Workshop with Guided Tour | General Idea
JuGroBa x General Idea: Zine-Workshop
© Gropius Bau, photo: Luis Sefcsik
In a guided tour through the exhibition, members of the Young Gropius Bau (JuGroBa) will give a personal perspective on the work of General Idea. Afterwards, students from the Technical University together with Giuseppina Lettieri from the Spinnboden Lesbian Archive & Library invite participants to explore the art and culture of zine-making, discussing aspects of self-publishing and DIY culture.
Between 1972 and 1989, General Idea published the FILE Megazine. The magazine, which adopted the format of the popular LIFE magazine, expressed General Idea’s approach to fiction and media: rumors about artist friends met with staged self-portraits of the collective. Inspired by General Idea and their subversive use of various media, participants will create their own zines in this workshop.
Materials will be provided, but participants can also bring their own. The results will be documented at the end and can be taken home.
The workshop is a collaboration with the Institute for Art History and Historical Urban Studies at the Technische Universität Berlin. As part of the seminar General Idea – A Project Seminar led by Merten Lagatz, students spent a semester researching the central motifs and recurring strategies of the artist group.
Instagram: @general_metazine
Giuseppina Lettieri (she/her) has over 10 years of experience in social movement archives. At the Archiv der Jugendkulturen in Berlin she was responsible for queer feminist fanzines and worked on issues of visibility, representation and empowerment. Since the beginning of 2023 she has been working at the Spinnboden Lesbian Archive & Library. As head of the Queer History Month in Berlin, she has also been organising city walks on DIY and lesbian subculture since 2018. Together with a colleague she published the zine ToBeSeen - eine intersektionale Intervention im Archiv der Jugendkulturen in 2021.