Waxing nostalgic about pre-pandemic Saturdays for a quaranzine
When my zine-making and zine-loving friends and I took on the challenge of making a nostalgia-themed zine last year, we didn't have to look far for ideas. We only had to realize that our Saturdays aren't the same anymore.
So, we called it that, and began putting together a selection of photos that reminded us of what our weekends used to be like. With it came our collective moniker, Saturdaze, and the beginnings of our shared experiences as four females navigating our personal and creative lives during a pandemic.
Saturdays Aren't The Same Anymore was what came out of what we called "accountability" meetings. These were Saturday check-ins via Zoom where we mostly talked about each other's creative pursuits amidst the pandemic. A collab zine was always in the cards. But it wasn't until one of us came across Spacebar Zine's call-out for nostalgia-themed zines that we set to work.
Nostalgia seemed to be the perfect theme to explore in a pandemic. A week before the lockdown in Manila began, three of us still saw each other in a zine fair. Next thing we knew, we were confined in our homes, warding off a pandemic poised to hover indefinitely. We were missing friends and family. We couldn't go to our usual haunts. Months later, our pre-pandemic days felt like they were eons past.
I think I can speak for the other girls when I say that choosing photos for the zine was an emotional task. On one hand, it was agonizing to go through our memories with the nagging feeling that the new normal would continue to limit our interactions and activities. On the other, it felt great to be creating stuff again and collaborating with like minds in what felt like forever.
What Saturdays gave us were the chance to reconnect and a renewed creative spark that we thought we lost. All of us badly needed both, being creative friends who were feeling lost and alienated due to the cycle of lockdowns. Making it to the roster of zines that Spacebar Zine published for the 2020 Bangkok Art Book Fair and sent to the 2021 Singapore Art Book Fair was the icing on the cake, so to speak.
These days, I look at Saturdays and I can't help but feel that it was the quaranzine that all four of us needed to make. We were fated to gather and put it together. I think each of us toyed with the idea of making a quaranzine, but it proved to be overwhelming to make on our own. So, even if our Saturdays haven't been the same, I think they've led to some of the best we've had in these crazy times.
Like what you’re reading so far? Please make sure to subscribe to The Zinery if you haven’t yet, and share this newsletter to anyone interested in zines and zine culture!