Hi all,
I'm really surprised how little response there's been to the idea of
defining mail art. Are we reconciled to it as an impossible task? Actually I
don't think it's anywhere near as hard as defining Fluxus.
Your view of mail art depends on where you see its beginnings. There are two
really: Ray Johnson and Fluxus. Ray Johnson's mail art was a closed activity
he always invited people to join his New York Correspondence school, one
couldn't just take part. On the other hand Fluxus mail art activity was
always open, anyone could taken part and lists of those involved were
circulated so that people could make their own contacts. Of course this is a
simplified vision of the beginnings of it all.
Carol asked what mail art was originally, well Carol in many ways the
Fluxlist Box was like a mail art project...the only thing that distinguished
it was our original intent in creating it within the context of a continuum
of Fluxus multiple production. Imagine a project like the box where someone
puts out an initial piece of paper/flyer asking for anyone interested to
send 50 works for a box saying that each participating artist will receive
a box containing one of his or her own submitted pieces plus one piece from
each other participating artist....that's a mail art project..people do the
same thing with zines
e.g. submit 20 copies of a page for an assembled book, you will receive a
copy of the book which will contain your page plus pages from the 19 other
participants. Carol to get an idea of mail art projects check out Fan Mail's
listing at
http://www.phi.lu/mailartinfo.html
You and anyone else can participate in any of these.
The way Roger organised the poetry book was like a mail art project.
Check out Alice's (aka Dragonfly Dream) site for intros to mail art and
some of her projects.......her work and approach are very different from the
John Held side of things.
http://www.dragonflydream.com/
This site by a lady named ZenaZero is particularly interesting because she
got into mail art via the web
http://home.planet.nl/~tineds/
For some years now Ruud Jansen (who is on the list incidentally) has been
interviewing mail artists about what they do and think, you can read them at
http://www.faximum.com/jas.d/lib_tam.htm
Ruud's own site is at
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/4947/
and worth looking at to get a picture of what mail art is.
All the above however are examples of the way in which mail art works today
which evolved from the open approach to mail art that came from Fluxus. In
the mail art I have done and still do I must admit that I'm much closer to
what Ray Johnson did. I don't take part in that many projects(almost none
these days) instead I exchange work with various individuals whose work I
either see elsewhere or whose name I see somewhere in documentation of mail
art activity, or sometimes with people I meet face to face or via the web. I
like doing this much more and it means that I don't have to rush work. Some
people contribute to lots of projects and rush their correspondance because
of it. I take my time, in the past I've taken several months to reply to
someone but normally when I do they can expect something that I've thought
about and spent some time on and think they'd like. This isn't the majority
way of operating in the mail art network but there are others who work like
this.
One other resource you should look at on the web is
Artpool's selection of Ray Johnson correspondence..great stuff
http://www.artpool.hu/Ray/7/7.html
http://www.artpool.hu/Ray/5/add.html
http://www.artpool.hu/Ray/raymap.html
So what is mail art? Well what it says I think, I believe it is as simple as
art through the mail, the depth comes from the myriad ways people have found
to execute this simple practice. In historical terms Ray Johnson is the
father of mail art since he was the first person to make a lot of noise
about sending art to people through the post...of course he's not the first
or the last person to do this but his character and interesting art styles
have made him a personification of the practice of mail art itself...at the
end of the day we all need a few heroes and I think Ray fits the bill quite
nicely.
Anyway, hope this is food for though Carol, and maybe others wil find some
use in it.
cheers,
Sol.
