THE MAIL-INTERVIEW WITH
VITTORE BARONI
Started on: 24-01-1995
RJ : Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the
traditional question. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?
Reply on: 30-3-1995
VB : I got involved in the mail art net in 1977, when I discovered
the existence of mail art through the work of G.A. Cavellini - I had seen an ad
in Flash Art Magazine for G.A.C.'s "Free" Art Books - I wrote him,
got the books, started a correspondence with G.A.C. (my first contact!) and
soon with Anna Banana and all the other late 70's regulars. The rest is
history!
RJ : Is mail art itself history, after the death of Ray Johnson?
Reply on : 20-4-1995
VB : As I wrote in the latest issue of ARTE POSTALE! magazine # 69,
the sad demise of R.J. in a way is an event/date that signals the end of the
"golden age" of mail art, that big phenomenon that Ray was
instrumental into originating in the early sixties and that probably had its
peak moment in the first half of the eighties. January 13th 1995 also means the
completion of a cycle, with fax/e-mail/internet/etc. picking up the inheritance
of "snail mail"/ correspondence. It must be pointed out that those
learning to travel the electronic highways have a lot to learn from postal
networkers (with years of experience behind them) in terms of strategies,
share-work practices and open frame of mind. So mail art is a bit more
"history", but its teachings will live on.
RJ : Could you explain what you mean with strategies, share-work
practices and open frame of mind. What are the teachings you would like to live
on?
Reply on 27-10-1995
(printed text and diskette)
(I've
sent a few times copies of the question and some samples of finished interviews
to Vittore Baroni. His answer came in a large envelope with lots of info's.
Also there was a diskette in it, but as I tried to read it, I discovered that
it was for a Macintosh computer. Since the file was not transformed to a
DOS-file, I could read the printed version and retyped the whole answer)
VB : Dear Ruud, sorry if I disappeared without answering to your
latest mailings, I didn't mean to be rude bur really from May to September my
work (almost) 24 hours-a-day at the Hotel makes it impossible for me to deal
with any kind of correspondence. I don't even open the damn envelopes,
sometimes. Now I'm back home and trying to put things into shape, while
answering to the latest question of our mail-interview, I also try to put some
order in my head regarding what I feel about the network today, and what I want
to do from now on (more ramblings in next Arte Postale!).... So here I go,
reverting to paper (my last disk was by mistake an MS-DOS translated Mac text,
but this is yet again a Mac disc on Word 5).
Question: something to do
with what is exactly the legacy that mail art leaves to internet surfers?...
A lot of people approach
Internet and electronic networking with a strictly utilitarian attitude, they
are looking for financial gains or sexual encounters or whatever. Others enjoy
the possibility/power to chat with millions of people, but have nothing to say
to them, so it's only a big waste of time and money: to me it is like those
Hi-Fi freaks who own incredibly expensive stereo playback systems and use them
to hear the same ten records, technology nerds into communication. I hope that
some of the "golden rules" of mail art will find their way into the
cyber-community, because what I see and read now regarding what's going on in
the Net isn't always that free and open. I must first of all admit that I do
not own yet a modem and I only used Internet a few times through the courtesy
of a friendly neighbour who has an access and University pass-word. But I do
read a lot about it in international magazines (Wired, .net and the like), so I
know more or less what is going on, regarding my favourite subjects. I noticed
a lot of resistance against the new media from old-time mail artists,
especially those who do not use a computer daily. I do not feel like that, I am
really enthusiast about the possibilities of the new media, but I tend to be
also realist: I will wait till there will be a Internet link also in my town[1]
(and by the way, even local phone calls in Italy may become very expensive if
you do a long call, so using Internet for hours is not cheap around here!),
also I will wait till the jargon and hype surrounding the Net will have
vanished a bit, when it will be just another common communication system added
to the existing ones, then I will start doing my electronic projects, probably
not leaving the postal medium abruptly but little by little. A book like Chuck
Welch's Eternal Network I think can be of great help even to
people who have never heard about mail art and will never practice mail art (or
who are not interested in art altogether), as a sort of preliminary
introduction to the spirit of free networking: it's something totally different
from the tons of Guides for Internet surfing you find in every bookshop,
because it is founded on over thirty years of intensive experiences in the
field of free and open exchange-communication. It is a wealth of wisdom that
you just can't sum up in a few words or even in a single book, but I believe a
mail artist approach to Internet will always be much more free-and-easy than
the approach of people who had no previous networking experiences. If mail art
arrived where Internet is today, connecting the whole planet in a web of
spiritual energy, using a much cheaper medium, at the same time I believe
strongly that mail art as a phenomenon has lost much of its significance now
that Internet is spreading: it will be just anachronistic to continue using
stamps beyond a certain (and very near) point in time.
Everything reaches a peak
and then starts to drop, mail art probably had its peak in '92 with the
Networker Congress thing, and now with the death of Ray Johnson the cycle is
complete, the only thing that can be done is tell the whole history in a more complete
way (like the books by Géza
Perneczky, John Held Jr., Chuck Welch are testifying), museums and collectors
can enter the scene and eat the remains. Those who where there for the
excitement (& warmth & enlightenments) of it and not for the glory,
will move on to better occupations. Of course it will take years and years for
the big wave to pass completely and dry out, there is still an enormous amount
of activity in mail art, and with Global Mail we also have
something the Network always lacked (except maybe for the short life-span of
Vile and a certain period of Umbrella) and always cried for, a magazine to act
as a forum and reference point, a small but reliable solid island in the
chaotic mailstream. I do not intend to stop printing my own Arte Postale!
magazine yet (at least three
issues are planned for this winter, starting with a Baroni-Bleus
collaboration), and there are still things that I need to do with the postal
system, but I do not feel tied emotionally hands and feet to it: I am a
networker at heart, and I use the more satisfying and more affordable
instruments I can put my hands on. If I had the possibility to phone all around
the world for almost nothing, I would use the phone, if I had a voice strong
enough to get over the mountain, I would just scream and scream. Before year
3000 something better than Internet will be invented, and we will all be
finally able to tele-transport ourselves P.K.Dick-style wherever we dream to
go.
