Academic Zine
As part of my 2025 art exhibition I self-published an 80 page academic zine with the same title – ‘Done X Illusion’ – to compile the exhibition’s full suite of works into an academic output and enhance the visibility of the underlying scholarship by way of a tangible dissemination. Introspection turned outwards. I printed a limited number of the exhibition.
On the imprint page I wrote, “this book is for the curious”. On the blank Intro page I wrote, “everything shared here has been used in a teaching and learning context in higher education”. And o n the second last I wrote, “this is the wrong zine” …
This Is The Wrong Zine
This was never the zine I set out to produce. The pieces shared here are the neatly packaged up end results. Final offerings. Or as far as I have been able to bring them. They are not the process. The captivating wrong turns, loose and often dead ends you unearth when searching for the core of things. The real art, design, thinking and writing. The real teaching and learning. That’s what I originally set out to share.
Some of it was on the process wall of the exhibition. It is the kind of stuff that lies hidden in the chaotic sketchbooks, workbooks, diaries, notepads and scrap pieces of paper piling up in the homes of artists, thinkers and writers worldwide. I also often find it in the personal notes of students as they progress through their studies. I ask why they chose not to share it. Work with it and submit it. But I already know the answer.
I once read a short interview with Australian author Richard Flanagan titled, ‘things I know’ in the now defunct Smith Journal (Volume 28. p031-032) where he said, “…. the greatest failures are finished books, but somewhere between the dream you start out writing, and the failure you end up publishing, is something worth reading. And once you understand this, you are free”.
Flanagan would tell students to seek the abyss. I tell them higher education – and learning in general – is his “between”. That they are free to fail. And if there was ever a place to take risk and fail and still be ok this should be it. None have ever believed me. But then we often teach best what we need to hear and learn the most. Maybe they sense I don’t truly believe it either.
So the next zine I pull together will be the inherent mess and madness in attempting to connect seemingly disparate pieces of information whilst avoiding all direct routes. A completely honest and unhinged deep dive. Something actually worth reading.
For
Done X Illusion ⎮ Solo Art Show ⎮ Lennox Arts Collective ⎮ Lennox Head
First Published
2025 ⎮ jason harding ⎮ Cabarita Beach ⎮ www.jasonharding.com
ISBN
ISBN 978-1-77638833-0-7
Printer
Graphic Expressions Print, Byron Bay Australia