no pain no gain

a reflection on making by Judit Csobod

No pain no gain is a zine project that grew out of my frustration about the archaic, rigid processes and rules of academic publication. Initially, I cooked up the idea for it when I was asked to contribute a piece to an edited collection of academic writings on experiential ethnographies in popular music. First accepted, then at the last minute dropped by the publisher, the idea of contributing a zine seemed like the right approach to the challenge. Disappointed, I declined the offer to include the already-written piece as a traditional academic chapter (offended by the idea even - this was written as a zine, not as an academic text) I was delighted to get the chance to realize my dream as one of the first outputs of Improvising Across Boundaries.

The creative process was a rollercoaster. Experienced in digital fanzine making, and expecting to learn about copy-machine techniques I underestimated the time and effort this operation ended up taking. There were several delays even before I could start working, including a delay in finding a mentor whom I worked with, a missed appointment by my mentor, badly chosen travel dates from my side, etc. no pain no gain is a product of an extremely intense week of day and night work, several mishaps, painful compromises, major self-reflection and harsh realizations, a close-to-panic situation, a cathartic comeback and joy following a giant change of direction.

Working on the zine made me realize that practice-based work is risky business and that traditional academic work is easy, predictable and comfortable compared to it. The realities of my process could have not been closer to the subject and the content of no pain no gain. Making this piece was conflict, confrontation, risk, improvisation, getting out of comfort zones, and trying real hard to consensualize rather than compromise decisions with myself and my mentor. My weaknesses have surfaced half the time with unexpected intensity. I am quick and confident when it comes to decisions, but I am dreadful at precision, details, patience and taking time. I just want things done and over to the next thing. Well, I have learned that that is not how creative work works. At least not this kind. An invaluable lesson, now that I am committed to a four-year, entirely practice-based research project. To be fair to myself (and the rest of the graduate students in my shoes) it is not easy to be patient and take your time when you have a full-time PhD project, a larger project, two hours of tutoring, two hours of social media work and 15 hours of bike-workshop work on the side to be able to pay your horrendous rent in Dublin in 2024.

God save my soul…

no pain no gain is everything I have dreamt it to be. Although I ended up being paired with a mentor who only had access to a brand-new copy machine, my idea of experimenting with copy settings proved to be impossible. We kept fighting till basically the last week to mix photocopy with scanned pages, but the layout we chose combined with Japanese binding proved to be too much of an engineer’s work for my humanities-trained brain. The sketched-together torn-apart written piece - initially made as a raw material for the photocopy version - then became the piece itself. The original. Literally, in every sense. Every page reflects the fragmented, layered, crossed-out, rewritten, re-glued, eaten, digested, spit-out thoughts and ideas the exact way they went through me. My process manifested in a physical object. Holding it in my hands makes me think about how clean, digitally produced, edited and then printed work hides all of the pain that actually went into it. The time, the energy, the frustration. The sweat, the tears, the mistakes, the victories. The relief….

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 It will irritate you starting from the first moment you're laying your eyes on it. It has a weird beauty when you look at it. It appeals somehow but it looks threatening as well. You see the sandpaper, the tin foil, you see the clumsy white tipp-ex rapid text corrector letters reminiscent of football hooligan graffiti. You know it is going to be uncomfortable, maybe even exasperating. But you can't resist. If you go, grab it, and hold it in your hands long enough, you might experience that the initial expectation, the irritating sensation in your fingers starts changing. Now it feels stimulating, there’s an excitement moving through you through the tactile. Your curiosity has won. You have entered into the conflict. When you open up the zine the inside of the sandpaper might give you some kind of relief. Could it be that sandpaper backsides have their own beautiful world of variance, hiding behind what most people would only touch with work gloves? You might’ve just cracked the code. You are ready for the ride. I am taking you through fragments of thought. Clumsy self-explanation followed by stories (case studies), thoughts of mine, and thoughts of others all fragments upon fragments upon fragments. Still, somehow they have a flow. They talk to each other as they stream through topics, interrupted by stories. I need you to think for yourself. I am not selling anything here. But I want to make you reflect. You get a break before the story starts and after the story ends. Use it wisely. What does that colour make you feel like? What does it mean? Why that color? Does it remind you of those intense noise breaks in the Johnathan Glazer films, perhaps? Or those long instrumentally accompanied Intros and Outrosin classic Hollywood movies operate with? How would it feel to just go inside that page and submerge in #4005329103872? Would it smell like glue? Are you ready to go on? Are you ready to read more? Lucky you, I still used academic reference system. Don't miss Sarah Schulman’s book! Oh and if you wanna read my manifesto piece that I wrote in 2019, I can’t quite promise it will be out next year, but the publishers have been working hard on it - they say - since 2022… Are you changed? Wanna talk to us? I won’t make it easy, but I won’t make it impossible either. I won’t spoon-feed you anything. You are made broken that way already. We all are. Let’s fix ourselves. Let’s all get into trouble.

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This project has straight-out made me realise what I have signed up for when I decided to commit to an exclusively practice-based 4-year research project. It will be a wild ride, especially if I will have to work the number of hours I have to now on the side (if you know about any well-paying part-time gigs, dear reader, hit me up. I come with references ;)). The creative process is the embodiment of conflict for me, while most traditional academic writing in its feathery, comfortable and predictable nature has proven to fail to make a difference in contemporary society, seemingly losing touch with reality and the people in it, their needs and lives and thoughts. I am not a traditional academic, my ways, experiences and knowledge do not fit on the clean-cut, polished pages of mass-produced white pages. I have something different to contribute and I feel that creative outputs are more potent to bear what I have to say and can speak more likely to a wider audience than academic publications.

I gave up applying for film school after I was rejected twice, back when I was in my late teens/early twenties. They said I am very very likely to get accepted on the third try as I have gotten all the way to the final round of entry tests the second time around. But when finally I was supposed to apply for the third time, I had decided that the world has enough artists and that I am bright enough to do anything I set my mind to, and there are possibly better uses to my skills and abilities. I never meant to be an academic. I just had things to say, ways to think and a burning desire to make a difference that then people who cared about me suggested that I try for a PhD. After one failed attempt at a more traditional research project in Canada, here I am, back with my teenage aspirations. I will be making a film, I have just made a zine (just as I did in my teenage years on the punk scene). Three more to follow. A multi-media exhibition. A multi-media performance. It will be a wild ride indeed.

I am grateful for every minute of the struggle.

#girlwithoutaruler

A virtual version of no pain no gain zine is available to read online.

The original no pain no gain zine is available to loan. Please contact Judit through the project email to request – info@improvacrossboundaries.ie