Mail Art

This begs a number of ontological questions that I don't think Rob's post fully embraces

Where does the 'artness' of mail art reside, as opposed to its 'mailness'? Is it really to be found in the moment it is circulating in the postal system, at which point it is either more or less invisible, except possibly to postal operatives, or at best only visible to the sender at one point or the recipient at another? More to the point would mail art actually be art if it never left the postal circuit (which includes the sender and recipient) and never entered the museum? I suggest not. I suggest that it would simply be… mail. It is only when it enters the museum or more generally the system of art discourse, that it becomes art, and in fact this is absolutely understood by mail artists. Ray Johnson, possibly the greatest mail artist and the founder of the New York Correspondance [sic] School used to send letters to MOMA, knowing that though they were unlikely to purchase his work as art, they were obliged to keep and archive any letters from artists; thus he could say that he had work in MOMA


—–Original Message—–
From: [email protected] on behalf of Rob Myers
Sent: Wed 9/13/2006 10:41 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: Mail Art

Mail art is art that is sent through the postal system. The experience
of mail art, its mode of consumption, is of receiving aesthetic ephemera
delivered with the rest of the mail.

This is not to say that mail art cannot be shown in the museum. Like
gourds and spears it can be presented in an anthropological context. But
like gourds and spears in museum vitrines it has been removed from the
world it was created in and given a new context.

Mail art designed to be shown in the museum does exist. It's a
substitute both for mail art and for museum art, and not a successful
one. Neither the energy of mail art nor the seriousness of the museum
survive the encounter.

The best that can be hoped for from presenting mail art in the gallery
is that the viewer can make an imaginative projection into the world of
mail art. Or that the work has enough formal qualities or content to
make its own small context, transcending both mail art and the museum.

What cannot be hoped for is to bring the experience of mail art, its
mode of consumption, its social relations, into the gallery. It is like
trying to exhibit jellyfish on podiums under bright lights so people can
see them better.
+
-> post: [email protected]
-> questions: [email protected]
-> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
-> give: http://rhizome.org/support
+
Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php

A further point about mail art that just occurred to me over breakfast (marmite on sourdough, black colombian coffee, freshly ground, if you must know). Even though mail art can only exist in a museum or art world context it is sustained by a kind of creation myth of its existence before it got coopted, of some pure moment of praxis that precedes museumification or commodification, but in fact never really exists, literally in that before it gets museumified or whatever it just isn't, yet, art, and if it doesn't will never become art. It is a bit like a kind of freudian trauma reaction that only exists in repetition. After all nobody has ever seen any mail art other than after it has been recognised as art; they couldn't have, by definition


—–Original Message—–
From: [email protected] on behalf of Rob Myers
Sent: Wed 9/13/2006 10:41 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: Mail Art

Mail art is art that is sent through the postal system. The experience
of mail art, its mode of consumption, is of receiving aesthetic ephemera
delivered with the rest of the mail.

This is not to say that mail art cannot be shown in the museum. Like
gourds and spears it can be presented in an anthropological context. But
like gourds and spears in museum vitrines it has been removed from the
world it was created in and given a new context.

Mail art designed to be shown in the museum does exist. It's a
substitute both for mail art and for museum art, and not a successful
one. Neither the energy of mail art nor the seriousness of the museum
survive the encounter.

The best that can be hoped for from presenting mail art in the gallery
is that the viewer can make an imaginative projection into the world of
mail art. Or that the work has enough formal qualities or content to
make its own small context, transcending both mail art and the museum.

