Abstract this is shit craft. glue under nails. misaligned type. pages that won’t optimise.

my practice research approaches diy zine-making as an endangered conceptual world: a minor, tactile language of knowledge production threatened by platform capitalism, academic standardisation, and extractive visibility regimes.
zines carry sedimented feminist and queer lineages — riot grrrl, counter-publics, fugitive study. thinking with fred moten and Stefano sarney’s undercommons, shit craft operates “in but not of” institutional space: using its resources while refusing its demand for polish, scalability, and measurable impact. it values friction, delay, illegibility.

projects such as no pain no gain and safe/brave explore zines as precarious epistemic resources. fragments mailed across distance, collective improvisation, unfinished pages — these are not aesthetic shortcomings but methodological commitments. drawing on sara ahmed’s work on affect and circulation, i understand shit craft as a sticky social practice: knowledge produced through touch, care, and obligation rather than optimisation.

this research asks: what forms of knowing become impossible when everything must be streamlined, searchable, and monetisable? what minor languages of making persist anyway?

presented as a performative exposition with handling and reading, this project demonstrates how endangered diy practices generate distinct forms of innovation: slow mediation, collective authorship, and refusal of extractability. shit craft does not scale. it circulates hand to hand. it keeps knowledge vulnerable, situated, and alive.