THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL B. CORBETT 42
Started on: 28-5-1995
RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
Reply on: 20-6-1995
MC : Ah, the origin myth. I first heard about mail art from a fellow art school student when he gave me a Cavellini sticker in 1983 or '84. He also invited me to his home to speak with Ryosuke Cohen in Japan during a group telephone call. I had no idea who these people were or what they were about.
Mind you, I had been sending decorated envelopes and collaged postcards to friends since the late '70's, but did not make the superficial connection. I came across Crane and Stofflet's Correspondence Art in the local library. I enjoyed reading it, but again the relevance eluded me.
I must admit I was not very impressed by my friend's activities. No doubt his poor explanations and my uneasy relationship with him did not help matters. Now I understand the difficulty in conveying certain experiences, especially to an audience not yet ready to grasp the emotional and conceptual framework underpinning those experiences. I was certainly not ready. Arrogant and ambitious, I felt destined to answer the higher calling of serious art. I was young and foolish.
Six years pass. My situation was now drastically reduced. I had made little or no art over the last three years due to a crisis of faith. It was a bleak, yet necessary, period. Nigredo. True, I had a busy mail-life, but it was mostly as a passive consumer. I happened upon an article about the old incarnation of Factsheet Five. I obtained a copy and found a few stray mail art listings therein. I contributed to a photograph exchange project and wrote to a person in Ohio with a very odd name, FaGaGaGa. Pleased by the response, I took an active, if unoriginal, step and ran an ad for a copycat photograph exchange in a local publication. This garnered two contributions. One contributor, Alice Borealis, would re-enter my netlife a few years later and become an important correspondent and collaborator. We had a Bogside congress here in the autumn of 1993.
During this same time period I recalled a graduate school printmaking professor's beautiful eraser carvings and began my own cruder efforts. I used them on my love letters and other mailings.
In 1991 I moved from the inner city to my present mountain fastness. The new found isolation would prove conducive to my budding mail art activities. Prefigured by eraser carving and use of rubberstamps in my sculptural work, my interest in stamp art grew. I discovered the magazines National Stampagraphic and Rubberstampmadness, and Thompson and Miller's The Rubber Stamp Album. Both magazines contain mailart listings. I began to spend hours making postcards to send to these strangers. My family worried I was wasting my time. They did not understand I felt an utter failure. Working again gave me joy and calmed my troubled spirit. Moreover, I was reaching out. This was a novel endeavor for me.
Besides making postcards, I contributed a number of eraser carving designs to Ryosuke Cohen's "Brain Cell" project. I am afraid I did not put him together with the phone call until much later. I also revived my long dormant interest in copyart with a contribution to Pascal Lenoir's assembling book, Mani-Art.
A few responses to my postcards trickled in, mostly from US addresses. I had a great deal of difficulty relating to their content.
In early 1992 I read two articles about the Decentralized Worldwide Networker Congresses. I was intrigued. This seemed very different from what I had experienced with mail art. I wrote to John Held and Crackerjack Kid seeking more information. Both responded and are beloved friends today, but it was John who sent me a copy of The Drawing Legion's Networker Congress Statements booklet. It, Mani-Art, and "Brain Cell" all arrived within the space of a few days. They were a revelation. The "AHHHHHH!" experience of connection, so frustrating in any attempt at description, was almost visceral. So, please forgive my poverty of details.
I knew I had found my new practice, one answering most of the questions that had caused my long drought. Some have expressed surprise these projects and the Congresses had such an impression and effect. It was not them per se, but rather the concept and network behind them that so moved me.
My artwork had long been concerned with visual and tactile models of unseen processes, giving form to the formless and vice versa. I knew I needed a framework for my future activities. I took "Brain Cell" and Networker Congress Statements as seminal inspirations and joined these with the formal, physical model of Mani-Art to provide the basis for my assembling project, Tensetendoned. It was begun in August, 1992, and the first issue appeared in December of the same year. It is now June of 1995 and the next issue is number twenty-six. Tensetendoned is my baseline.
I also borrowed the idea for a rubberstamp exchange from Michael Leigh of A.1. Wastepaper Co. Ltd. It is ongoing and very active.
I realize I have discussed as much of how as when I became involved in the network. I feel they go hand in hand since it is an evolving process. My main point is the many threads of years' length that came together to weave a new role. Some of those I have not yet touched on extend far beyond the parameters of my lifetime.
RJ : When I see the large collection of rubberstamps prints you have sent in for the TAM-Rubberstamp-Archive I know you have quite a large collection. How large is the collection now, and a more curious question....why do you want so many stamps?
Reply on 27-7-1995
MC : True enough, I do have many stamps. I send you all my custom designs, but few commercial ones. So, while you have numerous crowded TAM Archive sheets from me, you have seen but a portion of my collection. I estimate I presently own 2000+ stamps.
Why so many is indeed a much more curious question. It may be cultural. One aspect of the American character is a tendency toward excess. Then again, it may be an inherited trait. I come from a family of collectors and have been one myself my entire life. Stamps are abundant and inexpensive in this country. It is very easy to amass them in great quantity. I assure you, my hoard is matched and surpassed by many others'. Of course, some of my stamps have been the gifts of kind friends and family. There is also the ebb and flow of my exchange project, but I keep very few of the stamps sent in trade. Now I am generating my own designs through a professional stampmaker and this had added considerably to my collection.
Such are the mechanics of why so many, but desire must also be taken into account. I am much enamored of rubberstamps. I am aware many view them as the cold and remote marking devices of officialdom and bureaucracies the world over. In fact, the term "rubberstamp" has a number of negative connotations in the English language. I understand this, I do, yet I find them intimate and human.
Rubberstamps evoke memories of childhood play and so contain the heady violence of nostalgia. As adult playthings or serious tools, they form a bridge from memory to the (post)office and on through the seminal fringes of 20th century art.
There are an eternity of nows between the meeting of stamp and paper. The resulting imprint betrays the hand behind it. Repetition creates singular multiples. These marks are traces, residue, evidence, and history.
Each stamp I own increases my vocabulary of images. I use stampings as graphic elements in artwork for reproduction, thereby multiplying the multiple. I use stampings in juxtaposition to other images, thereby multiplying correspondences. I use stampings as artwork in and of themselves, thereby multiplying meanings. The stamp is an amplifying catalyst. The sudden abundance of ersatz rubberstamped images in current American print and video advertising speaks to awareness of this enchanting power.
RJ : In the last months you send me always copies of articles about Ray Johnson for which I am very thankfull. When and how did you get in touch with Ray Johnson and how was your correspondence (dance) with him?
Reply on 15-9-1995
MC: I first became aware of Ray and his work during my initial encounter with Correspondence Art in the mid 1980's. I had recently attended a copy art workshop and his use of the photocopier as an art tool intrigued me.
While Ray's name did not survive the vagaries of my memory, his work did. His infamous "Deaths" letter to the New York Times lodged firmly amid the cobwebs.
Years later when I had become involved in the net, I heard rumors of a near mythic figure, the reclusive father of mail art. This was, of course, Ray. I did not put him together with the still remembered "Deaths" letter until I reread a borrowed copy of Crane and Stofflet's book.
I set about to find him. Little did I know he had had the same address for well over twenty years. So, I felt as if I had found a hidden treasure when I came across it in an issue of Crackerjack Kid's Netshaker. I summoned my courage, took the plunge, and sent him something I cannot now recall. I was very pleased when he responded with a "RAYSDIARY" triangle. We were off and running from there.
Our postal exchanges grew in complexity and frequency as time passed. Some weeks I mailed to Ray on a daily basis and vice versa. He sent books, articles, newspaper clippings, posters, drawings, collages, letters, photocopies, sculptures, photographs, love and nothings. Recurring, layered themes wove throughout. Many still leave me puzzled. Some mailings contained things to be sent to a third party. I passed along items to a number of people; including Geoff Hendricks, Robert Warner, Bill Wilson, John Evans and Roy Lichtenstein. There are certain gifts from Ray I hold especially dear; such as a large seed pod from a Kentucky coffee bean tree, a T-shirt from Baja California, a box covered with postage stamps by Geoff Hendricks, two of his exhibition catalogues, and a box of perfumed carrots tipped with balloons.
Ray began telephoning me in early 1994. We first spoke the day before I left on a long car trip to Seattle and San Francisco, the Tensetendoned Pacific Rim Expedition. I remember the conversation well because I was so shocked Ray had called. Among other things, he told me he was "actually quite charming" despite his reputation to the contrary. Indeed, he often was just that.
During the aforementioned trip, I sent Ray a postcard from San Francisco depicting a drunken couple dressed in rabbit suits sitting on a bed. I returned home to find his response waiting, the now infamous "Condom Man" bunny head sculpture. The same pile of mail yeilded two invitations from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California. I packed off the altered bunny head to the "In the Spirit of Fluxus" exhibition and its doom. The rest of the story has been well documented. Despite the distasteful nature of the "Condom Man" incident, I feel it did much to deepen our relationship. Ray was calling almost daily during this period. Some days he called two and three times.
I last spoke with Ray around 8 PM on December 30th, 1994. He said he had called to tell me "the New York Correspondence School bunny was MURDERED (his emphasis) on December 30th, 1994," and I was "the first to know." I answered with phony expressions of shock and dismay. "How did they do it?," I asked. Ray replied, "Oh, so that's what you'll ask. That's what you'll say. We'll have to wait and see. You'll read about it in the New York Times." Later I did indeed do this very thing, but at the time I took it all in terms of the "Deaths" letter. I thought Ray was once again reinventing himself, shedding his skin as it were. The NYCS. The Fan Clubs. Buddha University. Taoist Pop Art School. Next? He sounded very upbeat, so it did not disturb me unduly. We went on to have a long, happy conversation about rabbits.
Ray's last mailing to me arrived a few days later. Postmarked the 31st, it contained two items we had discussed the night before. One was the "BUNNY DEAD" sheet. I decided to include it in an issue of Tensetendoned and it has now been widely circulated by the Galantais of Artpool. I sent Ray a number of mailings in response to this sheet. One was especially morbid and my memory of it is now tinged with regret.
On January 14th, 1995, I was in the process of assembling Tensetendoned #22. This was the issue containing copies of the "BUNNY DEAD" sheet. I was just about to write Ray a letter to enclose in his copy when the telephone rang. I thought it might be Ray as our phone rarely rings. In truth, I was hoping it was Ray because I hadn't heard from him in two weeks and had a lot to tell him. Instead, it was a sobbing Sheila Sporer calling from Long Island. We had never spoken before. I knew right off Ray was dead. His body had been found earlier that day, but the circumstances of his death were not yet fully known. I fear I am much to blame for early reports of Ray's demise bearing an incorrect date. Upon finishing my conversation with Sheila, I called John Held in Dallas. He had heard the news a few minutes before I called. We spoke about Ray and his legacy. John declared his death "the end of an era."
In late April of this year I travelled to New York City to attend Ray's memorial service. I cannot say it was a sad event in overall tone or mood. A grand procession into the meeting house began the service. People then rose and spoke as the spirit moved them in the Quaker fashion. Some sang and others recited poetry. Dick Higgins performed works by John Cage and George Brecht. At one point Geoff Hendricks stood on his head with large dead fish strapped to his bare feet. His dress? Black tie, of course. A stunning group performance involving a giant profile silhouette of Ray being cut out of a huge sheet of paper from behind closed the formal portion of the event. An adjacent room offered refreshments and both audio and video recordings of Ray in action. An assortment of work from those unable to attend was prominently displayed.
I must admit the memorial service lacked a sense of closure for me. It did not feel like goodbye because there is still such a great deal of controversy surrounding Ray's death. It was THE topic of conversation. Some believe it was an accident and others consider it suicide. A few people even suspect foul play. The truth may never be known. So, the event raised more questions than it answered. I fear it reopened an all too freshly closed wound. This answer was difficult to write for similar reasons. I confess I harbor a small bit of anger over his sudden passing. We were not done yet.
I believe Ray chose to remain an enigma, but not without purpose. A key may be found in the contrast between the historical Johnson and the personal Ray. I was intrigued by Johnson; sought out by Ray. Conversations with others who knew him lead me to believe Ray embodied as many meanings as the number of people he affected. We were legion. In this way, he was a mirror. He reflected you. Indeed, the house that Ray built was a house of mirrors, a labyrinth. Please remember the labyrinth was originally a testing ground. I often failed.
Ray had a dark side and could be acerbic, to put it mildly. This did not diminish him in my eyes, but rather expanded and amplified his humanity. Whatever his mood, when he spoke with you he was THERE, so very much so, and as if for you alone. Whether Grand Inquisitor or Grail King, his were heart-seeking missives. Ray Johnson proved there is much to do about nothing.
RJ : The typical thing about mail art is that every mail artist gathers his/her own network around him/her. We always speak of 'THE NETWORK' but in fact everybody has his own special network around him/her. How large is your network and where are your correspondents located (globaly)?
(On October 17th I receieved the latest issue of Tensetendoned from Michael. In it was a sad message too though. I knew that his father was ill, and now he informed me that his father had died a few days ago).
Reply on 22-11-1995
MC: The differentiation you make is between theory and practice.
You are correct, in practice there are but a series of personal networks. Some are enmeshed. Others work in parallel ignorance. The true paradox is being in contact with people the world over while still toiling away alone in your particular small corner of the globe. I appreciate this distance, though. It can smooth away rough spots where my petty spirit is lacking and perhaps nurture communication based upon more universally human themes. However, I believe the root cause for the networking urge is personal and not universal. There are as many reasons why as there are networkers. The individual is the real theatre for the work.
The size of my network waxes and wanes, ebbs and flows. In the beginning, I would send something to every network address I could find. Responses were few. Now, it seems I spend most of my time answering mail. Unfortunately for my correspondents, I am growing slower and slower.
I keep few records, but perhaps the following will provide a clearer picture for those to whom numbers speak. As of today, November 7, I have sent 906 mailings to 449 networkers in 43 countries since January 1st. The 28 issues of Tensetendoned realized so far have involved 340 contributors from 43 nations. It appears I am getting duller as well as slower.
Global is indeed the word, yet most of my networking occurs between here and Europe and within my own country. It surprises me how certain relatively small nations such as Belgium and the Netherlands are brimful with activity while other, larger countries seem to foster so little. Of course, there are places where economic, political, and geographical factors do much to hinder even basic communication. Networking is a luxury. In my own experience contacts have been few in Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean and other Atlantean isles, Southeast and South Central Asia, and Oceania.
RJ : Your answer is a nice example of how everbody experiences the network he is the center of. You mention Belgium and the Netherlands as places full with activity while I don't get that much mail from my own country and Belgium. Germany and Italy for me are active countries, as well as England and some more European ones. The USA of course the country with the largest amount of networkers I know, but somehow the mail from the USA is different than the mail I get from Europe. Do you also see this difference, or is it just my experience?
Reply on 26-1-1996
MC : Please understand. When I spoke of activity before, I meant it in terms of numbers of networkers alone and not volume of mail. In truth, I do not receive all that much mail from your country or Belgium either. My observations were based on my habitual perusal of project contributors lists as well as the daily mail. The point I failed to make clear was the number of networker addresses from Belgium and the Netherlands seems high in relation to their size and population.
I agree with you. Italy and the U.S. do appear to be the most active networking countries. Some things puzzle me, though. Why Italy? What makes it such a hotbed of activity? Japan is a very wealthy and densely populated nation. Yet, in light of this, they have relatively few networkers. Why?
You are not alone in your experience. Actually, might that not be a seminal lesson? I, too, see a difference between my European and domestic mail. Networking is a function of culture and I believe culture is the root cause of these differences. I also believe it may be the answer to my previous questions.
Now, be aware it has been said you cannot be a prophet in your own country. At times here I speak in generalities. I assure you exceptions can be found for every case.
The U.S. is a large country, but insular in its thinking. It is a place of extremes. A deep seated puritanical streak constantly wrestles with a fleshy hedonism. Every nation has its mythos. Ours is failing us. Violence, anger, and political angst abound. My domestic mail refelects the climate. All the hate mail has come from my compatriots.
Despite the turmoil, much of the work exhibits a sense of play or whimsey. This runs the gamut from the lark to the killing joke, but generally seems more lighthearted than the transatlantic variety. No doubt, Ruud, due to your long involvement with rubberstamps you have seen your share of "cute" mail art. Extremes and paradoxes.
Mail art can be a hard sell in this country. I choose my words carefully. Commerce is ingrained in our culture. So much so in fact, people are distrustful of anything which purports to be free. Many are eager to attempt to commercialize mail art. The "cute" mail I spoke of before is an example. It is driven by the stamp stores and magazines such as Rubberstampmadness and National Stampagraphic. I have had "cute" mail now from England, Germany, and Australia. It follows in the wake of a rubberstamp source springing up. Projects requiring participation or postage fees are becoming more common. You cannot expunge commerce from the network, but you can choose to minimize its influence.
My European correspondents assume less. Perhaps the proximity of so many cultures makes for a more open minded approach. Education is at a level where the great majority of my correspondents write and understand English, a stroke of luck for this comparatively ignorant anglophone. They seem to possess a better developed sense of history, both in art and the network. The work reflects this.
I believe European networkers are more likely to be willing to take on the tedious and thankless tasks some projects require than are my fellow Americans. We seek instant gratification and love the quick fix.
European networkers seem to have much better access to public and institutional funding. The dedication I spoke of before, coupled with this financial backing, often results in stunning documentation. The books weighing my shelves are testimony. When American institutions get involved with mail art, they frequently end up shooting themselves and the contributors in the foot. The key here is to find a sympathetic individual within the institution and work with her/him.
All in all, the best mail I receive comes mostly from overseas. The absolute worst is usually domestic. It all comes down to the spirit of the thing. Another's experience will no doubt engender a differing opinion. The real daily judgement is what to answer first.
RJ : Probably all mail from far away is the most interesting. But in most cases we shouldn't generalize. It is funny you mention "the daily judgement" of what to answer. Are you still able to answer all? If I look at all the mail I get in myself, I don't even try too, it would just ruin me. How do you deal with the daily frow of mail to your P.O.Box?
Reply on 11-3-1996
MC : If you recall, I did warn of the dangers of generalization.
While it is true I still experience a small thrill when I receive mail from a new country, distance alone lends no cachet to the contents.
I do try to answer all the mail I receive. I am slowing and this luxury may have to end in the very near future. I do not answer project documentation unless specifically requested to do so. Since I have learned not to write in anger, hate mail and other irritants are ignored.
I am a shameless mail addict. I need my daily fix and gloomy indeed is the day without. There are those days however, when I see the mail as nothing more than a source of potential work or trouble. Fortunately, this attitude is confined to times when I am absorbed in some other task such as during assembly week.
How do I deal with the daily flow? After I open and read all the mail, I record the networking portion in my mail diary. I also make note of and number all my outgoing network mail. Sorting follows recording. Contributions for my project go into the fabled Tensetendoned vault. This is actually an overflowing cardboard box. Other correspondence from contributors to future issues ends up here as well. I try to consolidate my efforts in order to conserve my finite time, energy, and resources. Most of what is left is then divided between two piles, "postcard" and "more than a postcard." These names reflect the level of effort required in an answer. Once answered, mail is moved to the nearby "dealt with" pile. Mailings which require no answer go here directly after being recorded. When this pile collapses and spills off the table and across the floor, I bundle it up for storage. Books, artistamps, and stickers are stored separately.
RJ : It is amazing how these procedures are almost identical to how I process my incoming and outgoing mail. A problem might occur again when the "storage" of all those boxes isn't possible anymore (I am facing that problem at the moment). I understand more and more why mail artists prefer recycling sometimes. How much of the mail art you get in you actually do recycle?
Reply on 6-4-1996
MC : I suppose similar problems make for similar solutions.
As a failure of a wannabe archivist, I tend to keep most of the net mail I receive. Not counting those items intended to be passed along, I would estimate I recycle perhaps 10% of my mail. This runs the gamut from simple reuse to cannibalization.
This network of ours is a fragile thing and the evidence the experience leaves behind is flimsy. I value the experience, so I believe the evidence should be preserved. Yet, above all, mail art is a gift. What my correspondents do with my mailings is entirely up to them. It is not for me to say or vice versa. I confess I do not waste my best efforts on known chop shops, though.
RJ : For me, the computer is an important tool for my communication. For writing and printing texts, keeping track of data, even conducting this interview with you and others. I notice you always use this typewriter. Why this choice?
