Queer Zineographies

Materializing Tactics for Resisting AI & Data Systems

Activities: Participatory Design, Zineography, DIY Publishing

As AI and data systems often falter when encountering queer identities and knowledge, reinforcing existing oppressions, queer people have resisted such systems and their nor- malizing tendencies. This project explores tactics of queering AI through collaborative zine-making (i.e. zineography) that challenges generative AI and data systems. We share how we workshopped and materialized queering tactics in zine spreads; analyzed these spreads according to materials, content, and tone; and visualized our analysis as thematic collages. We contribute: (1) tangible characteristics of queering AI and data systems (i.e. materials, tones, and aesthetics); and (2) design opportunities for using zineographies as a radical method for building and collectively sharing knowledge about a marginalized community, including recommendations for enacting queer zineographies. By materializing queering tactics through zine-making, we invite embodied, action-oriented critiques that question dominant techno-solutionist movements and trace queer possibilities outside of their normalizing narratives.

Publications

In this project, we draw on zineography, which is a Research through Design method of collaborative zine making within unequal contexts. Our work extends zineography into queer zineographies, or collective zine-making activities used to materialize tactics of queering AI and data systems. Materializing these tactics of queering then point to tangible strategies for resisting normalizing tendencies in generative AI and data systems.

Setting the stage

workshop motivations

There is a growing collective of Queer HCI scholars concerned with how AI and data systems enact biases against people with marginalized identities. Queering in HCI is a form of creative rebellion that subverts or destabilizes the status quo, particularly in disrupting or breaking down binary or essentializing categories. As a collective, we researchers–10 organizers and 10 attendees, came together in a workshop at the Designing Interactive Systems Conference in 2024 to envision a set of tactics for queering HCI, with particular focus on generative AI and data systems. We then created a participatory collaged zine to materialize the insights from our workshop. 

Here are some examples of queering shared at the beginning of our workshop, that were then worked into various zine spreads: RuPublicans instagram account (shared by Jordan Taylor), Ada Ada Ada's work (shared by Louie Søs Meyer), We Want YOU (to stop using AI) zine (shared by Ekat Osipova & Kay Kender), and NonbAInary: A Nonbinary Critique to Visual AI Models (shared by Fe Simeoni).

Our work contributes (1) opportunities for using queer zineographies to materialize tangible characteristics (such as materials, tones, and aesthetics) of queering to challenge AI and data systems, and (2) opportunities for using queer zineographies as a research method in HCI, towards building and sharing collective knowledge about technological resistance from marginalized perspectives.

Zines originate from marginalized communities and social movements, subverting centralized modes of publishing to share radical ideas. For LGBTQIA+ people in particular, zines are powerful tools of expression, resource sharing, and critique, as shown in these historical zines from the Queer Zine Archive Project. Zines featured from left to right: (1) Nothing About Us Without Us. A zine about abelism and disability organizing and activism within and outside of queer communities. (2) Queers Read This.  Originally published in 1990 for the NYC Pride march, and republished in 2009, this is a call to arms. (3) Borderlands: Tales from Disputed Territories between Races and Cultures by Nia King. Interviews and stories from QTPOC folks about their experiences. (4) Queer Action Figures. These are collections of queer graphics, flyers, posters from the mid-1990s. They’re fun and angry and exemplify resistance. (5) Activism Through Zines. This zine features a variety of activists who use zines in their work.

In our Workshop at DIS 2024, we collectively discussed and mapped the intersections between participant-shared queering examples. From these activities, we outlined a preliminary glossary of queering tactics, and every participant created a zine spread related to one or more tactics. 

With inspiration from zineographies as a community-based design practice and collage-based inquiry, we invited everyone to craft a two-page spread either focusing on one or several queering tactics from our glossary.

We used collage as a means of analyzing visual patterns of the zine spreads, identifying the material, aesthetic, and tonal characteristics of queering shared. Here's one example from our pictorial of a thematic collage that bridges material and conceptual connections throughout each of the zine spreads, speaking to multiple, tangible ways of subverting AI and data systems. In this collage, we highlight "excess" and "taking up space" as ways to push back against systems that would otherwise leave queer people diminished, erased, or misrepresented.

Printing and distributing this pictorial as a zine helps to translate conceptual queering tactics into tangible, collective modes of resistance towards AI and data systems. We have printed out and distributed copies, not only in academic settings, but also within broader queer communities. We encourage further work that spreads the word about academic results using zines and visual forms like this. Print your own copy by following the instructions in our pictorial!

Conclusions

towards queer zineographies

Themes of Queering from our Zines

• Parody and humor can question and poke fun at systems while exposing and mirroring their absurdities
• Obfuscation and layering makes content that is coded for marginalized communities but unintelligible to AI and data systems
• Disorienting and Taking Up Space destabilizes the “normal” to generate alternatives, evokes unease and discomfort with the status quo, and reclaims physical and digital spaces in which marginalized identities have been erased

Queer Zineographies: Collective, Material Practices of Resisting AI and Data Systems

• Zine-making prompted individual reflection and expression of queering, while building collective strategies for resisting AI and data systems
• Zine-making ensures that knowledge is accessible and fosters a mutual instead of extractive relationship
• For research about marginalized identities and oppressive technological systems, zine creation can be a critical way to build tactics of resistance in collaborative and material ways
• Read our pictorial for more ways to put queer zineographies into practice, as well as a guide for printing and distributing your own copy!

Email   ariggs00@gmail.com

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