The Mini-Zine-Library Project is a community art project that aims to create zines‚ small and simple home-made publications, during customised art-making workshops with children of all ages‚ on subjects related to their specific contexts and interests. The workshops are essentially resources oriented, meaning that they are specifically designed for participants to be able to identify their internal and external resources through the creative process, play and sharing. Ultimately, they allow for an experience of the life affirming qualities of art-making without the pressure or expectation to produce anything. The fact that something wonderful stands at the end, namely the library, something collective albeit with individual efforts, is both empowering and humbling.
With editions in Switzerland (Giswil and Langnau), Pakistan (Lahore) and India (Kolkata), we aim to create a growing Mini-Zine-Library that visits more cities and countries, broadening the range of local expressions to include different languages, cultures and ways of thinking. Thus the unity of the form of a library is essentially a celebration of the diversity of us all. What more beautiful is there?
Link to the project page: www.minizinelibrary.net
The Mini-Zine-Library is a project of "Verein Love für Allen" and the non-profit association "IDA – Projekte für Kultur". Habib Afsar and Mara Züst as part of the International Performance Art Giswil, Giswil, where supported by the festival. The project cycle in Kolkata, India, and Lahore, Pakistan, was supported by Pro Helvetia New Delhi, the two project cycles with Schule im Widmer, Langnau a.A. by Kulturagent.innen Schweiz.