Reply on 29-4-1996
MC : It suits my needs. My illegible handwriting has been a problem since childhood. Typing removes this obstacle to clarity.
This machine is a manual Royal portable. My father bought it for his own use when he was in high school, c. 1938. I have been using it for fourteen years now. It feels like an old friend. I like it becasue it is simple, direct, and reliable. Power outages are a frequent occurrence in this mountainous rural area.
Do not confuse form with content.
RJ : Doesn't sometimes the form tell al lot too besides the content? The specific tools each mail artist uses for making his other mail art has mostly quite specific reasons. Like you told about your typewriter! Currently you are having an exhibition at the Stamp Art Gallery. Is exhibiting your work important to you?
reply on 12-6-1996
MC : I apologize for not making myself more clear. I was much too succinct and failed to provide proper context. I meant my use of the typewriter is not intented to convey my feelings concerning same or any other message.
Yes, absolutely, the form or medium can be content and impart meaning. After all, didn't Marshall McLuhan say, "The medium is the message"? Indeed, some of my current work relies on the medium to convey the message. A soon to rubberized stamp design of mine reads, "ACTUAL RUBBER STAMP IMPRINT." Quick and easy though this little joke may be, it will not work until it is stamped out.
The key is intent, since this I can control. While I have no doubt my choice of tools imparts messages to my audience, their reactions and perceptions are out of my hands. The work is a mirror for their mindset. I find this true of all the arts, as well as other public fields of endeavor such as advertising. I offer an example. In graduate school #2 I worked on a series of glass and ceramic sculptures about geophysical, biological, and chthonic forces. A common reaction from viewers was, "It looks like nuclear war." This anxiety was a product of their minds, not mine. I was open to alternative interpretations, though, being well aware I was in the mirror business. Besides, people do like mirrors and are inexorably drawn to those things that reflect themselves. It is the Western ideal.
Have I succeeded in backpedalling my way out of my own trap?
I feel the question of how to give form from to the formless is one central to the networking experience. We all find a personal solution through our activity. Another new text stamp of mine touches on this point: "This is not the eternal. This is the wrapper the eternal comes in."
Oh, I just came across this very pithy quote from Milan Kundera in a recent issue of the Village Voice. It speaks to what we just discussed as well as what will follow, "Imposing form on a period of time is what beauty demands, but so does memory. For what is formless cannot be grasped, or committed to memory."
Networkers do not often mention beauty, though, do they?
Yes, exhibiting is important to me. It is another form of contact presented in a context perhaps more easily grasped by those viewers not directly involved with the net.
Moreover, the documentation of such exhibitions is important to me. My show was transitory. Much less ephemeral are the catalogue and boxed set of rubber stamps produced in conjunction therewith. These traces of events and experiences are the raw material for the mill of network history. History being largely myth, I am casting my bread upon the waters to become what it may.
Years ago when I had an exhibition, I designed and installed it myself. My only audience consisted of those who actually attended. Now, I am working at a distance for shows I will not see. My audience has expanded beyond the viewer and out into the network itself. Working at such remove, it is important to have faith in those mounting the show. My strong relationship with the Stamp Art Gallery folks allows for that. In fact, I am just back from a lively romp with Bill Gaglione, Darlene Domel, John Held, Diana Mars, et al., at the Stamp Art Publications Fluxfest in New York City. As things stand now, I would only undertake a taxing project like this exhibition for a good friend or upon such a friend's recommendation. You and this interview are one example. Guy Bleus is another. We are exploring tentative plans for a Tensetendoned retrospective at his Hasselt space in 1997.
RJ : You touched the subject of "network history". A lot has been written already in books and magazines. How much is true of what you have read? What is your experience?
reply on 28-8-1996
MC : History may be many things, but it certainly isn't truth. Truth is stranger than fact. So, while I do try to read as much of the history of the early network as I can find, I am aware it is an author's personal interpretation seen through the lens of time and culture.
That last is key. The concepts behind networking have changed with time, but personal interests and experience drive the individual networker and hence the net entire.
Today there are many who view the network as based upon underground, anarchic, and ahistorical principles. Actually, these are the concerns of the second wave of the net activity and the surrounding cultural climate during the 1960s. I understand how this appeals to the rebellious adolescent lurking within all of us. However, I find my own network spiritual roots a decade and more earlier when mail art was indeed art and historically aware.
So, people seize upon the version of networking tradition that suits their taste and needs. This is why so many heterogeneous views coexist. As network history piles up, these will multiply accordingly.
You asked about my personal experience. I must say written reports of events I have participated in have been reasonably accurate from my point of view. Of course, the historical legacy of present activity is as yet unknown.
Networking activities and artforms are currently marginalized at best. Cavellini's self-historification made for network legend, but did not make a dent in traditional modern art history. His goal eluded him. Such marginalization may or may not change in the future. History is fickle. Who knows where anyone will end up?
Network history is a muddled field. A case in point is Carlo Battisti. I believe his name is largely unknown outside of his native Italy. He was briefly involved with the net during the 1970s. Yet, he created the seminal "ARTE" rubber stamp and originated the mail art bull tradition as an homage to Cavellini , who himself did much to popularize his own later version. I am still glossing both men's work today.
History, like art, is mythic. The powerful open secret is that you can make your own. Do.
RJ : History will be based on facts that historians can find back. In mail art the more active participants in the network automatically build an archive. Do you consider your collection also an archive? Do you keep most of the mail you get?
reply on 12-10-1996
MC : I take your statement to mean historians will base their observations upon that which survives. True. This is why it is so important to have the original material perserved. Perception changes with the times. We do not look at a 13th century work with 13th century eyes or minds. Antique fakes seem so blatant to us today because they were created to satisfy contemporary expectations. Those of the present day were beyond the forger's ken. The raw stuff of our pursuit must be available to the fresh eyes that will follow.
I believe I mentioned my dismal failure as a wannabe archivist. I just don't have the temparment for it. My collection is more of a hoard. I tend to think of an archive as systematically filed and catalogued. While I have separate caches of mail art books, stickers, and artistamps; I cannot call this organization of any significance. I will have to leave the rest to the real archivists.
We previously covered the question of what I keep, no?
RJ : Yes, we did already discussed that issue. We have been doing this interview now for almost 1,5 year. Probably it is time to let others read these words as well. Normally I ask the interviewed person if I did forget to ask something. So, Did I?
reply on 6-1-1997
MB : Only you can say for sure.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for inviting me to participate in your interview project and the readers for their kind attention, especially in forbearance during my flightier moments.
RJ : Thank you for this interview Michael!
Address mail-artist:
Michael B. Corbett
P.O.Box 155
PRESTON PARK
PA 18455 - USA
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Mail-Interview with Bern Porter (USA)
THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH BERN PORTER 53
Started on: 29-8-1995
RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
Reply on 12-9-1995
BP : I invented mail art, November 11. 1913
RJ : Why November 11th 1913? What happened on that day that you decided to start to send out mail art?
Reply on 19-10-1995
BP : Sitting together on the floor of his 8x8 foot apartment east side New York I asked Ray: "What are you doing?" He answered: "Being myself."
(the next question to Bern Porter I wrote with pencil on a two-color blue silk-screen printing of Ray Johnson)
RJ : Ray answered "Being myself". So, who was Ray? I would like to know.
Reply on 20-3-1996
BP : I asked Ray: "What are you doing?" He answered: "Being myself, average weight, average height, non drinking, non smoking, daily on the uproad to survival."
I maintain at a library here "The Bern Porter Collection of Contemporary Letters" and wish to have the complete set of everything you have ever done. Advise cost delivered to me U.S.A. B.P U.S. Dollars in bankcheck form.
RJ : "Everything I ever have done?" That is difficult. Because all the mail art I sent out isn't mine anymore. All I produce is sent out into the network and I only have spare issues of magazines and copies of some pieces of mail. Everything I received and kept so far, that is something I have. Are all the letters you get (like e.g. this one) going to be part of "The Bern Porter Collection of Contemporary Letters", or is is just a "part of your life" that forms this collection? Just currious, what is in the collection?
Address mail-artist:
BERN PORTER
22 Salmond Road,
BELFAST , ME 04915
USA.
(Bern Porter died, so the interview never was finished)
Started on: 29-8-1995
RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
Reply on 12-9-1995
BP : I invented mail art, November 11. 1913
RJ : Why November 11th 1913? What happened on that day that you decided to start to send out mail art?
Reply on 19-10-1995
BP : Sitting together on the floor of his 8x8 foot apartment east side New York I asked Ray: "What are you doing?" He answered: "Being myself."
(the next question to Bern Porter I wrote with pencil on a two-color blue silk-screen printing of Ray Johnson)
RJ : Ray answered "Being myself". So, who was Ray? I would like to know.
Reply on 20-3-1996
BP : I asked Ray: "What are you doing?" He answered: "Being myself, average weight, average height, non drinking, non smoking, daily on the uproad to survival."
I maintain at a library here "The Bern Porter Collection of Contemporary Letters" and wish to have the complete set of everything you have ever done. Advise cost delivered to me U.S.A. B.P U.S. Dollars in bankcheck form.
RJ : "Everything I ever have done?" That is difficult. Because all the mail art I sent out isn't mine anymore. All I produce is sent out into the network and I only have spare issues of magazines and copies of some pieces of mail. Everything I received and kept so far, that is something I have. Are all the letters you get (like e.g. this one) going to be part of "The Bern Porter Collection of Contemporary Letters", or is is just a "part of your life" that forms this collection? Just currious, what is in the collection?
Address mail-artist:
BERN PORTER
22 Salmond Road,
BELFAST , ME 04915
USA.
(Bern Porter died, so the interview never was finished)
Mail-Interview with Ruggero Maggi (Italy)
THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH RUGGERO MAGGI. 6
Started on: 3-11-1994
RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
Reply on: 25-11-1994
RM : At the end of 1975 when I was invited for the mail art shows by the Saõ Paulo Library, by the Librije Beeldende Kunst Zwolle and for the Show "Papel y Lapiz" at Modern Art museum of Bogota.
RJ : How did these 'traditional art institutes' get your address?
Reply on : 9-12-1994
RM : Firstly: "Mail art uses institutions in the places of institutions against institutions". To "Papel y Lapiz" I was invited by Jonier Marin, a Colombian artist (organizer of the show) lover, like me, of Amazon and with whom I spoke, for the first time, of an eventual Amazonian Archive about -multimedia Ecological Art-. For the other 2 shows is a mistery!
RJ : What is the connection of Amazon and mail-art. What is your "Archive of Artistic Works and Projects" all about?
Reply on : 31-12-1994
RM : At 1979 I went for the first time to the Peruvian Amazon and there, by the direct contact with the immensity and the magnificence of that world and unfortunately with all the ecological problems which, already at that time, were borning, I decided to found an international archive dedicated to artistic projects and works about Nature in a general way and about Amazon in a specific one.
Today, after 12 years of activity, the Archive AMAZON reckons upon the participation of hundreds of artists with their works coming from various countries and it has arranged tens of international exhibitions in all the world.
At these last 20 years of Mail Art I have also arranged other projects like: "United for Peace" - "The Shadow Project" - "Playcare" - "Italian Report" - "Not Only Books" - "Aquarantacinquegiri" - Etc..
RJ : The most well-known project from you probably is the Shadow Project. I was lucky to be present during the event in 1985 in Italy where we painted shadows on the ground in Villa di Serio. Could you tell a bit more about the origin of this project, how it grew and if it still is going on....?
Reply on : 30-01-1995
RM : When the 1st atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima 50 years ago, human beings who were within three hundred metres of ground zero were instantly vaporized by the scaring heat, leaving behind only their shadows - the remnants of these innocent victims provide the image and the theme of the shadow project. The silent shadows scattered throughtout the city are representations of a sight, which, if a bomb had been detonated would be seen by no one. Unlike the shadows left by a nuclear holocaust, the images painted on the streets are now permanent.
At 1985 I received the invitation from the central shadow project organization in USA to arrange the Italian event to celebrate the Hiroshima Holocaust. How you have remembered, I invited some artists to "perform" with me at the 6th of August (the H-bomb day) at Villa di Serio, near Bergamo, for the biennia of that town. Between others also Enrico Baj was with us that day. After that event I organized many other shadow project days in Italy (Bologna - Tivoli - Senigallia - Cervo - Pordenone - Como - Scandiano - Etc.), At Dublin, at Minden in Germany, etc.. In 1988 I was invited also to realize the Shadow project in Japan at the same Hiroshima just at the H-bomb day! It was a dream, which had come true! After Hiroshima I and many other Japanese and foreign networkers, realized the Shadow project also at other Japanese towns: Kyoto - Iida - Nishinomiya - etc...
RJ : Are you at the moment planning any new projects connected to mail-art or is your interest shifting into other areas connected to art?
Reply on : 2-5-1995
RM : Since about 10 years I'm developping a theory about chaos art. I have always loved monsters since I was a child. The so-called irregularity, synonym of "ugliness", of some forms has always fascinated me. On the contrary, the aesthetic regularity of some lines, a pathetic attempt at perfection has very often bored me to death.
At a certain age, I also have sincerely tried to deepen the contact, to probe into the knowledge with a possible geometric "beauty", but, to my great surprise, the squares never were perfectly spaure, the circles never were perfectly circular, and so on. And yet I realised my work in that period scrupolously following the "ancient rules" tought at school. But nothing could be done: in spite of my efforts. The geometric figures, realised in different materials, did not fit in an exact way or at least in a way satisfactory to me.
There almost was a repulsion of the forms in fitting together. Strongly enough, a repulsion of the forms and not of the materials, which, on the contrary modelled themselves together joining in their greater or lesser roughness. The fault, as I discovered some years later only, though I had already got some signs, was Euclid's and of his deceptive geometry. Yes, it was really the foult of mathematics, which has been administred to us at school and which is introduced as a decoder of Nature, but is very little natural! She is in fact a pure and simple abstraction, so abstract and deceptivele regular to forget completely that nature is instead set up by forms, diverse ones: perforated, twisted, fragmented.... Forms however, that are easily fitted in. This world which only appears chaotic, needed a new type of geometry allowing a more realistic measuring of nature: the geometry of the fractals (from latin "Fractus" : broken, split).
In contrast with the Euclidean forms, the fractals are geometrically irregular forms in every part and present the same degree of irregularity on all scales. The irregular aspect of Nature and her discntinuous side, which have been real monstruosities to science for a number of years at a mathematical level, come at last outdoors and are studied through the geometry of fractals. Now that it's been looked for, CHAOS seems to be everywhere, from the spirals of smoke of a cigarette, which break into irregular spires to the dripping faucet passing from a regular rhythm to a chaotic one. These and other aperiodic and now linear movements are clear examples of turbolence, which is at the basis of the study and the revelant visual representation of the strange attractors. Strange not because unusual (in reality they are incredible incomprehensible). A further feature of the strange attractors of of being fractals, i.e. of having a complete structure (independently from the scale of magnification).
Chaotic art must inquire into the inner side of world, at last "cleaned" from the old scientific prejudices, looking for the mainforld aestetic and conceptual possibilities contained in chaos. A part from researchers concerning computer graphics, the possibilities are infinite. For instance, I am projecting a "chaotic machine", which will be a metal structure 8 mt. high, with a central plexiglas sphere providing for the insertion of a person which will be the first interference disturbing and therefore shifting to aperiodic the movement of the sphere itself, which will also be set in motion by some magnets. Being designed for outdoors, the other "disturbances" will be caused by elements like rain, wind, etc. All the structure will be connected to a computer, which will compute all the relevant strange attractors, and, through a printer, will visualise them on sheets, which will be given to the public.
The great discovery of the science of chaos is that apparently complicated behaviors can become simple if the right graphic representation has been chosen. The images of chaotic art are not only splendid but also contain an infinite series of data and information.
RJ : Did you use the computer before in your art? What is the potential of this machine?
Reply on 28-7-1995
RM: I have just used the computer at the Basel Art Fair (1989) to elaborate some Nazca drawings into spatial signs - all this was a part of my space art installation at the stand of OURS (Orbiting Unification Ring Satellite) at the same art fair. The result was a series of works reproduced then by copy machine which I have here enclosed. Pierre Restany has written some time ago: "In this society it becomes necessary to recreate the relationship between man and machine, and today this machine is the computer. To re-define this relationship implies the creation of right and true conditions of a dialogue between two types of intelligence: Artificial and human. And it's in the core of this dialogue where Maggi's linguistic research is inserted."
RJ : Are you already working with the Internet or are you planning to? What will be the impact of the Internet on the 'traditional' mail-art?
Reply on 17-8-1995
RM: I have planned to work by Internet for the "Quintessences" project about the death of the Count of Gagliostro and the vital necessity "to free yourself and to gain an essential truth". I wished to realize a plan of the Papal Fortress of San Leo (near Urbino, where Gagliostro died imprisoned) and include it into the Internet system, inviting artists from all the world to visit him (!) at the day of his bicentennial death: 26th of August 1995. All this was not possible and we are organizing a fax art project with the same spirit! Or better..... Metanetworker in spirit!
RJ : What will be the impact of the Internet on the 'traditional' mail-art? I've noticed that a lot of mail artists in the USA are using e-mail now besides the traditional mail system? I've written down my thoughts and experiences with e-mail. What are your views?
Reply on 8-1-1996
RM: Dear Ruud, sorry for the delay to answer but I have been in Brasil at São Paulo participating to a great interactive art event and now I'm in Lima from where I'll return to Italy at the 29th of December -- Happy New year to you & your family!
Your question -- Internet is the positive answer to the utopic danger: The Great Brother! Instead of a great central power, the Man has created a fantastic system of millions of peripheric little PC's connected through internet.
Some virtual network museums have been born in in all the world. In USA Honoria and Crackerjack Kid are very active in this sense. In Italy, at Porto S. Giorgio, the first Italian mail art virtual museum and gallery have been founded. They have opened their "doors" with a celebration of Ray Johnson and a "show" of mine, Internet URL : < http://www.sapienza.it/magam >. I'm planning also two computer-installations: A Telematic Totem and an Anti-Nuclear French tests in Pacific work.
RJ : You write quite opimitic about the Internet. I see also lots of negative sides, like the access to the hardware (no electricity or computers for e.g. African networkers), no money for the access to Internet. Also "The Great Brother" is still there, since the companies that own the telephone-lines can now monitor all the e-mail if they want to. Am I being to negative or are there also real dangers to the Internet?
Reply on 26-7-1996
RM : The poverty in Africa and in all the so-called 3rd world is a tragic, incontestable fact to which naturally also the defiency of electricity and the following lack of computers are joined.
If a certain kind of mentality and a sadly overflowing culture doesn't change in the rest of the world, it will be impossible for those countries to raise theirselves. After having ravaged throughout centuries, now it's time to give back something. But not in the shape of simple assistance, but building schools, hospitals, etc... Don't send shoes but build a shoe-factory!
However, how in all the cultural mutations (and surely internet is one!) there are some beginning problems but, for me, the game.... IS worth the the candle! The real danger has always been in the use which man can do and not in the machine.
RJ : I sure agree on that issue with you. Another subject; the mail art projects that are currently done in the mail art network mostly aren't that interesting for me anymore. How is this for you? Do you still participate in all the project-invitations you get?
(because of time & other things that happened in both our lives this
interview was broken off. On November 25th 2001 I decided to put all
unfinished interviews online as well).
Interviewed person:
AMAZON
Archive of Artistic Works and Projects.
Ruggero Maggi
C. so Sempione, 67
I - 20149 Milano
ITALY
Started on: 3-11-1994
RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
Reply on: 25-11-1994
RM : At the end of 1975 when I was invited for the mail art shows by the Saõ Paulo Library, by the Librije Beeldende Kunst Zwolle and for the Show "Papel y Lapiz" at Modern Art museum of Bogota.
RJ : How did these 'traditional art institutes' get your address?
Reply on : 9-12-1994
RM : Firstly: "Mail art uses institutions in the places of institutions against institutions". To "Papel y Lapiz" I was invited by Jonier Marin, a Colombian artist (organizer of the show) lover, like me, of Amazon and with whom I spoke, for the first time, of an eventual Amazonian Archive about -multimedia Ecological Art-. For the other 2 shows is a mistery!
RJ : What is the connection of Amazon and mail-art. What is your "Archive of Artistic Works and Projects" all about?
Reply on : 31-12-1994
RM : At 1979 I went for the first time to the Peruvian Amazon and there, by the direct contact with the immensity and the magnificence of that world and unfortunately with all the ecological problems which, already at that time, were borning, I decided to found an international archive dedicated to artistic projects and works about Nature in a general way and about Amazon in a specific one.
