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Real Correspondence is a mail art bulletin edited very irregularly by Vittore Baroni for Near The Edge Editions, via C. Battisti 339, 55049 Viareggio, Italy. It is distributed free by snail-mail since 1980 and also in e-mail version since 1998. >>> This is the December 2000 issue, announcing the publication of the book ARTISTAMPS by James W. Felter.
AAA Editions is proud to announce the publication of James Warren Felter’s book ARTISTAMPS / FRANCOBOLLI D’ARTISTA Here is the back-cover blurb: James Warren Felter (New York, 1943) has created, researched and collected artistamps since 1973. He organized exhibitions in North America, Europe and Russia and is often a consultant and lender. Currently Director of the Jas Cyberspace Museum, Felter lives in West Vancouver, Canada with his wife and cat. Artistamps rebel against the monopoly of governmental emissions, giving life with satirical, playful or lyrical intents to an alternative philately dominated by the most unrestrained creativity. This volume reconstructs the history of the art form, from the work of pioneers Michael V. Hitrovo and Karl Schwesig to the conceptual experiments of Yves Klein and Fluxus artists, and the planetary diffusion through the open network of Mail Art with the multicoloured emissions of imaginary islands and virtual countries. The book is illustrated with hundreds of artistamps by more than fifty artists most representative of the field. Preface by Vittore Baroni, with special advice from Anna Banana.
If you want to check the contents in detail, this is the full INDEX of the book: FOREWORD - The postage stamps’ revolt (V. Baroni) J.W. Felter - GREAT ART MUST BE LICKED! - The artists, actions and events shaping a new movement in international art ALBUM LEAVES (portfolios and short essays): Anna Banana - On Artistamp News ; Fernand E.J. Barbot; Vittore Baroni; Guy Bleus - The thrill of collecting artistamps; Kenneth J. Bryson; buZ blurr; Gregory T. Byrd; Guglielmo A. Cavellini; Piermario Ciani; David Cole; Michael Hernandez De Luna; Marcello Diotallevi; Dogfish - Cinderella in Tui Tui; Dominique; Susan Dworski; Andries D. Eker; James W. Felter; Hans R. Fricker; Jorge Garnica; Bruce Grenville - Voyages to imaginary countries; Harley; Ed F. Higgins III - Small is big; Dennis J. Highberger; Michel Hosszú; Sandy Jackson; K. Frank Jensen; Joki; Eleanor Kent; Alexander Kholopov; Natalie Lamanova; Rene Montes; Clemente Padin; Franco Piri Focardi; Joel Smith; Steve Smith; Geir Sør-Reime; State of Being; Rod Summers - Artistamps from the computer; Michael Thompson; Ed Varney - The artistamp "anthology" sheet; Chuck Welch. CHRONOLOGY OF FIRST EDITIONS SELECTED EXHIBITIONS BIBLIOGRAPHY Other artists with at least one artistamp reproduced (in order of apparition): Mark Bloch, Dennis P. Jordan, Jeffrey Dixon, Peter W. Kaufmann, Tim Mancusi, Endre Tót, Gerard Barbot, King Alexander, Richard De Meester, Alan Brignull, Fabio Bruno, Leslie Caldera, Joel S. Cohen & Thomas Kerr, Weef, Joe Decie, T. Michael Bidner, Michael V. Hitrovo, Karl Schwesig, Ray Johnson, Robert M. Watts, George Maciunas, Donald Evans, Ken Friedman, Dana Atchley, Carl T. Chew, Patricia Tavenner, Edgardo-Antonio Vigo, Picasso Gaglione, Alyce Cornyn-Selby, Arturo Fallico, Pere Souza, Gregory Zbitnew, Dieter Rot, Sean A. Woodward, Willi K. Baum, György Galántai, Rose Avery, Robert Rehfeldt, Jürgen O. Olbrich, Geraldo Yepiz, Michael Leigh, Pawel Petasz, Robin Crozier, Rose Avery, Francis Hall, Luc Fierens… plus various collective "anthology sheets".
