Wouldn’t it be awesome to travel through Europe, have a short stay here and there, meeting old friends and making new ones in the process? Julie und Guillaume are on a real long road trip and combined this adventure with their great passion for Zines. They build up an international library for Zines called Zines of the Zone. In all of Europe, there is a massive scene of people creating their own photo and indie zines, printing them and putting them together all in one. Along with their friends Basile and Sergej, Julie und Guillaume go from city to city, showing their collection of Zines and picking up new ones. A story that should never end. I met the two for a short chat.

Hi! That’s a wonderful project you have. Maybe you just introduce yourself?
Julie Hascoët: We are a group, changing and open. We are a non-profit organization from Nantes and mostly we are interested in visual arts.

What’s the motivation behind your project?
Julie: Travelling around Europe! And we love photo books and zines. We want to build a public archive and meet the publishers to get the story behind their books. We’re interested in everything that is self-published: Photo Zines and books, independent magazines and newspapers.

Okay. Where have you been so far?
Guillaume Thiriet: Oh. We went to Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Balkan countries, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Poland and the Baltic countries, Scandinavia, then back to Germany and we still have months to go before we go back to France! On our first German stay, we did Berlin and Leipzig. Now we’re on our way to the Netherlands we’ve visited Hamburg and now Cologne.
Julie: We started at the end of January. We started with 250 books and now we have 700.

Where do you find the magazines when coming to new cities?
Julie: Well, we spent one year building our library and getting in touch with local publishers. Each time we are in a new city, we organise events and invite local publishers to come and bring their book or zine. This way, we collected 450 books already. Here in Cologne, it’s our 41st event now. It’s nice, people just come by and say: “Hey, I brought something for you”. Sometimes, when we come to a new city, mail with new zines is already waiting for us at our host’s address.

Amazing. We wish you many more great Zines for your collection and a great trip through the rest of Europe!

> Zines of the Zone online
> Eine Übersicht über die Fanzine-Sammlung
> Tumblr über die Reise durch Europa

Das Gespräch führte Sven Job