Today, after 12 years of activity, the Archive AMAZON reckons upon the participation of hundreds of artists with their works coming from various countries and it has arranged tens of international exhibitions in all the world.
At these last 20 years of Mail Art I have also arranged other projects like: "United for Peace" - "The Shadow Project" - "Playcare" - "Italian Report" - "Not Only Books" - "Aquarantacinquegiri" - Etc..
RJ : The most well-known project from you probably is the Shadow Project. I was lucky to be present during the event in 1985 in Italy where we painted shadows on the ground in Villa di Serio. Could you tell a bit more about the origin of this project, how it grew and if it still is going on....?
Reply on : 30-01-1995
RM : When the 1st atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima 50 years ago, human beings who were within three hundred metres of ground zero were instantly vaporized by the scaring heat, leaving behind only their shadows - the remnants of these innocent victims provide the image and the theme of the shadow project. The silent shadows scattered throughtout the city are representations of a sight, which, if a bomb had been detonated would be seen by no one. Unlike the shadows left by a nuclear holocaust, the images painted on the streets are now permanent.
At 1985 I received the invitation from the central shadow project organization in USA to arrange the Italian event to celebrate the Hiroshima Holocaust. How you have remembered, I invited some artists to "perform" with me at the 6th of August (the H-bomb day) at Villa di Serio, near Bergamo, for the biennia of that town. Between others also Enrico Baj was with us that day. After that event I organized many other shadow project days in Italy (Bologna - Tivoli - Senigallia - Cervo - Pordenone - Como - Scandiano - Etc.), At Dublin, at Minden in Germany, etc.. In 1988 I was invited also to realize the Shadow project in Japan at the same Hiroshima just at the H-bomb day! It was a dream, which had come true! After Hiroshima I and many other Japanese and foreign networkers, realized the Shadow project also at other Japanese towns: Kyoto - Iida - Nishinomiya - etc...
RJ : Are you at the moment planning any new projects connected to mail-art or is your interest shifting into other areas connected to art?
Reply on : 2-5-1995
RM : Since about 10 years I'm developping a theory about chaos art. I have always loved monsters since I was a child. The so-called irregularity, synonym of "ugliness", of some forms has always fascinated me. On the contrary, the aesthetic regularity of some lines, a pathetic attempt at perfection has very often bored me to death.
At a certain age, I also have sincerely tried to deepen the contact, to probe into the knowledge with a possible geometric "beauty", but, to my great surprise, the squares never were perfectly spaure, the circles never were perfectly circular, and so on. And yet I realised my work in that period scrupolously following the "ancient rules" tought at school. But nothing could be done: in spite of my efforts. The geometric figures, realised in different materials, did not fit in an exact way or at least in a way satisfactory to me.
There almost was a repulsion of the forms in fitting together. Strongly enough, a repulsion of the forms and not of the materials, which, on the contrary modelled themselves together joining in their greater or lesser roughness. The fault, as I discovered some years later only, though I had already got some signs, was Euclid's and of his deceptive geometry. Yes, it was really the foult of mathematics, which has been administred to us at school and which is introduced as a decoder of Nature, but is very little natural! She is in fact a pure and simple abstraction, so abstract and deceptivele regular to forget completely that nature is instead set up by forms, diverse ones: perforated, twisted, fragmented.... Forms however, that are easily fitted in. This world which only appears chaotic, needed a new type of geometry allowing a more realistic measuring of nature: the geometry of the fractals (from latin "Fractus" : broken, split).
In contrast with the Euclidean forms, the fractals are geometrically irregular forms in every part and present the same degree of irregularity on all scales. The irregular aspect of Nature and her discntinuous side, which have been real monstruosities to science for a number of years at a mathematical level, come at last outdoors and are studied through the geometry of fractals. Now that it's been looked for, CHAOS seems to be everywhere, from the spirals of smoke of a cigarette, which break into irregular spires to the dripping faucet passing from a regular rhythm to a chaotic one. These and other aperiodic and now linear movements are clear examples of turbolence, which is at the basis of the study and the revelant visual representation of the strange attractors. Strange not because unusual (in reality they are incredible incomprehensible). A further feature of the strange attractors of of being fractals, i.e. of having a complete structure (independently from the scale of magnification).
Chaotic art must inquire into the inner side of world, at last "cleaned" from the old scientific prejudices, looking for the mainforld aestetic and conceptual possibilities contained in chaos. A part from researchers concerning computer graphics, the possibilities are infinite. For instance, I am projecting a "chaotic machine", which will be a metal structure 8 mt. high, with a central plexiglas sphere providing for the insertion of a person which will be the first interference disturbing and therefore shifting to aperiodic the movement of the sphere itself, which will also be set in motion by some magnets. Being designed for outdoors, the other "disturbances" will be caused by elements like rain, wind, etc. All the structure will be connected to a computer, which will compute all the relevant strange attractors, and, through a printer, will visualise them on sheets, which will be given to the public.
The great discovery of the science of chaos is that apparently complicated behaviors can become simple if the right graphic representation has been chosen. The images of chaotic art are not only splendid but also contain an infinite series of data and information.
RJ : Did you use the computer before in your art? What is the potential of this machine?
Reply on 28-7-1995
RM: I have just used the computer at the Basel Art Fair (1989) to elaborate some Nazca drawings into spatial signs - all this was a part of my space art installation at the stand of OURS (Orbiting Unification Ring Satellite) at the same art fair. The result was a series of works reproduced then by copy machine which I have here enclosed. Pierre Restany has written some time ago: "In this society it becomes necessary to recreate the relationship between man and machine, and today this machine is the computer. To re-define this relationship implies the creation of right and true conditions of a dialogue between two types of intelligence: Artificial and human. And it's in the core of this dialogue where Maggi's linguistic research is inserted."
RJ : Are you already working with the Internet or are you planning to? What will be the impact of the Internet on the 'traditional' mail-art?
Reply on 17-8-1995
RM: I have planned to work by Internet for the "Quintessences" project about the death of the Count of Gagliostro and the vital necessity "to free yourself and to gain an essential truth". I wished to realize a plan of the Papal Fortress of San Leo (near Urbino, where Gagliostro died imprisoned) and include it into the Internet system, inviting artists from all the world to visit him (!) at the day of his bicentennial death: 26th of August 1995. All this was not possible and we are organizing a fax art project with the same spirit! Or better..... Metanetworker in spirit!
RJ : What will be the impact of the Internet on the 'traditional' mail-art? I've noticed that a lot of mail artists in the USA are using e-mail now besides the traditional mail system? I've written down my thoughts and experiences with e-mail. What are your views?
Reply on 8-1-1996
RM: Dear Ruud, sorry for the delay to answer but I have been in Brasil at São Paulo participating to a great interactive art event and now I'm in Lima from where I'll return to Italy at the 29th of December -- Happy New year to you & your family!
Your question -- Internet is the positive answer to the utopic danger: The Great Brother! Instead of a great central power, the Man has created a fantastic system of millions of peripheric little PC's connected through internet.
Some virtual network museums have been born in in all the world. In USA Honoria and Crackerjack Kid are very active in this sense. In Italy, at Porto S. Giorgio, the first Italian mail art virtual museum and gallery have been founded. They have opened their "doors" with a celebration of Ray Johnson and a "show" of mine, Internet URL : < http://www.sapienza.it/magam >. I'm planning also two computer-installations: A Telematic Totem and an Anti-Nuclear French tests in Pacific work.
RJ : You write quite opimitic about the Internet. I see also lots of negative sides, like the access to the hardware (no electricity or computers for e.g. African networkers), no money for the access to Internet. Also "The Great Brother" is still there, since the companies that own the telephone-lines can now monitor all the e-mail if they want to. Am I being to negative or are there also real dangers to the Internet?
Reply on 26-7-1996
RM : The poverty in Africa and in all the so-called 3rd world is a tragic, incontestable fact to which naturally also the defiency of electricity and the following lack of computers are joined.
If a certain kind of mentality and a sadly overflowing culture doesn't change in the rest of the world, it will be impossible for those countries to raise theirselves. After having ravaged throughout centuries, now it's time to give back something. But not in the shape of simple assistance, but building schools, hospitals, etc... Don't send shoes but build a shoe-factory!
However, how in all the cultural mutations (and surely internet is one!) there are some beginning problems but, for me, the game.... IS worth the the candle! The real danger has always been in the use which man can do and not in the machine.
RJ : I sure agree on that issue with you. Another subject; the mail art projects that are currently done in the mail art network mostly aren't that interesting for me anymore. How is this for you? Do you still participate in all the project-invitations you get?
(because of time & other things that happened in both our lives this
interview was broken off. On November 25th 2001 I decided to put all
unfinished interviews online as well).
Interviewed person:
AMAZON
Archive of Artistic Works and Projects.
Ruggero Maggi
C. so Sempione, 67
I - 20149 Milano
ITALY
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Mail-Interview with Anna Banana (Canada).
This interview was done in 1995 by Ruud Janssen.
THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH ANNA BANANA 13
Started on: 3-12-1994
RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
Reply on: 7-1-1995
AB : This is one of those questions I've answered so many times, I thought everyone knew by now! Anyway, for the record, here goes. In 1971, I was living outside the small town of Sooke, on Vancouver Island. In an attempt to connect with some creative people, I declared myself the Town Fool of Victoria, capital of the province of British Colombia, some 36 miles from where I was living. That turned out to be an uphill climb, and in an effort to communicate with the populace of Victoria, I started publishing the Banana Rag. I delivered copies of this newsletter by hand to a number of public schools in the Victoria area, and while I was at it, I mailed copies to some of my artist friends in Vancouver.
The response from the schools was varied, and in some instances, I was invited into the schools to do activities with the students. One of my friends in Vancouver who was then a member of the Image Bank collective, responded with a copy of the Image Bank Request List. This little 2-page flyer brought the first information I had that there was, in fact, a network. It was a list of names and addresses of artists, and the sorts of images they wanted to receive; lips, clouds, 50's cars, that sort of thing.
I went through my stack of old clip magazines and put together an envelope for each of the perhaps 20 artists listed, and mailed them out, with a copy of the Banana Rag, and a note stating that I was interested in receiving ANYTHING to do with bananas; images, news stories, jokes, music, whatever, as long as it had a reference to bananas. Within 2 or 3 weeks, my mail-box came alive, and here I had the sort of enthusiasm and response I was missing elsewhere in my life. Amongst the bananas, there were samples of the others' work, invitations to projects, etc., and before I knew it, I was HOOKED.
In the course of the next year and a half, I responded to all the mail I received, participated in all projects I heard about, and expanded the number of artists I was exchanging with to perhaps 100. When I left Sooke, it was to go on the road, to meet my correspondents, and decide where I would live next. I intended to drive across Canada, down the eastern USA, across the southern states, and up to the West Coast. However,the van I bought to make this trip in turned out to be a lemon, and my start was delayed for 6 months. When I did leave Canada in May of 1973, I went south into Washington, Oregon and California. In the Bay Area, I met with all 12 of my mail art connections, and decided pretty quickly that that was the place for me to live.
However since I had written to all my correspondents that I was heading their way, I went on with the trip for another 2 months, after which, I realized a number of things:
1 The USA is huge, and driving across it more time consuming than I had figured.
2 Driving alone across vast stretches of the continent was not all that much fun.
3 Most of my correspondents were men, and most of them had wives or lovers who, while they tolerated my visit, were none too enthused about it.
4 In San Francisco, I had met my future husband, and I knew that was where I wanted to live. I decided to quit the mega-trip, and headed back to San Francisco at the end of August, where I settled down for the next 8 years, getting even more committed to mail art with the publication of VILE magazine, which I began in 1974.
RJ : This extensive answer arises a lot of questions in me, but I have to settle for one now. Some mail-artists have a private life besides their mail-art life, but in your case it seems that your private life and your mail-art world got completely integrated. I remember the issue VILE (#8, 1983), and it looked like your life and your art were the same at that moment. Some photo's of you and Bill Gaglione indicate the same. Am I right?
Reply on : 18-4-1995
AB : During those years with Bill, we were both very involved with mail art and performance art, and there was very little time for anything else (except the everyday jobs/work we did to support that activity which took up the majority of our time! We just don't write about that stuff.), so I suppose you are right, at that moment, my life and art were very integrated. What isn't apparent from that view you had of us from VILE #8, is that we both DID have jobs or paying work that is never spoken about in the context of the magazine.The humdrum work that just about everyone has to do to pay the bills. Bill had a variety of jobs over the year, and after working in a print shop, and for a weekly newspaper, I started my own graphic design and production company, Banana Productions, which is how I earned the money to publish VILE and the Banana Rag.
Certainly our performing, publishing and mail-art activities did NOT pay our rent, or put food on the table, and we both spent a good deal of our time at those money-earning activities in order to SUPPORT our mail art, publishing and performance work. Further, we both had friends and activities that were not related to art, but our social life was within a circle of art-related friends, and many of my friends in San Francisco were persons with whom I had exchanged mail-art before I went there.
RJ : Why did the VILE magazine stop? What was your next step?
Reply on : 9-5-1995
AB : It cost too much to produce and mail. It took too much time and there were other things I wanted to do. I felt hemmed in by the need to "do the next issue." Bill wanted to take it in directions that weren't consistent with my initial concept of it. My relationship with Bill was falling apart. I was tired of the vile focus, and felt it wasn't an appropriate publication in which to air other sides of my perceptions and activities. I'd "been there, done that," and it was time to move along, do something else.
At the beginning of our cross Canada tour of 1980, we were offered a sublet on an apartment in Vancouver. We had been evicted from our apartment in San Francisco the month before we left, and had put all our things in storage. We decided to take the sublet and move to Vancouver - a MAJOR change. That never happened. I moved and he stayed.
Arriving in Vancouver in late January 1981, I was like a fish out of water. I didn't know at that point that Bill would not be coming up, but I was still feeling very displaced. All my close friends were in San Francisco, and the situation I moved into wasn't quite what I had imagined it to be. In late February I went back to SF to do a final performance with Bill, one we had scheduled before the trip. At that time it became clear that he wouldn't be moving to Canada.
During those first two years in Canada, I tried to quit mail art. I did only one issue of the Banana Rag, in 1981, and I almost let the mail accumulate, unanswered. Early in 1982, I convinced the local TV station to host my 10th anniversary April Fool's Day event; the Going Bananas Fashion Contest. I applied for a grant to create the new performance work, Why Banana? and in the fall of '82, toured it across Canada and the USA. After that, I applied for funding to produce About Vile, so that I could bring VILE to an official conclusion, use the materials that people had sent for it, and wrap up that period of my life. (my years in San Francisco '73-'81).
Once I had published About VILE (in 1983), the natural place to distribute it was the network. Once I started distributing it, of course, the responses started flowing in.... and I got caught up again in sending and receiving mail. I altered the format and focus of the Banana Rag, making it more a mail-art information/forum, than the strictly banana content of the earlier editions. I had overspent the budget to print About VILE, and ended up with a debt, no money, no job, and no commercial contacts in Vancouver. The printers wanted the balance due, and I approached them with the proposition; give me a job, and I'll pay what I owe. I was hired and worked there for two years, learning the ins and outs of full-color printing, doing paste-up and camera work, and a lot of in-house design.
In 1984, I was back in San Francisco for the Inter Dada '84 events, and spent 3 weeks working with my friend Victoria Kirkby on a performance, In the Red, which we presented in that festival. In '85 I did a performance art workshop with art students in Calgary. We worked with the material from "in the Red," producing a new work, In the Red, In the Black. In '85, I quit the producing job, and free-lanced my design services, both to the printer, and to other clients and connections I had begun to develop. I continued printing and sending the Banana Rag, and in the fall of '86, I did a second tour of Europe, this one solo.
RJ : At the moment you are very active with artistamps. When did you start with those? What is so fascinating about them?
Reply on : 3-6-1995
AB : I did my first artistamp in response to an invitation by Ed Varney in the mid-70's. He reproduced a number of my stamps on one of his many "anthology sheets." The first ones I did were in B&W, and he printed them in black and red. Then somewhere around '76 or '77, Eleanor Kent, who was a neighbor of mine in San Francisco, got a Color Xerox machine in her home, and invited me to come and work with it. I produced my first two editions on that machine, along with many other collages and postcards, and Eleanor introduced me to Jeff Errick of Ephemera, which produced buttons, postcards and stamps. He allowed me to go and perforate my stamps there, in trade for copies of each edition. I believe it was also during that period (late 70's) that Ed Higgins did his Nudes on Stamps book, producing sheets of artistamps from nude portraits of mail artists. On the cover of each issue, he stuck the stamp of the person to whom he was sending the catalogue.
While all of this whetted my appetite for the stamp format, it wasn't until I moved back to Vancouver, and started working at Intermedia Press, that I really got the BUG for stamps. I saw the editions Varney had produced, and found myself wanting that quality of reproduction and that quantity of stamps so that I could really USE them, not just trade sheets. Through my job at Intermedia, I learned the technology necessary to produce full color, photo offset editions, however I didn't put this into practice right away.
My initial editions done in Vancouver, were reproduced using Color Xerox, and these dated from 1984, when I had an artist in residence on Long Island, NY, and had the time and resources to experiment with the medium. I also did a series that year commemorating the Inter-Dada '84 Festival. The originals of these editions were still collages, as were my 15-sheet Euro-Tour Commemorative edition which I did in 1987 after my '86 European trip. For these editions, however, I utilized the brand new Canon Laser color copier, and was very impressed with the results. However, these were still pretty pricey to produce, and that's when I started doing the figuring necessary to cost out a full-color printed edition. I circulated this information in 1987, and in 1988 produced the first two editions of International Art Post. There are 16 editions of these in print to date, and considerably more of my own, limited editions, for which I still utilize the Canon Laser copier. (Full colour printing is still too costly to use for all my own editions).
There are many aspects of artistamps that engage my attention. I think the first thing that grabs me about them, is that they parody of an official currency/medium of exchange. People still do double-takes when looking at an envelope with artistamps on them. Because they look so REAL, the question always comes up, "are they real/legal?" , "Can I mail a letter with these?" I like this aspect, because it startles people, and makes them question what IS real. Since I have a healthy disrespect for most government agencies, this is very satisfying.
Another side of this aspect is that of putting ones own subject priorities on a stamp, claiming or assuming power, or the trapping of power, and again, demonstrating that often appearances are deceiving.
Years ago I gave up object making, as it produced too many bulky products that then had to be stored, framed, shipped, etc., all of which took up a lot of room and money. If you put $200 worth of materials and $500 worth of your time into a work, it wasn't easy to just give it away, and so one felt obliged to take care of there products. I felt there was already too much "stuff" in the world, and I didn't want to be producing more, especially of things that would tie me down, in terms of mobility, space, and resources. I gave up object making to become the Town Fool of Victoria, creating public events, interactions, and doing mail art.
The beauty of stamp art is that it doesn't take up a lot of room, doesn't require exotic equipment and supplies (other than a pin-hole perforator!). One doesn't have to have a huge studio in which to work. One can experiment with different medium without a big cost factor. One can produce a large body of work, and keep it all in one simple box on the shelf, or in an album. One can produce additional copies of an edition as they are required, rather than having to do a huge run all at once. One can send single sheets, or a whole show around the world without great expense, trade with other stamp makers, and produce limited editions at a relatively moderate cost.
Furthermore, they have a USE. They are not just for matting and framing, but torn up and put on envelopes, they become a colorful and provocative elements on a mail-art piece. One can make a statement with a stamp, in a very limited space. I LOVE THEM!
RJ : Because you are active in mail art for such a long time, you must have received a lot of mail art too. Did you keep it all? How would you describe 'your archive'
Reply on 28-07-1995
AB : Yes, I kept everything except for chain letters, which I either destroyed, or when I was feeling particularly patient, sent back to sender with a note explaining that I do not consider this form of communication in any way art, or even mail art. I think they are tyrannical and unimaginative, and I have NEVER responded to any of them as requested.
If I had only one word to describe my archive, it would be "humongous," or perhaps more accurately, "comprehensive." Being a "paper addict," and an "image junkie," I treasured the mail I received from the very beginning. When I left Canada in May of '73, driving in a Dodge van which I had modified to be my home, I carried with me my mail art archive which consisted of 2 boxes of material. When I took up residence in San Francisco in August of '73, one of my first purchases was a file cabinet. During my 8 years in San Francisco, the collection grew by leaps and bounds, partly because I was publishing VILE magazine, and everyone in the network then was anxious to have their works documented by having them reproduced in the magazine. I also continued publishing the BANANA RAG during that period, and that also drew numerous mailings from the network.