How the book was born: After the publication in 1997 of my mail art guide (in Italian) Arte Postale for AAA Editions, the small publishing house I had founded two years earlier with my business partner Piermario Ciani, I started planning a follow up to that book, focussed on a single specific aspect of mail art. In Spring 1998 the notorious artistamp maker James W. Felter and his wife visited me in Viareggio, and we discussed the possibility of editing together a book on artistamps. In the following months the decision was taken to publish a book on the history of rubber stamp art first, as rubber stamps were easier to reproduce in black and white than artistamps, and John Held Jr. was able to provide very quickly an essay sketching the history of the genre. So in April 1999 L’arte del timbro/Rubber Stamp Art by Held appeared in a bilingual Italian/English edition, a structure that we used as a blueprint for the new book by Felter on artistamps (to appear just before Xmas 2000). In this way a sort of "trilogy" on mail art has been accomplished by AAA Editions, and we are quite happy with the results. Of course, there are several other subjects that could be profitably explored as further volumes in this series (postcards, experimental poetry, collages, stickers, etc.), but we are not sure that we really want to continue in this direction. As many of you might know, life for small publishers is not easy at all, and we feel we have done our bit documenting the mail art phenomenon. We hope that others will take up the challenge. It would be interesting, though, to take the project a step further: mail art is a fascinating subject and deserves a major survey book by a major publisher with international distribution. With thousands of people around the world exchanging materials in the mail art network, hundreds of archives scattered in many Western and Eastern countries and four decades of networking history behind our backs, it is rather surprising that so few books exist in print on the subject (if you do not count hard to find show catalogues and self-produced publications). Last year we were lucky enough to see the appearance of the wonderful monography Ray Johnson - Correspondences by Flammarion (something more than an exhibition catalogue), and this Summer Marc & Mel Corroto edited a very interesting special mail art issue of the US magazine New Observations (more info below), but this kind of events are few and far between. We really hope to see in the near future more scholarly works and introductory books about mail art appear in print. If nobody out there does the job, we’ll have to figure a way to make it happen ourselves…
NEW OBSERVATIONS n.126 - Summer 2000 - The Art Is In The Mail(ing) Guest Editors: FaGaGaGa (Mark & Mel Corroto). Cover by Ray Johnson. 34 pages with richly illustrated short essays by several international networkers. If you have an interest in the history and theory behind mail art, this special issue of New Observations magazine is strongly recommended. I do not have copies for distribution, but you can get it directly from the source: 320 West 37th Street, #6F, New York, NY 10018 USA (price for a single back issue: $9.00 USA / $ 11.50 foreign). You may find some food for thought inside it, like shown by these brief excerpts from Mark Bloch’s text "Communities Collaged: Mail Art and the Internet", that echo with uncanny precision my own feelings about the valuable experience of mail art as a forerunner of the Internet: < < I used e-mail to arrange a face to face meeting with AA Bronson, one third of the influential General Idea team that created File Magazine in 1972. (…) In February 2000, Bronson said: "It’s a whole book to discuss about all the various threads of what was going on. I think it - let’s call it the ‘electronic revolution’ - is already in progress without there being an electronic technology in place. So, the whole idea of networking on very horizontal rather than vertical structures. (…) It’s not based on a hierarchy and it’s not based on equality per se and it’s not based on… a sort of Marxist notion. It’s much more about free-form networking that operates in a very organic sort of way. So the correspondence art was very much like an illustration of that. It’s like the Internet… it’s exactly like the Internet in its structure and in the way it happened and the way it changed and shifted all the time. And it’s quite interesting the way these little banks of images pulled out of the popular culture were collected and then recycled - very much the way imagery passes through the Internet, through everybody’s emails… (…) I think it was, and is, the feeling of the time. It was appearing with a small group of people who were, in a way, more conceptually advanced. It was just part of their nature. And it’s really now that it’s appearing in the culture at large. Buckminster Fuller always talked about a 25 year lag between something being invented and something appearing in the culture at large and that’s sort of how correspondence was. It was something for just a few people and now in the form of the Internet, it’s just sort of everyday activity for everybody." >>
