Potluck: The Cui-Zine Library

ABOUT

We are inviting contributions of food zines for Potluck: The Cui-Zine Library that will be displayed at the Serendipity Arts Festival this year. A zine (rhymes with green) is an independently produced booklet, made with the aim to exist outside of mass consumer culture. This library brings together all our hodgepodge, homemade, and messy thoughts, feelings, and stories on food.

Our collection will explore food through the lenses of nostalgia, desire, caste, gender, labour, play and more. It will house multilingual zines of varied styles and folds, traversing the spectrum of all that makes food a vibrant and fertile ground to understand ourselves and the worlds around us.

If you’re interested in contributing your food zine(s) to Potluck: The Cui-Zine Library, please fill out this form.

KEY INFORMATION

Commencement date: September 30, 2023
Submission deadline: November 30, 2023

CURATORS

Zinedabaad is a zine-making collective, run by Riya Behl and Devashree Somani. They make zines, organise workshops and curate pop-up zine libraries.

Zinedabaad believes in the spirit of the zine: an independently produced non-commercial, non-professional, small-circulation booklet, usually distributed by zinesters themselves and made with the aim to exist outside of mass consumer culture.

The word ‘zindabaad’ in Hindustani means ‘long live’, and Zinedabaad hopes to keep this spirit of independent publishing alive through their work.

ELIGIBILITY

We’re looking for zines about food. Submissions are open to all, with no bar on age, gender, nationality or zine type. No culinary or zine-making expertise is required—everyone has a seat at our table! If you’re new to the medium, here is a simple tutorial to begin making a zine, or even better – come attend one of our workshops!

All forms and folds of zines are welcome, with no limitations on their sizes or number of pages. There are endless creative possibilities–your zines can be filled with writing, poetry, photography, doodles, collages or any creative concoction of the above. You can also submit as many zines as you’d like.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Please fill out this form to contribute to our library. We will email you with next steps on submitting a digital file and/or couriering physical copies of your zines to us.

Do note that we are not in a position to compensate you for the zines you choose to send to the library. We are currently offering only compensatory shipping charges as per Speed Post’s tariff structures. After you post your zine(s) to the postal address shared with you, please fill out the secondary form to share your package’s tracking information and initiate the compensatory shipping charges process. If international shipping poses a challenge for you, please email [email protected] with the subject line ‘International Library Submission’ to explore alternate ways in which we can make sure your zine(s) find their way to our library.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

All contributors must ensure that their zines are original works and that they hold the necessary copyrights or permissions for any third-party content, if applicable. They must attest to the same in a self-declaration of authorship present on the submission form.
Contributors will retain ownership of their zines. Zinedabaad Collective and Serendipity Arts Festival will not acquire these rights.
The submitted zines will be on display on any and/or all days of the Serendipity Arts Festival, subject to Zinedabaad’s curatorial decisions.
Zinedabaad is curating the library in alignment with the vision, mission and values of the Serendipity Arts Festival, and all the laws of India. Any zine that does not align with these curation guidelines may be removed from display at any point during the festival. Under no circumstances will the submitted zine(s) be altered.
Contributors’ zines will not be returned to them after the Festival. They will continue to be in the possession of Zinedabaad Collective and may be made accessible to the public in any future zine workshops or libraries they curate. All due credit will be given now and in the future to the creators of the zine.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or clarifications related to your zine submissions.

Upcoming Zine-making Workshops

ABOUT

Zinedabaad will facilitate zine-making workshops that explore the theme of food and curate these culinary DIY publications at Potluck: The Cui-Zine Library, housed at The Grove during the festival this year. Participants who attend these free-of-cost workshops will get the chance to display their zines at this library.

Since zines are created by non-professionals, anyone can attend these workshops and/or submit their food zine for the library. Read to know more about upcoming online and in-person workshops.

Meet Me in the Kitchen?

