Much has been said about the Gen Z demographic — that they are caught in a spiral of digital overconsumption and overstimulation. However, in the social scenes of Chennai, a countercurrent is emerging. Young people are gathering at zine-making clubs, carving linocut prints, loading film into old cameras, and listening to vinyl records, making a slow but deliberate return to the tactile spaces in the city.
Zine-making
At Kannadi Cupboard in Tambaram, siblings Prasanna Venkatesh and Keerthana Alageshan are holding space for all things analogue. The yellow-painted studio resists digital as much as possible; it smells only of paper, glue, and deliberateness. Every fortnight, they gather with a small community to make photobooks, zines, and collages, and sometimes even host a mango potluck, if it’s the season. There’s also an open call for anyone to leave behind something personal inside glass cases at Kannadi Cupboard, like museum artifacts.
“There is already so much in digital format,” says 23-year-old Prasanna. “We wanted to create something that is tactile and can’t be replicated online. Holding a print or seeing it with the naked eye, that’s a kind of intimacy digital doesn’t give us. Besides, with AI, everything and everyone is trying to sound the same,” he adds.
Working with analogue media isn’t easy either, since you don’t always end up where you planned. “Drawing a line with a wooden plank won’t be straight, and our generation seems to be okay with that imperfection. That’s precisely what analogue is about,” he adds.
A zine-making workshop in Tambaram by Prasanna Venkatesh and Keerthana Alageshan
Linocut printing
If zine-making is having its renaissance, linocut printmaking is catching up. It’s slow, intentional, a three-hour ritual of carving, rolling, inking, and pressing. Aparna, an artist who conducts linocut printing workshops alongside Padma Shree, says that analogue is, in a way, a liberation from the readymade matrices they’ve long been used to at work.
“I don’t see it as a resistance to digital culture personally, but rather as a response to the need for transcendence from the boredom of capital-centred production of art and craft. It is a joy to do manual art. The slowness of it can be a form of resistance against the pressures of being part of the modern workforce,” adds Aparna.
For fellow artist Padma Shree, who grew up in Sivakasi, terms like litho, press, and fine arts were already familiar. “The labour that the medium requires is both rewarding and challenging. The repetition in carving each stroke, rolling the ink, pressing somehow appeals to me. My mind is focused, and at the same time, in flow. Involving the body is also something I enjoy about printing, and about other things I do, like gardening and macramé,” she adds.
A linocut printing workshop by artists Padma Shree and Aparna
Film photography
Aditya, a 26-year-old gallery archivist and film photographer, speaks about how analogue photography has become sought after by the young generation. “With digital, you click and you have it. With film, it’s on the negatives which you enlarge, scan, check if the image has fallen into place, and then comes printing. Old techniques like gelatin silver prints and cyanotypes are also making a comeback. It’s expensive, but people are increasingly drawn to it, taking film cameras on vacations and so on,” says Aditya.
Gallery archivist and film photographer Aditya at one of his workshops
Many things today unfold in fast, fleeting moments. Yet Gen Zers are indulging in the art of doing things by hand, not entirely for vintage appeal or nostalgia, but for the slowness of it, seeking texture and character in an otherwise monotonous world.
Published – October 14, 2025 05:46 pm IST
