In the early 90s, we gathered in the local youth club rather than rail depots, our collective slowly expanding beyond its original core members. Most afternoons, we’d occupy the club for the detailed work of assembling our zines. Our triangular publications, stained with coffee and marked with hand-drawn circuit diagrams, proudly displayed the bold “TAG PHREAKS” logo that became our calling card. The colorful holographic triangular stickers beneath our paper zines became our secondary medium—their reflective surfaces encoded with symbols that referenced our analog hacking techniques. The ink stamp visible on the wooden table alongside our triangular zines wasn’t merely for postage but marked each issue with a unique identifier linking it to our distribution network. Studio work sessions taught us to blend artistic expression with technical knowledge, creating publications that documented the intersection of graffiti culture and phone phreaking. By ‘92, our zine had evolved beyond simple documentation, incorporating intricate circuit diagrams disguised as artistic patterns—creating a visual language that authorities couldn’t decode. During our weekly meet-ups, we would spread our triangular zines across wooden tables, use black ink stamps to mark them, and with careful attention to who received which issue, distribute another node in our growing underground information network.
DIFFUSED STATES is a part of DATA FLUENCIES: Rivulets April 18 – June 15, 2025 Opening April 18, 6–9pm Fridays, 4pm–9pm; Saturdays and Sundays, 12pm–6pm
Boston Cyberarts, 141 Green Street, Boston, MA, USA
#DATAFLUENCIES #DIFFUSEDSTATES #SpeculativePasts #ThisIsNotHistory #FrihedLighedOgHipHop #TagPhreaks
