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OPEN CALL - ZINE ISSUE #2:

“ You Fight the War with Guns,
We Fight the Peace with Stories”


Send your contribution by the 25th of November.
Release event: 18.12.25 at Dodo ry.

The second issue of A4CT is on its way. This time, the issue will be shared both online and as a physical zine, distributed throughout the city of Helsinki and available for PDF download, so it can be shared anywhere.

We want to embrace the activist DIY nature of zines to offer a platform for micro-stories: fragments that are often silenced, censored, or afraid to emerge. Too often narratives needs to be modified, toned down, or reshaped in order to fit accepted formats. With this zine, we want to give home to unpolished and unfiltered stories - true to the people who carry them.

This zine refuses to conform to the tyranny of what dominant media calls “moral correctness”, used as an excuse to silence dissent and dictate which voices and narratives are allowed to be heard or seen. By gathering diverse stories from different parts of the world in multiple formats, we aim to challenge the echo chambers and algorithm-driven narratives of the digital world that keep us numb, passive, and divided.

We invite you to dare to be honest with yourself and your story, and to give them form through words, visuals, or any other form of expression suitable for a zine. There is no need to create a new work for this and the topic is open as soon as it fits with the concept and idea. Contributions can be submitted under your real name, a pen name, or completely anonymously. Our goal is to create an *uncensored* zine, easily printed, distributed, and shared.

Sounds good but... do you have any budget for this? 
Find more info on that here.


Formats:

a) Text:

(ie: manifestos, recipes, short essays, poetry, fiction, shopping list, to-do list, or any other form that fits into a zine). Max. to 700 words (in English if possible) so that it fits  in 2 pages (A5) per submission. 


b) Visual works:

(ie: sketches, drawings, mini-comics, screenshots, photographs, memes, collages, illustrations, corecore, or any other form that fits into a zine). B&W or color. Visual works should fit 2 pages A5 or 2-page spread (side-by-side A5 pages) if possible.


c) Hybrid/experimental formats welcome.

- See some examples of zines here and in ISSUU.
- Find more info about zine culture here.


* We’re aiming to keep things in a micro-story format, ideally no more than 2 x (A5) pages. That said, we don’t want the limited space to oversimplify your story - no, no, no!! So if you need more room, we can adapt as long as your submission still fits whitin the idea of a micro-story.

 How to submit:

- Send your contribution to artivism4ct (at) proton.me by the 25th of November.

- Length: Max 2 pages (A5) per submission if possible.

- There is no need to create a new work for this zine as soon as it fits with the concept and idea.

- Please check our guidelines before sending in your contribution.
* A4CT runs entirely on a volunteer basis. There is no grant or funding behind this initiative, and therefore we are currently unable to provide financial compensation for submissions. We are looking for independent entities to partner with for this publication and bring it to life through a community-driven approach, with the goal of expanding the reach of the zine while keeping it independent and uncensored.