RJ : Some readers of this interview might not know your magazine
"Arte Postale!". What is your magazine about?
Reply on 24-11-1995
VB : I discovered mail art in 1977 and the following year I was
already corresponding with an ever increasing number of contacts, a hundred or
more, so I soon reached the point when you are not able anymore to find the
time for elaborate original answers to each and every single mailing. I needed
something readily available to trade with other networkers and that could
become the focus for my postal activities, so the natural step to take was to
create my own magazine, like other mail artists did before me (at the time, I
was particularly impressed, even more than by the "glossy" Vile,
by an american xeroxed publication called Cabaret Voltaire, that
showed you could make a strong original magazine with just a black and white
photocopier).
And that's how ARTE
POSTALE! (with - often forgotten! exclamation mark, to me a reminder of the
excitement of my first encounter with the mail art medium) was born in October
1979, as a totally non-profit publication, distributed only through the postal system
and wholly dedicated to the aesthetics and philosophies of mail art.
Through perseverance and a
few weird ideas that did hit the mark, it has become one of the most well known
and long-lived magazines in the whole Eternal Network. The title is simply
"Mail Art!" translated into italian, as I wanted it to be from the
start a "pure" mail art publication, totally rooted in the
correspondence milieu. There never was a fixed size or periodicity, though in
the first three years I was able incredibly to maintain a monthly pace (I was a
young student and single then, with a lot of free time in my hands!), now I am
lucky when I am able to publish more than two issues a year. After five or six
issues completely printed on cheap paper-plate off-set machines (I later turned
to photocopies for a better resolution quality), always produced in 100
numbered copies, the magazine gradually turned into an "assembling"
publication, gathering together original pages contributed by various
international networkers, while I still printed the cover and a few "home
pages". I don't remember exactly from where I got the idea in 1979, but
probably I was aware of the Assembling magazine by Richard Kostelanetz (though
at that point I still had not actually seen one) and I had received some
collective mail art publications (though they looked more like artistic
"portfolios" than magazines, with loose pages and minimal editorial
work). From the beginning, I wanted Arte Postale! to look like a
"real" magazine, not an arty multiple, so I always stapled all the
pages together, never mind the "preciousness" of some of the works,
sealing sometimes the smaller bits into bags or envelopes glued to the pages.
Though there were often themes to stick to, participants were usually totally
free regarding the size and medium of their contributions (often someone would
send a hundred totally different pages), so I also got several tridimensional
oddities, like plant leaves, glass beads, ping pong balls and bee‑wax bas‑reliefs.
This forced me sometimes to adopt unusual formats, the most bizarre issue being
the "boxed" N.24, with mostly 3D works and resembling a marriage
between a mail art mag and a Fluxus box. To do a "gathering mag" is
big fun only if you deeply and sincerely love the mystic side of the self‑publishing
experience. Each time you are confronted with a different challenge of finding
the best way to bring into harmony an array of disparate works, so it is never
a mechanical practice, it is like stitching together a Frankenstein creature
and trying to infuse some life into it. The boring aspect is of course the actual
work of collecting page after page to put all the copies together, once a
scheme and order of assembling is decided, but I usually did this in the late
evening, while listening to music or watching films on TV with an eye, often
with the help of my mother (!) who was also sitting in, so with only 100 copies
to go it never took more than two or three very relaxed working sessions. I
think one reason why some of us just feel a sort of orgasm when they finally
hold in their hand the first finished copy of a self‑publication lies in the
fact that we are a generation raised in a global media environment, we are used
to get most of our views on the world from the printed page and to assimilate
magazines since we are born (I'm talking of people born in the fifties or
sixties, younger generations are much more video‑centered): the fact of
actually editing and publishing a mag is for us the (often inconscious)
accomplishment of a cathartic reversal of roles. It is like when a video‑recorder
first entered into your house, making you feel that you no longer depended on
what "they" wanted to show you: now you could decide what movie to
watch and at what pace and which scene you wanted to see again and again. But
it is even more than that, now you can star in the movie... Well, anyway, as
even the best games tend to become tedious after some time, I decided to stop
collecting original pages starting with issue N.52 (it was supposed to be N.51
really, but a lot of people kept mailing things in a hundred copies even after I
discontinued the call for contributions ‑ I still get the odd accidental
package now after ten years, so unforeseeable are the network
circumvolutions!). This change left me free to vary and experiment with the
number of copies produced, ranging from the single copy of the special
"homage issue" (N.53, this was put together by Mark Pawson as a
terminal tribute to the "assembling days" of Arte Postale!, with
unique pieces by fifty‑some different networkers, it came like a total surprise
and I liked it so much that I decided to give it a proper AP! number) to the
600 copies of issue 63 (with a 7" vinyl record by my group Le Forbici di
Manitu inside, singing the Let's
Network Together hymn) and the "unlimited" issues N. 60‑61‑69
(xerox‑copies always available). The most successful and fun to do issues have
been the "mail art show show catalogue" N.47 (I organized a project
requesting fake mail art invitations, to be diffused to short circuit the
net!), the bumper N.5O "silver issue" (a real silver knife sent from
Canada hidden in one of the copies), the "mail art handbook" N.55 (a
sort of half‑serious synthetic guide to happy networking), the "mail art
& money do mix!" N.56 (I sent money out to networkers with optional
requests on how to use it and I glued a real coin to each cover: not only a
free magazine, but a mag that pays you to be read!). Differently from several
mail art bulletins and publications that consist mostly of reproductions of
adds and lists of invitations to projects (these may be useful as a source of
information, but I find them really boring as magazines, if not done with the
craft and passion of a Global Mail), I always wanted each issue of Arte
Postale! to be a sort of personal/collective little art‑work in itself, with
many hand‑interventions in each single copy (folded pages, blots of colour,
small glued inserts, rubberstamped images, etc.), like a miniature
"artist's book" minus the pretentiousness of priced gallery art. So
instead of using the small space available (lately, I try to keep AP! under the
weight of 20 grams, to save on trees and postage) to reproduce invitations and
lists of addresses, I prefer to focus each time on a single theme, selecting
the most inspired contributions and arranging them so to make a collective
statement on that particular topic (of course also all the contributors not
reproduced in the mag ‑ to include always everything would be economically and
technically impossible! ‑ do get a free copy).
