MAIL ART

[ANDROPHILIA]

mail art is the historical avant-garde artistic practice of sending mail to one or more recipients postcards, envelopes, objects and similar items designed artistically. All designed as an exchange and not compensated for.
I read today about a historian mail artist active musically as the ne monicker Amok (Enrico Piva) and his postal work. From a fake bomb to defuse containing a vial of Valium to a whole pump with diesel heavy river stones.
there is a lot of names and networks in this area.
Have historical names or direct experiences to report?

[HongKongGoolagong]

I guess I have received and sent a lot of what is probably 'mail art' over the years. Post-2010 I hooked up with a deliberately unplugged from the internet scene based around Psionic Plastic Joy magazine and was slightly startled to find that people like Billy and Rhoda Haddock, the author of The Illuminoids and small press poet Neal Wilgus and Al Ackerman (RIP 2013) were still active.

Received some quite superb work of etchings with eerie power to them gratis from someone called Alex Cabrol in Brazil.

My favourite parcels in the UK over many years have come from OKOK Society and Dr Adolf Steg. Of course for every package of otherworldly wildness there'll be a useless lazy collage with rubber stamp cliche.

It's still out there and it's not online and it's deliberately elusive.

[ANDROPHILIA]

[Strömkarlen]

I use to be into mail-art in the eighties/early nineties. There was a big overlap with the early industrial scene with people like Monte, Genesis P-orridge, Vittorio Baroni, Club Moral, Graf Haufen and so on. To much crap killed the urge to be involved... If you want to dig deeper there is this book http://www.amazon.com/Mail-Art-An-Annotated-Bibliography/dp/0810824558 I got a copy and can part with :-)

[Cementimental]

I was really into mail art for a couple of years mid-late 90s... Got burned out eventually and moved on to noise and concentrating on animation (uni & then work). Still kind of miss it, and still have dreams about receiving strange things in the post :)

Some of my early exposure to noise was thru mail art, got random Matching Head tapes from a catalog someone sent one time, and participated in a couple of compilation projects by A1 Waste Paper Co etc

[ANDROPHILIA]

and still have dreams about receiving strange things in the post :)

uhm
i think is possible start again a new network :)

[Jordan]

I was really bummed out when I heard that Ackerman died.  The Blaster Al Ackerman Omnibus is a pretty necessary book to own.

[tiny_tove]

Vittore Baroni has amassive amount of mail art!
I was heavily into that but no longer have my archive :/

[ost-jurgur]

http://vimeo.com/19492638

this is a good doc on vimeo about mail art but this in french sorry

[HongKongGoolagong]

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/we-have-mail - some intriguing historical details on Pauline Smith, whose Adolf Hitler Fan Club tried to test the limits of free speech in a very ahead of its time way.

[no_baizuo_allowed]

Vittore Baroni has amassive amount of mail art!
I was heavily into that but no longer have my archive :/

Anyone on here know anything about the link between Baroni and Coil? He's credited as "help / influence" in the making of Horse Rotorvator (among 40 odd other names). This is not a connection I would have assumed existed. More familiar with him in the realm of MB, Lt. Murnau, European mail art network on the periphery of tape trade of the time. I'm kind of mindblown, in fact.

[no_baizuo_allowed]

Just generally on the MAIL ART topic: I fully 100% advocate for the use of philately-related terms among industrial/noise/power electronics tape enthusiasts, as it's of high relevance when discussing pre-internet culture.

Just off the bat there's the *very rare* Comando Bruno Serunkuma "Cuaderno De Campo" cassette that cleverly uses the stamp template for a cassette cover, and back cover of the Comando Bruno & Avant-Dernières Pensées "Muestras Sin Valor" LP (which I very much enjoy although it is seemingly of no value). These examples make me think about the strong correlation that there is (or was) between release artwork and packaging materials. Hence it's an easy transfer from a tape sent in the mail to mail art as a topic. One is obviously therefore a simple extension of the other. I don't know why I picked two Comando Bruno releases: they are good examples but not definitive. This thread is a great opportunity to add to this field of releases.

Perhaps another thread is needed to fully explore the breadth of releases that featured components related to philately/mail art in their design? Or maybe my interest can be accommodated here.
Even today, the mailing of physical product is a stage of its existence. The packing and boxing of work is so integral to the process of churning out releases.

& of course, the "mail collaboration" could be seen as a type of release all it's own.
-FâLX çèrêbRi "Pyogenic Organism" cassette from 1983 being a neat little example that also crosses into early power electronics territory in terms of aesthetic.
-Death Pact Mailmusic (brief label in the 80s for DPI personnel) is another fine example.
-As is this:

[no_baizuo_allowed]

*BUMP*


Not MAIL ART in the avant garde sense, but I still consider this classical, archetypal messenger-on-horseback logo of the Correios de Portugal to be a fine example of the art of mail carrier services. If only we could all have our mail couriered with such dignity. This gives some thought to whether there really is any difference between the whole machinery/infrastructure and goings-on of the transport & logistics industry, and our beloved MAIL ART sub-culture?

"In ancient history, messages were hand-delivered using a variety of methods, including runners, homing pigeons and riders on horseback. Before the introduction of mechanized courier services, foot messengers physically ran miles to their destinations. Xenophon attributed the first use of couriers to the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger."

[Cementimental]

Makes me think of the muted post-horn symbol in "Crying Lot of 49" :) I think i actually made a rubber stamp of that one time... or maybe just had the idea and never did...

This looks good, gonna order I think: https://fluke.bigcartel.com/product/fluke-19-the-mail-art-issue-2nd-edition

Always enjoyed receiving Ruud Janssen's Mail Art Interviews zines back in the day, some of them are online: http://www.iuoma.org/interview.html

Good to see on facebook that Brain Cell is still going strong. Have a load of these somewhere, always dreamed of wallpapering a room with them http://www.ryosukecohen.com/

[W.K.]

Always enjoyed receiving Ruud Janssen's Mail Art Interviews zines back in the day, some of them are online: http://www.iuoma.org/interview.html

Hah great site, although the main site without the /interview section is interesting as well!

http://www.iuoma.org/