What cannot be hoped for is to bring the experience of mail art, its
mode of consumption, its social relations, into the gallery. It is like
trying to exhibit jellyfish on podiums under bright lights so people can
see them better.
+
-> post: [email protected]
-> questions: [email protected]
-> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
-> give: http://rhizome.org/support
+
Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php

My last two posts should be read in reverse order to their posting on
Rhizome (at least as I got them) to make any sense, with the post below
read first


Charlie Gere
Reader in New Media Research
Director of Research
Institute for Cultural Research
Lancaster University Lancaster LA1 4YL UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1524 594446
E-mail: [email protected]
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/cultres/staff/gere.php


—–Original Message—–
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Gere, Charlie
Sent: 14 September 2006 07:37
To: Rob Myers; [email protected]
Subject: RE: RHIZOME_RAW: Mail Art

This begs a number of ontological questions that I don't think Rob's
post fully embraces

Where does the 'artness' of mail art reside, as opposed to its
'mailness'? Is it really to be found in the moment it is circulating in
the postal system, at which point it is either more or less invisible,
except possibly to postal operatives, or at best only visible to the
sender at one point or the recipient at another? More to the point would
mail art actually be art if it never left the postal circuit (which
includes the sender and recipient) and never entered the museum? I
suggest not. I suggest that it would simply be… mail. It is only when
it enters the museum or more generally the system of art discourse, that
it becomes art, and in fact this is absolutely understood by mail
artists. Ray Johnson, possibly the greatest mail artist and the founder
of the New York Correspondance [sic] School used to send letters to
MOMA, knowing that though they were unlikely to purchase his work as
art, they were obliged to keep and archive any letters from artists;
thus he could say!
that he had work in MOMA


—–Original Message—–
From: [email protected] on behalf of Rob Myers
Sent: Wed 9/13/2006 10:41 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: Mail Art

Mail art is art that is sent through the postal system. The experience
of mail art, its mode of consumption, is of receiving aesthetic ephemera
delivered with the rest of the mail.

This is not to say that mail art cannot be shown in the museum. Like
gourds and spears it can be presented in an anthropological context. But
like gourds and spears in museum vitrines it has been removed from the
world it was created in and given a new context.

Mail art designed to be shown in the museum does exist. It's a
substitute both for mail art and for museum art, and not a successful
one. Neither the energy of mail art nor the seriousness of the museum
survive the encounter.

The best that can be hoped for from presenting mail art in the gallery
is that the viewer can make an imaginative projection into the world of
mail art. Or that the work has enough formal qualities or content to
make its own small context, transcending both mail art and the museum.

What cannot be hoped for is to bring the experience of mail art, its
mode of consumption, its social relations, into the gallery. It is like
trying to exhibit jellyfish on podiums under bright lights so people can
see them better.
+
-> post: [email protected]
-> questions: [email protected]
-> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
-> give: http://rhizome.org/support
+
Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php


+
-> post: [email protected]
-> questions: [email protected]
-> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
-> give: http://rhizome.org/support
+
Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php

Religious art is art that is made for places of
worship. The experience of religious art is intimately
tied up with the many meta-experiences & practices
surrounding the act of worship.

This is not to say that religious art cannot be shown
in the museum. Like gourds and spears it can be
presented in an anthropological context. But
like gourds and spears in museum vitrines it has been
removed from the world it was created in and given a
new context….

Internet art is art that is made for the internet.The
experience of internet art is intimately tied up with
the experience of sitting at a computer which is
often used for more prosaic activities. The experience
of internet art is indissolubly connected with the
isolation of the user, sitting alone in front of a
monitor, often at night, sometimes drunk or mind
bogglingly tired. Tired, so tired. This is not to say
that internet art cannot be shown in the museum. Like
gourds and spears it can be presented in an
anthropological context. But like gourds and spears in
museum vitrines it has been removed from the world it
was created in and given a new context….

Art that was made in 1970 is art that was made in
1970.The experience of art that was made in 1970 is
intimately tied up with the experience of being in
1970. The experience of art that was made in 1970 is
only fully available if you were there. Man…you had
to have been there.
This is not to say that art that was made in 1970
cannot be shown in the museum. Like gourds and spears
it can be presented in an anthropological context. But

like gourds and spears in museum vitrines it has been
removed from the world it was created in and given a
new context….

