A Really Wild Rewilding Bestiary Zine - Creating an academic style zine

Selected as part of more-than-human freedom’s 2024 zine conference, A Really Wild Rewilding Bestiary zine has been generated as the first iteration within a Practice-as-Research driven, performative zine document series. The content of the publication responded to the conference theme considering ‘vernacular perspectives on non-humans’ skills in caring for themselves and landscapes’ and drew influence from the Guiding Principles for Rewilding (Carver, S., Convery, I., Hawkins, S., et al., 2021). In doing so, the publication examines cultural allegories synonymous with various figures of the UK grey wolf: The Lone Wolf; The Pack of Wolves; The Companion Wolf and explores how social expectations may influence types of caregiving in an imagined rewilding instance.

With a responsibility to deliver on the conference themes provided by more-than-human freedoms call out and digital boundaries (grey scale, file size etc.) to allow an online publication, the creative process became a triangulation of considerations – 1) How to present academic, research led writing in a short, succinct zine style 2) How to remain true to traditional zine making techniques and aesthetics 3) How to explore my creative practice whilst adhering to digital/conference restrictions

Some thoughts on the process of each element. Presenting academic, research led writing in a zine format.

Ahead of writing the bulk of the zine, initial consideration was given to fundamental structural points of academic writing and how this will translate across a different style of writing; fragmented, shorter text sections are more likely found within traditional zines as opposed to the essayist nature of most critical papers. With a constant need to think about the layout, I found the writing process demanded an awareness of performativity from the start. Rather than writing each section purely for content-sake and then trying to fit it around images, or vice versa, I discovered early on the need for both text and image to be in conversation with one another. Thinking about how I wanted the zine to be digested by the reader guided the writing into the three different categories of wolf (Lone wolf, Pack of Wolves, Companion Wolves), as the writing became a miniature case study on each with an introduction and conclusion. This formatting allowed the zine to be easily digestible in either one sitting, or to engage independently with one ‘case study’ at a time.

Remaining true to traditional zine making techniques and aesthetics.

Aiming to stay true to more traditional zine making, I had originally planned to design and build the zine in full as a hard copy, utilising collage/layering techniques, and then scanning in at the end to make the digital copy. However, due to the final zine having to be delivered online in greyscale, there was a lot of editing the shades and density of scanned images to ensure a strong enough contrast to ensure each element on the page would show up. I found through this process that scanning each item separately and then using computer software to digitally layer and create the collages produced a more effective “zine style” document on this occasion, whilst ensuring it to be easily legible.

Next time, I am interested in trying to create the full document without any computer software input and consider the materialistic nature of different images/design elements explored. I want to play around with how this will change the performativity of a zine and how it may alter between original copy, re-produced paper and digital copies?

Exploring my creative practice in response to a conference call-out.

With an interest in medieval bestiaries, I wanted to draw on the traditional format found within such manuscripts to present the three different types of wolves being discussed. This prompted me to start thinking about medieval borders and font styles, as well as sourcing different images of wolves that could be used to illustrate the categories being explored. A lot of the imagery used within this zine was found through the Dover Pictorial Archive (a vast collection of royalty/copyright free imagery that has been sourced through reference collections, facsimiles of printed materials and manuscripts) and was edited/manipulated to pull on collage making techniques, following traditional zine styles.

Next steps

Moving forwards, as the research deepens, I am interested in exploring the difference between various types of bestiaries (publication years, origin country, authors/illustrators etc.) and how this can be playfully re-produced in numerous ways through contemporary zine making. I will be visiting a few different archives over the next couple of months where I will be viewing the original manuscripts of various bestiaries. I am hoping this will not only provide opportunity to try and find traces of the she-wolf, but also to consider the way these documents perform with awareness of the fragility of the parchment, fading ink and imagery within.

Through the next few zines, I am aiming to explore the contrasts between a document that is potentially one of a kind, invaluable and securely housed within temperature-controlled archives and museums [bestiaries] and the other that can be a quick, low-cost, easily reproduced item [zines]. What are the similarities/differences and how does each help document the ephemerality of species and human/nonhuman relationships over time?

A Really Wild Rewilding Bestiary zine, alongside the work of others presenting in the conference, can be found on h-commons and will be available very soon. For now, you can view the document under the project section of this site.