% Eternal Network Issues
% Florian Cramer, 7-2019

# Groundwork

1) Robert Filliou, Eternal Network (1968) - Western Europe

2) New York Correspondance School, Ray Johnson (1960s/1970s) - North America

3) NET, Jaroslaw Koslowski, Andrzej Kostolowski (1972) - Eastern Europe

Use of stamp to make project appear like a government project and thus escape control/censorship. Failed when Koslowski was put on trial and was banned from work.

# Vittore Baroni, Real Correspondence (1980s)

Alternative communication model, for networked/participatory/peer-to-peer vs. top-down/sender-vs-receiver mass media communication

Next to mail art, influences of post-punk DIY culture, noise music, DIY cassette music, zinemaking. Marks a period when the mail art network at large began to refer to itself more broadly as "eternal network".

# Flux Post Kit, 1960s

Artist-made postal stamps, rubber stamps, postcards, envelopes, postboxes: Exposes mail art as alternative postmastership or "intimate bureacracy" (Craig Saper, who derives this term from concrete poetry and its formalist poetics). 


# Blitzinformation

Stefan Kukowski & Adam ..., Polish-British artists (1973)

Proposal of an artist-run search engine or knowledge base (answering mailed questions in an artistic/poetic way)

(Correspondence Art, 268)

# Ulises Carrion, "The Big Monster" and E.A.M.I.S.

Talk given in 1979, published in 1984 (Correspondence Art, XV):
debunking the myth of Mail Art as being non-elitist and inclusive,
addressing the apparatus of the postal system ("The Big Monster") as an
issue. 

Alternative to the "Big Monster" with E.A.M.I.S. (Correspondence Art, 129): Artist-run postal system off the official postal system, serving as both transmission and archiving system, principles of P2P, sneakernet, mesh networks

# Pawel Petasz, Commonpress (1977-)

(Baroni, Arte Postale, 158). Mail Art magazine edited by changing editor-publishers: collaborative editing & distributed publishing

# FILE / VILE / BILE / SMILE (1972-)

Zine published by General Idea imitating the graphic design of LIFE magazine, use of appropriation and meme strategies

Meme-like takeup, mutations of the zine, up to the point where SMILE could be published by anyone.

# Pete Horobin, Data (1980-1990)

Analog-visual database record of all day activities of the artist, precursor of "quantified self" (but more qualitative)/big data operation; distributed via Xerox copies to correspondent network

# Neoism / APT festivals

Hybridization of Eastern European unofficial art (with performances in private apartments) and North American mail art/alternative culture. Stresses that it is not art (vs. mail art) and claims to be a "network web" as early as in 1981.

Overlaps with post-punk and industrial culture:

# Genesis P. Orridge / COUM Transmissions

Founders of industrial music/industrial culture movement

Originally mail artists

P. Orridge got on trial for sending a postcard with pornographic images (problems of porn and censorship), organized a "mail action" to rally public support by fellow artists (crowdsourcing campaign)

# Pauline Smith, Adolf Hitler Fan Club

Police raid at the same time as GPO's trial.

Was the fan club just an experiment in transgression, or was it making a serious case for Hitler as a fighter against capitalism? Was it trolling? Same issue as with the Alt-Right today. (Documented in GPO book & Correspondence Art, 294)

# Cavellini

Cavellini stickers as self-fulfilling prophecy/hyperstition (to have a retrospective at Palazzo Ducale in 2014), spamming campaign by a rich industrialist, using network effect for self-marketing and platform capitalism.


# Clemente Padín

Visual poet, oppositional activist in Uruguay during military dictatorship, got detained, mail art network was used to pressure him out of prison (crowdsourcing/crowd petition effort)

# Manfred Vänçi Stirnemann, Copy-Left

Use of the term copyleft and copyleft symbol (reversed ©) ca. ten years prior to Free Software movement; involves East/West collaborations

# Ruud Janssen, TAM

Networking becoming its own cause/artistic practice, first Mail Art BBS (dialup computer) proto-Internet, translating Mail Art into sharable electronic text files

# Rev. Ivan Stang, High Weirdness by Mail

Stang is founder/head of the Church of SubGenius. His books is a resource book on mail-distributed pseudo-science, cults, political fringe movements (including Neonazis and Holocaust revisionists like Ernst Zündel), conspiracy theories;

full range of fake news/conspiracy theories as present today on the Internet, partly involving the same or related actors, showing that these networks are not specific to the Internet.