Every once in a while this occasionally interesting, invariably pretentious magazine cranks out something extraordinarily perceptive about independent culture. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the sense that this magazine “about issues of art and culture” did that with their special Do It Yourself issue. A scrambled egg of rants, collages and snippets, it is everywhere…but also nowhere. The reader doesn’t know what to read first, and so, consequently, ends up flipping backwards, looking for a starting point, a locus, a centre, a concrete moment. Not unlike the recently published Verso book by Stephen Duncombe that purports to address issues surrounding the politics of alternative culture, Fuse gives examples, offers perspectives, but doesn’t really harness the swirling energies of indie culture except to prove indisputably that they exist and that they matter. There are some fine moments in this issue. Scott Treleaven of Salivation Army offers up a muddled but fascinating article about the zine/occult experience. “Intimate forms of propaganda can secure a safe space for individuals to explore aspects of occulture without membership,” he writes in a moment that, thankfully, couples keen perception with lucid expression. Another fine offering is ‘Daddy, You Fucked Up Again’ by Emily Vey Duke. Its lurid school-girl drawings narrated by atonal passages of crit-speak and personal reflection are extremely effective. Earlier on I found myself reading a page about how to make stickers. C’mon kids. Time’s a wasting. In a space like indie culture – as vertiginous as it is potent – Fuse needs to join Scott and Emily on the attack: don’t sit back and describe. Do. (HN)
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