In sixteen years, over 500
networkers from approximately 35 different countries, ranging from elementary
school kids to well respected artists like Ray Johnson and Ben Vautier,
participated into Arte Postale!. In pure mail art spirit, no form of censorship
or selection on the original "assembling" contributions was ever
applied. Each contributor always receives one or more free copies of the issue
he/she is featured into. Up till issue N.63 the magazine, though 99%
distributed or traded free in the network, was also made available at a low
cover price to interested non‑mail artists, through the diffusion of small mail
order catalogues, but given the difficulties of such a minimal form of
distribution ‑ sales never repaid even the cost of printing the catalogues! ‑
since issue N.64 it has become totally free: you cannot buy the new issues
anymore, and I decide who is going to get them for trade or as a gift (only a
few back‑issues are still available in a very limited number of copies). A
complete (or almost complete) collection of the magazine is housed in several
international archives, such as the Administration Centre/42.292 Networking
Archive in Belgium, the V.E.C. Archives in Holland and the Sackners Archive of
Concrete and Visual Poetry in Miami Beach, USA. And yes, I have spotted
recently some deleted early issues of AP! already offered at high prices in
specialized catalogues for collectors of avantgarde publications: I don't know
if I should be proud or angry about it, for sure there is nothing I can do (and
unfortunately I don't have a secret stash of back‑issues under the roof!), I
guess it's inevitable that such ironic turns of events may happen... One thing
I've been ruminating about for quite some time now is if I ever want to stop
doing Arte Postale!, and I just made up my mind to reach at least issue 100,
that would be a nice point to stop (or to turn into an electronic publication,
who knows ‑ but then the name will have to change definitively). This still
leaves 28 issues to go, and that means that Arte Postale!, like mail art
itself, will still be around for quite a few years...
Ruud, I'm not sure if I
have sent it to you already, anyway here is a complete list of the AP! editions
so far (please note that some of the issues appeared with a different
"fake" logo, still retaining the Arte Postale! numeration):
1 ‑ DEMONIA
‑ October 1979 ‑ edition of 100 copies
2 ‑ PATTI
SMITH ROCKIN' DEMONIA ‑ November 1979 ‑ 100
3 ‑ ART
SONGS FROM DEMONIA ‑ December 1979 ‑ 100
4 ‑ MORE
POLITICAL SATIRE: POST SCRIPTUM ‑ January 1980 ‑ 100
5 ‑ CAVELLINIANA
‑ February 1980 ‑ 100
6 ‑ AMERICAN
MAIL ART DADA 80 ‑ March 1980 ‑ 100
7 ‑ REFLUXUS
ISSUE ‑ April 1980 ‑ 100
8 ‑ AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
ISSUE I ‑ May 1980 ‑ 100
9 ‑ UK
SPECIAL ‑ June 1980 ‑ 100
10 ‑ AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ISSUE II ‑ July 1980 ‑ 100
11 ‑ AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ISSIE III ‑ August 1980 ‑
100
12 ‑ ALL STARS ISSUE ‑ September 1980 ‑ 100
13 ‑ T‑SHIRTS ISSUE ‑ October 1980 ‑ 100
14 ‑ DEVELOP MY DREAMS ‑ November 1980 ‑ 100
15 ‑ (teacher with kids) ‑ December 1980 ‑ 100
16 ‑ VISUAL POETRY ISSUE ‑ January‑February 1981 ‑
100
17 ‑ ETOATLERPSA! ‑ March 1981 ‑ 100
18 ‑ THE YAHOO BULLETIN ‑ 1st April 1981 ‑ 100
19 ‑ THINK ABOUT MAIL ART ‑ May‑June 1981 ‑ 100
20 ‑ UT FONA RES ‑ July 1981 ‑ 100
21 ‑ 44 88! ‑ no date (July 1981) ‑ 100
22 ‑ MIDSUMMER ISSUE ‑ August 1981 ‑ 100
23 ‑ THE YAHOO BULLETIN (II) ‑ September 1981 ‑
100
24 ‑ BOXED EDITION (in 3D cardboard box) ‑ October
1981 ‑ 100
25 ‑ THIS ORDER ‑ December 1981 ‑ 100
26 ‑ YEARBOOK 1981 ‑ 31st December 1981 ‑ 100
27 ‑ POSTCARDSBOX (in cardboard box) ‑ January‑February
1982 ‑ 100
28 ‑ CONFIDENCES ‑ March 1982 ‑ 100
29 ‑ CRISIS OF #29 ‑ April 1982 ‑ 100
30 ‑ EAST‑WEST CONNECTION ‑ May 1982 ‑ 100
31 ‑ (vintage postcards) ‑ June 1982 ‑ 100
32 ‑ BIDET ‑ July‑August 1982 ‑ 100
33 ‑ (mask cover) ‑ September 1982 ‑ 100
34 ‑ ARE YOU IN LOVE? ‑ October 1982 ‑ 100
35 ‑ BIENNALE DE PARIS ‑ November 1982 ‑ 100
36 ‑ (badges cover) ‑ December 1982 ‑ 100
37 ‑ S.I.N.EWS I ‑ January 1983 ‑ 100
38 ‑ CONCEPTUAL MAFIA ‑ March 1983 ‑ 100
39 ‑ LEWD CARESS (also CARE N.8) ‑ April 1983 ‑
100
40 ‑ (old Forte dei Marmi photo) ‑ May 1983 ‑ 100
41 ‑ S.I.N.EWS II ‑ June 1983 ‑ 100
42 ‑ POST‑ART GUERRILLA ‑ July 1983 ‑ 100
43 ‑ NETWORKART ‑ August‑September 1983 ‑ 100
44 ‑ (postman & drummer) ‑ October‑November
1983 ‑ 100
45 ‑ S.I.N.EWS III ‑ December 1993 ‑ 100
46 ‑ A TRIP TO AKADEMGOROD ‑ January‑February 1984
‑ 100
47 ‑ MAIL ART SHOW SHOW CATALOGUE ‑ March 1984 ‑
100
48 ‑ MCMLXXXIV! ‑ April‑June 1984 ‑ 100
49 ‑ THE MINIATURE ISSUE (in cassette box) ‑ July‑September
1984 ‑100
50 ‑ SILVER ISSUE ‑ October 1984 ‑ 100
51 ‑ S.I.N.EWS IV ‑ January 1985 ‑ 100
52 ‑ SCRIPTA VOLANT ‑ February‑March 1985 ‑ 200
53 ‑ HOMAGE A VITTORE BARONI ‑ no date (April‑May
1985) ‑ 1 copy only (this issue organized and edited by Mark Pawson, who also
produced and distributed an unnumbered transparent xerox‑sheet with names of
contributors)
54 ‑ CORNUCOPIA ‑ June‑December 1985 ‑ 300