When I left San Francisco in 1981, I had 40 boxes of archival material shipped to me in Vancouver. While perhaps a third of that was books, at least half of them related to mail-art shows and projects, and a good many were "network 'zines." For the most part, I have filed the books, periodicals and catalogues separate from the letters and mailings, to make access to them easier. In the absence of a catalogue of the archive, this isn't the most satisfactory solution, since any time I wanted to refer to a particular artist, I couldn't go to just one place in the system to get a complete picture of their activity. I also streamed out postcards, as their own category, and in more recent years, have separated the artistamp sheets from the rest of the materials. The advantage of this system, of course, is that if I want to present a talk about postcards, artistamps, or books and 'zines, I don't have to go ploughing through all fifty boxes of material to find what I want. Maybe someday I'll get around to cataloguing it all, but having recently sold and catalogued 400 pieces to the National Postal Museum of Canada, I don't think that'll be any time soon. Cataloguing is a tedious and time consuming activity which I can't afford to do at this point. That's all for now, over and out-
RJ : It seems that the Postal Museums are very interested in mail art these last years. What are the plans of the Canadian Postal Museum with your collection?
Reply on 17-8-1995
AB : First I'd like to clarify for your readers, that the NPM has only 400 pieces of mail art from my archive; a very small sampling from my 23-year-accumulation. I think the postal museums have taken an interest in mail-art, as they are loosing their primary position in the world of communication due to phone, FAX and e-mail. While stamp collectors will no doubt continue to treasure the little bits of paper the post offices of the world issue, fewer and fewer people resort to the post office when they wish to communicate. And of course, with telephones, fewer people write letters than they did in times past, so where are they going to turn for new support and interest? Mail-art fills the bill very nicely. It's interesting, lively, international, visual, playful, creative, and relatively cheap, as art goes... and ANYONE can do it!
The National Postal Museum of Canada has not been very forthcoming about their plans for this collection. The most I know, is that they will use it for educational purposes, and to that end, will probably mount exhibitions from it, and offer workshops in their little gallery within the Museum of Civilization. They have spoken to me about a second mail-art exhibition which would focus on artistamps. The dates mentioned are well in the future, and from my experience in negotiating with them, it will be some time before anything conclusive will come out of these talks. They did suggest that they would like me to be the guest artist when this exhibit does come about, and of course I said I would be most interested. However, I'm not holding my breath about this one... the NPM is part of the large bureaucratic structure of the National Museum, and as such, decisions take a very long time. I will certainly keep you posted on developments.
RJ : Especially the last decade a lot of publications have been written about mail art (mostly by male mail artists). Is it always true what is written down?
Reply on 8-9-1995
AB : That's a biggie! What is the TRUTH? People have been searching for that one for centuries. I believe to a larger extent, people write what they BELIEVE to be true, but none of us is objective, and we all have our histories, friends, experiences which filter our perceptions. Further, no one individual can tell the "whole story" of mail art, because no one individual has all the contacts - it's NOT a finite system. An outsider researches the phenomena would never be able to cover the whole picture, because while mail art is not a finite system, it is also a changing one. People are constantly discovering the phenomena and starting exchanges while others quit and go on to other forms of expression. If it were made extinct, by say, the termination of the international mail system, THEN, perhaps, someone could do a complete picture of it, but even then, it is unlike that one researcher could unearth all the persons involved and review all the work that has been exchanged. Nor do I think it important that every work and every practitioner get a mention.
The whole point of mail art has been to be involved in a creative, expressive PROCESS of exchange, between two or more parties. You send out, and you get back. You have an audience that responds. If they don't respond, you don't send to them any more. This is the nature od mail art, and it can be represented by describing the types of materials exchanged, and the persons one knows of who make these exchanges. But this isn't the same as a history of mail art, and I rather doubt we will ever read one that is completely satisfactory to our own perception of the story, because it will not reflect our view of the thing.
For example, in an essay introducing a bibliography of mail art that sounds like the complete history when you read it, unless you happened to be active during the periods described, and your contribution to the process doesn't get mentioned. This is the situation I found myself in with that essay. I was very active in the 70's, publishing both the Banana Rag and VILE Magazine. I felt both were focal points in the network, and know that many persons contributed material to VILE in the hopes of being published. I felt that VILE was THE show-place of the network during the period of its publication (74-81), yet I nor VILE got a mention in that essay. What was written was "true," but incomplete, yet that essay will be quoted as "the story of mail art."
That essay was published in a mail art show catalogue a couple of years before it appeared in the bibliography. I wrote to the author and asked why I and my contribution to the network were omitted. He didn't respond to the question at first, and when he eventually did, he really didn't give any reason. Then he published it, unchanged, in the bibliography. I was outraged. He was well aware of my work, and of VILE, yet he decided not to mention it. I reviewed the bibliography in Umbrella, questioning this omission. However, the book is published, and in circulation. It won't be changed. It has authority. It is a massive work and very well done. Why did he choose to exclude me from that essay? I don't know.
In May of '94, he and I were both at the mail art congress in Quebec city. I asked him again, in person, why he had omitted me from that essay, and why he had refused to alter the piece when I raised the issue. He said he just wrote what came to mind when he was writing, and that he never changes a piece once it is written. So, from his perspective, my work in recording the network during the 70's was not important. Who can argue with what another considers important? The problem is, that what is written sounds like the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, when in fact, there is a considerable amount of opinion being expressed about the truth, in both what is said, and in what is omitted.
I can't comment on a lot of the other publications on mail art that have come out, as I haven't had the time to read them all. However, I'm sure similar situations exists, and the contributions of many others, often women, have been overlooked, or disregarded in the great move now afoot, to record the history of mail art.
I think that, generally speaking, each person who writes about mail art attempts to tell "the true story." As readers, we have to remember that each person must and will tell it from their own perspective; with all their likes and dislikes, opinions, priorities, and experiences between them and the phenomena we've come to know as mail art.
RJ:Well, in a way I am looking for this "true story" and am currently doing these mail-interviews where I don't edit the answers as much as possible. I already sent you some interviews. Any reaction to the last one I sent you?
Reply on 8-9-1995
AB:I am enjoying reading the interviews, and found the current one you sent, arto posto's to be quite stimulating. I was interested to note her making a distinction between the original mail art network, and the rubber-stamp net being spawned by Rubberstampmadness. I've been watching RSM's development for some time, and note that many of the advertisers are running CONTESTS to get readers to send in artworks, with PRIZES offered for the best work! This is NOT in the mail art tradition, nor is all the "how-to/techniques" articles that are run in RSM. What I see happening there, is the gentrification of mail art, ie. the "taming of the shrew."
Since RSM is basically a commercial magazine, with enormous amounts of advertising which represents a lot of money changing hands over the purchase of rubber stamps, supplies, papers, etc. all related to THE CRAFT of rubber-stamping, naturally, the results are more predictable. The focus in this rubber-stamp movement - moving into main stream America - is decorative, rather than revolutionary. This focus on craft and technique produces "pretty" art-works, but entirely misses the CONTENT with which mail art rubber stamping began; ie. the usurping of an initially business technology (the rubber stamp) for the expression of radical, anti-established, anti-consumerist sentiment.
I find it amusing and ironic that mail art, which while radical and critical in outlook, was always about inclusive; anyone can do it - everyone has something to say, everyone's work is to be of equal value, etc. etc. etc. , is now being watered down by this great rubber-stamp connection to mail-stream America via RSM. In place of discussion of political, economical, human rights or artistic philosophies, we now find techniques and how-to articles flooding the pages. Criticism of the status quo has definitely taken the back seat, if it has not been left behind all together.
I was also interested in arto posto's comments about how she hasn't time to keep up with all the contacts she gets, let alone deal with all the responses she gets from the internet. That's why I have avoided the internet - I am already overwhelmed by the amount of mail I get, and I can't imagine trying to keep up with more. I am definitely NOT a mail-art crusader, nor do I approve of persons setting themselves up as mail-art experts, and doing workshops to teach others techniques, passing out mailing lists, etc. There are already too many people exchanging to be able to keep up with it all, without going out and beating the bushes to get more recruits.
The funny thing is, Vittore Baroni, Guy Bleus and other earlier mail artists (myself included) all started out attempting to contact EVERYONE in the network, then after a few years, realized that the more people one contacted, the heavier the burden of reply became. In the beginning, it was great fun to get lots of new contacts, but there seems to come a turning point, when the load gets too heavy, both in terms of one's time and $$$, when it is no longer possible to respond to everyone who sends you mail.... that response becomes a burden rather than a joy. Myself, Baroni and Bleus have all written on this point, and it appears that Baroni has pretty much dropped out of networking, and I have curtailed my mailings to fewer people, and very few shows, aside from Artistamp News to which individuals must subscribe, or I can't possibly afford to continue the contact. Bleus appears to be continuing to attempt to be there for everyone, and I wonder how long he will last at it.
RJ : Should the "earlier mail artists" , as you call them, learn the newcomers what mail art is about, or should they find it out for themselves?
Reply on 26-9-1995
AB : I don't see it as the role of 'earlier mail artists" to instruct newcomers to the field. This is a free playing field, and one of the joys of it was the lack of rules - except, of course, rules were made up and issued - in some cases, almost as demands. This network is evolving, as it always has, since Johnson's first mailings, since the FLUXUS artists first mailings. In those days (1960's and 70's), it was perpetrated by artists who celebrated their being outside the "real art world." ...but who were none-the-less, big time players in that world. Those initial players were critical of the status quo on many levels; from the tightly focussed elitism of the Art World, to the "american way of life," (ie. consumption).
FILE magazine in the early 70's brought a whole other community of artists into contact with each other, and these were the artists who carried the ball after 1974. These were still persons who perceived themselves as artists, but ones who enjoyed their "outsider" status; artists who didn't get shows in commercial galleries, or anywhere else, and who celebrated their discontent with very dada sorts of artworks. The network became their showplace, and their disaffected attitudes and criticisms of main-stream America were exchanged via the mail; then, more frequently through the late 70's and 80's, were exhibited in mail art shows. The one-to-one exchanges were replaced by growing numbers of mail art exhibits and projects to which one could send one's work, and get one's name in a catalogue. Witness the show listings in Global Mail, if there is any question about this.
In the past five years or so, a number of practitioners (Michael Jacobs, John Held, Peter Küstermann, for example) seem to have become crusaders, and with an almost religious zeal, go about giving workshops to "get everyone to join in," rather than simply continuing to explore and enjoy their existing contacts. Providing information about the network seems OK to me - if people "get it," and want to participate, fine, one has facilitated that connection. However, these workshops in techniques seem self-serving in that, in the guise of "spreading the word," the motivation behind them is either to get paid the fee for doing the workshop, or to sell products; rubber stamps, supplies and equipment - which is a long way from the original critical stance of those engaged in mail art.
All that said, I must come back to your question and say I don't believe there are any valid "shoulds," in mail art. Mail art is an ever-changing, evolving networking practice, and it is futile to attempt to tell anyone how they "should" do it. For me, it is not as interesting to exchange with persons who focus on how-to/techniques, or concern about producing decorative, saleable greeting cards and the like, as with those whose focus is a critique of the society in which we live. However, if people are getting their creative juices flowing doing these things, then BRAVO. Carry on, do it, enjoy it, send it out and let the network evolve! This is still far superior to spending one's time in front of the tube, and I applaud it.
Maybe this is a good point to end? Unless you have some more provocative questions.... Go Bananas!
RJ : Yes, I think it is a good moment to end this interview. But even after ending the interview, I will keep asking questions now and then....! Thank you for this interview.
THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH ANNA BANANA 13
Started on: 3-12-1994
RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
Reply on: 7-1-1995
AB : This is one of those questions I've answered so many times, I thought everyone knew by now! Anyway, for the record, here goes. In 1971, I was living outside the small town of Sooke, on Vancouver Island. In an attempt to connect with some creative people, I declared myself the Town Fool of Victoria, capital of the province of British Colombia, some 36 miles from where I was living. That turned out to be an uphill climb, and in an effort to communicate with the populace of Victoria, I started publishing the Banana Rag. I delivered copies of this newsletter by hand to a number of public schools in the Victoria area, and while I was at it, I mailed copies to some of my artist friends in Vancouver.
The response from the schools was varied, and in some instances, I was invited into the schools to do activities with the students. One of my friends in Vancouver who was then a member of the Image Bank collective, responded with a copy of the Image Bank Request List. This little 2-page flyer brought the first information I had that there was, in fact, a network. It was a list of names and addresses of artists, and the sorts of images they wanted to receive; lips, clouds, 50's cars, that sort of thing.
I went through my stack of old clip magazines and put together an envelope for each of the perhaps 20 artists listed, and mailed them out, with a copy of the Banana Rag, and a note stating that I was interested in receiving ANYTHING to do with bananas; images, news stories, jokes, music, whatever, as long as it had a reference to bananas. Within 2 or 3 weeks, my mail-box came alive, and here I had the sort of enthusiasm and response I was missing elsewhere in my life. Amongst the bananas, there were samples of the others' work, invitations to projects, etc., and before I knew it, I was HOOKED.
In the course of the next year and a half, I responded to all the mail I received, participated in all projects I heard about, and expanded the number of artists I was exchanging with to perhaps 100. When I left Sooke, it was to go on the road, to meet my correspondents, and decide where I would live next. I intended to drive across Canada, down the eastern USA, across the southern states, and up to the West Coast. However,the van I bought to make this trip in turned out to be a lemon, and my start was delayed for 6 months. When I did leave Canada in May of 1973, I went south into Washington, Oregon and California. In the Bay Area, I met with all 12 of my mail art connections, and decided pretty quickly that that was the place for me to live.
However since I had written to all my correspondents that I was heading their way, I went on with the trip for another 2 months, after which, I realized a number of things:
1 The USA is huge, and driving across it more time consuming than I had figured.
2 Driving alone across vast stretches of the continent was not all that much fun.
3 Most of my correspondents were men, and most of them had wives or lovers who, while they tolerated my visit, were none too enthused about it.
4 In San Francisco, I had met my future husband, and I knew that was where I wanted to live. I decided to quit the mega-trip, and headed back to San Francisco at the end of August, where I settled down for the next 8 years, getting even more committed to mail art with the publication of VILE magazine, which I began in 1974.
RJ : This extensive answer arises a lot of questions in me, but I have to settle for one now. Some mail-artists have a private life besides their mail-art life, but in your case it seems that your private life and your mail-art world got completely integrated. I remember the issue VILE (#8, 1983), and it looked like your life and your art were the same at that moment. Some photo's of you and Bill Gaglione indicate the same. Am I right?
Reply on : 18-4-1995
AB : During those years with Bill, we were both very involved with mail art and performance art, and there was very little time for anything else (except the everyday jobs/work we did to support that activity which took up the majority of our time! We just don't write about that stuff.), so I suppose you are right, at that moment, my life and art were very integrated. What isn't apparent from that view you had of us from VILE #8, is that we both DID have jobs or paying work that is never spoken about in the context of the magazine.The humdrum work that just about everyone has to do to pay the bills. Bill had a variety of jobs over the year, and after working in a print shop, and for a weekly newspaper, I started my own graphic design and production company, Banana Productions, which is how I earned the money to publish VILE and the Banana Rag.
Certainly our performing, publishing and mail-art activities did NOT pay our rent, or put food on the table, and we both spent a good deal of our time at those money-earning activities in order to SUPPORT our mail art, publishing and performance work. Further, we both had friends and activities that were not related to art, but our social life was within a circle of art-related friends, and many of my friends in San Francisco were persons with whom I had exchanged mail-art before I went there.
RJ : Why did the VILE magazine stop? What was your next step?
Reply on : 9-5-1995
AB : It cost too much to produce and mail. It took too much time and there were other things I wanted to do. I felt hemmed in by the need to "do the next issue." Bill wanted to take it in directions that weren't consistent with my initial concept of it. My relationship with Bill was falling apart. I was tired of the vile focus, and felt it wasn't an appropriate publication in which to air other sides of my perceptions and activities. I'd "been there, done that," and it was time to move along, do something else.
At the beginning of our cross Canada tour of 1980, we were offered a sublet on an apartment in Vancouver. We had been evicted from our apartment in San Francisco the month before we left, and had put all our things in storage. We decided to take the sublet and move to Vancouver - a MAJOR change. That never happened. I moved and he stayed.
Arriving in Vancouver in late January 1981, I was like a fish out of water. I didn't know at that point that Bill would not be coming up, but I was still feeling very displaced. All my close friends were in San Francisco, and the situation I moved into wasn't quite what I had imagined it to be. In late February I went back to SF to do a final performance with Bill, one we had scheduled before the trip. At that time it became clear that he wouldn't be moving to Canada.
During those first two years in Canada, I tried to quit mail art. I did only one issue of the Banana Rag, in 1981, and I almost let the mail accumulate, unanswered. Early in 1982, I convinced the local TV station to host my 10th anniversary April Fool's Day event; the Going Bananas Fashion Contest. I applied for a grant to create the new performance work, Why Banana? and in the fall of '82, toured it across Canada and the USA. After that, I applied for funding to produce About Vile, so that I could bring VILE to an official conclusion, use the materials that people had sent for it, and wrap up that period of my life. (my years in San Francisco '73-'81).
Once I had published About VILE (in 1983), the natural place to distribute it was the network. Once I started distributing it, of course, the responses started flowing in.... and I got caught up again in sending and receiving mail. I altered the format and focus of the Banana Rag, making it more a mail-art information/forum, than the strictly banana content of the earlier editions. I had overspent the budget to print About VILE, and ended up with a debt, no money, no job, and no commercial contacts in Vancouver. The printers wanted the balance due, and I approached them with the proposition; give me a job, and I'll pay what I owe. I was hired and worked there for two years, learning the ins and outs of full-color printing, doing paste-up and camera work, and a lot of in-house design.
In 1984, I was back in San Francisco for the Inter Dada '84 events, and spent 3 weeks working with my friend Victoria Kirkby on a performance, In the Red, which we presented in that festival. In '85 I did a performance art workshop with art students in Calgary. We worked with the material from "in the Red," producing a new work, In the Red, In the Black. In '85, I quit the producing job, and free-lanced my design services, both to the printer, and to other clients and connections I had begun to develop. I continued printing and sending the Banana Rag, and in the fall of '86, I did a second tour of Europe, this one solo.
RJ : At the moment you are very active with artistamps. When did you start with those? What is so fascinating about them?
Reply on : 3-6-1995
AB : I did my first artistamp in response to an invitation by Ed Varney in the mid-70's. He reproduced a number of my stamps on one of his many "anthology sheets." The first ones I did were in B&W, and he printed them in black and red. Then somewhere around '76 or '77, Eleanor Kent, who was a neighbor of mine in San Francisco, got a Color Xerox machine in her home, and invited me to come and work with it. I produced my first two editions on that machine, along with many other collages and postcards, and Eleanor introduced me to Jeff Errick of Ephemera, which produced buttons, postcards and stamps. He allowed me to go and perforate my stamps there, in trade for copies of each edition. I believe it was also during that period (late 70's) that Ed Higgins did his Nudes on Stamps book, producing sheets of artistamps from nude portraits of mail artists. On the cover of each issue, he stuck the stamp of the person to whom he was sending the catalogue.
While all of this whetted my appetite for the stamp format, it wasn't until I moved back to Vancouver, and started working at Intermedia Press, that I really got the BUG for stamps. I saw the editions Varney had produced, and found myself wanting that quality of reproduction and that quantity of stamps so that I could really USE them, not just trade sheets. Through my job at Intermedia, I learned the technology necessary to produce full color, photo offset editions, however I didn't put this into practice right away.
My initial editions done in Vancouver, were reproduced using Color Xerox, and these dated from 1984, when I had an artist in residence on Long Island, NY, and had the time and resources to experiment with the medium. I also did a series that year commemorating the Inter-Dada '84 Festival. The originals of these editions were still collages, as were my 15-sheet Euro-Tour Commemorative edition which I did in 1987 after my '86 European trip. For these editions, however, I utilized the brand new Canon Laser color copier, and was very impressed with the results. However, these were still pretty pricey to produce, and that's when I started doing the figuring necessary to cost out a full-color printed edition. I circulated this information in 1987, and in 1988 produced the first two editions of International Art Post. There are 16 editions of these in print to date, and considerably more of my own, limited editions, for which I still utilize the Canon Laser copier. (Full colour printing is still too costly to use for all my own editions).
