Copy and distribute! Zines and independent press in Poland during the transition period

September 4th – October 15th 2026 | exhibition
September 3th – opening
Museum of Caricature, Kozia 11, Warsaw

The 1980s and 1990s marked the heyday of niche, independent press. Political opposition bulletins were produced on duplicating machines, while in community centres, science fiction enthusiasts printed illegal translations of the genre’s classics, along with their own first literary attempts. The photocopier – a device designed to streamline office work in capitalist corporations – became a tool of resistance, a seedbed for critical thought and avant-garde art. Zines, regardless of their creators’ views, became part of the systemic transformation. They provided platforms for discussions about the changing world, the fears and hopes aroused by the new political system. In the Third Republic of Poland, many authors of zines and independent press entered the mainstream – the realms of politics, academia, and the arts.

Independent publications have always accompanied social and political transitions. They would emerge wherever the official flow of information proved insufficient, was subject to control, or failed to provide space for the development of new ideas. Even before the term ‘zine’ was coined, there was already a practice of independent creation and distribution of printed materials that served as tools of communication, manifestos, commentaries, and testimonies of their time.

Self-publishing and independent distribution can both support emancipation and the critique of authority, as well as serve to spread exclusionary or authoritarian ideas. In this sense, zines constitute a valuable source of information for researchers of the history of independent culture and social conflicts. They document not only the views of their creators, but also the mechanisms through which ideas assume a material form and enter into their own, non-institutional circulation.

An exhibition organised in collaboration with the Gabriel Narutowicz Institute of Thought in Warsaw.