OVO

Here in the future we make blogs. But between 1987 and 1992 I published a zine the old fashioned way: by stealing office supplies and photocopies from a friend’s place of employment. The result was called OVO. OVO was the first to publish several essays by Hakim Bey that later appeared in his book T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone. OVO published work by Mike Diana long before his work drew the attention of State and Federal employees. Photographs of body piercing appeared in OVO two years before the Modern Primitives issue of Re/Search. The phrase ‘phone tag’ appears in print for the first time in the first issue of OVO. ‘Liberating Wednesday’ by PM, author of bolo’bolo, appears here for the first (and only) time; this is nearly a decade before and fifty-two times more radical a suggestion than today’s Buy Nothing Day. Crop circles and the Men in Black are referenced at a time when they were still obscure. The first appearance of Ride Theory in print occurs in Ignatz Topolino’s contribution to OVO. And OVO was aware enough of the outer edges of scientific ethics to mention gene patents in the same year they first were granted.

I have spent the past two years scanning, editing and annotating those zines, and now they are ready for you to download for free in PDF and Open Office format. The entire collection, over five hundred pages, is offered into the public domain. So go get your copies of OVO today!