ABOUT

Workshop date: 19 November 2023
Workshop time: 4-6 pm

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

What is the kitchen for you? Is it a room in the corner of your house where you bicker with your flatmate over dirty utensils? Or is it homely, a space of comforting aromas and memories? Is it where violence lingers, or belongingness builds? What was the kitchen for you growing up, and what is it today?

If you’ve played out fantasies or want to locate your histories in the kitchen – this is the workshop for you. Each participant will create a single page that will be bound together in a collaborative, anthology zine. This workshop is open to everyone, no prior culinary or artistic experience required!

BRING WITH YOU

– 2 A4 sheets of paper (or any loose paper will do if you don’t have A4 sheets on hand)
– Any and all art supplies, but at least a pen/pencil
– Scissors

ABOUT THE FACILITATORS

Roshni Kapoor and Zinedabaad Collective

Roshni is neurospicy and likes elaichi in their chai. In their professional and political journey as a feminist researcher, professional chef and farmer, Roshni has arrived at six inseparable factors found in the life of any recipe—salt, fat, acid, heat, queerness and kink. Currently their practice is evolving into a station of stories and immersive performances around ‘finding homes in queer kitchens’ where one relooks at kitchens as sites of healing, belonging and pleasure.

Food, Fungi and You

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

Mushrooms are only the tip of the fungi iceberg. Peek below the surface and you shall find miles and miles of mycelium network, covering the surface of the Earth. What can fungi then teach us about looking beneath the surface of the idea of food, to reveal a complex and expansive web of relationships–across species and ecosystems? Through this workshop, participants will examine food as a site for multispecies relationships, using fungi as the anchor.

Workshop date: 07 October 2023
Workshop time: 4-6 pm

BRING WITH YOU

– 2 A4 sheets of paper (or any loose paper will do if you don’t have A4 sheets on hand)
– Any and all art supplies, but at least a pen/pencil
– Scissors

ABOUT THE FACILITATORS

Malavika (Terra Myco) and Zinedabaad Collective

Malavika (Terra Myco) is a public educator bringing fungi to the people, and the people to fungi. Their work is focussed on investigating the interplay of community and ecology through the lens of fungi. They host urban fungi forays, that examine the city as a dynamic social-ecological system, and art workshops that intertwine mycology and queer theory with the aim of cultivating alternative paradigms of self and other. Through their work, they foster a community of mycophiles across India, creating space for scientific learning and novel interpretations of our shared ecology.

A Recipe for Nourishment

Workshop date: 29 October 2023
Workshop time: 4-6 pm

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

What does feeling nourished look like for you and the communities you belong to? In this mini-zine workshop, we will explore what nourishment is through metaphors of food. If you had to create a recipe of your own – and it need not be a food item – what would you make?

This workshop is open to all. We especially encourage disabled, neurodivergent, queer, trans people and those coming from other marginalised experiences to join us. Please mention your accessibility requests in the registration form.

BRING WITH YOU

Bring with you:

– 2 A4 sheets of paper (or any loose paper will do if you don’t have A4 sheets on hand)

– Any and all art supplies, but at least a pen/pencil

– Scissors

ABOUT THE FACILITATORS

Shivangi Agarwal and Zinedabaad Collective

Shivangi is a queer and disabled activist based in Delhi, India. They are currently working in the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team at Thoughtworks and a member+consultant at the Youth Coalition for Sexual & Reproductive Rights.

They also have over 6 years of experience working as a consultant, researcher, writer, advisor and facilitator with an emphasis on advocacy for disability, sexuality, gender, policy, arts, mental health, SRHR, education and accessibility, with local and global organisations.

They have facilitated workshops on Disability Best Practice and Etiquettes, Accessibility, LGBTQ+ Sensitisation, Unconscious Bias at Workplace with several organisations.

In their free time they like creating zines, painting on big canvases, walls, or unique surfaces like their prosthetic shoes and wheelchairs! They like to use various forms of art for justice, collective organising, and live documentation of political narratives and radical thoughts. Find them on Instagram and Twitter @DisabledSpice.

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