Oisteanu, Valery: Illegal Mail Art (a poetical essay), in: Mail Art Then and Now, The Flue, Vol. 4, No. 3-4 (special issue), 1984 Winter, pp. 11-12. MAIL ART H/STORY^THEFLUXlJS Downloaded from http://artpool.hu/MailArt/chrono/1984/FluxusFactor.html snared works of Arman and Spoerri, the by Ken Friedman decollages of Hains and Dufrene and the world-embracing, massively realized projects of Christo. The issues and ideas that motivated La Bertesca FLUX the Nouveaux Realistes also emerged in via del Carmine the Pop Art of the late '50's and early 20121 M ilano POST telefono 87.4J.13 | '60's in Britain and the United States, CARD PARTIAL PROGRAM : G. Brecht (Ladder, Chair, A Play. Lamp) Robert t ser (Pat’ s Birthday) Earle Joseph Byrd (Birds) John Cage (h'33” ) Barney Childs (Fourth String Quartet) P h ilip Corner Lucia Olugot iwski Robert FI 11 too (111 I' trade Mo. I - a 53 kg. poem) Malcolm though Pop Art tended to be an art Goldstein Rad Grcxmu/Rudolph Burckhardt {Shoot the Moor) Al Hanse Dick Higgins (Oanger Musi s tla ls . Two fo r Hemi Bay) Spencer lay) J ill Johnston Brooklyn Joe Jones J Holst (Stories) Terry Jennings (Piece fo r String Quartet) Ray \n which took the real into its scope (Mechanical Music) Alison Knowles (Proposition, Nlvea Cream Piece for Oscei ! Child Art) Arthur Kdpcke (music while you work) Tekenhlsa Kosugl (Micro I, An lea 1) P hilip Kruam (Construction fo r Perfoi y Kuehn Peter Longezo (A Method fo r Reversing the Direction of Rotation of the Planets) George Meciunas (Place for ___ ___ , ___ ,0r Everyman, Plano Compositions) Jackson Mac Low emblematically rather than by direct (John Bull Pack; Night Walk; Adams County, Illin o is ; Poert-au-l ice; Sth Light Poem; Solo Readings) Robert Morris (Stories, Construction) Robin Page (Soto fo r Guitar) Ben Patterson (Pond, Paper Pl< Gloves, from Methods t Processes; Three movements fo r seeing - Can you incorporation or manipulation. hear It?) Yvonne Rainer (a dance-drama) 01ter Rot (leh llebe « I.. .) Tomas Schmlt (Zyklus; From'Sanltas') Robert Swlsshelm James Tenney (Collage) Stan Yanderbeek (What. Who, How; Kanklnda) Robert l ;s (Cascade, News, TWo Inches) Jemes Waring (Wind Music #3) -Diane Wakoskl Lieeett W ill lams (U-dtreetIona 1 song o f doubt. Opera) Christ Wolff La Monte Young (Co^osl tlons I960, Plano Pieces fo r David Tudor, Maned) 20 novembre 1973 The college sensibility and incorpora­ Compost tlons 1961, 2 sounds, 566 fo r Henry Flynt, String Trio) . IS news reports, birth t deeth notices, beauty contest, sweaty palms... alle ore 18 © tion of the real are attitudes shared with CONTRIBUTION S'*. LIMITED SEATING. HARDWARE POET’ S PLAYHOUSE e/o BL0ED0W 37 WEST G6TM STREET NEW YORK N.Y. much later correspondence art. It is in I * t K,. the use of the postal system, of artists' $ O' YAM FESTIVAL. ANNOUNCEMENT. 1962. YAM was a multimedia mail and per­ XL ('f N--V £vlA^L| 1 ol*Ji stamps and of the rubber stamp that 4 Nouveaux Realisme made the first ges­ formance art event, which as this announcement indicates brought together a £ variety of artists, ranging from George Brecht, Robert Watts, Alison Knowles, Lk ~ f V t m r s tures toward correspondence art and per invitarvi al discorso 0 Dick Higgins, Ray Johnson who were among the well known figures in mail art e alia presentazione dei toward mail art. Got. i ) n o y circles, to sculptor Robert Morris, dancer Yvonne Rainer and composer La Monte films fluxus di Ben. Several early key works in these media were created by these artists. Young. What did YAM stand for? Nothing more esoteric than MA Y spelled back­ W r 1 4 1 ■ Klein's famous Blue Stamp was a postal wards. Ed Plunkett Collection. BEN VAUTIER. POSTMAN'S CHOICE. 1973 reissue o f a 1966-67post card printed by Fluxus based on a 1965 work by cause celebre and a bureaucratic scan­ Ben. This mail art work involved the issues of choice and chance. Ben simply addressed both sides o f the post card and dal after it was successfully mailed and left it up to the post man as to which of the two addresses would receive it. It was received by Ken Friedman. The Gilbert postmarked in the mid-50's, Arman in­ and Lila Silverman Collection. troduced the rubber stamp into contem­ t would be difficult to pinpoint the make it as simple today to record and to outgrowth of artists' correspondence. porary art with his cachets and ac­ Imoment when artists' correspon­ send a video-tape as to write a letter. History and tradition list Ray Johnson as cumulations of the early and middle dence became correspondence art. By With teletext, interactive cable, the central figure in this phase of corre­ years of'the decade.t Spoerri not only the