Publish and Be Damned

Cork Zine Archive on display at UCC

‘Here was a first-hand account, almost like reading a diary of the time’

The Cork Zine Archive offers a glimpse into a golden era for youth culture on Leeside.

UCC Library in partnership with the Cork Zine Archive hosted an exhibition, Publish and be Damned, which highlights the importance and distinctiveness of an almost forgotten artefact of our recent print culture, the Fanzine or ‘Zine.

The exhibition, curated by Siobhán Bardsley and Fiona O’Mahony, brings together a collection of zines and independent magazines produced by various groups in Cork spanning three decades, from 1975 until the dawn of digital and social media. It is the objective of the exhibition to curate and ensure the preservation of as large a collection of Cork produced fanzines as possible.

“They preserve an honest, no-holds barred perspective on city life that was specific to each individual or group for whom the fanzine was conceived, and often were the only space for voices that would otherwise have been lost amidst the dull din of the status quo,”

As part of this project the Cork Zine Archive is accepting the donation of additional titles to the collection, which it hopes will find a home in the UCC Library, ensuring that this “vernacular journalism” will be available to facilitate research and further study of a distinctive element of the vibrant cultural life of the City of Cork. Publish and Be Damned ran until the end of September 2019 in UCC Library, Cork.

Siobhan Bardsley, curator; and Fiona O'Mahony, exhibition designer ; 'Publish and be DAMNED' Fanzine exhibition

The exhibition was captured in 360 degree detail. Please use the windows here to discover more

We have also created a Virtual version of the Exhibition. Click Here to view