Reply on 17-8-1995

AB: First I'd like to clarify for your readers, that the NPM has only 400pieces 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 dueto phone, FAX and e-mail. While stamp collectors will no doubt continue totreasure the little bits of paper the post offices of the world issue, fewer andfewer people resort to the post office when they wish to communicate. Andof course, with telephones, fewer people write letters than they did in timespast, so where are they going to turn for new support and interest? Mail-artfills 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 abouttheir plans for this collection. The most I know, is that they will use it foreducational purposes, and to that end, will probably mount exhibitions fromit, and offer workshops in their little gallery within the Museum ofCivilization. They have spoken to me about a second mail-art exhibitionwhich 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 beforeanything conclusive will come out of these talks. They did suggest that theywould like me to be the guest artist when this exhibit does come about, andof course I said I would be most interested. However, I'm not holding mybreath about this one... the NPM is part of the large bureaucratic structureof the National Museum, and as such, decisions take a very long time. I willcertainly keep you posted on developments.

RJ: Especially the last decade a lot of publications have been written aboutmail 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 forthat one for centuries. I believe to a larger extent, people write what theyBELIEVE to be true, but none of us is objective, and we all have ourhistories, friends, experiences which filter our perceptions. Further, no oneindividual can tell the "whole story" of mail art, because no one individualhas all the contacts - it's NOT a finite system. An outsider researches thephenomena would never be able to cover the whole picture, because whilemail art is not a finite system, it is also a changing one. People areconstantly discovering the phenomena and starting exchanges while othersquit and go on to other forms of expression. If it were made extinct, by say,the termination of the international mail system, THEN, perhaps, someonecould do a complete picture of it, but even then, it is unlike that oneresearcher could unearth all the persons involved and review all the workthat has been exchanged. Nor do I think it important that every work andevery practitioner get a mention.

The whole point of mail art has been to be involved in a creative, expressivePROCESS of exchange, between two or more parties. You send out, and youget back. You have an audience that responds. If they don't respond, youdon't send to them any more. This is the nature od mail art, and it can berepresented by describing the types of materials exchanged, and the personsone knows of who make these exchanges. But this isn't the same as a historyof mail art, and I rather doubt we will ever read one that is completelysatisfactory to our own perception of the story, because it will not reflect ourview of the thing.

For example, in an essay introducing a bibliography of mail art that soundslike the complete history when you read it, unless you happened to be activeduring the periods described, and your contribution to the process doesn'tget mentioned. This is the situation I found myself in with that essay. I wasvery active in the 70's, publishing both the Banana Rag and VILEMagazine. I felt both were focal points in the network, and know that manypersons contributed material to VILE in the hopes of being published. I feltthat VILE was THE show-place of the network during the period of itspublication (74-81), yet I nor VILE got a mention in that essay. What waswritten was "true," but incomplete, yet that essay will be quoted as "the storyof mail art."

That essay was published in a mail art show catalogue a couple of yearsbefore it appeared in the bibliography. I wrote to the author and asked why Iand my contribution to the network were omitted. He didn't respond to thequestion at first, and when he eventually did, he really didn't give anyreason. 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 mentionit. I reviewed the bibliography in Umbrella, questioning this omission.However, the book is published, and in circulation. It won't be changed. Ithas authority. It is a massive work and very well done. Why did he choose toexclude 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. Iasked him again, in person, why he had omitted me from that essay, and whyhe had refused to alter the piece when I raised the issue. He said he justwrote what came to mind when he was writing, and that he never changes apiece once it is written. So, from his perspective, my work in recording thenetwork during the 70's was not important. Who can argue with what anotherconsiders important? The problem is, that what is written sounds like thetruth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, when in fact, there is aconsiderable amount of opinion being expressed about the truth, in bothwhat is said, and in what is omitted.

I can't comment on a lot of the other publications on mail art that havecome out, as I haven't had the time to read them all. However, I'm suresimilar situations exists, and the contributions of many others, often women,have been overlooked, or disregarded in the great move now afoot, to recordthe history of mail art.

I think that, generally speaking, each person who writes about mail artattempts to tell "the true story." As readers, we have to remember that eachperson must and will tell it from their own perspective; with all their likesand dislikes, opinions, priorities, and experiences between them and thephenomena we've come to know as mail art.