end of the late 1950's, the three mailgrams, electronic mail, electronic spondence art. To the degree that he created ephemeral mailed works and primary sources of correspondence art computer networking, video, inexpen­ identified, named and himself became projects, small gazettes and cards, but were taking shape. In North America, sive audio, and —looming on the identified with the emerging art form, his involvement with mail art —unlike the New York Correspondence School horizon —a myriad of new communica­ this is true. that of Klein or Arman —continued was in its germinal stages in the work of tions techniques, correspondence art is Working in the tradition of collage and unabated for over a decade and a half artist Ray Johnson and his loose net­ harder to define than ever before. the objet trouve, he was perhaps the spanning all the phases of corre­ work of friends and colleagues. In Eur­ While these facts establish a sense of first to identify the transaction of art spondence art. ope, the group known as the Nouveau perspective, the soul of correspondence works and notes with colleagus as an art Thus, it can truthfully be said that the Realistes were addressing radical new art remains communication. Its twin form itself. Through this stroke of in­ first artists involved in mail art were the issues in contemporary art. On both faces are "correspondence art" and spiration, correspondence art was born. Nouveaux Realistes. However, it was continents, and in Japan, artists who "mail art." Here the distinction is be­ Johnson gave it focus by promulgating Ray Johnson and his circle of friends in were later to work together under the tween reciprocal or interactive com­ the rubric, "The New York Correspon­ the New York Correspondence School YAM FESTIVAL PART 5 rubric of Fluxus were testing and begin­ munication — correspondence — and dence School of Art."* Thus, by permu­ who gave the first phase its character­ ning to stretch the definitions of art. unidirectional or one-way com­ tation, the world was given the new istic sensibility and presence. DELIVERY EVENT munication, mailed out without any re­ medium, correspondence art, and its If the Nouveaux Realistes created by subscription Correspondence art is an elusive art quirement for response. first body of practitioners. The New York paradigms of correspondence art and mailed art as works, it was the New York R. W ATTS cm d o r G . BRECHT form, far more variegated by its very There are special wrinkles in corre­ Correspondence School (NYCS). w ill assemble a work nature than, say, painting. Where a spondence art that involve the mails as However, correspondence art as such Correspondence School that took the and arrange delivery notion from paradigm to practice. Rang­ to y o u painting always involves paint and a medium of transmission for purposes first grew from the work of the European or an addressee of your choice support surface, correspondence art other than mail art. The best example of artists identified as the "Nouveaux ing at times from seventy —five to as can appear as any one of dozens of this would be an exhibition of art from Realistes," a term coined for them by many as three hundred people, the upon receipt of either media transmitted through the mail. Eastern Europe in which the cheapest French critic Pierre Restany. The core NYCS was summoned into being by (A ) $1 2 3 5 0 13 21 34 55 etc. While the vast majority of correspon­ and safest way of sending art to the issue of the "New Realism," a move­ Ray Johnson but, at its height, existed dence art or mail art activities take place United States would be through the ment born in the early '50's, was the around him as many intersecting rela­ in the mail, today's new forms of elec­ mail, though the art works sent would conception of an art made of real ele­ tionships independent of his direct in­ (B) a number of $ equal to the date of the month on which the work is subscribed to multiplied by tronic communication blur the edges of actually be intended as —and only as — ments, that is, materials taken from the volvements. Many distinguished artists the number of food items consumed by the sub­ that forum. In the 1960's, when cor­ photographs, drawings, paintings, or world directly rather than pictorially. The participated in Johnson's whirling scriber on that day. respondence art first began to blossom, artists' books. group includes Arman, Yves Klein, Piero vortex of mailings and events, some of To subscribe, address: most artists found the postal service to Certain forms of art have become Manzoni, Martial Raysse, Raymond whom, such as Richard C, Ed Plunkett, YAM FESTIVAL, P.O.