MAIL ORDER James Warren Felter, ARTISTAMPS/FRANCOBOLLI D’ARTISTA (AAA Editions, December 2000), 216 pages, hundreds of illustrations, all texts in English/Italian: $ 17.00. Special introductory offer: buy three copies and get a fourth as a gift. Buyers of Felter’s book by mail order will also receive as a free extra bonus a colour artistamps mini-sheet printed by AAA Editions in a limited edition of 250 copies (while supply last). Another new book from AAA (November 2000): Various Authors - PIERMARIO CIANI: dal Great Complotto a Luther Blissett (AAA Editions), 256 pages in black and white and colour, a richly illustrated compendium of 25 years lived intensely on the art fringe between graphic design and photography, copy art and fanzines, stickers and multiple names. With original texts (in Italian, head-chapters with English translation) by E. Baj, V. Baroni, P. Bristot, A. Caronia, V. Deho, P. Echaurren, F. Galluzzi, M. Giacon, J. Held Jr., S. Home, G. Marziani, G. Perretta, C. Tavella, S. Zannier: $ 18.00 Other AAA books on mail art: Vittore Baroni - ARTE POSTALE (AAA Editions), a guide to the network of creative correspondence, 256 pages, ca. 300 illustrations, in Italian only: $ 18.00 John Held Jr. – RUBBER STAMP ART/L’ARTE DEL TIMBRO (AAA Editions), an illustrated history of the use of rubber stamps in art, from Dada to mail art, 176 pages, multicolour print, texts in English/Italian, last copies: $ 17.00 Other mail art publications still available: Arte Postale! n. 81 - The Incongruous Meetings 1998, 12 pages magazine with manual interventions and enclosures: $ 3.00 The Incongruous Meetings 1998 cassette supplement - incongruous songs and audio art on a c46 audiocassette with 8 pages booklet: $ 4.00 Arte Postale! n. 82 - The Table of the Little Iconoclast, 20 pages magazine with manual interventions: $ 4.00 Arte Postale! n. 83 - The David Zack Project, brand new issue launching a networking tribute to a great pen pal (see below), large folded sheet magazine with manual interventions and enclosures: $ 1.00 Commonpress 23 - 1979 catalogue of mail art show on political satire organized by V. Baroni, ca. 100 pages loose in box, edition of 500: $ 30.00 Last Trax – a detailed history of the Trax international group/project (1981-1987), an important sourcebook to understand the roots of "network culture", 60 pages illustrated in two colours, text English/Italian, with 7" vinyl EP, postcards, stamps and stickers enclosed: $ 15.00 Last but not least, a NEW very special item: For true lovers of artistamps, we recommend the audio CD compilation "Living in the ice age Vol. 2 - Stamps, headphone music & lazy penpals" published in the Summer 2000 by the Italian label Milano 2000 (distributed by Family Affair/Edizioni Ishtar, via Mecenate 76/3, 20138 Milan, Italy - e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] - web site www.ishtar.it). Edited by the graphic designer and copy artist Giacomo Spazio together with the musician and DJ Stefano Ghittoni, the album includes 12 tracks of "down beat" electronics from international acts (DJ Vadim remixed by Silent Poets, Jim O’ Rourke remixing the High Llamas, The Cinematic Orchestra reworkerd by Tom Tyler, plus Periferico, The Dining Rooms, Bedroom Rockers, Spiralman, etc.) and also a 13th acoustic "ghost track" by Le Forbici di Manitù, an hommage to the "father of mail art" Ray Johnson. The CD comes in a original cardboard box with 12 mini-sheets of artistamps in full colour, with works by over 40 artists, designers and comics artists (Franco Matticchio, Gianluca Lerici, Pablo Echaurren, Giuseppe Palumbo, Gabriella Giandelli, Joung Lee, etc.). Included in the package is also a short text (in Italian/English) by V. Baroni on the "Great moments in the history of artists’ stamps" (as published in a recent issue of Artistamp News zine). I have been able to obtain just a few copies of this lovely item, published in a very limited edition, to offer directly for sale, so if you are interested get it before it is too late! Cost is $ 18.00 each (only one copy for customer). HOW TO ORDER - Prices are in U.S. dollars and include surface postage, if necessary figure out an equivalent in your own currency. For air mail (outside Europe only) add $ 2.00 to each item ordered ($ 4.00 for each AAA book). Send payiments as cash in registered envelope or International Postal Money Order (no cheques, or add $ 5.00 for bank costs) to: Vittore Baroni, Via C. Battisti 339, 55049 Viareggio, Italy.
