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One of the functions of mail-art has been to question habits and habitual
responses. If I pick only music, food or mail-art that suits my taste, and
as Plato would say, flatters my taste (but may not be healthy), then I
am like that bear staked to the ground who turns in ever-smaller circles.
Among current mail-artists, Daniel Wenk challenges the postal sysems in several
nations, and with his decisions to send some of the stuff he sends, he
challenges my habitual responses and/or judgments. Much his mail-art is an
emancipation from myself. John Cage made a point of not deciding, of not
choosing, of selecting through the use of "chance" operations. Those
operations are not by chance, they are by ignorance of the facts about
the causes, taking a chance that an emanticating epiphany would show him what
the world could do when he subtracted his ego, his desires, his ambitions.
Cage wanted to astonish himself with art that would not simply repeat himself to
himself, so he worked with blind-spots while wearing blinders (his
anti-self-_expression_ was exquisite self-_expression_). Brilliantly, as a
counterpart to chance operations, he hunted and ate wild mushrooms, a risky
activity in which he had to know verifiable facts about mushrooms, or he
get his stomach pumped yet again. Asked about the contrast between the
comical not-knowing in chance operations, and the scientific
melancholy knowing in eating mushrooms, Cage said: "The not-knowing cheers
up the knowing." Nowadays I discard without knowing their
contents maybe 9 out of 10 pieces of mail that arrive to sell me something,
to tempt me into debt, or to advertise a self-important painter, but I never
know what will be in the mail, so I limp down the steps eagerly, with a
daily not-knowing that cheers up the over-knowing. As John Ashbery
wrote of astonishing moments, and as I quote to myself upon opening some mail
that has made me take a step back: "Our habits ask us for
instructions." Bill
458 West 25th
Street New York City 10001-6502 212 989 2229 458 West 25th
Street
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