Art made by women is art that is made in the context
of the skein of experiences & herstories that are
tied up with the biological make-up of women & also
the political & social consequences of the oppression
of women in class society.
It cannnot therefore be fully experienced by anyone
who does not have first hand subjective access to
these experiences.
This is not to say that art that is made by women
cannot be shown in the museum. Like gourds and spears
it can be presented in an anthropological context. But

like gourds and spears in museum vitrines it has been
removed from the world it was created in and given a
new context….

michael

— Rob Myers <[email protected]> wrote:

> Mail art is art that is sent through the postal
> system. The experience
> of mail art, its mode of consumption, is of
> receiving aesthetic ephemera
> delivered with the rest of the mail.
>
> This is not to say that mail art cannot be shown in
> the museum. Like
> gourds and spears it can be presented in an
> anthropological context. But
> like gourds and spears in museum vitrines it has
> been removed from the
> world it was created in and given a new context.
>
> Mail art designed to be shown in the museum does
> exist. It's a
> substitute both for mail art and for museum art, and
> not a successful
> one. Neither the energy of mail art nor the
> seriousness of the museum
> survive the encounter.
>
> The best that can be hoped for from presenting mail
> art in the gallery
> is that the viewer can make an imaginative
> projection into the world of
> mail art. Or that the work has enough formal
> qualities or content to
> make its own small context, transcending both mail
> art and the museum.
>
> What cannot be hoped for is to bring the experience
> of mail art, its
> mode of consumption, its social relations, into the
> gallery. It is like
> trying to exhibit jellyfish on podiums under bright
> lights so people can
> see them better.
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set
> out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

Quoting "Gere, Charlie" <[email protected]>:

> A further point about mail art that just occurred to me over
> breakfast (marmite

From a jar or a squeezy bottle?

> on sourdough, black colombian coffee, freshly ground, if you must
> know). Even though mail art can only exist in a museum or art world
> context it is sustained by a kind of creation myth of its existence
> before it got coopted, of some pure moment of praxis that precedes
> museumification or commodification, but in fact never really exists,
> literally in that before it gets museumified or whatever it just
> isn't, yet, art, and if it doesn't will never become art. It is a bit
> like a kind of freudian trauma reaction that only exists in
> repetition. After all nobody has ever seen any mail art other than
> after it has been recognised as art; they couldn't have, by definition

Nobody has ever seen any art before it has been recognised as art, except for
those who used or cleaned the urinal before Duchamp got hold of it or
those who
prayed to icons before they were regarded as aesthetic rather than spiritual.
Then there's the Salon des Refuses. Actually lots of people have seen art
before it has been recognised as art. The institutional theory breaks
itself if
it is ever actually used.

When I was at art school I was given a mail art address list, and other people
were sending and receiving mail art from bedsits rather than museums without
hitting the problem of institutional validation. They were artists and
believed
that what they were doing was artistic and was art, if minor. This is an art
world context but not The Art World Context. I got the impression that
the idea
in part was to create a non-gallery context and a non-heroic art. It was a
hang-over from radical conceptualism.

My point is not that mail art needs institutional validation. Mail art exists
quite happily as mail art, as something you get with the bills, and this is a
context that it loses when institutions decide that they need to get involved.

This mail art context, which is interesting not so much for its
unimportance as
for its casualness, is different from a gallery context, and creates a
different experience of art, offering different possibilities. Mail art don't
need no steenkin' museum to validate it, and I'm not sure museums need
mail art
to validate them.

What neither mail art nor museums need is "museum mail art". Mail art is
ephemeral and incidental. Museum art is heroic and important. Something has to
give, and the end result is not even the artistic equivalent of
corporate punk.
Mail art seen after the fact in a museum is interesting. Art a mail artist has
made for a museum that is informed by their mail art practice is interesting.
Museum-sized bundles of felt UPS-ed to the gallery with the label on
display as
they are hung aren't.

