Common Margins
Commons-oriented research through co-creation, ethnography & DIY publishing
Common Margins is the action research initiative behind the pliegOS open editing project. We work on co-creation processes and open “do-it-yourself” publishing to explore how communities generate, share and preserve knowledge and cultural artifacts, grounded in and oriented towards the Commons. From zines and other ephemeral formats to experimental collective archives, we treat paper and low-tech materials not as relics or luddite nostalgia but as convivial, appropriate technologies that deserve connections with diverse methodological advances. Among others, for supporting collaborative ethnography, distributed learning and alternative paths of communication in an era of social acceleration through digital automation.
3 interconnected axes
Common Margins is structured around three interconnected axes (co-creation, open infrastructure and collection & analysis) connecting situated practices with shared critical inquiry.
Co-creation processes
Workshops, retreats and citizen-ethnographic encounters where zine-making and participatory design serve both as processes of inquiry and as tools for collective expression.
Open infrastructure
Simple, accessible tools and materials to design, share and remix research outcomes and methods under open knowledge licenses – treating publishing technologies and co-creation practices as a commons.
Collection & analysis
Digitising, archiving and studying zines (co-created and historical) as well as co-creation toolkits to understand themes, aesthetics and networks of independent thinking.
Conceptual pillars
Algorithmic caution & analog creation
Against the current digital push toward automation and speed, we embrace cautious, critical engagements with AI while resisting extractive and authoritarian tendencies in technology. Typewriters, collage, hand-made layouts and PDF obfuscation reclaim slowness, error and intimacy – reasserting human creativity, transdisciplinary perspectives and less-extractive modes of knowledge.
Open knowledge & relational infrastructures
Openness is not only a matter of licenses or data, but also built through relationships of care, accountability and collective authorship. We share tools, methods and publications under open licenses and conditions, linking analog/digital practices, community archiving and experimental zine-journal formats.
Bibliodiversity & (s)low technologies
We treat zines and co-creation toolkits as vital forms of knowledge. Inspired by the concept of bibliodiversity, we value plural voices, formats and aesthetics. Paper is “slow technology”: modest, but resilient and convivial. Ephemeral print cultures offer sustainable ways to share memory, creativity and collective meaning.
Main research methods
- Co-creation around the field: workshops and participatory design encounters where zine-making and prototyping are both method and collective expression.
- Conversations & networks: p2p sharing, interviews & focus groups with social actors and authors, collectors, editors, students, users, activists.
- Analyzing content & discourse: exploring themes, aesthetics, storytelling and contexts across co-created outcomes.
- Collective archiving & publishing: co-created repositories and a (forthcoming) peer-reviewed, print-only journal in postal-zine format.
Why it matters
Common Margins aim is to develop co-creation tools and paper-oriented open knowledge, contributing to collaborative ethnography through rapid publishing. By making and studying zines and other community co-creations in situated contexts, we explore how caring and meaning can emerge in shared processes. The project axes and methods connect qualitative research with everyday creativity and local perspectives, lately in response to the need to reclaim focused attention, analog reading and AI-free imagination.