There are many aspects of artistamps that engage my attention. I think the first thing that grabs me about them, is that they parody of an official currency/medium of exchange. People still do double-takes when looking at an envelope with artistamps on them. Because they look so REAL, the question always comes up, "are they real/legal?" , "Can I mail a letter with these?" I like this aspect, because it startles people, and makes them question what IS real. Since I have a healthy disrespect for most government agencies, this is very satisfying.
Another side of this aspect is that of putting ones own subject priorities on a stamp, claiming or assuming power, or the trapping of power, and again, demonstrating that often appearances are deceiving.
Years ago I gave up object making, as it produced too many bulky products that then had to be stored, framed, shipped, etc., all of which took up a lot of room and money. If you put $200 worth of materials and $500 worth of your time into a work, it wasn't easy to just give it away, and so one felt obliged to take care of there products. I felt there was already too much "stuff" in the world, and I didn't want to be producing more, especially of things that would tie me down, in terms of mobility, space, and resources. I gave up object making to become the Town Fool of Victoria, creating public events, interactions, and doing mail art.
The beauty of stamp art is that it doesn't take up a lot of room, doesn't require exotic equipment and supplies (other than a pin-hole perforator!). One doesn't have to have a huge studio in which to work. One can experiment with different medium without a big cost factor. One can produce a large body of work, and keep it all in one simple box on the shelf, or in an album. One can produce additional copies of an edition as they are required, rather than having to do a huge run all at once. One can send single sheets, or a whole show around the world without great expense, trade with other stamp makers, and produce limited editions at a relatively moderate cost.
Furthermore, they have a USE. They are not just for matting and framing, but torn up and put on envelopes, they become a colorful and provocative elements on a mail-art piece. One can make a statement with a stamp, in a very limited space. I LOVE THEM!
RJ : Because you are active in mail art for such a long time, you must have received a lot of mail art too. Did you keep it all? How would you describe 'your archive'
Reply on 28-07-1995
AB : Yes, I kept everything except for chain letters, which I either destroyed, or when I was feeling particularly patient, sent back to sender with a note explaining that I do not consider this form of communication in any way art, or even mail art. I think they are tyrannical and unimaginative, and I have NEVER responded to any of them as requested.
If I had only one word to describe my archive, it would be "humongous," or perhaps more accurately, "comprehensive." Being a "paper addict," and an "image junkie," I treasured the mail I received from the very beginning. When I left Canada in May of '73, driving in a Dodge van which I had modified to be my home, I carried with me my mail art archive which consisted of 2 boxes of material. When I took up residence in San Francisco in August of '73, one of my first purchases was a file cabinet. During my 8 years in San Francisco, the collection grew by leaps and bounds, partly because I was publishing VILE magazine, and everyone in the network then was anxious to have their works documented by having them reproduced in the magazine. I also continued publishing the BANANA RAG during that period, and that also drew numerous mailings from the network.
When I left San Francisco in 1981, I had 40 boxes of archival material shipped to me in Vancouver. While perhaps a third of that was books, at least half of them related to mail-art shows and projects, and a good many were "network 'zines." For the most part, I have filed the books, periodicals and catalogues separate from the letters and mailings, to make access to them easier. In the absence of a catalogue of the archive, this isn't the most satisfactory solution, since any time I wanted to refer to a particular artist, I couldn't go to just one place in the system to get a complete picture of their activity. I also streamed out postcards, as their own category, and in more recent years, have separated the artistamp sheets from the rest of the materials. The advantage of this system, of course, is that if I want to present a talk about postcards, artistamps, or books and 'zines, I don't have to go ploughing through all fifty boxes of material to find what I want. Maybe someday I'll get around to cataloguing it all, but having recently sold and catalogued 400 pieces to the National Postal Museum of Canada, I don't think that'll be any time soon. Cataloguing is a tedious and time consuming activity which I can't afford to do at this point. That's all for now, over and out-
RJ : It seems that the Postal Museums are very interested in mail art these last years. What are the plans of the Canadian Postal Museum with your collection?
Reply on 17-8-1995
AB : First I'd like to clarify for your readers, that the NPM has only 400 pieces of mail art from my archive; a very small sampling from my 23-year-accumulation. I think the postal museums have taken an interest in mail-art, as they are loosing their primary position in the world of communication due to phone, FAX and e-mail. While stamp collectors will no doubt continue to treasure the little bits of paper the post offices of the world issue, fewer and fewer people resort to the post office when they wish to communicate. And of course, with telephones, fewer people write letters than they did in times past, so where are they going to turn for new support and interest? Mail-art fills the bill very nicely. It's interesting, lively, international, visual, playful, creative, and relatively cheap, as art goes... and ANYONE can do it!
The National Postal Museum of Canada has not been very forthcoming about their plans for this collection. The most I know, is that they will use it for educational purposes, and to that end, will probably mount exhibitions from it, and offer workshops in their little gallery within the Museum of Civilization. They have spoken to me about a second mail-art exhibition which would focus on artistamps. The dates mentioned are well in the future, and from my experience in negotiating with them, it will be some time before anything conclusive will come out of these talks. They did suggest that they would like me to be the guest artist when this exhibit does come about, and of course I said I would be most interested. However, I'm not holding my breath about this one... the NPM is part of the large bureaucratic structure of the National Museum, and as such, decisions take a very long time. I will certainly keep you posted on developments.
RJ : Especially the last decade a lot of publications have been written about mail art (mostly by male mail artists). Is it always true what is written down?
Reply on 8-9-1995
AB : That's a biggie! What is the TRUTH? People have been searching for that one for centuries. I believe to a larger extent, people write what they BELIEVE to be true, but none of us is objective, and we all have our histories, friends, experiences which filter our perceptions. Further, no one individual can tell the "whole story" of mail art, because no one individual has all the contacts - it's NOT a finite system. An outsider researches the phenomena would never be able to cover the whole picture, because while mail art is not a finite system, it is also a changing one. People are constantly discovering the phenomena and starting exchanges while others quit and go on to other forms of expression. If it were made extinct, by say, the termination of the international mail system, THEN, perhaps, someone could do a complete picture of it, but even then, it is unlike that one researcher could unearth all the persons involved and review all the work that has been exchanged. Nor do I think it important that every work and every practitioner get a mention.
The whole point of mail art has been to be involved in a creative, expressive PROCESS of exchange, between two or more parties. You send out, and you get back. You have an audience that responds. If they don't respond, you don't send to them any more. This is the nature od mail art, and it can be represented by describing the types of materials exchanged, and the persons one knows of who make these exchanges. But this isn't the same as a history of mail art, and I rather doubt we will ever read one that is completely satisfactory to our own perception of the story, because it will not reflect our view of the thing.
For example, in an essay introducing a bibliography of mail art that sounds like the complete history when you read it, unless you happened to be active during the periods described, and your contribution to the process doesn't get mentioned. This is the situation I found myself in with that essay. I was very active in the 70's, publishing both the Banana Rag and VILE Magazine. I felt both were focal points in the network, and know that many persons contributed material to VILE in the hopes of being published. I felt that VILE was THE show-place of the network during the period of its publication (74-81), yet I nor VILE got a mention in that essay. What was written was "true," but incomplete, yet that essay will be quoted as "the story of mail art."
That essay was published in a mail art show catalogue a couple of years before it appeared in the bibliography. I wrote to the author and asked why I and my contribution to the network were omitted. He didn't respond to the question at first, and when he eventually did, he really didn't give any reason. Then he published it, unchanged, in the bibliography. I was outraged. He was well aware of my work, and of VILE, yet he decided not to mention it. I reviewed the bibliography in Umbrella, questioning this omission. However, the book is published, and in circulation. It won't be changed. It has authority. It is a massive work and very well done. Why did he choose to exclude me from that essay? I don't know.
In May of '94, he and I were both at the mail art congress in Quebec city. I asked him again, in person, why he had omitted me from that essay, and why he had refused to alter the piece when I raised the issue. He said he just wrote what came to mind when he was writing, and that he never changes a piece once it is written. So, from his perspective, my work in recording the network during the 70's was not important. Who can argue with what another considers important? The problem is, that what is written sounds like the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, when in fact, there is a considerable amount of opinion being expressed about the truth, in both what is said, and in what is omitted.
I can't comment on a lot of the other publications on mail art that have come out, as I haven't had the time to read them all. However, I'm sure similar situations exists, and the contributions of many others, often women, have been overlooked, or disregarded in the great move now afoot, to record the history of mail art.
I think that, generally speaking, each person who writes about mail art attempts to tell "the true story." As readers, we have to remember that each person must and will tell it from their own perspective; with all their likes and dislikes, opinions, priorities, and experiences between them and the phenomena we've come to know as mail art.
RJ:Well, in a way I am looking for this "true story" and am currently doing these mail-interviews where I don't edit the answers as much as possible. I already sent you some interviews. Any reaction to the last one I sent you?
Reply on 8-9-1995
AB:I am enjoying reading the interviews, and found the current one you sent, arto posto's to be quite stimulating. I was interested to note her making a distinction between the original mail art network, and the rubber-stamp net being spawned by Rubberstampmadness. I've been watching RSM's development for some time, and note that many of the advertisers are running CONTESTS to get readers to send in artworks, with PRIZES offered for the best work! This is NOT in the mail art tradition, nor is all the "how-to/techniques" articles that are run in RSM. What I see happening there, is the gentrification of mail art, ie. the "taming of the shrew."
Since RSM is basically a commercial magazine, with enormous amounts of advertising which represents a lot of money changing hands over the purchase of rubber stamps, supplies, papers, etc. all related to THE CRAFT of rubber-stamping, naturally, the results are more predictable. The focus in this rubber-stamp movement - moving into main stream America - is decorative, rather than revolutionary. This focus on craft and technique produces "pretty" art-works, but entirely misses the CONTENT with which mail art rubber stamping began; ie. the usurping of an initially business technology (the rubber stamp) for the expression of radical, anti-established, anti-consumerist sentiment.
I find it amusing and ironic that mail art, which while radical and critical in outlook, was always about inclusive; anyone can do it - everyone has something to say, everyone's work is to be of equal value, etc. etc. etc. , is now being watered down by this great rubber-stamp connection to mail-stream America via RSM. In place of discussion of political, economical, human rights or artistic philosophies, we now find techniques and how-to articles flooding the pages. Criticism of the status quo has definitely taken the back seat, if it has not been left behind all together.
I was also interested in arto posto's comments about how she hasn't time to keep up with all the contacts she gets, let alone deal with all the responses she gets from the internet. That's why I have avoided the internet - I am already overwhelmed by the amount of mail I get, and I can't imagine trying to keep up with more. I am definitely NOT a mail-art crusader, nor do I approve of persons setting themselves up as mail-art experts, and doing workshops to teach others techniques, passing out mailing lists, etc. There are already too many people exchanging to be able to keep up with it all, without going out and beating the bushes to get more recruits.
The funny thing is, Vittore Baroni, Guy Bleus and other earlier mail artists (myself included) all started out attempting to contact EVERYONE in the network, then after a few years, realized that the more people one contacted, the heavier the burden of reply became. In the beginning, it was great fun to get lots of new contacts, but there seems to come a turning point, when the load gets too heavy, both in terms of one's time and $$$, when it is no longer possible to respond to everyone who sends you mail.... that response becomes a burden rather than a joy. Myself, Baroni and Bleus have all written on this point, and it appears that Baroni has pretty much dropped out of networking, and I have curtailed my mailings to fewer people, and very few shows, aside from Artistamp News to which individuals must subscribe, or I can't possibly afford to continue the contact. Bleus appears to be continuing to attempt to be there for everyone, and I wonder how long he will last at it.
RJ : Should the "earlier mail artists" , as you call them, learn the newcomers what mail art is about, or should they find it out for themselves?
Reply on 26-9-1995
AB : I don't see it as the role of 'earlier mail artists" to instruct newcomers to the field. This is a free playing field, and one of the joys of it was the lack of rules - except, of course, rules were made up and issued - in some cases, almost as demands. This network is evolving, as it always has, since Johnson's first mailings, since the FLUXUS artists first mailings. In those days (1960's and 70's), it was perpetrated by artists who celebrated their being outside the "real art world." ...but who were none-the-less, big time players in that world. Those initial players were critical of the status quo on many levels; from the tightly focussed elitism of the Art World, to the "american way of life," (ie. consumption).
FILE magazine in the early 70's brought a whole other community of artists into contact with each other, and these were the artists who carried the ball after 1974. These were still persons who perceived themselves as artists, but ones who enjoyed their "outsider" status; artists who didn't get shows in commercial galleries, or anywhere else, and who celebrated their discontent with very dada sorts of artworks. The network became their showplace, and their disaffected attitudes and criticisms of main-stream America were exchanged via the mail; then, more frequently through the late 70's and 80's, were exhibited in mail art shows. The one-to-one exchanges were replaced by growing numbers of mail art exhibits and projects to which one could send one's work, and get one's name in a catalogue. Witness the show listings in Global Mail, if there is any question about this.
In the past five years or so, a number of practitioners (Michael Jacobs, John Held, Peter Küstermann, for example) seem to have become crusaders, and with an almost religious zeal, go about giving workshops to "get everyone to join in," rather than simply continuing to explore and enjoy their existing contacts. Providing information about the network seems OK to me - if people "get it," and want to participate, fine, one has facilitated that connection. However, these workshops in techniques seem self-serving in that, in the guise of "spreading the word," the motivation behind them is either to get paid the fee for doing the workshop, or to sell products; rubber stamps, supplies and equipment - which is a long way from the original critical stance of those engaged in mail art.
All that said, I must come back to your question and say I don't believe there are any valid "shoulds," in mail art. Mail art is an ever-changing, evolving networking practice, and it is futile to attempt to tell anyone how they "should" do it. For me, it is not as interesting to exchange with persons who focus on how-to/techniques, or concern about producing decorative, saleable greeting cards and the like, as with those whose focus is a critique of the society in which we live. However, if people are getting their creative juices flowing doing these things, then BRAVO. Carry on, do it, enjoy it, send it out and let the network evolve! This is still far superior to spending one's time in front of the tube, and I applaud it.
Maybe this is a good point to end? Unless you have some more provocative questions.... Go Bananas!
RJ : Yes, I think it is a good moment to end this interview. But even after ending the interview, I will keep asking questions now and then....! Thank you for this interview.
Mail-Interview with Tim Mancusi (USA)
THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH TIM MANCUSI 64
by Ruud Janssen
Started on 25-3-1996
RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
Reply on 12-4-1996
TM : My involvement with mail art began directly and abruptly in February, 1969. I was 18 years old and a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. As an assignment in my Environmental Arts Class our teacher, Stephen Kaltenbach asked us "to find out who Ray Johnson is and get involved with his art". At the time Ray was represented at the Feigen Gallery which was a subway ride away from class. I remember being really impressed with his collages which were embellished with cursive text done with a crow guill pen loaded with India ink. He would also distress the surface of his collages with sandpaper. At that time I believe Ray had just moved from his Suffolk Street address in N.Y. to his Glen Cove address on Long Island, about 20 minutes from my home town.
I remember telling Stephen Kaltenbach at the end of the school year in May '69 that I was really glad he gave us this assignment and that I believed it would continue after the semester was over. Little did I know that it would continue for 26 years until Ray's death in january 1995. Or that it would put me in touch with hundreds of artists around the world and be the reason I'm currently involved with a career in rubber stamps.
RJ : More students besides you got the same assignment. Did they became all active mail artists? If not, why did you?
Reply on 29-4-1996
TM : As far as I can tell, almost all of the students in my class probably stopped corresponding with Ray after the Spring semester ended. Although there must have been more, I know of only one student, Mike Mahoney who kept involved in mail art for a few years.
In fact one evening in June, 1972 Mike, Bill Gaglione and myself visited Ray at the Pink House in Locust Valley. Why I continued corresponding while most students faded away is probably simply the odds. I loved the process and I loved Ray's drawings, plus it was fun.
RJ : How did you get involved with rubber stamps?
TM : Once again, I can trace my interest in rubber stamps to Ray Johnson. He would often add to his mailings with a stamped expression, usually a one line pun referring to someone he knew in the art world. These stamps were typeset (almost always in 12pt. Helvetica) and stamped in red, blue or purple. What I liked about them was that "stamped" look - uneven coverage, a little blurry, perfectly imperfect.
After I moved from Levittown, N.Y. to San Francisco, I worked with my cousin, Bill Gaglione in an art supply store. Across the street was Patrick's Office Supply store. It was there, that Bill and I had our first rubber stamps made. (The stamp division at Patrick's was run by Bob Grimes, who years later, would be made famous by Leavenworth Jackson). In June 1970, I had Patrick's make 3 different images of clouds I had drawn into rubber stamps. Soon after I drew 2 more, the man on the moon and the planet Saturn for Hervé Fischer's early anthology of international stamp art. It waas a precursor of an industry yet to come.
In 1979 a friend, Joel Rossman, bought a small vulcanizer and we all started making stamps like crazy. This collaboration among Joel, Bill and myself led to the publication of STAMP ART which was a compilation of rubber stamped artwork mailed to contributors. The legacy of STAMP ART is that it led directly to the formation of 2 of the world's most successful rubber stamp manufacturers - Gaglione's Stamp Francisco, and the company I work for, Rossman's Personal Stamp Exchange.
RJ : Your move to San Francisco, the Bay Area, I also bring in connection to the "Bay Area Dadaists". What happened there?
Reply on 1-6-1996
TM : What happened in San Francisco was a convergence of creative energy in a place and time that discouraged limitations. The sky was the limit. With an affinity for dadaism, not just as a period of art but as a way of living Bill, myself and other artist friends, (in particular Steve Caravello, Charles Chickadel and Monte Cazazza) used the City as a backdrop for our numerous activities. We would mail and/or hand out invitations to strangers in the street to come to our gallery openings, group photo's, performances, parties and other events. Anyone who asked us "What's mail art?" soon found themselves corresponding with Ray Johnson, The Northwest Mounted Valise, General Idea, The Western Front and other mail artists throughout Europe and Central America.
Mail art was exploding at the time and we found it easier to keep up with it all by having our collages, statements and drawings printed in small runs of 50 or 100 copies. We were the originators of what Ant Farm called "Quikcopy Art" and we stretched the limits of paper plate printing technology.
Through the years, various artists would visit the Bay Area and join in the art-making. For example, Anna Banana came down from Canada in 1973, stayed, married Bill and contributed immensely throughout the 70's to the Bay Area Dada Scene. The people, the events, the happenings, in retrospect are almost too numerous to record in such an interview as this. I could go on for pages but I'll end it here so you can ask another question.
RJ : What is the story about the Weekly Breeder? Do you know how it got started, and can you tell me what it "was all about".....
Reply on 17-6-1996
(Together with Tim Mancusi's answer he sent me 3 original copies of the Weekly Breeder to illustrate in full detail what the magazine was all about. The magazines were also meant as a gift to the TAM-Archive! Thanks Tim!)
TM : The "New York Correspondence School Weekly Breeder" as it was originally called was started by Ken Friedman in 1970 or '71. Keep in mind that the name "New York Correspondence School" was invented by Ray Johnson as a pun on the "New York School" which referred to that group of painters living and showing in New York during the 50's. Ray Johnson knew these artists and also experimented early in his career with abstract expressionism. So as the concept of mail art was coalescing Ray probably thought it would be funny to stick the word "correspondence" (or sometimes "corresondance") in the middle of New York School to give what he was doing both an identity and validity. There was always an underlying "tongue-in-cheek" aspect to his motives.
Current art scholars consider Johnson's art to be the numerous collages he made and showed mainly at the Feigen Gallery in New York City. His invention of mail art is still considered by the powers that be in the art world as an interesting sideline but not a true art movement. And I'm sure Ray was aware of that at the time. So he was just having fun with this thing that he knew was both very powerful but also invisible. At least this is my theory on how and why Ray identified his postal endeavors as "The New York Correspondence School" and it explains half of the Weekly Breeder's name.