- Rob.

Quoting "Gere, Charlie" <[email protected]>:

> This begs a number of ontological questions that I don't think Rob's
> post fully embraces

Ontology? Right… [cracks knuckles]

> Where does the 'artness' of mail art reside, as opposed to its
> 'mailness'?

In the genetic character of the objects under consideration that cannot be
accounted for by their status as mailed artefacts. Or that uses their
status as
mailed artefacts as an index.

> Is it really to be found in the moment it is circulating in
> the postal system, at which point it is either more or less invisible,
> except possibly to postal operatives, or at best only visible to the
> sender at one point or the recipient at another? More to the point would
> mail art actually be art if it never left the postal circuit (which
> includes the sender and recipient) and never entered the museum? I
> suggest not.

Mail art that has not ended up in musums is still "mail art". Apart from the
fact that mail art is the *name* for a kind of activity and product (MailArt)
as well as a *description*, art that has been mailed and that reflects this
fact cannot by definition be validated by the museum. If the museum says "I
recognise this as mail art" and we are to believe that without this
institutional declaration mail art is not mail art, the museum becomes the
eviscerated God of intelligent design, a slave to the bleedin' obvious. If the
museum says "I recognise this as art", it is ontologically incompetent. If the
museum says "I recognise this as mail" then I fear for its collection.

If MailArt is not Mail Art until the museum gets out its rubber stamp, it will
exist in a Schrodinger's cat-like state of aesthetic indeterminacy, stuck
between two words -er- statuses ("mail" and "art"). Mail Art may be minor but
it is still art, it is art by virtue of its own relations and its own genetic
character. It has a voice, albeit a small one.

> I suggest that it would simply be… mail. It is only when
> it enters the museum or more generally the system of art discourse, that
> it becomes art,

Objects can emerge from as well as enter into "art discourse". Mail Art is a
good example of this.

> and in fact this is absolutely understood by mail
> artists. Ray Johnson, possibly the greatest mail artist and the founder
> of the New York Correspondance [sic] School used to send letters to
> MOMA, knowing that though they were unlikely to purchase his work as
> art, they were obliged to keep and archive any letters from artists;
> thus he could say that he had work in MOMA

FedEx a canvas to MOMA and they won't keep it. Send them mail and they
have to.
If this doesn't prove that mail art affords different possibilities to museum
art and that it affords a critique of artworld relations for at least some of
its practitioners I don't know what does. ;-)

- Rob.

Rob Myers wrote:
>
> Nobody has ever seen any art before it has been recognised as art,
> except for
> those who used or cleaned the urinal before Duchamp got hold of it or
> those who

This statement doesn't need the "except" clause. Those who used or cleaned the urinal didn't see a work of art, they saw a urinal.

Pall

Jar of course. Squeezy bottles are some new kind of nonsense that I
refuse to recognise as marmite or, for that matter, new media art.
Anyway the thing about Marmite, as it seems with some of my post, is
that you either love it or hate it.

If you receive something in the mail that you are able to recognise as
mail art then it has already been institutionalised, whether it
physically enters a museum or not. OK that's not the point you are
making and I see what you are getting at, but I suppose I want to just
press at the difference between mail art operating in a different
institutional or at least discursive or intellectual art context and it
being innocent of art-world contexts. There is a danger that mail art
might be regarded as acting somehow prior to and autonomous from the
institutional world of art recognition and validation


Charlie Gere
Reader in New Media Research
Director of Research
Institute for Cultural Research
Lancaster University Lancaster LA1 4YL UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1524 594446
E-mail: [email protected]
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/cultres/staff/gere.php


—–Original Message—–
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of [email protected]
Sent: 14 September 2006 11:27
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: RHIZOME_RAW: Mail Art

Quoting "Gere, Charlie" <[email protected]>:

> A further point about mail art that just occurred to me over breakfast

> (marmite

From a jar or a squeezy bottle?