55 ‑ MAIL ART HANDBOOK ‑ January‑December 1986 ‑
500
56 ‑ MAIL ART & MONEY DO MIX! ‑ January‑June
1987 ‑ 100
57 ‑ THE BOX GAME ‑ July‑December 1987 ‑ 500
58 ‑ THE B.A.T. MANUAL ‑ January‑December 1988 ‑
300
59 ‑ ALTERNATIVE PHILATELY ‑ January‑June 1989 ‑
500
60 ‑ (the making of) NETZINE ‑ July‑September 1989
‑ unlimited edition
61 ‑ SMILE ‑ October‑December 1989 ‑ unlimited
edition
62 ‑ B‑ART ISSUE ‑ January‑December 1990 ‑ 500
(250 with insert booklet by Günther
Ruch)
(no Arte Postale! in 1991)
63 ‑ LET'S NETWORK TOGETHER (with 7" record) ‑
January‑December 1992 ‑ 600
63b‑ META‑CONCERT IN SPIRIT (cassette) ‑ January‑December
1992 ‑ 93
64 ‑ UTOPIA INFANTILE (V.B. & Robin Crozier) ‑
January‑March 1993 ‑ 100
65 ‑ GLASS ENIGMA (David Drummond‑Milne) ‑ April‑June
1993 ‑ 100
66 ‑ THE ONE‑MAN SHOW ‑ July‑September 1993 ‑ 100
67 ‑ STICKERMAN SCRAPBOOK ‑ October‑December 1993 ‑
100
68 ‑ ARTURO G. FALLICO SPECIAL ‑ January‑December
1994 ‑ 100
69 ‑ RAY JOHNSON LIVES! ‑ January‑February 1995 ‑
unlimited edition
70 ‑ THE NO INSTITUTE/JÜRGEN O. OLBRICH ‑ March‑April 1995 ‑ 100
71 ‑ FUN IN ACAPULCO ‑ May‑September 1995 ‑ 300
72 ‑ ONE YEAR LATER ‑ 1‑13 January 1996 ‑ 81
73 ‑ A DECK OF POSTCARDS ‑ October‑December 1995 ‑
100
74 ‑ MY OWN PRIVATE INTERNET ‑ 14‑17 January 1996 ‑
300
75 ‑ LUTHER BLISSETT MAN OF THE YEAR ‑ 18 January‑1
April 1996 ‑ 100
And the following one is a
short essay I wrote for the recent exhibition of the whole Arte Postale!
collection organized by Guy Bleus in his mail‑art gallery space in Hasselt,
Belgium ‑ it was not used in the catalogue‑magazine so it's still unpublished:
ARTE
POSTALE! 1979‑1995: MEMORIES OF A MAIL ART MAGAZINE MAKER
As the old saying goes, I
am not an artist, I am a networker. When I started utilizing the mail art net,
I was looking for something that the traditional art system could not give me.
At that time, in the late seventies, I tried to restrain myself as much as I
could from creating "fine" images. I did not want to make
"artworks" and develop a style or please myself aesthetically. I
wanted to find new ways to communicate my ideas, avoiding all the usual traps
and cliches of the gallery‑museum‑critic‑artmagazine routine. I was very young
and naive, and of course I was also wrong (a style always develops in spite of
yourself, and you can't hide away indefinitely your love for pencils and
colours), but my clumsy idealism lead me instinctively to fully and wholeheartedly
embrace this correspondence art thing. It was so liberating, the whole anarchic
idea of Mail What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law. Furthermore,
operating at distance (as those travelling the Internet are realizing thirty
years later) permitted you to disguise yourself with harmless trickery,
switching sex, age, status, credo and (pen)name as fast as you could lick a
stamp. It was not art in the traditionally accepted sense, yet you could
pretend it was and "play artist" with hundreds of others grown‑up
kids, create new real/fake art myths and throw them in the face of the official
Artclique, or simply forget that such a thing as a cultural elite existed and
make up your own ideal (net)working dimension, a planetary web with you at the
centre.
For me, a networker is a
new kind of cultural worker, with a new role in society and new tools and
strategies of intervention at his/her fingertips: a sort of "cultural
animator", a meta‑artist who creates contexts for collective expression,
instead of traditional art works. I always felt that, in the mail art medium,
the "art work" is not represented by the single postcard or letter I
mail, but by the whole process of interaction with my contact(s), including
their replies and the spiritual link that is activated between us. A complete
mail art project, a collection of contributions from dozens or hundreds of
different people (not necessarily "artists"!) responding to one
request or theme, is another form of what I regard as a proper networking art
piece: not the single contribution, but the sum of all the interacting
mailings. In this sense, photocopied (or off‑set printed) and self‑distributed
mail art magazines, often including manual interventions and original pages
submitted by various contributors, are yet another form of genuine art work
generated by networking practices. I consider the thousands of copies of Arte
Postale! that I lovingly hand‑assembled one by one in the past sixteen years as
the best single documentation of my multifarious activities as a full‑free‑time
networker. While many content themselves with simple lists of names and
addresses, I believe there are infinite ways to turn a mail art catalogue or
magazine into a fully satisfying little art piece in itself. All those
unexpected holes or original fragments glued on the pages, one‑of‑a‑kind
enclosures or hand signed messages are not intended to mimic the preciousness
of pricey artists' books, but to make the experience of reading a mail art
magazine as fresh, unique and intimate as that of reading a personal letter. If
only in a few cases I have been able to achieve this, then I am an happy
networker.