Ken Friedman was a teenager when he became interested in the activities of the international group of artists known as Fluxus, who had their heydays mainly in the early 60's. Ken identified with the Fluxus artists and formed Fluxus West which was not any real organisation or group. It was just him. Ken was eventually turned on to what Ray was doing probably via Fluxus artists. Dick Higgins, Both Fluxus and the NYCS shared the commonality of a Zen sensibility and it was in that spirit that Ken started printing and mailing out his single sheet "NYCS Weekly Breeder". (The Weekly Breeder part of the title is a take off on the "Weekly Reader" which was a current affairs newsletter distributed to American public school children). It was also a way for Ken to align himself with Ray's increasing populariry. So Ken published about 10 of these sheets and actually mailed them out every week. In 1971, for whatever reason he asked Stu Horn in Cherry Hill, New Jersey if he would continue to put it out. Stu, an excellent mail artist who corresponded as "The Northwest Mounted Valise" added an extra page or two and continued publishing it for another 6 months or so. The NYCS Weekly Breeder at that time looked like a page from a dadaist scrapbook. Mainly short, absurd articles and weird pictures taken from the daily newspaper and collaged together. Similar to the type of xeroxed pages Ray might enclose in his envelopes, just more structured. When Stu decided to travel to Europe for the summer he wrote and asked me if I would continue to publish the Breeder. I was thrilled and jumped on the oppotunity.
I put out our first issue in May of 1972. It was 2 pages with a staple in the upper left hand corner. We printed 200 copies and mailed them out to whoever was on mine and Gaglione's combined list. Because we split the printing costs we each got half of what remained after mailing. And of course Bill was assistant editor. That issue was the first time we referred to ourselves as "the Bay Area Dadaists". The second issue was 6 pages long with 2 staples on the left side. The staples were significant because now it was becoming a "zine". Our third issue was about 15 pages. Each issue got bigger and more expensive to print. It was no longer weekly and months would go by between issues.
The weekly Breeder gave me an opportunity to merge my interests in dada and mail art with my skills in graphic arts. I could draw like an underground cartoonist, do interesting designs with type and lettering, make Max Ernst-type collages all while poking fun at politics and religion. We would also invite other artists to contribute a page or two like Lowell Darling, Robert Cumming, Futzie Nutzle, Bill Griffith, Jeff Berner, Monte Cazazza, General Idea, etc. And, of course Ray would occasionally send a page. We would print, collate and bind the issues at our expense and mail them out free to contributors and newcomers. One of my favorite issues was from May, 1973 (although dated 1953 just to be dada). I did the lettering for the headmast, Steve Caravello did the collage on the cover and Gaglione did about 20 pages of great collages for the guts. It takes hours just to absorb that one issue.
So, there were 3 basic Eras to the Weekly Breeder. Ken Friedman's, Stu Horn's, and the Bay Area Dadaists'. I believe our version was the first true dadazine and influenced other mail artists to publish their own. There have been somewhat similar publications and other commercially published books and magazines, not to mention Grant funded periodicals but the Breeder was self-published, limited to 200 copies and always free. We put out a total of 7 issues over a 2 and a half year period. I'm sure most of those copies are now lost or sleeping in land fills.
RJ : It is fun to look back at things, but how is the mail art network nowadays? Is it still fun being a mail artist?
Reply on 13-7-1996
TM : It is more fun than ever. Obviously, I wish I could still mail stuff to Ray but the fact that the network exists at all is a testament to his vision and diligence. And for me, merely continuing in mail art acts as a tribute to him. Today there are more kinds of mail art than there was in the late 60's and early 70's. I correspond with many people who consider themselves mail artists (which they are) but who have never heard of Ray Johnson. These are the decorative envelope and postcard people who populate the pages of RUBBERSTAMPMADNESS. Their mail art is centered around rubber stamps. There are some really fantastic artists of this genre, people like janet Hofacker, Rusty Clark, Toby Galinkin, etc. Not to mention the hand-carved eraser crowd which is a whole other catagory. Then there's the more traditional type of mail artists like Adda Dada, Mike Dyar, Buster Cleveland and Rocola. And, of course hundreds of others. Another offshoot of mail art is the incredible production of artistamps (Perforation is Power). The boundaries between the various styles of mail art can get blurry and thats one of its pluses. I do not compare one type of mail art as being better than another although I believe all current forms evolved from the New York Correspondence School.
Obviously, as an employee of PSX (Personal Stamp Exchange) I owe a lot to the decorative card and envelope group of mail artists. But I also like the more conceptual or process-oriented "add on and mail to...." type of correspondence. I especially love those daring people who try to mail postcards and envelopes with counterfeit postage just to see if they can get away with it. I recently received a small disposable camera (with the film built in) from La Toan Vinh in Montreal. It was originally sent out by ex posto facto in Texas with one rule: take a picture of your mail box, repackageit and mail it out to someone else. I sent it off to Graffiti Grafix. Eventually after the film runs out it will be mailed back to ex posto facto. The whole process will probably take 2 years and involve about 24 people - not to mention the actual photographs. Now that's mail art!
In the late 1970's I found myself getting bored with the mail I was receiving. It was slowly being dominated by a lot of minimal-effort, obscure and impersonal photocopied sheets, slapped together with what seemed to be a "just get it out" mentality. In retrospect I see this as a result of the continuing growth of mail art at that time. It was starting to get watered down by people who saw the excitement in it but thought it necessary to reach everybody on every list. There was a lot of "chain-mail art" at the time which I refused to answer. One of the things that I have always liked about mail art is that anyone could do it. I have often encouraged my non-artist friends to take a chance with the network to see what happens, to see where it might lead. But by 1979 after a full decade of activity, my enthusiasm was waning. It had become more of a chore. So, exept for my occasional piece to ray, Bill or Rocola or a camera-ready page mailed to a zine, I was not an active mail artist during the 1980's. I followed my employer, PSX from San Francisco up to Petaluma in 1983 which made it inconvenient to continue to do things with Bill. As a result I never attended any of the Congresses and kept on making art right on through that Art Strike. I was simply unaware of it.
Many months or years would go by inbetween visits with Bill and darlene. It wasn't untill Jan. , 1992 when my brother and I had dinner with them in the city that I would begin to get back seriously into mail art. At that dinner I mentioned that it would be 20 years in May since we put out our first Weekly Breeder. I suggested that we publish a Special 20th Anniversary issue and asked Bill to invite whomever he thought might enjoy contributing to it. From that list of Bill's coupled with the remnants of my own list evolved my current list of correspondents. Plus those people that are always suggesting that I send something to someone they enjoy corresponding with. And the network continues to widen. Since 1992 I have answered every piece of mail sent to me. I absolutely love the fact that when I come home from work there waiting in my mailbox could be something from someone new that will blow my mind. And that my response back to them will start an escalating volley that will lead to a place neither of us knows and might even involve other creative people. Mail art is truely a unique experience the nature of which most people will never know.
Ah, but then there is the Internet. Which is basically digital mail art and no less valid than Ray's traditional form. Its physical and tactile limitations are offset by its immediacy and awesome pervasiveness. I recently bought a MAC computer and have installed some graphic applications. Along with a color ink jet printer I have found it to be an incredible efficient tool for generating mail art. It lends itself to personalization and is still something that I can stick in an envelope and send off into that old fashioned postal system. I intend to purchase a modem eventually mainly to download software upgrades but not as my main source of mail. Obviously E-mail and home sites will replace the mailbox and probably the telephone in the next century but I hope that takes awhile. First class mail will probably go first leaving Third class and Express services as the most lucrative for the Postal Services. So, instead of me mailing you an actual print from a hand carved stamp of M.B. Corbett you would download that image from the print I had scanned and placed in your web site. No longer would your copy be a unique, one of a kind print. Instead it would be digitally identical to everyone else's varying only by your printers settings.
When I first got into mail art a postage stamp was .08c (US). Today its .32c. Tomorrow it will be on my phone bill. It is with the knowledge that our grandchildern may never experience licking a stamp that I gleefully keep up this tradition.
RJ : Well, how could you know that on the day I received your answer, I just had started with my own web site, and that all the interviews that are finished are now online thanks to the help of Jas W. Felter in Canada. But like you, I still prefer the paper-work and at the same time am open to the new developments. When I first met you, you had this exhibition in Hagen, Germany, with your larger artworks where you included the rubber stamping as well. The small rubber stamp is too small for you?
Reply on 31-8-96
TM : It's not that the typical commercial rubber stamp is too small for me, it's just that I have always realized other potential uses of the act of rubber stamping. A rubber stamp transfers ink onto paper. Being someone who likes to draw and paint I knew that I could use that basic concept to make images that hadn't been done before. The large stamped pieces that I exhibited at the Stempel Mekka in hagen (Germany) in September 1994 represent a combination of the various mediums that I enjoy exploring; drawing, painting and print-making all under the umbrella of rubber stamps. But the birth of those pieces began at that very same dinner with Bill and Darlene in january 1992 when I asked Bill if I could exhibit at his Stamp Art Gallery. The show was eventually scheduled for July 1993. So, with the opportunity provided by Bill to exhibit and the means to make the type of rubber stamps I had in mind provided by PSX I set out to produce about 20 large pieces of rubber stamp art.
These rubber stamp "paintings" were made in the following manner; I started with a series of small rubber stamps that I cut out of various dot and line patterns from LetronaÔ sheets from LetrasetÔ. These were in circular, square and triangular shapes ranging in size from 1 square inch to 5 square inches. I used these stamps in combination with extensive masking techniques the way an airbrush artist might. I would draw in pencil a light picture of a scene I had in mind and mask off parts of the background and foreground to build up color. I used light-fast fabric inks exclusively so that the pieces would not fade when exposed to light over time. I wanted to go beyond the mere "scene-making" that can be accomplished with a tree stamp here and a cow stamp there. For the average stamp user stuff like that is fun but for me it became rudamentary around 1971. So, even though I used small rubber stamps I knew that by combining the airbrush masking techniques with my knowledge of halftones and color that I could make very large paintings. The paintings were large but the stamps were actually small.
When Diana Arsenau and Wolfgang Hein of HEINDESIGN were in the Bay Area in July 1993, they visited PSX and also saw my exhibit at the Stamp Art Gallery. They asked me if I would show at their Stempel Mekka the following year in Hagen. I added 5 new pieces for the Stempel Mekka show. These were on wood and even larger than the previous years paintings. That trip to Germany, where I met you and Elke Freed and Siggi Wille and Tom Nelson and so many others will always be a special memory.
RJ : Yes, those first stempel-Mekka's were really a pleasure to be at. Just today, as I write this next question, the 5th Stempel Mekka is taking place in Hagen now. It has grown into a large international event with lots of stamp firms and is now located at a place inside a museum (with an original exhibition with stamp-cards to go with it). But the commercial aspect has taken over a lot of the Stempel Mekka. The same goes for the larger rubber stamp magazines (like RubberstampMadness and National Stampagraphic) which have become more commercial glossy zines instead of meeting points for creative people/artist. What do you think of this development?
Reply on 21-9-1996
TM : This is a very complex question. But my years in the industry make me as qualified as anyone to answer it. It was 1970 when I had those 3 cloud drawings made into stamps. I remember when Joel Rossman bought his first small vulcanizer in 1979 and a couple of years later we delivered our first shipment of cable car stamps (worth about $ 25,°°) to Woolworth's in San Francisco. We walked out of there simply ecstatic. So today it is absolutely amazing for me to walk through our current factory and say "good morning" to an employee who wasn't even born when I was mailing postcards of my stamped clouds to Ray Johnson, Richard C., May Wilson, et al.
But the commercialization of the rubber stamp industry was inevitable. And its potential wasn't realized by me or Gaglione or Personal Stamp Exchange. The first true rubber stamp companies were All Night Media, Hero Arts and Rubberstampede. What I do find significant is that all the major companies are located in the Bay Area. That rubber stamps became commercial is in and of itself value neutral. If I may get a little political, let me say that I prefer capatalism over socialism as long as its "capitalism with a human face". But I remember when brand names used to be sewn on the inside of clothing - not on the outside. I'm more upset by the commecialization of sporting events than I am of the rubber stamp industry. I don't want to see corporate logos on baseball and football uniforms like I see on European and latin American Soccer uniforms. But, I'm sure before too long I'll be cheering on the Intel 49ers rather than the San Francisco 49ers.
Not only was the commercialization inevitable but also beneficial. Just taking PSX as an example I can attest to the fact that over the past 15 years we have employed probably over 1,000 people which has enabled about 100 people to purchase new automobiles and a couple of dozen people to move from renting to buying their homes. Think about the subsequent ripple effect of those activities on other industries. And its all centered around the act of rubber stamping which is a fun and good and basic activity. There are worse things to fret about.
And concerning publications such as Rubberstampmadness and national Stampagraphic, I don't lament the over abundance of advertising. I have some early RSMs from around 1980 when Lowry Thompson was editor. Those early issues were definetly more mail art oriented and more fun than current issues but I am still impressed with the skillful management of that magazine by the current editor, Rubberta Sterling and her husband. They've helped promote the industry and have also created many jobs, I'm sure in the Corvallis area. And their classified section is still a great meeting place for rubber stamp pen pals (although not as hip a crowd as one might find in Global Mail). I personally like National Stampagraphic if only because they had the gumption to publish John Held Jr.'s tribute to Ray Johnson after his death. RSM only mentioned him obliquely and I doubt if they understand or appreciate that aspect of traditional mail art. But that's okay. They all serve their purpose.
In the mid 1980s we used to wonder "when's the bubble going to burst?" It may someday but not for awhile, I think. Rubber stamps are now a mainstay of the gift, craft and stationery industry. Remember that in the 19th century the greeting card industry grew out of something that was very personal and hand made. Cards used to be made by regular folks and were part of Folk art. Now there is Hallmark and here in the late 20th century they worry about loosing some business because people use rubber stamps to make their own cards. It's ironic. The thing about the rubber stamp industry is that almost anyone can start their own business. Not anyone can start their own car company or decide to start manufacturing refregerators. So there will always be new, small companies coming into the industry and pushing the older, bigger companies into more precision marketing and efficient assembly.
RJ : You seem to enjoy carving the portraits of ather people, and I am happy to receive the prints of the results. How do you choose "the subjects" and why do you use rubber (on this large size) instead of e.g. wood or linoleum?
Reply on 30-10-1996
(During my travel to San Francisco / California in October/November 1996, one of the people I visited was Tim Mancusi in Rohnert Park. The first day I was there Tim handed me the next question which he had typed and printed with his computer. I took the answer with me and am retyping it in Tilburg. Because we had lots of other things to discuss besides this interview, I sent the next question end of November from the Netherlands. It was very nice indead to meet Tim for a second time!)
TM : The "subjects" I choose for my hand-carved portraits are usually my friends and fellow mail artists. Occasionally someone will ask me to carve a portrait of a relative, usually a child and, of course I willocassionally ask the people. I ask the people I correspond with to send me a photo of themselves so I can "immortalize them in rubber". And I do this as a means to motivate myself to make art. One of the problems I've always had as an artist is in motivation. There is never any lack of ideas - I have more ideas for all kinds of art than I'll ever have time to complete. But I will always finish the art that I promise to make for others. In other words, I have no problem breaking a commitment to myself but not a commitment to anyone else. Once I promise someone that I will carve their portrait there is no doubt that I will complete it. I would have done one of you but your own hand-carved portrait is so good that I doubt if I could improve on it.
I carve in rubber simply because I want these prints to come under the catagory of "Rubber Stamp Prints". It's a technicality. And once I adhere the carved rubber onto a block of wood it becomes a true rubber stamp. A few of the prints I displayed at the Stempel Mekka were so large that they probably should have been carved in wood or linoleum. In my opinion, one of the things that distinguishes a rubber stamp print from a traditional linoleum or wood block print is that the stamp is held in the hand and stamped on to paper. Traditional printmaking is usually done in an opposite fashion - the carved block is placed on a table and the paper is layed over it and, with the aid of a precise mechanical device comes in contact with the block.
I intend in the future to buy a small press that would enable me to make large, multi-color prints from linoleum. (But then they could never be considered as "Stamp Art" which I feel still needs to be legitimized as a valid form of art.) One of the disappointing aspects of the type of rubber I currently use is that the surface deteriorates when inked with solvent based inks which, over time ruins the edge of the line. There are some good permanent, water-based inks that have recently been released by the various ink manufacturers. I have often thought back to the slicon type of rubber that you experimented with and showed me in Hagen. I believe it had a more resilent surface than the rubber I carve in.
RJ : Funny you mention that carved portrait of me that I use on my post. I was carved my Joy E. McManus from Texas, USA who did that one for me years ago as a surprise-present for me. Yes, she did a good job, and I always like to use that stamp. The stamp is a symbol on its own now.....
Another question. You have been doing mail art for a long time now, but haven't kept all the mail art you got in. What eventually will happen with the mail art that is circullating around the globe?
reply on 5-1-1997
(together with his answer Tim sent reprints of photo's he took of me while I was visiting him in Rohnert Part, November 1996. Also some artworks which mostly are portraits of (mail-) artists he knows).
TM : That's a difficult question to answer. I don't think anyone really knows what will happen to all that mail art although I can give you anecdotal examples of what has happened to some mail art. Back in my early days I sent out some really neat pieces that I remember were quite good. I would be shocked, and flattered to find out that even one receipient of that mail thought enough of it to save it. Over the years, as time and mailings accumulate some people started saving their mail, putting it in boxes, recording what came in and what went out. It became, for some a thing to do - perfectly suited for humans' natural organization tendencies. And, with the advent of personal computers, what was starting to get unruly became more manageable. Computers could enable mail artists to keep more precise records of mail art activity. No one knows that better than you.
Ironically, the most important force in creating an awareness of the need to archive mail art came from Ray Johnson's suicide in January, 1995. And, with the Walker Museum's "Spirit of Fluxus" exhibition that toured internationally a couple of years ago it isn't that wild to imagine that mail art, as an off-shoot (or "distant-cousin") of Fluxus activity might be worthy to students of modern art of a deeper examination. If that interest can be generated then all those boxes of mail art that a lot of people have stashed in closets, attics and garages will become the main source of exploration and assimilation. I know, for example that Patricia Tavenner of Oakland, California has saved almost all of the mail art she has received since the early 1970's. Maybe you saw some during your stay with her this past Autumn.
Sometime around 1977 after about 8 years of accumulating mail from all over the world (and with the previously descibed boredom setting in) I wound up donating a few hundred pieces of mail to the Oakland Museum. If I remember it correctly, Rick Solloway got me in touch with Michael Bell who was working at the Museum at the time. I gave him a foot locker filled with envelopes and small-press publications, and most of my Ray Johnson mail which I now regret. I kept about 20 or 25 pieces from Ray that were particularly personal. Those pieces of mail, along with a few boxes of other ephemera were later sold to Stephen Lieber (who previously had bought Jeff Berner's collection of Fluxus Art and then sold it to the Walker in Minneapolis). It was Gaglione who got me in touch with Lieber in May, 1992 while we were putting together the 20th Anniversary issue of The NYCS Weekly Breeder. Stephen was mainly interested in Ray's early mail art up until 1975. I find it interesting that Lieber considers Ray's mailings after 1975 to be of less significance. In a way it truly defines a Golden Age.
Now, there is some controversy centered around the ethicalness of selling mail art. I was unaware of this controversy at the time, having just gotten back into mail art but in retrospect I don't think that would have stopped me. It's a personal decision and I'm glad I did it. I was surprised by what Lieber offered me and decided the time was right. For years I had, from apartment to apartment moved all these dusty, old boxes of mail art - occasionally questioning why. And suddenly, here's this collector who not only is going to pay me for my archiving deligence but will, in all liklehood promote and help legitamize mail art. And that will benifit everyone.
I sometimes become weary of those mail art purists who look down their noses at others who sell their collections. During the 3 year period between when I sold the majority of my collection and Ray's death I continued to send and to receive mail from him. He was fully aware of what I had done and never expressed to me any consternation. In fact I believe our best exchanges were during this period. And, besides it's nice to recoup some of the money I had spent over all those years. Not to mention the time spent making a lot of great, little, one of a kind pieces designed to blow the minds of a single recipient.
So, I guess you can break down the eventual fate of all these pieces of mail into the following catagories:
- Some mail art is archived and put away in boxes.
- Some mail art is organized in exhibitions and either enjoyed or not understood by its observers.
- Some mail art is thrown away.
- Some mail art is lost and may turn up later.
- Some mail art is destroyed (as was the case in the mid 1970s with the Italian Postal System).
- Some mail art is added on to by other mail artists and kept going in the network.
- Some mail art is framed and displayed on the walls of certain individuals.
- Some mail art is never opened and some is never answered.
My hope is that enough will be saved so that future generations will know that this was and continues to be an exciting, expressive endeavor that gives people joy in both its giving and receiving.