> on sourdough, black colombian coffee, freshly ground, if you must
> know). Even though mail art can only exist in a museum or art world
> context it is sustained by a kind of creation myth of its existence
> before it got coopted, of some pure moment of praxis that precedes
> museumification or commodification, but in fact never really exists,
> literally in that before it gets museumified or whatever it just
> isn't, yet, art, and if it doesn't will never become art. It is a bit
> like a kind of freudian trauma reaction that only exists in
> repetition. After all nobody has ever seen any mail art other than
> after it has been recognised as art; they couldn't have, by definition

Nobody has ever seen any art before it has been recognised as art,
except for those who used or cleaned the urinal before Duchamp got hold
of it or those who prayed to icons before they were regarded as
aesthetic rather than spiritual.
Then there's the Salon des Refuses. Actually lots of people have seen
art before it has been recognised as art. The institutional theory
breaks itself if it is ever actually used.

When I was at art school I was given a mail art address list, and other
people were sending and receiving mail art from bedsits rather than
museums without hitting the problem of institutional validation. They
were artists and believed that what they were doing was artistic and was
art, if minor. This is an art world context but not The Art World
Context. I got the impression that the idea in part was to create a
non-gallery context and a non-heroic art. It was a hang-over from
radical conceptualism.

My point is not that mail art needs institutional validation. Mail art
exists quite happily as mail art, as something you get with the bills,
and this is a context that it loses when institutions decide that they
need to get involved.

This mail art context, which is interesting not so much for its
unimportance as for its casualness, is different from a gallery context,
and creates a different experience of art, offering different
possibilities. Mail art don't need no steenkin' museum to validate it,
and I'm not sure museums need mail art to validate them.

What neither mail art nor museums need is "museum mail art". Mail art is
ephemeral and incidental. Museum art is heroic and important. Something
has to give, and the end result is not even the artistic equivalent of
corporate punk.
Mail art seen after the fact in a museum is interesting. Art a mail
artist has made for a museum that is informed by their mail art practice
is interesting.
Museum-sized bundles of felt UPS-ed to the gallery with the label on
display as they are hung aren't.

- Rob.

+
-> post: [email protected]
-> questions: [email protected]
-> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
-> give: http://rhizome.org/support
+
Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php

Where would an On Kawara telegram fit in?
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/kawara/essay.html#four
Eric

At the end of How to Draw a Bunny, after Ray Johnson dies, there is a scene where his agent and curator are putting together his first solo show. It's almost as if they couldn't wait until he was out of the way and no longer able to steward the dispersal and contextualization of his own work (the stewardship of which was no small part of the work itself). Rather than honor the spirit of his practice, they jumped at the chance to (mis)translate his work into the commodity gallery system. "This butterfly used to fly freely in and out of our natural history museum, always eluding capture. Wasn't it clever? See how we've honored it by capturing it and pinning it under glass."

Some of my favorite artifacts are things I reveived from artists in the mail that no one else knows about. When they come around to interview me fo their posthumous Max Herman documentary, "I'll never tell." For every Henry Darger or Nek Chand that winds up on our radar, I'd like to believe there are dozens more who never do. Just as there are thousands of people in the world right now singing improvisational worship songs in unknown tongues to God, songs that will be remembered not even by their singers, but only by God. If there's just a void out there, the archivist becomes more essential (Neil Young has his own personal archivist). Regarding the work of Sarah Kane, Nicholas Mirzoeff writes, "Confronted by the indifferent surveilance of late capitalist society and an absent god, the subject disintegrates." If God's out there, the archivist becomes more incidental. I love the title of the Psychedelic Furs retrospective – "Should God Forget." http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000002AHD/

ephemera is dead. long live ephemera.

