Interview with Ludomir - Mózgojad fanzine
1. At the beginning, please tell me how the fanzine Mózgojad came into being? What preceded it?
Mózgojad appeared in 1992 after several conversations with different people. In Słupsk at that time there were quite a few people who made up the punk / hc / reggae scene. We all knew each other, met and so on. At one of these meetings we decided to make a zine. Two of us (Gilbert and I) already had a little experience with zines. We used to run the festival paper during Totus Mundus - an independent theater festival. We interviewed artists, wrote reviews and designed the layout. The whole thing had to be put together from day to day. Usually we would write in the evening, and in the morning we would collect the material, arrange it on a template, and photocopy it to distribute during the next day of the festival. With Mózgojad we had more time, but basically the method was similar :)
2. Where did the inspiration for it come from? Was there any other zine published in your city? Do you have any foreign fanzines inspiration? Do you also have issues available in PDF format?
In Poland at that time there were a lot of people actively building the hc/punk scene. There were a lot of zines, music publishers, bands, cultural centers. There was no internet, but we communicated through letters, met at festivals. There was also a big exchange market of independent publications in Warsaw called "Giełda". In Słupsk we always had access to that world, because people traveled and brought zines, tapes, records. Photocopying was quite accessible and cheap, so it wasn't hard to make your zine, you just had to get the content. For the first issue we worked in a larger group - everyone wrote something, we did some interviews by mail, some live, pasted ads of other publications and drawings. Someone also came up with a name, which was the nickname of one of our friends - Kamil - and meant "braineater". Everyone contributed something, and Gilbert and I typed it all up on typewriters and pasted it into a mock-up. We then managed to convince the local Culture House to provide us with a photocopier on which we could duplicate the zine and send it out into the world. It was printed regularly as orders came in through the post office - the money from those orders covered the printing costs. Soon we started organizing concerts at the same Culture House, so it was easy to fill up some of the content that way. We also cooperated with the eco and anarchist organizations and wrote articles on social issues. We tried to react vividly to the problems around us. The articles were also written by people from other places - mainly from Poland. We didn't have much contact with foreign scenes. Sometimes it was possible to extend some bands tours to Słupsk, then we had an occasion to talk to them and print it in the zine - for example, interviews with Pig Ignorance and Under the Gun were made after their gig.
As for the Mózgojad in pdf-format I don't have at the moment, but maybe it will appear soon, because I found original mock-up of first two numbers at my mother's attic :)
3. Have you had any collaborations or worked with scenes in neighbouring countries? I'm interested in Czech and Slovak ones, have you collaborated with anyone?Do you know any fanzines or magazines from Slovakia and Czech Republic?
At that time we didn't have contacts in Czech and Slovakia. Słupsk is north of Poland, so somehow we were more focused on Scandinavian scene – I remember some connections to Finland and Sweden later on. We knew there were many things happening in Czech and Slovakia, but did not have access to that.
4. Who took care of the graphics of your zine, who chose the themes of the magazine? What was the punk and alternative scene like in your city? Bands, clubs, festivals?
As I said - we did it in a larger group, but basically two of us - me and Gilbert - were responsible for the editorial. The first issue was mainly composed by Słupsk forces – through the all 3 issues fo Mózgojad we had even a series of articles called “Słupsk underground story”. There was quite a scene in Słupsk at that time - several bands were active, including Ewa Braun and Karcer, who were already stars of the hc/punk scene. In the neighboring town of Ustka there was Parafraza, which held monthly concerts to which we would travel from Słupsk with the whole brigade of punks. When we organized our first concert as part of our activities in 1992, more than 300 people came. It was quite surprising, because no one expected such a turnout – usual concert public was like 50-100 people. Suddenly there were a lot of people our age (we were 15/16 at that time), but also older and younger punks.
There were also several bands rehearsing in garages in Słupsk. We started meeting, talking, doing things. This grew into a large active group, which then moved into more social, environmental, anarchist activities. There were several houses of culture in the region that supported such activities by organizing concerts, then the first anarchist infoshop was created by Gilbert and Jacek.
As for Mózgojad, it started as a local initiative, but already the second issue was an incredible success. I had to keep adding new copies because orders were coming in from all over Poland. The second issue went out in more than 1,000 copies, which was quite a surprise in the days before the Internet. Again, people from Poland got involved. Drawings were sent to us by a guy from Sierpc - Sulo, but we also drew ourselves. I do not remember exactly how everything went. At that time we just did things without thinking about it. We felt the power of such activity and a real impact on reality.
5. Did you have any problems with the developing neo-Nazi scene at the time? What was the article about the band Babayaga Ojo?
In Słupsk there were ab. 5 skinheads. We had some problems with them because they were quite big and unpredictable, but it was not a big scene. However, they had good connections with Wroclaw, which was a neo-Nazi center at that time. We managed to keep them away somehow, but sometimes it was hard. We were always anti-fascist and we were quite explicit about it... the Babajaga-Ojo case is a good example. In the first issue of Mózgojad we cooperated with Maciek from Bełchatów, who had his own zine Wkrent. He printed our stuff, we printed his. And he sent us this little article about Babajaga-Ojo – a band which we didn't know, but we heard something that they might be sympathetic to the neo-Nazi scene. So we decided to print his text together with a flyer we got at the same time denouncing the band as fascists. Maciek wrote that the band was cool and the flyer said that they were neo-Nazis. So a few weeks later, after the first issue came out, we got a letter from Zbowid (a friend from Poznań) confirming that Babajaga-Ojo likes Nazis. We decided to add an extra page to our zine with a printout of this letter and some extra anti-nazi graphics. So the new copies were already made with this extra page. In the second issue we had a big column with letters (which we received quite a lot) where this thing was further discussed. We were always for discussion, but at the same time we did not want to give any ground to Nazi stuff. To make it even more clear - in the second issue we printed this little poster with a pig in a helmet and the description: "Nazi pigs fuck off". We had a lot of problems with skinheads because of that, but we also had a big support from other people from the hc/punk scene.
6. What are you doing today? Are you using your fanzine experience in your current job? Are you interested in today's fanzine scene?
I'm an artist - I work mostly with visual and performative arts, and I use the experience of making zines (I also design books, for example), but most of all I use the experience of being part of that big movement of the 90s: the ideas of independence, social justice, activism that were at the center of that movement are very important in my contemporary work. I also work with musicians whose roots are in the same scene, like Marcin Dymiter (also from Słupsk) and Robert Piotrowicz. I'm also interested in the art book and art zines. The idea of self-publishing is a very important part of it, and I'm really happy that this idea is still so active and meaningful.
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