X is for XEROX Day 24 of our alphabet for The Horror Show! We grew up a generation too late for punk, but its incendiary impact was still burning. The hippies may have rejected the establishment, but it was still a culture dominated by white, middle-class (mostly) men, whose privilege allowed them to turn on, tune in and drop out. But stripped down to its core, the abiding lesson of punk was that ANYONE could Do-It-Yourself. The invention of the printing press may have revolutionised access to the means of production, but the Xerox machine put them in the hands of spotty teenagers and kids on the dole. Even a dead-end job could be liberating if you could get away with using the photocopier. So by the time we became teenagers in the eighties there was a firmly established ‘alternative culture’. Fanzines, independent record labels, small presses. In The Horror Show! you’ll find a few examples of fanzines including the anarcho-punk ‘Toxic Grafity’ by Mike Diboll and ‘Stabmental’ focussing on post-punk and industrial music, produced by a schoolboy called Geoffrey Rushton, who would become better known as John Balance of Coil. Of course artists were quick to explore access to these rough and ready machines too. @pennyslinger created an incredible series of works using the Xerox machine she had access to as a teacher at Portsmouth College of Art. We’re delighted to have some of these in The Horror Show! In the new millennium, artist @lauragraceford put photocopiers to work creating her ‘Savage Messiah’ fanzines. They’ve been described as “the voice of a London under siege from neoliberal modernisation”. After burning through coins at a phenomenal rate using the photocopiers at @goldsmithsuol we eventually acquired our own machine. A second-hand beast of a machine that’d previously seen service in a corner shop. It was magic, enabling us to launch an object-based art fanzine called ‘Words & Pictures’. We published ten issues and then stopped. You have to know when to quit. The Horror Show! @SomersetHouse opens in 3 days Tickets on sale. Link in bio Alphabet typography by @BarnbrookStudio #TheHorrorShow #Xerox #ToxicGrafity #Stabmental #Words&Pictures