I may or may not scan the zine I've stuck together about my trip to Besancon, Proudhon's hometown. It is mostly sketches and book extracts with a little bit of route explanation - very little navel-gazing. But I added this poncey introduction to it:
What's this Fanzine made out of?
Aside
from these explanatory notes right here, everything in this fanzine
travelled with me from Besancon: the compiling of these various pieces
into a fanzine format allows me to collect these memories and traces
together, and they are joined together by the journey they made with me.
- the map is what I used to locate myself between France and Switzerland
& the 'Sunday 29 July' text are snippets from a printout of my blog
entry, which I carried with me on my journey, alongside an explanation
of the anarchist pilgrimage project, quickly translated into french by a
work colleague of mine (this involved revealing my anarchist politics
for the first time to everyone in the shared office). These were
intended to ease introductions with european anarchists who were
gathering in St.Imier - for why, you'll have to wait;
- the times new roman quotes are from my copy of George Woodcock's
'Proudhon' which I started reading as I reached the border on the way
back from Switzerland (I'll also be making a similar zine from/about the
St.Imier conference, to share at a report-back session in my hometown);
- the sketches were with a pen & pad bought in St.Imier, both now
used up, and the locations were derived from that Woodcock book (which
was surprisingly readable);
- the comments in 'this font' are my
typed-up notes, scrawled at the time - a sample is included on the page
with the fort picture;
- the photos were taken with the disposable camera that that those notes will later record me buying;
-
the details of 4 Bisontin anarchist groups (in french) are taken from a
flyer I had from St.Imier (on the train to which I also had the company
of two some Bisontin anarchists - they got hassled by police at the
border, telling them they'd better be pacifist or else! I meanwhile
played the ignorant non-francophone tourist and wasn't even searched);
- my 60 euro train ticket to Paris is also stuck in the mix, and
additional pictures are photocopied from an A4 magazine on Proudhon (in
french) I bought at the bookfair in St.Imier, 'Itineraire',
and finally:
- the scrap of cartoon on the front cover, complete with its anarchist
allusions to property and against election, came from one of the
flyposted door-shutters in Besancon, just by the Librairie
L'Autodidacte.
It is precisely that kind of trace, linking the present with the past,
that gives me the thrills and sense of revelation on these journeys. To
see a circled A in graffiti, or an anarchist sticker in a foreign town,
is one thing, but you can never know the route, or the relevance behind
it to the history you are pursuing: but to see one produced by a local
group, in the very neighbourhood where the person you are tracking was
born, is something else. And this one: it is stuck on someone else's
unused property, it features pictures as well as words (my fanzine
enthusiasm is closely linked with my visual-textual love, ie. comics!),
it is layered upon other layers and layers of other flyposters, carrying
through time in one place. The address is on the very street that the
flyposter was pasted, and the square that was behind my back as I
collected it will this month host the latest in a regular series of
anarchist gatherings and open-air gigs: it's the centre of the local
anarchist scene. The topics, also, those ideas carried forward from the
past, are against playing the electoralist game, and of challenging the
social normality of richmen's property ownership: two of the very issues
that are what make Proudhon important, why historically we pinpoint him
and rework, reprint his arguments (as I do in this zine, using
Woodcock's helpful summary, over the last 3 pages). The use of the
phrase 'anarchist', core arguments used by what was to become the
anarchist movement, they are all there, in that fragment of paper and
wallpaper paste, sun-faded ink and ideas and time.
These are the kind of themes that I wish to address in my
presentation at the Loughborough Anarchist Studies Conference, 3 - 5
September 2012. And (for those who aren't there) it is for this event
that I have printed this fanzine. I am beginning a series of art
performances, with which I intend to share some of my experiences,
thoughts and sketches form a much bigger journey I began 2 years back,
following the routes of Bakunin And Kropotkin. If you're interested, or
would like to join me next summer on a part of the concluding travels,
see
http://anarchistpilgrimage.blogspot.com