RJ: Well, in a way I am looking for this "true story" and am currently doingthese mail-interviews where I don't edit the answers as much as possible. Ialready 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 adistinction between the original mail art network, and the rubber-stamp netbeing spawned by Rubberstampmadness. I've been watching RSM'sdevelopment for some time, and note that many of the advertisers arerunning CONTESTS to get readers to send in artworks, with PRIZES offeredfor 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, isthe gentrification of mail art, ie. the "taming of the shrew."

Since RSM is basically a commercial magazine, with enormous amounts ofadvertising which represents a lot of money changing hands over thepurchase of rubber stamps, supplies, papers, etc. all related to THE CRAFTof rubber-stamping, naturally, the results are more predictable. The focus inthis rubber-stamp movement - moving into main stream America - isdecorative, rather than revolutionary. This focus on craft and techniqueproduces "pretty" art-works, but entirely misses the CONTENT with whichmail art rubber stamping began; ie. the usurping of an initially businesstechnology (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 inoutlook, was always about inclusive; anyone can do it - everyone hassomething to say, everyone's work is to be of equal value, etc. etc. etc. , isnow 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-toarticles flooding the pages. Criticism of the status quo has definitely takenthe 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 tokeep up with all the contacts she gets, let alone deal with all the responsesshe gets from the internet. That's why I have avoided the internet - I amalready overwhelmed by the amount of mail I get, and I can't imagine tryingto keep up with more. I am definitely NOT a mail-art crusader, nor do Iapprove of persons setting themselves up as mail-art experts, and doingworkshops to teach others techniques, passing out mailing lists, etc. Thereare 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 thenetwork, 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 toget lots of new contacts, but there seems to come a turning point, when theload gets too heavy, both in terms of one's time and $$$, when it is no longerpossible to respond to everyone who sends you mail.... that response becomesa burden rather than a joy. Myself, Baroni and Bleus have all written on thispoint, 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, asidefrom Artistamp News to which individuals must subscribe, or I can'tpossibly afford to continue the contact. Bleus appears to be continuing toattempt 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 newcomerswhat 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 newcomersto the field. This is a free playing field, and one of the joys of it was the lackof rules - except, of course, rules were made up and issued - in some cases,almost as demands. This network is evolving, as it always has, sinceJohnson's first mailings, since the FLUXUS artists first mailings. In thosedays (1960's and 70's), it was perpetrated by artists who celebrated theirbeing outside the "real art world." ...but who were none-the-less, big timeplayers in that world. Those initial players were critical of the status quo onmany 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 artistsinto contact with each other, and these were the artists who carried the ballafter 1974. These were still persons who perceived themselves as artists, butones who enjoyed their "outsider" status; artists who didn't get shows incommercial galleries, or anywhere else, and who celebrated their discontentwith very dada sorts of artworks. The network became their showplace, andtheir disaffected attitudes and criticisms of main-stream America wereexchanged 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 bygrowing numbers of mail art exhibits and projects to which one could sendone's work, and get one's name in a catalogue. Witness the show listings inGlobal Mail, if there is any question about this.

In the past five years or so, a number of practitioners (Michael Jacobs, JohnHeld, Peter Küstermann, for example) seem to have become crusaders, andwith an almost religious zeal, go about giving workshops to "get everyone tojoin in," rather than simply continuing to explore and enjoy their existingcontacts. Providing information about the network seems OK to me - ifpeople "get it," and want to participate, fine, one has facilitated thatconnection. However, these workshops in techniques seem self-serving inthat, in the guise of "spreading the word," the motivation behind them iseither to get paid the fee for doing the workshop, or to sell products; rubberstamps, supplies and equipment - which is a long way from the originalcritical stance of those engaged in mail art.

All that said, I must come back to your question and say I don't believe thereare any valid "shoulds," in mail art. Mail art is an ever-changing, evolvingnetworking 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 whofocus on how-to/techniques, or concern about producing decorative, saleablegreeting cards and the like, as with those whose focus is a critique of thesociety in which we live. However, if people are getting their creative juicesflowing doing these things, then BRAVO. Carry on, do it, enjoy it, send it outand let the network evolve! This is still far superior to spending one's time infront of the tube, and I applaud it.

Maybe this is a good point to end? Unless you have some more provocativequestions.... Go Bananas!

RJ: Yes, I think it is a good moment to end this interview. But even afterending the interview, I will keep asking questions now and then....!

Thank you for this interview.

- END -