RJ : Most of the catagories you mentioned are quite logical. I only wondered about the part "as was the case in the mid 1970s with the Italian Postal System". Since I only started with mail art in 1980, I wonder if you could tell me a bit more about that. The history of mail art isn't always easy to find in books yet........
answer on 22-3-1997
TM : In 1975 Bill Gaglione, Anna Banana and myself had met Arturo Swartz at a dinner in San Francisco. Arturo owned a gallery in Milan, Italy where he exhibited dadaist and Fluxus art. In 1976 Bill had the idea to schedule a show for Anna Banana at Arturo's gallery unbeknownst to him. Bill designed a phoney poster announcing the exhibit (called "Hosannah Banana") and mailed it out soliciting mail art at the gallery's address. Arturo was not phased by Bill's unsanctioned exhibition and welcomed the contributions. But, Bill was later informed by Arturo that the show unfortunately coincided with a labor strike by Italian postal workers. During the strike mail was not delivered and continued to pile up. After a few months most of that mail, both domestic and international was destroyed.
Also, I can tell you for a fact that, during the Vietnam War years of the late 1960s and early 1970s Federal officials in the U.S.A. routinely collected and opened any mail to certain destinations that had any political messages on the envelope or just looked weird to them. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that, at one time a file was kept on me (and other mail artists) by the F.B.I. based on my envelopes of that time.
RJ : Do you like to 'provoke' the system with your (mail-) art?
next answer on 19-4-1997
TM : If, by the word "system" you mean the postal system then, yes I like to provoke them. But one of the definitions of provoke means "to anger" and I certainly wouldn't want to do that. But I do like to bemuse them. It is a tenuous relationship we mail artists have with the postal system. We want to push the limits of the process of mail delivery but not to the point of making it so difficult that we impede this process. That would be self defeating.
I am constantly amazed at some of the mail that shows up in my mailbox since it is sometimes near impossible to find the actual address. I worked for the U.S. Postal System in 1970 and I can tell you that all they want from us is to see a clear written address. In the U.S. the Post Office consists of mail handlers and mail carriers. It is the job of the mail handlers to get the mail to that point in the system where the mail carriers can sort the mail for delivery along their route. We all know where the address and return address should appear on an envelope and any deviation from that begins to annoy them. I, personally try not to make it hard to deliver my mail. I want it there as fast as possible. But, if I am going to provoke the Postal System I want it to be in a non-vicious, conceptual way.
Some of the most extreme examples of this were the exchanges I had a couple of years ago with Graffiti Grafix and Bianca Jarvis, a teenager who goes by the name of "Mysterious X". In fact, in my last telephone conversation with ray Johnson he told me that Bianca had mailed him a Hostess® "SnowballÔ" which, for those who may not know is a commercially baked type of cupcake. She simply wrote his address on the package, stuck some stamps on it and sent it across the country, as is exposed to the system. I think she was 13 at the time. Graffiti Grafix once mailed me an artificial banana and I mailed her back an artificial cucumber. We had several fruit and vegetable mailings for awhile. All of them unpackaged. I once sent her a stenciled portrait of herself spray-painted on plywood. It was 2ft. by 3ft. and I wanted it to be a gigantic postcard. When I took it into the Post Office the clerck behind the counter said "Don't you want to package this first?" I said "No, that would be missing the point." (you don't package a postcard). "But it might get damaged" she said. "Yes, it might" I replied. The next day it arrived without a problem.
I once mailed her a postcard that consited of nineteen 1 cent stamps (a postcard was 19 cents at the time). I placed them on a card rows high and 4 columns wide. In the center, in small but clear print was her address contained within the dimensions of a single stamp.
One of my pieces to her was a postcard that consisted of a clear, see-through piece of thin plastic. All that was on it was my return address, her address (both written with a laundry marker) and a stamp. Bill gaglione did this 25 years earlier for his first wife, Linda. It is very dada to pay for postage so that you can send nothing. What does the letter carrier think as he delivers a clear piece of mail with no apparent message? It is pure process.
As a preliminary act to answering this question you posed I recently sent you a postcard that had a small envelope glued to one side of it. On the other side was your address and in the message portion it said "This postcard is really a letter". When you turn over the card and open the envelope inside is a letter that says "This letter is really a postcard". So, in actuality I was able to send you a letter, but at the postcard rate. To me this is very provocative and I consider it to be one of my best conceptual mail art pieces.
RJ : Yes, that postcard (or was it a letter?) arrived at my address without any problems, and I liked it a lot too. Sometimes with the large amount of mail I get in, I do miss the humor in the mail, and I notice that for you this is still an essential part. This humor normally develops best in one-to-one mail-contacts that are built up over the years, where mail-art contacts become close friends. Do you experience this as well?
answer on 3-7-1997
(With his answer Tim sent me a copy of the "Earaser Carvers Quarterly" #4, a special edition with the portraiture of Tim Mancusi. Also a copy of the "National Stampagraphic" Volume XV , Number 3 , Spring 1997 , in which a special about Tim's portrait-stamps , and two prints of his most recent carvings of "The Sticker Dude" - Joel S. Cohen and Buz Blurr).
TM : Yes, humor is a strong aspect to my art and sometimes my approach to life. It is an inherent part of my personality and I think it is why I'm drawn to dada and Surrealism. Ray Johnson could not have brought about modern mail art without humor. It is a wry, ironic, zen type of humor and when one can occassionally capture it in an envelope to send along to a friend or stranger that's a special event. The three main components of mail art that I have observed over the years seem to be humor first with politics and sex tied for seconds.
What I find interesting is that it doesn't always take that long to establish a comfortable rapport through the mail. I have corresponded with all types of people - kids, adults, men, women, straight and gay. And since many mail artists often use "nick names" you initially have no information at all about the person on the other end. Humor can be a great way to broaden the kind of mail art you send and receive. But, because that humor is in the form of correspondence and you are not there in person to add something subtle via body language or a facial expression, the ironic point you were hoping to make may be misinterpreted. I had this problem a couple of years ago with Mallory, the Moadster of Fresno (California), and as a result we no longer exchange mail. Which is sad because her stuff was great. And she's an excellent eraser carver, too. (Now that I think about it, maybe I'll mail her something this week!) You talk about becoming close friends - in one of Mallory's last letters to me she mentioned that she had met her (then) current boyfriend through mail art. That has to be the ultimate satisfaction of answering mail; to actually establish a real relationship with someone. Of course as in any relationship a close proximity helps.
Sometimes I'll correspond with someone for awhile and then I get a postcard or a letter and they'll mention that they'll be visiting the bay area in the near future and we finally meet. Last September I met Sugar Irmer from Berlin and this October I'll be meeting Toby Galinkin from North Carolina. And, as you know its fun to show them around.
RJ : Yes, I sure remember the time in beginning November of last year, where you even took two half days off from your work, to show me the sunny sides of Norther California and introduced me to Jeff Berner. Time sure flies, and this interview is now going on for more then a year. So, I guess it is time to come to an end. Normally I ask if I forgot to ask you something. So, did I?
reply on 28-7-1997
TM : No, I don't believe so. And I am very appreciative of the fact that the questions you asked gave me the opportunity to record my early memories of mail art, dadazines and rubber stamps. And also to express my opinions. Thanks for your deligence and especially for posting this interview on the internet.
RJ : Thanks for your time and energy as well Tim!
by Ruud Janssen
Started on 25-3-1996
RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
Reply on 12-4-1996
TM : My involvement with mail art began directly and abruptly in February, 1969. I was 18 years old and a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. As an assignment in my Environmental Arts Class our teacher, Stephen Kaltenbach asked us "to find out who Ray Johnson is and get involved with his art". At the time Ray was represented at the Feigen Gallery which was a subway ride away from class. I remember being really impressed with his collages which were embellished with cursive text done with a crow guill pen loaded with India ink. He would also distress the surface of his collages with sandpaper. At that time I believe Ray had just moved from his Suffolk Street address in N.Y. to his Glen Cove address on Long Island, about 20 minutes from my home town.
I remember telling Stephen Kaltenbach at the end of the school year in May '69 that I was really glad he gave us this assignment and that I believed it would continue after the semester was over. Little did I know that it would continue for 26 years until Ray's death in january 1995. Or that it would put me in touch with hundreds of artists around the world and be the reason I'm currently involved with a career in rubber stamps.
RJ : More students besides you got the same assignment. Did they became all active mail artists? If not, why did you?
Reply on 29-4-1996
TM : As far as I can tell, almost all of the students in my class probably stopped corresponding with Ray after the Spring semester ended. Although there must have been more, I know of only one student, Mike Mahoney who kept involved in mail art for a few years.
In fact one evening in June, 1972 Mike, Bill Gaglione and myself visited Ray at the Pink House in Locust Valley. Why I continued corresponding while most students faded away is probably simply the odds. I loved the process and I loved Ray's drawings, plus it was fun.
RJ : How did you get involved with rubber stamps?
TM : Once again, I can trace my interest in rubber stamps to Ray Johnson. He would often add to his mailings with a stamped expression, usually a one line pun referring to someone he knew in the art world. These stamps were typeset (almost always in 12pt. Helvetica) and stamped in red, blue or purple. What I liked about them was that "stamped" look - uneven coverage, a little blurry, perfectly imperfect.
After I moved from Levittown, N.Y. to San Francisco, I worked with my cousin, Bill Gaglione in an art supply store. Across the street was Patrick's Office Supply store. It was there, that Bill and I had our first rubber stamps made. (The stamp division at Patrick's was run by Bob Grimes, who years later, would be made famous by Leavenworth Jackson). In June 1970, I had Patrick's make 3 different images of clouds I had drawn into rubber stamps. Soon after I drew 2 more, the man on the moon and the planet Saturn for Hervé Fischer's early anthology of international stamp art. It waas a precursor of an industry yet to come.
In 1979 a friend, Joel Rossman, bought a small vulcanizer and we all started making stamps like crazy. This collaboration among Joel, Bill and myself led to the publication of STAMP ART which was a compilation of rubber stamped artwork mailed to contributors. The legacy of STAMP ART is that it led directly to the formation of 2 of the world's most successful rubber stamp manufacturers - Gaglione's Stamp Francisco, and the company I work for, Rossman's Personal Stamp Exchange.
RJ : Your move to San Francisco, the Bay Area, I also bring in connection to the "Bay Area Dadaists". What happened there?
Reply on 1-6-1996
TM : What happened in San Francisco was a convergence of creative energy in a place and time that discouraged limitations. The sky was the limit. With an affinity for dadaism, not just as a period of art but as a way of living Bill, myself and other artist friends, (in particular Steve Caravello, Charles Chickadel and Monte Cazazza) used the City as a backdrop for our numerous activities. We would mail and/or hand out invitations to strangers in the street to come to our gallery openings, group photo's, performances, parties and other events. Anyone who asked us "What's mail art?" soon found themselves corresponding with Ray Johnson, The Northwest Mounted Valise, General Idea, The Western Front and other mail artists throughout Europe and Central America.
Mail art was exploding at the time and we found it easier to keep up with it all by having our collages, statements and drawings printed in small runs of 50 or 100 copies. We were the originators of what Ant Farm called "Quikcopy Art" and we stretched the limits of paper plate printing technology.
Through the years, various artists would visit the Bay Area and join in the art-making. For example, Anna Banana came down from Canada in 1973, stayed, married Bill and contributed immensely throughout the 70's to the Bay Area Dada Scene. The people, the events, the happenings, in retrospect are almost too numerous to record in such an interview as this. I could go on for pages but I'll end it here so you can ask another question.
RJ : What is the story about the Weekly Breeder? Do you know how it got started, and can you tell me what it "was all about".....
Reply on 17-6-1996
(Together with Tim Mancusi's answer he sent me 3 original copies of the Weekly Breeder to illustrate in full detail what the magazine was all about. The magazines were also meant as a gift to the TAM-Archive! Thanks Tim!)
TM : The "New York Correspondence School Weekly Breeder" as it was originally called was started by Ken Friedman in 1970 or '71. Keep in mind that the name "New York Correspondence School" was invented by Ray Johnson as a pun on the "New York School" which referred to that group of painters living and showing in New York during the 50's. Ray Johnson knew these artists and also experimented early in his career with abstract expressionism. So as the concept of mail art was coalescing Ray probably thought it would be funny to stick the word "correspondence" (or sometimes "corresondance") in the middle of New York School to give what he was doing both an identity and validity. There was always an underlying "tongue-in-cheek" aspect to his motives.
Current art scholars consider Johnson's art to be the numerous collages he made and showed mainly at the Feigen Gallery in New York City. His invention of mail art is still considered by the powers that be in the art world as an interesting sideline but not a true art movement. And I'm sure Ray was aware of that at the time. So he was just having fun with this thing that he knew was both very powerful but also invisible. At least this is my theory on how and why Ray identified his postal endeavors as "The New York Correspondence School" and it explains half of the Weekly Breeder's name.
Ken Friedman was a teenager when he became interested in the activities of the international group of artists known as Fluxus, who had their heydays mainly in the early 60's. Ken identified with the Fluxus artists and formed Fluxus West which was not any real organisation or group. It was just him. Ken was eventually turned on to what Ray was doing probably via Fluxus artists. Dick Higgins, Both Fluxus and the NYCS shared the commonality of a Zen sensibility and it was in that spirit that Ken started printing and mailing out his single sheet "NYCS Weekly Breeder". (The Weekly Breeder part of the title is a take off on the "Weekly Reader" which was a current affairs newsletter distributed to American public school children). It was also a way for Ken to align himself with Ray's increasing populariry. So Ken published about 10 of these sheets and actually mailed them out every week. In 1971, for whatever reason he asked Stu Horn in Cherry Hill, New Jersey if he would continue to put it out. Stu, an excellent mail artist who corresponded as "The Northwest Mounted Valise" added an extra page or two and continued publishing it for another 6 months or so. The NYCS Weekly Breeder at that time looked like a page from a dadaist scrapbook. Mainly short, absurd articles and weird pictures taken from the daily newspaper and collaged together. Similar to the type of xeroxed pages Ray might enclose in his envelopes, just more structured. When Stu decided to travel to Europe for the summer he wrote and asked me if I would continue to publish the Breeder. I was thrilled and jumped on the oppotunity.
I put out our first issue in May of 1972. It was 2 pages with a staple in the upper left hand corner. We printed 200 copies and mailed them out to whoever was on mine and Gaglione's combined list. Because we split the printing costs we each got half of what remained after mailing. And of course Bill was assistant editor. That issue was the first time we referred to ourselves as "the Bay Area Dadaists". The second issue was 6 pages long with 2 staples on the left side. The staples were significant because now it was becoming a "zine". Our third issue was about 15 pages. Each issue got bigger and more expensive to print. It was no longer weekly and months would go by between issues.
The weekly Breeder gave me an opportunity to merge my interests in dada and mail art with my skills in graphic arts. I could draw like an underground cartoonist, do interesting designs with type and lettering, make Max Ernst-type collages all while poking fun at politics and religion. We would also invite other artists to contribute a page or two like Lowell Darling, Robert Cumming, Futzie Nutzle, Bill Griffith, Jeff Berner, Monte Cazazza, General Idea, etc. And, of course Ray would occasionally send a page. We would print, collate and bind the issues at our expense and mail them out free to contributors and newcomers. One of my favorite issues was from May, 1973 (although dated 1953 just to be dada). I did the lettering for the headmast, Steve Caravello did the collage on the cover and Gaglione did about 20 pages of great collages for the guts. It takes hours just to absorb that one issue.
So, there were 3 basic Eras to the Weekly Breeder. Ken Friedman's, Stu Horn's, and the Bay Area Dadaists'. I believe our version was the first true dadazine and influenced other mail artists to publish their own. There have been somewhat similar publications and other commercially published books and magazines, not to mention Grant funded periodicals but the Breeder was self-published, limited to 200 copies and always free. We put out a total of 7 issues over a 2 and a half year period. I'm sure most of those copies are now lost or sleeping in land fills.
RJ : It is fun to look back at things, but how is the mail art network nowadays? Is it still fun being a mail artist?
Reply on 13-7-1996
TM : It is more fun than ever. Obviously, I wish I could still mail stuff to Ray but the fact that the network exists at all is a testament to his vision and diligence. And for me, merely continuing in mail art acts as a tribute to him. Today there are more kinds of mail art than there was in the late 60's and early 70's. I correspond with many people who consider themselves mail artists (which they are) but who have never heard of Ray Johnson. These are the decorative envelope and postcard people who populate the pages of RUBBERSTAMPMADNESS. Their mail art is centered around rubber stamps. There are some really fantastic artists of this genre, people like janet Hofacker, Rusty Clark, Toby Galinkin, etc. Not to mention the hand-carved eraser crowd which is a whole other catagory. Then there's the more traditional type of mail artists like Adda Dada, Mike Dyar, Buster Cleveland and Rocola. And, of course hundreds of others. Another offshoot of mail art is the incredible production of artistamps (Perforation is Power). The boundaries between the various styles of mail art can get blurry and thats one of its pluses. I do not compare one type of mail art as being better than another although I believe all current forms evolved from the New York Correspondence School.
Obviously, as an employee of PSX (Personal Stamp Exchange) I owe a lot to the decorative card and envelope group of mail artists. But I also like the more conceptual or process-oriented "add on and mail to...." type of correspondence. I especially love those daring people who try to mail postcards and envelopes with counterfeit postage just to see if they can get away with it. I recently received a small disposable camera (with the film built in) from La Toan Vinh in Montreal. It was originally sent out by ex posto facto in Texas with one rule: take a picture of your mail box, repackageit and mail it out to someone else. I sent it off to Graffiti Grafix. Eventually after the film runs out it will be mailed back to ex posto facto. The whole process will probably take 2 years and involve about 24 people - not to mention the actual photographs. Now that's mail art!
In the late 1970's I found myself getting bored with the mail I was receiving. It was slowly being dominated by a lot of minimal-effort, obscure and impersonal photocopied sheets, slapped together with what seemed to be a "just get it out" mentality. In retrospect I see this as a result of the continuing growth of mail art at that time. It was starting to get watered down by people who saw the excitement in it but thought it necessary to reach everybody on every list. There was a lot of "chain-mail art" at the time which I refused to answer. One of the things that I have always liked about mail art is that anyone could do it. I have often encouraged my non-artist friends to take a chance with the network to see what happens, to see where it might lead. But by 1979 after a full decade of activity, my enthusiasm was waning. It had become more of a chore. So, exept for my occasional piece to ray, Bill or Rocola or a camera-ready page mailed to a zine, I was not an active mail artist during the 1980's. I followed my employer, PSX from San Francisco up to Petaluma in 1983 which made it inconvenient to continue to do things with Bill. As a result I never attended any of the Congresses and kept on making art right on through that Art Strike. I was simply unaware of it.
Many months or years would go by inbetween visits with Bill and darlene. It wasn't untill Jan. , 1992 when my brother and I had dinner with them in the city that I would begin to get back seriously into mail art. At that dinner I mentioned that it would be 20 years in May since we put out our first Weekly Breeder. I suggested that we publish a Special 20th Anniversary issue and asked Bill to invite whomever he thought might enjoy contributing to it. From that list of Bill's coupled with the remnants of my own list evolved my current list of correspondents. Plus those people that are always suggesting that I send something to someone they enjoy corresponding with. And the network continues to widen. Since 1992 I have answered every piece of mail sent to me. I absolutely love the fact that when I come home from work there waiting in my mailbox could be something from someone new that will blow my mind. And that my response back to them will start an escalating volley that will lead to a place neither of us knows and might even involve other creative people. Mail art is truely a unique experience the nature of which most people will never know.
Ah, but then there is the Internet. Which is basically digital mail art and no less valid than Ray's traditional form. Its physical and tactile limitations are offset by its immediacy and awesome pervasiveness. I recently bought a MAC computer and have installed some graphic applications. Along with a color ink jet printer I have found it to be an incredible efficient tool for generating mail art. It lends itself to personalization and is still something that I can stick in an envelope and send off into that old fashioned postal system. I intend to purchase a modem eventually mainly to download software upgrades but not as my main source of mail. Obviously E-mail and home sites will replace the mailbox and probably the telephone in the next century but I hope that takes awhile. First class mail will probably go first leaving Third class and Express services as the most lucrative for the Postal Services. So, instead of me mailing you an actual print from a hand carved stamp of M.B. Corbett you would download that image from the print I had scanned and placed in your web site. No longer would your copy be a unique, one of a kind print. Instead it would be digitally identical to everyone else's varying only by your printers settings.
