Workshop: Memory Re-Used How to Build a Magazine with Reused Paper Using your Memories

The Brooklyn Public Library (New York City) is hosting the University Open Air Winter Semester from February 24 to March 7th, they invited me to participate for the second time since they started to do the University Open Air (UOA) in 2019. 

On this semester I will do a workshop that I developed since I was living in Colombia, it workshop was named for me Sursystem 3R (Reused, Recycle and Rethink), but for this event, I changed its name, now is called: Memory Re-Used, and the goal is that the participants in the workshop bring their old memories from their life in the neighborhood where they are or were living (old pictures, postcard, letters, posters... etc) and create a new page for the content of the magazine with that memories and, on the same time, they learn how to build a magazine with reused paper and reused shoebox, also, they will make the decoration of the cover and the back cover of the magazine using different techniques.

The workshop will be split into two parts, I will leave below the links to the UOA webpage and the links to my workshop.

Also, there will be more classes and lectures through those two weeks, feel free to explore it and I hope you can participate in this fantastic idea from the Brooklyn Public Library.

  UOA Webpage with all the curses and info

>Click on the image to go to the UOA webpage<

See you around and enjoy it!

Marcelo Arroyave

THE FIRST SURSYSTEM 3R IN 2018

When I started to make the Sursystem Magazine I was to doing a workshop in my original city: Cali, it was a long time ago, when I was in the university and when I believed that I could change the world. The idea of the Sursystem magazine wasn’t just mine, there was another person, my friend from the university Harold, better known in Cali as The Zudakaboy; he was doing a workshop with me about Manu Chao and the world music and in the middle of this job we started to think about a magazine where we could to write about music, globalization and “mestizaje”, then, we started to build, first, the idea about the publication and then, the topics and finally, the magazine title. 

COVER OF 

THE FIRST SURSYSTEM 3R IN 2018

CURRENTLY IN CALI, COLOMBIA

We worked together with the magazine for around four years, we made together 3 issues and then, He went apart to start to make his own Magazine that is called Satellite Sursystem. The last number of Satellite Sursystem is about the Salsa Music and its history in Cali, Colombia and the Caribe. My friend Harold sent me it with my sister around 6 months ago, and it is a beautiful publication with very interesting essays, articles, and stories, also, the graphic design that was made by Carlos Carrillo -in my opinion, the best graphic designer in Cali and also in Colombia- is really amazing, beautiful, awesome... I don’t have more words to describe their beauty. 

SURSYSTEM 3R BACK COVER

The way that I chose to said thank you to my friend for sending me the last edition of his publication was to making a Magazine Sursystem 3R to him. I sent it to him with my sister when she was back to Colombia around five months ago. I hope Harold will enjoy my magazine that is handmade such as I enjoyed his magazine when I got it. His magazine Sursystem was the first magazine that I made in 2018. 

Enjoy!

INTERIOR PAGE

Marcelo Arroyave

Eternal Member of the Collective Sursystem

Transmitting From South Bronx.

THE FANZINE SCENE IN NEW YORK, CHAPTER IV

After 16 months, here I am writing about the Fanzine scene in New York, again! 

In March of 2016 I was in a love depression, and this situation pushed me to go to street and join every single Fanzine event in NY. It was nice because I went to different places on the city and I met another Fanzine scene. One of them was the NYCFeminist Zinefest; it is made a Saturday on March in a very old and very fancy building in the Columbia University in Manhattan; In that moment it was a short trip to me in that festival because it was small, also, was the same Punk-feminist fanzine fair that you can met in another middle class “rebel” event around New York and around the west world: youth with Punk-feminist style clothes and a lot monster DIY Fanzines, plus, fanzines where the author show the drama of her life in that moment (although that young woman currently is a student in one o the most famous and expensive universities around the world).

But, this is the important thing, in middle of it Deja vu, I found a mature woman sat down in a single table with a little and tiny Fanzine on front of her and on the cover a number: 50. In that moment, when I took the fanzine, I felt that my time and my trip wasn't lost. 

 

I talked with her for a few minutes a paid for the Fanzine. I left the event and when I got my home, I left the little Fanzine on my desk where remained until three weeks ago, when I took it again and I read with devotion.

50 is the Fanzine name, like I said above; it is a little autobiography, where the author, in a very hard and deeply exercise of her memory, got and wrote down her memories from the age of one year old until the 50 years old -I didn't know how old was her on the moment when I bought her Fanzine- saying in each page a moment of her life in that age, and letting us know how she changed through her relationship with her mother, father, boyfriends, lovers, books, pets, cities, jobs... letting a little window open to us whereby we can see a little of her life and in the same time, guessing the other big part of her life.

50 was a nice discovered in that fair and I am happy to do a little description of it, because do that kind of memory exercise is hard and some times painful for the author, on the other hand is a good vehicle to let her demons go.

Title: 50.

Author: Jude Vachon

City: New York.

Year: 2016

Measurements: 5.50 inches of width X 4 1/3 inches of high.

Number of pages: 56

Printing Technician: Copies by copy machine in black and white.

Contact: vachonjude@gmail.com

Resume: fanzine with a little autobiography by years of age, from the one year of age until the 50 years old.

 

By Marcelo Arroyave

Eternal member of the Sursystem Collective.