THE DAVID ZACK PROJECT - The Correspondence Novels (CN in brief) by David "Oz" Zack are a sort of Holy Grail of mail art literature. A key figure in the early shaping of the international network of correspondence art and in the creation of its basic mythologies, Zack has disseminated his diaristic writings around the globe by randomly mailing faded carbon copies, cheap photocopies or typewritten manuscripts to his many international correspondents. Zack’s "destructured" novels travelled the mailways, from a point in the 70es until his disappearance clouded in mystery in the second half of the 80es, in the form of envelopes marked with special numbered rubber stamps referring to different subjects/chapters (for example, CN-2-Outside the Outsider, CN-6-Bern Porter and other Geniuses, CN-9-The N-tity, etc.). If you happen to have some pages of these Correspondence Novels in your archive, please send a good readable photocopy to the address below (send originals only as gift, the material will not be returned). I will try to collect as many scattered Zack pages as possible and - if/when enough material is collected - I will produce a limited edition CN (The Book of Oz), mailing a complimentary copy to all contributors. If you want to read a few samples of Zack’s writing, request the new issue 83 (The David Zack Project) of Arte Postale! magazine (see above), or get it free in exchange for your mail art from my snail-mail address: Vittore Baroni, via C. Battisti 339, 55049 Viareggio, Italy.
Call for Arte Postale! n. 84 - JUST 4 F.U.N.? The I.M.A.C.O.V.L. (Mail Artists Council Of Virtual Lands) team in Belgium, R. De Meester and B. Simon, declared 2001 to be "the Mail Art Year of the Virtual Lands": read all about it by visiting their web site at http://www.ibelgique.com/Imacovl (you will also find there an invite to contribute to a collective artistamps project). Near the Edge Editions, the home of the mail art magazine Arte Postale!, decided to support the promotion of 2001 as the year of imaginary countries by assembling a special artistamps issue titled JUST 4 F.U.N.? (F.U.N. is an acronym invented by my friend Piermario Ciani, and stands for Fantastic United Nations). To participate send an original design in black & white for an artistamp on the theme of virtual lands & creative de-globalization, size cm. 5,5 x 5,5 (inches 2,2 x 2,2), and/or 201 copies of an original artistamp (hopefully on the given theme, but not necessarily). Deadline: February 1st , 2001. Of course all contributors will receive a copy of the magazine. In 2001 AAA/Near the Edge will try to organize an artistamps exhibition in Italy, to promote James Felter’s book and the "Mail Art Year of Virtual Lands", so if you make artistamps or if you have new stampsheets, I will be happy to add them to my E.O.N. archive (and I will send some of my artistamps in exchange). Mail everything to the usual address: Vittore Baroni, via C. Battisti 339, 55049 Viareggio, Italy. That’s all for this bulletin, hope to see you soon in the snail-mail! Ciao, V.
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