RJ : Thanks for this extensive overview of your magazine and the
philosophy behind it. In all those years you must have received lots of mail
art. Is it all still at your place? Do you keep an archive or do you recycle a
lot?
Reply on 27-12-1995
(With
his answer Vittore included a diskette with the text as he had written it on
his computer, Unfortunately it was a MAC computer, and since I use a DOS
machine, I could not read the disk nor the text. Vittore also included some
photos of his archive which I will use as illustrations when possible, and some
small hand-made postcards).
VB : In the past fifteen years or so I remember very few days without
a piece of mail in my mailbox. When that happens, I know that the post office
might be on strike or that it must be a very special day indeed (with a mild
sense of relief built in the very experience!). This means that yes, I have
received a tremendous amount of mail, but luckily I have never been a
compulsive collector and I always recycle a lot of what came in. My room as a
young student was not that big, and it had to function as studio and archive of
mail art besides containing all my books, records, clothes and stuff. There was
no way I could save everything, so my line in action from the very start was to
throw the most useless trash-mail in the bin, save the books, catalogues and zines
for the library, keep only the "artworks" (classified in alphabetical
folders and files, arranged under authors' names and geographically) and the
envelopes that contained enough meaningful drawings, artistamps or
rubberstamps. This means that most of the personal messages, envelopes and
trivia has been recycled as new envelopes, submissions to assembling
publications or material for collages. This still leaves a LOT of paper
material and 3D pieces.
When I moved to my new
house in 1988, I had to pack everything into dozens of crates, it took me one
year to put everything back into shape in the new E.O.N. (Ethereal Open
Network) mail art studio-archive, that is now located in two small rooms under
the roof at Via Battisti 339, Viareggio, Italy. One room is just a storage
space, with boxes containing the works belonging to single projects, theme
exhibitions, series of panels of my own work, etc. The other room has a
library-wall with all the catalogues and magazines, plus all the folders and
larger file-cabinets for the contacts with whom I have long-standing
relationship, and files with the other mixed authors, divided geographically.
Downstairs I have a small
"home gallery" space with temporary exhibitions by single mail
artists, of materials culled from the archive. I must add the archive is in a
perpetual state of "orderly disorder", I am a very orderly type and I
like everything to be neatly arranged, but I never seem to be able to keep pace
with the upcoming mail.
At the time of writing,
there are at least ten big cardboard crates full of answered mail that need to
be subdivided into the various files, but who knows when I will be able to
perform this lovingly boring task. I usually sneak up into the mail art room at
odd times, very early in the morning before everyone wakes up or late at night
when everyone sleeps, so I rarely spend there more than one hour a day, and
that's just time enough to answer a few letters and develop some new ideas.
Right now the archive would need at least another room, as it has become really
full up to the brim with materials. I am thinking right now of an unheard of
manner to deal with the space problem, you'll read all about it in a future
issue of Arte Postale!
RJ : This space problem is something I hear from a lot of active mail
artists. I am very curious about your solution, but I will wait till you
publish it in your future issue of Arte Postale!. Let's focus on
something else. In 1986 there was the "tourism" and in 1992 the
"DNC-year". Were you active in those events too? Is meeting the
artists, you are in contact with by mail, a logic step in mail art?
Reply on 17-1-1996
(Vittore
wrote me that he will type the answers and questions all on his MAC-computer.
Since I can't read the MAC-diskettes, he will keep track of the words, and will
then transform the final interview with the help of a friend to a DOS-diskette
and send it to me).
VB : Yes, I did participate partially in both the big
"decentralized congresses" of Mail Artists (1986) and Networkers
(1992). In the first case, it was mostly through mail friends who came and
visited me in Forte dei Marmi, where I still lived at the time. I got really
very frequent visits from mail artists throughout the 80es, not one month
passed away without someone dropping in unexpected, while in the 90es visits
are very few and far between (this must mean something: either people has less
money and travelling has become more expensive, my image as a perfect guest has
changed, we have all grown old and with family ties, "tourism" is no
more that exciting, I really don't have an answer for this, maybe it is all
these reasons put together). In the second case, I helped H.R. Fricker from the
very start to formulate the call for the World‑Wide DNC92, so I felt much more
directly involved, I travelled to several Congresses in Italy and to a major
one abroad, the one held at Hans‑Rudi's house in the Swiss mountains. I have
many great memories and sweet anecdotes about all my mail‑art meetings
throughout the years, and not a single bad one, so I definitely think that
meeting in person after a long acquaintance through the post is a positive
thing, but I would not call it a "logic step" in mail art (it's
probably just an "inevitable step"): when you meet, it is no more
"mail art", regardless to the fact that you do cooperate
"live" on a performance or creative work or you just sip tea and
chat, it's a totally different kind of experience. I think meeting mail art
contacts now and then is an healthy thing to do, it helps you to put certain
things in perspective and to go more in depth and into details in conversation
(though, with phone before and Internet now, you can do more of this also at
distance), but to meet too many people too often, unless you are unemployed and
with all the time in the world in your hands, is just putting an useless stress
on your already difficult daily life schedule. Also, a strange thing I noticed
is that even if a meeting is very intense and positive on all accounts, usually
you tend to correspond less (or even stop corresponding) with someone you have
met in person. I guess it erodes the myth we all slowly build around respect
and friendships "at distance", a little part of its magic is always
lost in the process.
RJ : Will this magic stay there with the new communication forms the
internet brings us? On-line chatting and video-phone...... Or the
"anonymous" mail art by "snail-mail" shall survive this?
