Last summer at the first annual Compressed Zine and Music Fair, an artist shared incredible typographic art at one booth, while a zinemaker a few tables over sold handmade zines with instructions on how to unionize a workplace. Across the floor, a DJ's beats set a backdrop for a unique exchange of ideas, art and community.
Burn All Books, a risograph press and shop, and Particle FM, a locally based internet radio station, are collaborating on another Compressed event this Saturday. This time it's held at the San Diego Central Library's 9th floor event space, featuring artists, zine makers, small presses, musicians and creatives.
Christian Gonzalez is founder of Particle FM, and he said that the event celebrates unity among artists. "I was thinking about the name of the event, Compressed, and sort of why we came up with the name initially. The idea was to compress the arts community into a single space," he said.
Both Burn All Books and Particle FM focus on DIY — or do it yourself — art and music. DIY art is a broad term for something created by an individual artist without gatekeepers, agents, curators or other barriers, and the genre also prioritizes accessible means of production. For example, printing by risograph, an affordable, analogue mass-production zine and poster printer. Burn All Books is one of the only risograph presses in San Diego.
For Burn All Books co-founder Amanda Bernal, zines and other DIY art forms are essential in making creativity accessible and possible.
"Basically, the synthesis of what DIY is is not asking permission before you make something. So maybe it's not the most technically accurate or the sharpest looking — maybe it is — but it's something that you made that you did out of passion, and that you probably taught yourself how to do in some way, whether that's with the help of friends or you did everything from start to finish on your own," Amanda Bernal said.
She said that community is a big part of the DIY ethos.
"What you can make is greatly expanded when your community's expanded, so bringing the means of production — for us, it's printmaking and printing, and for Christian (Gonzalez, of Particle FM), it's recording and distributing music and community radio. They're the same in that they give people the means to make industry things on their own without there being a middleman basically, so everything is kind of on your terms. It makes creativity a lot more possible and broad because you don't have to wait for anyone to co-sign," Bernal said.
Nick Bernal, the other co-founder of Burn All Books, said a big project for them is a zine archive, and gathering together in this way parallels and enhances the idea of archiving what the arts community is doing right now.
"The art community here, the DIY art community, the music communities have always been great in San Diego. What we're doing is really nothing new. But to celebrate it with everybody, to kind of make a record of it, this time, so that in the future, you know, people are less unsure about what we did," Nick Bernal said.
Holding the event at the downtown library was a really important step for the group in this second year — not just in terms of growth and the ability to host more vendors and more visitors.
"The library is so important to us as an institution that is for everyone, and just one of the few institutions we have that is so accessible, that is about breaking down barriers between people and giving people equal access to resources and to knowledge," Amanda Bernal said.
Particle FM curated the music component of Compressed. Particle FM DJs Laurie Piña, Make Believe DIY and more will provide music during the event. Gonzalez said that the independent radio station’s aim is similar to that of Burn All Books.
"I think the relationship between the radio station and Burn All Books is really sort of the model for the way we want to present our art to the world. I think in the same way that Burn All Books is documenting zine culture in San Diego, the radio station is also documenting music culture in San Diego with — you know, every radio show that we publish is archived and put in a database somewhere. So it's sort of like a snapshot in time of like, this is what the community's doing. This is what people are inspired by," Gonzalez said.
Compressed, similar to other local zine fairs like SD Zine Fest, is a chance for the community to trade their own creations — so bring your own work to swap. Vendors and makers include Hello Barkada, Good Faith, Tijuana's Corrientes/Impresiciones Editorial, My Little Underground, Red Brontosaurus Records, Beyond the Veil and more.
"It's a way for you to get involved too. It's not just like a showcase of these publications but a way for you to interact with them and for people to — like the people who are tabling themselves, they're going to be interacting with each other. It's really just like a petri dish of creativity, really like at the ground floor, you know? You have a lot of people who are doing something not because anybody asked them to, they just feel strongly about something," Gonzalez said.
Details: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m, Saturday, Aug. 10. Shiley Events Space, 9th floor, San Diego Central Library, 330 Park Blvd., downtown. All ages. Free.