_

Rob Myers wrote:

> Mail art is art that is sent through the postal system. The
> experience
> of mail art, its mode of consumption, is of receiving aesthetic
> ephemera
> delivered with the rest of the mail.
>
> This is not to say that mail art cannot be shown in the museum. Like
> gourds and spears it can be presented in an anthropological context.
> But
> like gourds and spears in museum vitrines it has been removed from
> the
> world it was created in and given a new context.
>
> Mail art designed to be shown in the museum does exist. It's a
> substitute both for mail art and for museum art, and not a successful
> one. Neither the energy of mail art nor the seriousness of the museum
> survive the encounter.
>
> The best that can be hoped for from presenting mail art in the
> gallery
> is that the viewer can make an imaginative projection into the world
> of
> mail art. Or that the work has enough formal qualities or content to
> make its own small context, transcending both mail art and the museum.
>
> What cannot be hoped for is to bring the experience of mail art, its
> mode of consumption, its social relations, into the gallery. It is
> like
> trying to exhibit jellyfish on podiums under bright lights so people
> can
> see them better.

Pall,
Isn't it bit fast conclusion?What about bath in Spanish square fountain in
Roma,scene from Fellinis film 8 1/2,blue Anita Ekberg with big
bubies)?("Fountain" is name of Duchamps work with urinal).
Or just piss on some art piece/space with/without utillitar purpose(Beuys
work with coyot in cell,where did he piss this days?Or Marina Abramovich in
her long happenings?
I suppose they make some magic separate between they physiology and
mind,between body and art praxis(space for performing 'art')?Pure art on one
side,and pure body on the other?
Finally artist see material before he made something with or on/in it(depend
what he intend to do it could be canvas or blaster,or computer…).'Surplus
of value'-art,even material without any intervention(empty canvas on gallery
wall,switch of computer) "became art if artist said so"(very questionable
assertion).Artist announcement in that case give 'aesthetic'status to this
polysyllabic object.Even simple tautology canvasEnvas could be in
conceptual statement-art.Now we have two empty canvases on wall,or floor.And
so far.I like Braco Dimitrijevich(Bosnian Serb from Sarajevo,studied art in
Zagreb, who used to live in London,for those who never heard)work:hundreds
of Kawasaki motorbike in huge hall.After exhibition, no doubt ,those vehicle
take their usual destiny,but I'm not sure was market price because of their
tour in art bigger or not.Are those vehicle 'art' pieces after exhibition?Or
just enlighten with 'art' environment?What's decisive for their destiny in
hiatuses between 'art' object and 'simple' object?
OK.well known thing.I will say that ones more:in ancient Greece wasn't any
differentiate between 'art'and'thing'(shoes,dress…etc.)Everything was
"technae"that time.With term 'poiesis'
division between 'object of art'(something which sublimate feeling for
beauty)and object with specific usability(shoes,dress)was carrying
out.That's why we have strong tendency to re-examine status of art in light
of 'tecnae',supplement with new experiences in aesthetic,art
praxis,philosophy and other cultural inheritance.And,finaly,I suppose
question about 'mail art'is part of this perplexity.
(More about 'tecnae' you could see in:Martin Heiddeger,Vortage und
Aufsatze,Dritte Auflage,Verlag Gunter Neske,Pfullingen,1967.)
MANIK

Rob Myers wrote:
>
> Nobody has ever seen any art before it has been recognised as art,
> except for
> those who used or cleaned the urinal before Duchamp got hold of it or
> those who

This statement doesn't need the "except" clause. Those who used or cleaned
the urinal didn't see a work of art, they saw a urinal.

Pall

a long time ago on raw someone said they considered mail art dead and buried
because it wasn't and isn't big in the galleries and museums.

it wasn't intended to be.

mail art goes on still, also.

just because some art is conceived outside the contexts of the art commodity
infrastructure does not mean it is inconsequential.

it may only be inconsequential or non-existant to those who live in an
environment that can barely conceive of art outside the art commodity
infrastructure. art as inherantly capitalistic. no other possibility. very
sad.

ja
http://vispo.com