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Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel)
Tanja Kapp | Journeying the Page 185
than concentrating on
how action drives the
plot forward, these scat-
tered image transitions
highlight the detailed and
sensuous surroundings of
the traveller. The zine here
does not focus so much on
temporal progression but
on atmosphere, ‘set[ting] a
wandering eye on different
aspects of a place, idea or
mood’ (McCloud 1993: 72).
The various media at
play in A Long Walk, and
particularly their conflu-
ence within the medium of the zine, show how experience and its remembrance is processual
and always in a state of development. Right at the start of the narrative, Molesworth reflects
that ‘walking and drawing has the power to encourage thinking’ (Molesworth 2016: 3), sug-
gesting that he does both activities simultaneously. The pictorial elements of the zine, including
drawings and photos, thus mark the artist’s first creative examination of the geography and
his spatial walking practice. The second layer of documentation is produced afterwards, in
the form of typewritten text, as the use of past tense throughout the zine indicates. Crucially,
Molesworth’s written account of the walk is interspersed with handwritten editorial notes and
changes, as can be seen in Fig. 8. It is especially through these alterations that the zine con-
veys how individual memories of experiences are constantly changing. In the same way that
Molesworth edits his prior travel account, past experiences are constantly rewritten within one’s
memories, as new perspectives and contexts retrospectively change one’s evaluation of certain
events. As a transparent medium, whose production can be tracked through its DIY nature
and copy-and-paste layout, the zine does not hide its ‘made-ness’. Douglas and Poletti insist
that it is indeed this deliberate ‘roughness’ that plays a crucial part in setting the medium apart
from its glossy, professionally produced counterpart, the magazine (Douglas and Poletti 2017:
196). Granted, the production of zines today may at least to some extent involve computer soft-
ware — and this is apparently true for both zines studied in this article. Nevertheless, it seems
evident that they retain their aura of imperfection. In A Long Walk, this is mainly made pal-
pable through Molesworth’s editing hand, which disrupts the flow of the verbal narrative and
thus discloses the process of production to his limited audience. The fact that producing in a
professional manner has become increasingly easy in our day and age further reveals how DIY
aesthetic today is a conscious decision, tied more than ever to considerations of appearance. As
an ephemeral medium positioned on the fringes of cultural production, the zine embraces all
non-normative approaches, both medially and ideologically, and thus affords a unique experi-
mental playing field for mapping psyche and geography.
Fig. 8: An excerpt of Molesworth’s travel account showing
handwritten edits (Molesworth 2016: 3)
>mcs_lab>
Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020
The Journal
- Title
- >mcs_lab>
- Subtitle
- Mobile Culture Studies
- Volume
- 2/2020
- Editor
- Karl Franzens University Graz
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2020
- Language
- German, English
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- Size
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Pages
- 270
- Categories
- Zeitschriften Mobile Culture Studies The Journal