Outside the Mainstream Press: Language, Materiality, and Temporality in Microzines

This article examines aesthetic strategies employed in the modernist little magazine and contemporary independent magazines. Language, materiality, and temporality are found to be key elements for experimental multimodal expressions challenging mainstream periodical cultures. In order to emphasize parallels between precarious, noncommercial, and innovative micro-publishing practices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we propose to use the term ‘microzine’.

In three case studies, we offer analyses of linguistic defamiliarization, typography and design, and the representation of temporal experiences of migrancy to highlight the entanglement of aesthetic strategies as well as their persistence over time. This comparison of the Little Review (1914–29), NXS (2017–2022), and Burnt Roti (2016–) opens up possibilities to view disparate non-mainstream magazine projects as potent incubatory spaces for new magazinal assemblages.

Ernst, J., Fazli, S. & Scheiding, O., (2023) “Outside the Mainstream Press: Language, Materiality, and Temporality in Microzines”,
Journal of European Periodical Studies 7(2), 97–114.