Reply on 24-2-1996
VB : Some forms of "magic" will probably disappear with the
end of snail mail, in a few years or decades, like this strong romantic feeling
associated with the history of love letters (letters to the loved one abroad,
at war, in prison, etc.), we will miss the collections of letters by great
poets, writers and artists, and so on (or we will start seeing collections of e‑mail
messages in print). But other forms of "magic" will be introduced by
the new media, like the possibility of taking on different identities (and even
change sex) in the Internet, while probably you can do the same through on‑line
dialogue and on video‑phone: you just have to alterate your voice or do a good
make up job, it is easy to fool everyone! So all in all it will not be a great
loss, because it will happen very gradually, people will have time to adjust to
it and come up with all sorts of new pranks and "creative"
transgressions if they want to. You can remain anonymous even if you meet
someone else in person, you can change your looks a bit and just insist that
your name is Luther Blissett.
RJ : You mention "Luther Blissett". I've read the article
about yet another "universal" name, like I knew "Monty
Cantsin" and "Karen Elliot". Isn't the repetition I see in a lot
of mail art initiatives the indication that the mail art network is ready to
vanish gradually?
Reply on 19-3-1996
VB : I haven't noticed a particularly relevant increase in
"repetitiousness" in the mail art network in recent months or years:
to my knowledge, it has always been there! That of mindless cloning of ideas or
of repetition of cliches is maybe an unavoidable side‑effect of all interesting
phenomena and exciting activities, it is always easier to imitate than to be
original and too many people are just plain lazy (God bless their unstressed
lives!), so I guess this only helps you to select the correspondents with whom
you really love to trade stuff... Regarding "multiple names", their
history goes back a long way before Monty Cantsin was born in the mind of Mr.
David Zack, as you can read in a chapter of Stewart Home's 1988 book Assault
on Culture (that by the way I am in the process of publishing in
italian for the small publishing house AAA I just founded with my ex‑TRAX
partner Piermario Ciani). I am involved in multiple name strategies since 1980,
when I created the ubiquitous conceptual group Lieutenant Murnau: with my
present band Le Forbici di Manitú I am
assembling right now a retrospective CD of Lt.Murnau's seminal
"plagiarist" recordings, to be released later this year on the UK
label Earthly Delights. I truly believe the negation of the singular identity
in favour of a shared name is a wonderful and radical development of some
networking philosophies inherent to mail art (there is no single
"artwork", the process or the collective project is the artwork,
there is no centre, each cell is at the centre of the net, etc.). I don't
believe, though, that much has been obtained by Cantsin, Eliot, Mario Rossi,
Bob Jones and all the other "historical" multiple names, especially
if compared with what the Luther Blissett Project has been able to accomplish
in Italy in just two years. Since the beginning of 1995, for the first time the
multiple name concept has really been embraced by a large number of people
working secretly in several towns (there are now groups of Blissetts in Rome,
Bologna, Udine, Rovigo, etc.), and it would take a whole book to report you all
the media pranks that have been successfully played to the italian national TV,
to big newspapers and publishers, etc. In fact, there are already three books
out in Italy on the Blissett case (and a fourth one will be published in May
'96 by AAA: Totò,
Peppino e la Guerra Psichica), plus several magazines and pamphlets (a few things are now
being translated into english in London), there are also several Luther
Blissett radio shows on independent radio stations and tons of articles from
the press every month. So this is not the repetition of an old concept, but
rather the beautiful big flower that has finally blossomed out of all those
minimal old seeds. It is growing fast, you can maybe compare it to the Church
of the SubGenius for the kind of fringe people it usually attracts, but it is
much more radical in ideology (all Blissett materials are no copyright and the
battle against copyright is a favourite cause for Blissett, while the SubGenius
is a deposited trademark!), the stated aim being to cause panic into all media,
to challenge and sabotage all the centres of Power and Control everywhere. The
Blissett Project goes way beyond the problems caused by an enflated ego, so
often a burden in all (mail) art circles, and it goes way beyond being simply
an "art project" (so maybe I should stop discussing it here!): it is
cultural terrorism at work.
RJ : This news about Luther Blissett is quite interesting for me. I
thought to be quite well informed about what is going on in the network, but it
seems that this Luther Blissett-idea is especially being developed in Italy,
and hasn't reached the network that well yet (I only remember seeing the name
on some xeroxes I got from Italy, and then there are the beautiful artistamps
that Piermario Ciani designed for his Blissett-project). It seems that in the
whole network, Italy takes a special place when it comes to networking within a
single country. Any specific reason?
reply on 10-04-1996
VB : There are two main attitudes towards this "mail art"
activity as a whole: one attitude consists in escaping the prison of the closed
official art system (artist-critic-dealer-gallery-museum-passive audience) just
to end up building another (more satisfactory) small ghetto‑utopian fairyland
(the "network" seen as a circle of "friends", where
everyone knows each other and what is going on: mail artists‑catalogues‑exhibitions‑magazines‑meetings‑more
active mail artists); the other attitude consists (and I subscribe to this one)
in seeing the mail art practitioners as just a tiny fragment of a global
networking phenomenon (including the small and underground press, the tape
network, what happens in free BBS, in some areas of the Internet, and then
again fax‑zines, phone‑phreeks, ecc.) where no one is physically able to keep
trace of every net‑focussed thing that is going on in the planet, and where
really anything can happen to link human consciousnesses together (without
necessarily the need of an "art" tag). Italy is part of the global
network just like any other geographical or linguistic area, so if a project is
well developed here you can't say it "hasn't reached the network", it
simply means that in the case of the Blissett project Italy has become the
centre of the network (that will spread from there), just like in the case of
the Decentralized WorldWide Congresses of 1992 Switzerland functioned as the
originating centre of that project: it's not a dogmatic thing, the centers are
always different and shifting places, each one of us is at the center of the
whole network, but surely every project must have to begin somewhere...
