14 FASHION Feb 6 , 2004 www.varsity.co.uk
varsityarts 06.02.04 Andrew Gillespie Do It Yourself Ellen E. Jones In a post-Llewllyn-Bowen age, the term ‘D.I.Y.’ seems to be associated exclusively with half-arsed M.D.F. sideboards and toilet roll desk-tidyers. It needn’t be so. In correct usage the phrase ‘do it yourself ’ should denote unrestrained expression, innovation and piles and piles <strong>of</strong> gung-ho, glorious, guerrilla cool. If you want something done properly you have to do it yourself, which is why every key cultural movement since Punk has contained an element <strong>of</strong> the D.I.Y. ethos. Like many examples <strong>of</strong> home-grown creativity, Punk was born in reaction to the limitations <strong>of</strong> what came before. ‘The Story <strong>of</strong> Punk’ should properly be subtitled ‘How The Kids Overcame The Insufferably Smug Hippies and Their Tyrannous Monopoly on Counterculture.’ Everytime Ade Edmondson clonks hippy Nigel Planer over the head with a saucepan in The Young Ones, it is a symbolic victory for us all. Fanzines are D.I.Y too - stapled together, full <strong>of</strong> rude words, mis-spellings and outrageous libel - <strong>Varsity</strong> Arts would sell its Nan for such freedoms. Independent film <strong>of</strong> the cheapest, scraggiest kind - think Kevin Smith’s Clerks or The Blair Witch Project - they’re D.I.Y. Everytime a low-budget independent film does something new and original, a little bit more <strong>of</strong> the big studio monolith crumbles away. Its not true anymore that creative visions can only be realised at great expense. Sometimes we do it ourselves not because the march <strong>of</strong> cultural history demands a change, but simply because we can. We can because <strong>of</strong> cheap(ish) digital cameras and desktop publishing programmes, 5p photocopying in every cornershop and hours and hours <strong>of</strong> dead cable TV air time gagging to be filled by Geordie teenagers ‘rapping’ about the ozone layer. Oh, and the glorious, golden internet. Some D.I.Y. enthusiasts are motivated solely by the Zen-like contentment <strong>of</strong> creation, without view to publication or exhibition. Others are obsessive in their desire to enforce their under-represented opinions and questionable talents on the world at large. I suppose it’s possible that the average printmedia consumer had a gaping hole in their lives until zines like IQ a “sex zine for girls who like girls who wear glasses” and Murder Can Be Fun (which chronicled every death in Disneyland since 1955) came along and filled it. But I doubt it. The D.I.Y enthusiast is utterly liberated <strong>from</strong> such tiresome concerns as quality or market demand. I’m not suggesting that we all have un-tapped reserves <strong>of</strong> genius - most bedroom art is completely deviod <strong>of</strong> artistic merit and far more people seek recognition than actually deserve it -but that’s exactly the point. You don’t need anyone’s permission to make a film or write a book or form a band. To reclaim a phrase <strong>of</strong> the hopelessly corporate for my own purposes, you just do it. The <strong>Varsity</strong>Arts Guide to DIY 1.White Town, Your Woman - The first No.1 to be made in someone’s bedroom and also pretty darn funky. 2.Punk - In the words <strong>of</strong> scene instigator Philip Sallon, “We just got this idea to make outfits out <strong>of</strong> binliners...” 3.The Guerilla Film-makers Handbook by Chris Jones and Genevieve Jolliffe - If Lord <strong>of</strong> The Rings, director Peter Jackson had read this book, the world would be a better place. 4.Graffiti – “where every evening is an opening and every passer-by is a viewer” - see Ronojoy Dam’s pg 16 article 5.Amateur Dramatics - <strong>from</strong> the french ‘amateur’, meaning ‘lover.’ In other words, if pr<strong>of</strong>essionals work for money, amateurs work for love. 6. Sniffing Glue, The Wrong’Un, Hardcore Is More Than Music, Oz - and other fanzines that changed the world, or at least thought they did 7.Changing Rooms - If only all builders were as resourceful as Handy Andy. Music Hammer Time Visual Arts Spray Up The City Film The Dogs Bollocks Page 18 Page 16 Page 17
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