Comrades Zine

This zine compiled by Comrades consists of three contributions from Midlands based artists who form part of the wider collective. Through a mixture of editorial, poems and illustrations, Ashokkumar attempts to understand the necessity of activism for disabled artists. Jasmine explores quiet forms of activism using fingerspelling (British Sign Language) with reference to Tony Heaton’s “Smile Fuck” artwork. Roo invites us to imagine what our own access documents could look like and how we choose or choose not to communicate our needs to institutions. 

The zine acts as a document that dissects creative activism from different perspectives and provides a focus of discussion and a safe space where it can be understood and discussed. Zines are DIY in their very nature, nothing needs to be accurate or referenced and this makes for an exciting area where our knowledge is the knowledge, platforming lived experiences of real people. We understand that there is no one way of defining creative activism however through our zine we hope we will inspire other D/deaf Disabled and ND artists to understand how they can explore and embrace their own definition of activism.