(regarding Blissett, I must point out that there are several english‑speaking
Luther Blissetts in UK, USA, Holland, Germany, Australia: I can provide several
addresses if you want, also see the contacts list and english text found in
Internet reprinted in issue 75 of Arte Postale!
plus LB has written with Stewart Home the pamphlet Green
Apocalypse and published another booklet in UK recently, Bob Black has
written about LB in the USA, I included a text in english from John Berndt/LB
in the book Totò,
Peppino e la guerra psichica, etc., but what is really interesting is how the Blissett
project has managed to satisfactorily sabotage and infiltrate the big national
media: never assume something isn't happening in the network if you do not know
anything about it, I was also pleasingly shocked when I first found out about
the Blissett project, just because it proved me that so much can be happening
before that even a "seasoned" networker like me finds out about
it...). Italy has always been at the forefront of mail art activities (just see
the number of italian participants to any catalogue, compared to the size of
our country!), so it comes as no surprise to me that there is also a number of
projects being developed in our own tongue (there are so many more things that
you can do when everybody speaks fluently the same language!), a lot of small
poetry magazines for example have opened their pages to mail art since the late
seventies here, and I doubt a lot of these mags have spread beyond the borders,
as they were all written in italian. There are probably many reasons for this,
but I guess it depends a lot on the strong background of political awareness of
the average italian student, the cultural agitation of the movements of protest
of 1969, 1977, and of the early 90's really left their mark on several
generations of young people, who got used, among other things, to the mail art
and networking ideas through several influential magazines (Amen, Decoder,
Neural, Rumore ‑ I wrote for years a "networking" column for the last
two of these high circulation magazines, reaching thousands of readers ‑ not to
mention the small zines like Arte Postale!, Na, Fuck, Sorbo Rosso, Il Sorriso
Verticale, Underground, etc.etc.) and books (Opposizioni 80, No
Copyright, Last Trax, to name but a few). I think that besides Italy,
maybe only in the USA (through the influential work of Factsheet Five, Global
Mail, The Church of the SubGenius, Hakim Bey's "Immediatist"
theories, Chuck Welch and John Held's books, etc.) the networking practice has
become so widely rooted and accepted as a relevant contemporary cultural
strategy belonging to everyone, and surely not limited to artistical practices.
But inevitably this situation will gradually spread to larger cultural areas.
Like millions of other people, I was thinking and doing "networking"
for a long time before discovering about mail art, and I am & will be
thinking and doing networking in and out of mail art also as I grow old.
RJ : The expanding of the network is mentioned by other mail artists
as well as an important goal in networking. Do you think that everybody can be
an artist? Do you think that everybody can be a networker?
Reply on 11-5-1996
VB : Of course everyone can be an artist (good or bad, it does not
matter), but this surely does not mean that everyone should be an artist! Luckily, we have all a different brain and a
slightly different idea of what is good for us. As the old saying goes,
differences are what really spice up the world. At the same time, a little bit
of creativity surely makes your life more complete, just like a little bit of
sport makes your body feel better. Those who never consider exploring their own
creative potentials (and I don't mean they necessarily have to paint a picture,
it can just be arranging the flowers in a vase, or making up a lullaby for your
son, etc. etc.) surely are missing a good reason to live up to be 100 yrs old.
The same applies to the fact that everybody can be a networker, with the
difference that, strictly speaking, everybody already is a
networker (of one sort or the other), unless he has always lived alone in a
desert island with no form of communication available, not even with the birds
and bees...
RJ : Another topic that seems to be very vivid at the moment in the
USA is the mail art & money issue. Lon Spiegelman introduced the sentence
"money & mail art don't mix" more then a decade ago. What are
your thoughts on this subject?
Answer on 5-7-1996
Question
received on May 17, 1996, mailing of the answer delayed till July 1996 (the
printer of Vittore's computer broke down at the same time he started his summer
job)
VB : I just wrote a very long and detailed letter on this subject the
other day, to an american networker called Joy who gave an university lecture
on Fluxus & mail art: in that occasion the issue was raised of the fact I
did offer in a recent issue of Arte Postale! magazine "slices" of my
archive for sale (that was my provocative solution to the "space
problem" discussed earlier in this interview). I reproduce here my letter
(minus some personal remarks) that I think can sum up well my own position on the money issue.
"(...) Going straight
to the "money & mail art do not mix" affair, I guess every
generation of networkers is confronted with this same issue and reacts more or
less in the same way. I was very active myself in the late seventies, campaigning
for the unwritten "golden rules" of mail art (no jury, no rejects, no
prizes, no prices of admission, free catalogue to all, etc.) whenever I found
someone trespassing the line of fair conduct by asking an admission fee to a
mail art show or money for a mail art catalogue, etc.. At the time I even got
myself into a little bit of trouble (by writing a provoking "purist"
mail art leaflet in the mock‑shape of a Red Brigades message...) and surely
into endless postal debates, that sometimes spilled onto the pages of Umbrella
and other network‑related zines. What is nice but a bit boring at the same time
is the fact that (misinterpretations aside, which anyway always abound!) my
position was and is very much alike the one outlined in your letter, that is in
turn very similar to the conclusions that any sensitive and judicious networker
will get to with just a little pondering: the exchange is FREE, for each show
or project (or magazine) ALL participants should receive a free copy of the
documentation (surplus copies of catalogues and magazines can be sold to
general public, of course, on a generally no profit basis), it is ethically
very UNFAIR to sell archives (or single pieces of mail, for that matter!) you
accumulated as personal gifts (though there is no law that can prevent you from
doing it, if you really want), much better to donate them to interested
institutions, and so on and on and on.
As I just said, this is all
very reasonable and very simple to understand by everybody, but I just happen
to have already lived the whole dispute a few times during my experience that
spans several "generations" of networkers, so it is just getting a
little more boring each time around... (I should simply reach back in my old
papers and photocopy ten years old leaflets and articles, then circulate them
again to show that nothing is changing ‑ but I just don't have the time to
search through my very chaotic archive... it's so much easier to think up
something new!). Fact is, I don't like to play the networking game with a
"boy scout attitude" ‑ to quote an appropriate expression once used
by my friend Al Ackerman ‑ and instead of writing politically correct
"netiquette" manifestos I much prefer to stimulate reactions on a
given topic by playing pranks and hard‑to‑tell jokes (if it's too easy to spot,
it is no more a good hoax), acting absurdly and (in my intention at least)
"creatively". In the early eighties I devoted one whole issue of my
Arte Postale! magazine to the Mail Art & Money dilemma, titled provokingly
"Mail Art & Money DO Mix!" (a real coin glued to each cover) and
documenting the reactions to a mail project for which I had sent several real
banknotes, with amounts ranging from 1 to 50 dollars in different currencies,
to contacts around the globe, with humorous requests attached like: "buy
me a gift with this money or drink it to my health" or "you are a
wonderful artist, keep this money as payment of the mail you just sent me"
or "you are a terrible artist, keep this money but please stop mailing me
stuff"...
