does offer more than a million and one ways to procrastinate at work, we recommend the following.