When I first got into mail art a postage stamp was .08c (US). Today its .32c. Tomorrow it will be on my phone bill. It is with the knowledge that our grandchildern may never experience licking a stamp that I gleefully keep up this tradition.
RJ : Well, how could you know that on the day I received your answer, I just had started with my own web site, and that all the interviews that are finished are now online thanks to the help of Jas W. Felter in Canada. But like you, I still prefer the paper-work and at the same time am open to the new developments. When I first met you, you had this exhibition in Hagen, Germany, with your larger artworks where you included the rubber stamping as well. The small rubber stamp is too small for you?
Reply on 31-8-96
TM : It's not that the typical commercial rubber stamp is too small for me, it's just that I have always realized other potential uses of the act of rubber stamping. A rubber stamp transfers ink onto paper. Being someone who likes to draw and paint I knew that I could use that basic concept to make images that hadn't been done before. The large stamped pieces that I exhibited at the Stempel Mekka in hagen (Germany) in September 1994 represent a combination of the various mediums that I enjoy exploring; drawing, painting and print-making all under the umbrella of rubber stamps. But the birth of those pieces began at that very same dinner with Bill and Darlene in january 1992 when I asked Bill if I could exhibit at his Stamp Art Gallery. The show was eventually scheduled for July 1993. So, with the opportunity provided by Bill to exhibit and the means to make the type of rubber stamps I had in mind provided by PSX I set out to produce about 20 large pieces of rubber stamp art.
These rubber stamp "paintings" were made in the following manner; I started with a series of small rubber stamps that I cut out of various dot and line patterns from LetronaÔ sheets from LetrasetÔ. These were in circular, square and triangular shapes ranging in size from 1 square inch to 5 square inches. I used these stamps in combination with extensive masking techniques the way an airbrush artist might. I would draw in pencil a light picture of a scene I had in mind and mask off parts of the background and foreground to build up color. I used light-fast fabric inks exclusively so that the pieces would not fade when exposed to light over time. I wanted to go beyond the mere "scene-making" that can be accomplished with a tree stamp here and a cow stamp there. For the average stamp user stuff like that is fun but for me it became rudamentary around 1971. So, even though I used small rubber stamps I knew that by combining the airbrush masking techniques with my knowledge of halftones and color that I could make very large paintings. The paintings were large but the stamps were actually small.
When Diana Arsenau and Wolfgang Hein of HEINDESIGN were in the Bay Area in July 1993, they visited PSX and also saw my exhibit at the Stamp Art Gallery. They asked me if I would show at their Stempel Mekka the following year in Hagen. I added 5 new pieces for the Stempel Mekka show. These were on wood and even larger than the previous years paintings. That trip to Germany, where I met you and Elke Freed and Siggi Wille and Tom Nelson and so many others will always be a special memory.
RJ : Yes, those first stempel-Mekka's were really a pleasure to be at. Just today, as I write this next question, the 5th Stempel Mekka is taking place in Hagen now. It has grown into a large international event with lots of stamp firms and is now located at a place inside a museum (with an original exhibition with stamp-cards to go with it). But the commercial aspect has taken over a lot of the Stempel Mekka. The same goes for the larger rubber stamp magazines (like RubberstampMadness and National Stampagraphic) which have become more commercial glossy zines instead of meeting points for creative people/artist. What do you think of this development?
Reply on 21-9-1996
TM : This is a very complex question. But my years in the industry make me as qualified as anyone to answer it. It was 1970 when I had those 3 cloud drawings made into stamps. I remember when Joel Rossman bought his first small vulcanizer in 1979 and a couple of years later we delivered our first shipment of cable car stamps (worth about $ 25,°°) to Woolworth's in San Francisco. We walked out of there simply ecstatic. So today it is absolutely amazing for me to walk through our current factory and say "good morning" to an employee who wasn't even born when I was mailing postcards of my stamped clouds to Ray Johnson, Richard C., May Wilson, et al.
But the commercialization of the rubber stamp industry was inevitable. And its potential wasn't realized by me or Gaglione or Personal Stamp Exchange. The first true rubber stamp companies were All Night Media, Hero Arts and Rubberstampede. What I do find significant is that all the major companies are located in the Bay Area. That rubber stamps became commercial is in and of itself value neutral. If I may get a little political, let me say that I prefer capatalism over socialism as long as its "capitalism with a human face". But I remember when brand names used to be sewn on the inside of clothing - not on the outside. I'm more upset by the commecialization of sporting events than I am of the rubber stamp industry. I don't want to see corporate logos on baseball and football uniforms like I see on European and latin American Soccer uniforms. But, I'm sure before too long I'll be cheering on the Intel 49ers rather than the San Francisco 49ers.
Not only was the commercialization inevitable but also beneficial. Just taking PSX as an example I can attest to the fact that over the past 15 years we have employed probably over 1,000 people which has enabled about 100 people to purchase new automobiles and a couple of dozen people to move from renting to buying their homes. Think about the subsequent ripple effect of those activities on other industries. And its all centered around the act of rubber stamping which is a fun and good and basic activity. There are worse things to fret about.
And concerning publications such as Rubberstampmadness and national Stampagraphic, I don't lament the over abundance of advertising. I have some early RSMs from around 1980 when Lowry Thompson was editor. Those early issues were definetly more mail art oriented and more fun than current issues but I am still impressed with the skillful management of that magazine by the current editor, Rubberta Sterling and her husband. They've helped promote the industry and have also created many jobs, I'm sure in the Corvallis area. And their classified section is still a great meeting place for rubber stamp pen pals (although not as hip a crowd as one might find in Global Mail). I personally like National Stampagraphic if only because they had the gumption to publish John Held Jr.'s tribute to Ray Johnson after his death. RSM only mentioned him obliquely and I doubt if they understand or appreciate that aspect of traditional mail art. But that's okay. They all serve their purpose.
In the mid 1980s we used to wonder "when's the bubble going to burst?" It may someday but not for awhile, I think. Rubber stamps are now a mainstay of the gift, craft and stationery industry. Remember that in the 19th century the greeting card industry grew out of something that was very personal and hand made. Cards used to be made by regular folks and were part of Folk art. Now there is Hallmark and here in the late 20th century they worry about loosing some business because people use rubber stamps to make their own cards. It's ironic. The thing about the rubber stamp industry is that almost anyone can start their own business. Not anyone can start their own car company or decide to start manufacturing refregerators. So there will always be new, small companies coming into the industry and pushing the older, bigger companies into more precision marketing and efficient assembly.
RJ : You seem to enjoy carving the portraits of ather people, and I am happy to receive the prints of the results. How do you choose "the subjects" and why do you use rubber (on this large size) instead of e.g. wood or linoleum?
Reply on 30-10-1996
(During my travel to San Francisco / California in October/November 1996, one of the people I visited was Tim Mancusi in Rohnert Park. The first day I was there Tim handed me the next question which he had typed and printed with his computer. I took the answer with me and am retyping it in Tilburg. Because we had lots of other things to discuss besides this interview, I sent the next question end of November from the Netherlands. It was very nice indead to meet Tim for a second time!)
TM : The "subjects" I choose for my hand-carved portraits are usually my friends and fellow mail artists. Occasionally someone will ask me to carve a portrait of a relative, usually a child and, of course I willocassionally ask the people. I ask the people I correspond with to send me a photo of themselves so I can "immortalize them in rubber". And I do this as a means to motivate myself to make art. One of the problems I've always had as an artist is in motivation. There is never any lack of ideas - I have more ideas for all kinds of art than I'll ever have time to complete. But I will always finish the art that I promise to make for others. In other words, I have no problem breaking a commitment to myself but not a commitment to anyone else. Once I promise someone that I will carve their portrait there is no doubt that I will complete it. I would have done one of you but your own hand-carved portrait is so good that I doubt if I could improve on it.
I carve in rubber simply because I want these prints to come under the catagory of "Rubber Stamp Prints". It's a technicality. And once I adhere the carved rubber onto a block of wood it becomes a true rubber stamp. A few of the prints I displayed at the Stempel Mekka were so large that they probably should have been carved in wood or linoleum. In my opinion, one of the things that distinguishes a rubber stamp print from a traditional linoleum or wood block print is that the stamp is held in the hand and stamped on to paper. Traditional printmaking is usually done in an opposite fashion - the carved block is placed on a table and the paper is layed over it and, with the aid of a precise mechanical device comes in contact with the block.
I intend in the future to buy a small press that would enable me to make large, multi-color prints from linoleum. (But then they could never be considered as "Stamp Art" which I feel still needs to be legitimized as a valid form of art.) One of the disappointing aspects of the type of rubber I currently use is that the surface deteriorates when inked with solvent based inks which, over time ruins the edge of the line. There are some good permanent, water-based inks that have recently been released by the various ink manufacturers. I have often thought back to the slicon type of rubber that you experimented with and showed me in Hagen. I believe it had a more resilent surface than the rubber I carve in.
RJ : Funny you mention that carved portrait of me that I use on my post. I was carved my Joy E. McManus from Texas, USA who did that one for me years ago as a surprise-present for me. Yes, she did a good job, and I always like to use that stamp. The stamp is a symbol on its own now.....
Another question. You have been doing mail art for a long time now, but haven't kept all the mail art you got in. What eventually will happen with the mail art that is circullating around the globe?
reply on 5-1-1997
(together with his answer Tim sent reprints of photo's he took of me while I was visiting him in Rohnert Part, November 1996. Also some artworks which mostly are portraits of (mail-) artists he knows).
TM : That's a difficult question to answer. I don't think anyone really knows what will happen to all that mail art although I can give you anecdotal examples of what has happened to some mail art. Back in my early days I sent out some really neat pieces that I remember were quite good. I would be shocked, and flattered to find out that even one receipient of that mail thought enough of it to save it. Over the years, as time and mailings accumulate some people started saving their mail, putting it in boxes, recording what came in and what went out. It became, for some a thing to do - perfectly suited for humans' natural organization tendencies. And, with the advent of personal computers, what was starting to get unruly became more manageable. Computers could enable mail artists to keep more precise records of mail art activity. No one knows that better than you.
Ironically, the most important force in creating an awareness of the need to archive mail art came from Ray Johnson's suicide in January, 1995. And, with the Walker Museum's "Spirit of Fluxus" exhibition that toured internationally a couple of years ago it isn't that wild to imagine that mail art, as an off-shoot (or "distant-cousin") of Fluxus activity might be worthy to students of modern art of a deeper examination. If that interest can be generated then all those boxes of mail art that a lot of people have stashed in closets, attics and garages will become the main source of exploration and assimilation. I know, for example that Patricia Tavenner of Oakland, California has saved almost all of the mail art she has received since the early 1970's. Maybe you saw some during your stay with her this past Autumn.
Sometime around 1977 after about 8 years of accumulating mail from all over the world (and with the previously descibed boredom setting in) I wound up donating a few hundred pieces of mail to the Oakland Museum. If I remember it correctly, Rick Solloway got me in touch with Michael Bell who was working at the Museum at the time. I gave him a foot locker filled with envelopes and small-press publications, and most of my Ray Johnson mail which I now regret. I kept about 20 or 25 pieces from Ray that were particularly personal. Those pieces of mail, along with a few boxes of other ephemera were later sold to Stephen Lieber (who previously had bought Jeff Berner's collection of Fluxus Art and then sold it to the Walker in Minneapolis). It was Gaglione who got me in touch with Lieber in May, 1992 while we were putting together the 20th Anniversary issue of The NYCS Weekly Breeder. Stephen was mainly interested in Ray's early mail art up until 1975. I find it interesting that Lieber considers Ray's mailings after 1975 to be of less significance. In a way it truly defines a Golden Age.
Now, there is some controversy centered around the ethicalness of selling mail art. I was unaware of this controversy at the time, having just gotten back into mail art but in retrospect I don't think that would have stopped me. It's a personal decision and I'm glad I did it. I was surprised by what Lieber offered me and decided the time was right. For years I had, from apartment to apartment moved all these dusty, old boxes of mail art - occasionally questioning why. And suddenly, here's this collector who not only is going to pay me for my archiving deligence but will, in all liklehood promote and help legitamize mail art. And that will benifit everyone.
I sometimes become weary of those mail art purists who look down their noses at others who sell their collections. During the 3 year period between when I sold the majority of my collection and Ray's death I continued to send and to receive mail from him. He was fully aware of what I had done and never expressed to me any consternation. In fact I believe our best exchanges were during this period. And, besides it's nice to recoup some of the money I had spent over all those years. Not to mention the time spent making a lot of great, little, one of a kind pieces designed to blow the minds of a single recipient.
So, I guess you can break down the eventual fate of all these pieces of mail into the following catagories:
- Some mail art is archived and put away in boxes.
- Some mail art is organized in exhibitions and either enjoyed or not understood by its observers.
- Some mail art is thrown away.
- Some mail art is lost and may turn up later.
- Some mail art is destroyed (as was the case in the mid 1970s with the Italian Postal System).
- Some mail art is added on to by other mail artists and kept going in the network.
- Some mail art is framed and displayed on the walls of certain individuals.
- Some mail art is never opened and some is never answered.
My hope is that enough will be saved so that future generations will know that this was and continues to be an exciting, expressive endeavor that gives people joy in both its giving and receiving.
RJ : Most of the catagories you mentioned are quite logical. I only wondered about the part "as was the case in the mid 1970s with the Italian Postal System". Since I only started with mail art in 1980, I wonder if you could tell me a bit more about that. The history of mail art isn't always easy to find in books yet........
answer on 22-3-1997
TM : In 1975 Bill Gaglione, Anna Banana and myself had met Arturo Swartz at a dinner in San Francisco. Arturo owned a gallery in Milan, Italy where he exhibited dadaist and Fluxus art. In 1976 Bill had the idea to schedule a show for Anna Banana at Arturo's gallery unbeknownst to him. Bill designed a phoney poster announcing the exhibit (called "Hosannah Banana") and mailed it out soliciting mail art at the gallery's address. Arturo was not phased by Bill's unsanctioned exhibition and welcomed the contributions. But, Bill was later informed by Arturo that the show unfortunately coincided with a labor strike by Italian postal workers. During the strike mail was not delivered and continued to pile up. After a few months most of that mail, both domestic and international was destroyed.
Also, I can tell you for a fact that, during the Vietnam War years of the late 1960s and early 1970s Federal officials in the U.S.A. routinely collected and opened any mail to certain destinations that had any political messages on the envelope or just looked weird to them. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that, at one time a file was kept on me (and other mail artists) by the F.B.I. based on my envelopes of that time.
RJ : Do you like to 'provoke' the system with your (mail-) art?
next answer on 19-4-1997
TM : If, by the word "system" you mean the postal system then, yes I like to provoke them. But one of the definitions of provoke means "to anger" and I certainly wouldn't want to do that. But I do like to bemuse them. It is a tenuous relationship we mail artists have with the postal system. We want to push the limits of the process of mail delivery but not to the point of making it so difficult that we impede this process. That would be self defeating.
I am constantly amazed at some of the mail that shows up in my mailbox since it is sometimes near impossible to find the actual address. I worked for the U.S. Postal System in 1970 and I can tell you that all they want from us is to see a clear written address. In the U.S. the Post Office consists of mail handlers and mail carriers. It is the job of the mail handlers to get the mail to that point in the system where the mail carriers can sort the mail for delivery along their route. We all know where the address and return address should appear on an envelope and any deviation from that begins to annoy them. I, personally try not to make it hard to deliver my mail. I want it there as fast as possible. But, if I am going to provoke the Postal System I want it to be in a non-vicious, conceptual way.
Some of the most extreme examples of this were the exchanges I had a couple of years ago with Graffiti Grafix and Bianca Jarvis, a teenager who goes by the name of "Mysterious X". In fact, in my last telephone conversation with ray Johnson he told me that Bianca had mailed him a Hostess® "SnowballÔ" which, for those who may not know is a commercially baked type of cupcake. She simply wrote his address on the package, stuck some stamps on it and sent it across the country, as is exposed to the system. I think she was 13 at the time. Graffiti Grafix once mailed me an artificial banana and I mailed her back an artificial cucumber. We had several fruit and vegetable mailings for awhile. All of them unpackaged. I once sent her a stenciled portrait of herself spray-painted on plywood. It was 2ft. by 3ft. and I wanted it to be a gigantic postcard. When I took it into the Post Office the clerck behind the counter said "Don't you want to package this first?" I said "No, that would be missing the point." (you don't package a postcard). "But it might get damaged" she said. "Yes, it might" I replied. The next day it arrived without a problem.
I once mailed her a postcard that consited of nineteen 1 cent stamps (a postcard was 19 cents at the time). I placed them on a card rows high and 4 columns wide. In the center, in small but clear print was her address contained within the dimensions of a single stamp.
One of my pieces to her was a postcard that consisted of a clear, see-through piece of thin plastic. All that was on it was my return address, her address (both written with a laundry marker) and a stamp. Bill gaglione did this 25 years earlier for his first wife, Linda. It is very dada to pay for postage so that you can send nothing. What does the letter carrier think as he delivers a clear piece of mail with no apparent message? It is pure process.
As a preliminary act to answering this question you posed I recently sent you a postcard that had a small envelope glued to one side of it. On the other side was your address and in the message portion it said "This postcard is really a letter". When you turn over the card and open the envelope inside is a letter that says "This letter is really a postcard". So, in actuality I was able to send you a letter, but at the postcard rate. To me this is very provocative and I consider it to be one of my best conceptual mail art pieces.
RJ : Yes, that postcard (or was it a letter?) arrived at my address without any problems, and I liked it a lot too. Sometimes with the large amount of mail I get in, I do miss the humor in the mail, and I notice that for you this is still an essential part. This humor normally develops best in one-to-one mail-contacts that are built up over the years, where mail-art contacts become close friends. Do you experience this as well?
answer on 3-7-1997
(With his answer Tim sent me a copy of the "Earaser Carvers Quarterly" #4, a special edition with the portraiture of Tim Mancusi. Also a copy of the "National Stampagraphic" Volume XV , Number 3 , Spring 1997 , in which a special about Tim's portrait-stamps , and two prints of his most recent carvings of "The Sticker Dude" - Joel S. Cohen and Buz Blurr).
TM : Yes, humor is a strong aspect to my art and sometimes my approach to life. It is an inherent part of my personality and I think it is why I'm drawn to dada and Surrealism. Ray Johnson could not have brought about modern mail art without humor. It is a wry, ironic, zen type of humor and when one can occassionally capture it in an envelope to send along to a friend or stranger that's a special event. The three main components of mail art that I have observed over the years seem to be humor first with politics and sex tied for seconds.
What I find interesting is that it doesn't always take that long to establish a comfortable rapport through the mail. I have corresponded with all types of people - kids, adults, men, women, straight and gay. And since many mail artists often use "nick names" you initially have no information at all about the person on the other end. Humor can be a great way to broaden the kind of mail art you send and receive. But, because that humor is in the form of correspondence and you are not there in person to add something subtle via body language or a facial expression, the ironic point you were hoping to make may be misinterpreted. I had this problem a couple of years ago with Mallory, the Moadster of Fresno (California), and as a result we no longer exchange mail. Which is sad because her stuff was great. And she's an excellent eraser carver, too. (Now that I think about it, maybe I'll mail her something this week!) You talk about becoming close friends - in one of Mallory's last letters to me she mentioned that she had met her (then) current boyfriend through mail art. That has to be the ultimate satisfaction of answering mail; to actually establish a real relationship with someone. Of course as in any relationship a close proximity helps.
Sometimes I'll correspond with someone for awhile and then I get a postcard or a letter and they'll mention that they'll be visiting the bay area in the near future and we finally meet. Last September I met Sugar Irmer from Berlin and this October I'll be meeting Toby Galinkin from North Carolina. And, as you know its fun to show them around.
RJ : Yes, I sure remember the time in beginning November of last year, where you even took two half days off from your work, to show me the sunny sides of Norther California and introduced me to Jeff Berner. Time sure flies, and this interview is now going on for more then a year. So, I guess it is time to come to an end. Normally I ask if I forgot to ask you something. So, did I?
reply on 28-7-1997
TM : No, I don't believe so. And I am very appreciative of the fact that the questions you asked gave me the opportunity to record my early memories of mail art, dadazines and rubber stamps. And also to express my opinions. Thanks for your deligence and especially for posting this interview on the internet.
RJ : Thanks for your time and energy as well Tim!
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