The same
"absurdist" approach I adopted recently with the text ironically
titled "The big sell out" included in a micro‑issue of Arte Postale!
#74. I had just read news of Ray Johnson's letters starting being marketed and
of people selling or venting the idea of selling their archives, so I had this
very instinctive guts reaction of coming up with a paradoxical idea for "selling
out" my own archive as well (the cheapo "sharepiece" concept is
an obvious parody of digital shareware), just to see how Net Land would have
reacted to this move. I didn't really expect many hot reactions though, there
seem to be less and less people in the mail art circles who really care about
these issues, and in fact until today your phone call was the only hint of
somebody taking my "molest proposal" seriously: I got no reactions at
all in the mail, maybe people are too shy to point out that I am doing wrong
and they prefer the back‑stabbing gossip‑spreading technique (my shoulders and
conscience are large enough to take in a lot of eventual bad vibes!), except
for just one polite order in cash from a NY publisher/networker (I spent more
than 50 dollars to assemble and mail his "share‑piece", and he
already thanked for it, I'm not sure he got the joke though). Of course, I knew
very well that (almost) NOBODY would have spent 50 dollars to get a bunch of
old battered letters artistically arranged by me, and even if I DID get an handful
of orders, I could manufacture a few "archive share‑pieces" by using
some of the semi‑junk mailart I receive daily and I always end up recycling
into my works anyway. It should be clear to you by now that I am not an anal
retentive archivist, I always loved to PlAy with the stuff I receive, I recycle
most of the envelopes and useless xeroxes so I never have to buy envelopes and
stationery ‑ this saves trees, by the way ‑ there are pieces I receive that I
treasure and others that I throw away and others that I play with, I believe it
is my right to do so, just as others con do what they want with what I send
them.
One key concept here I
think is the "no profit" bias of what you do with your mail art
archive, not HOW you use it. Not all of us are collectors at heart or have the
time and energy to file orderly thousands of pieces. I have often tried to print
top quality issues of my zine Arte Postale! or of other networking‑related
projects (like the TRAX series) and I always lost A LOT of money in the
process. I always mailed free (expensively by air mail) copies to ALL the
participants‑contributors to ALL my projects, and then I tried to sell the
remaining copies to cover at least part of the printing costs, but I soon
learned that people who are in the mail art network just plain don't like to
buy stuff (it's totally OK for me, and that's why since 1993 my mail art zine
has become smaller and with no price attached), while distribution through
other underground or official channels just proved not to work at all (very few
copies sold, and two distributors out or three will not bother ever paying you
back, I still got credits pending all over the world...). I was never inclined
nor lucky in getting funds for my projects from any kind of organization or
institution, I always preferred to work independently with no pressures or
hustles from anybody, this also means that when I have done a good publication
or a small hand‑assembled catalogue I always paid from my pocket, giving what I
believe is a fair "gift" in exchange for the materials submitted to
my projects. I sure wish half of the projects I enter into every year would do
the same, but usually it's just a two pages xeroxed list of addresses you get,
which I find most of all a very un‑artistic practice. Even with just two
photocopies you can do wonderful mini‑books... Though I have a good
"normal" job, helping out my father in his Hotel business from May to
September, plus another low‑income job all the year round as a professional
rock journalist and freelance writer, I find more and more difficult to keep up
with the cost of running a family and at the same time communicating with
hundreds of friends, that's why sometimes I have to keep silent for months or
why I haven't been able yet to save enough money to buy me a modem, a bigger
computer, a subscription to a server and start up using E‑mail, as I'm sure I
will do in a not too distant future. But I assure you I never intended to
become rich by selling pieces of my history, I'd rather starve or sell my
record collection than part ways with letters like yours, that have touched a
nerve of my being (and that's the essence of NETWORKING to me)."
RJ : Well, maybe this interview will touch some more nerves of other
networkers when it hits the network. I guess with the Summer that has already
started, it is time to end the interview unless I forgot something important to
ask you?
Reply on 17-7-1996
(complete text via e-mail)
(The
last answer from Vittore Baroni came together with a 58 KByte file which
contained the complete text of the interview. So far Vittore has been the first
to type all answers on his computer, and therefore I only had to adjust the
complete text on my own text-processor a bit for the final result)
VB : I really enjoyed answering to your questions and I am a bit sad
that this is the last one, as I am sure there are numberless things worth
discussing about mail art that have been left out (memories of Cavellini, the
Neoist Camps and APT fests, the TRAX saga, marriages arranged and broken
through MA, etc. etc.). I believe that a project like your "mail‑interviews"
is very important to the spirit of mail art, exactly like the Decentralized
Congresses of past years, because it activates on a (semi)public level A
COLLECTIVE REFLECTION on a phenomenon that tends naturally to remain invisible
and private. Yours was a very simple idea, but that will surely be fertile of
positive results, and for this I must thank you enormously. As this seem to be
already a very long interview, I will end up very briefly with the hope that
other projects with the relevance of your "mail‑interviews" will
continue to appear now and then unexpectedly in the mail art net, giving back
strength and voice to a warm sense of community that often seems to dissolve
into "silent" and mechanical exchanges. DO KEEP IN TOUCH!
Address of mail‑artist:
Vittore Baroni
NEAR THE EDGE EDITIONS
Via C. Battisti 339
55049 Viareggio
LU - ITALY
[1] On the
moment this interview was finished there were many access points to the
Internet in Vittore's Hometown.
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