Mail Art News #11: Hammering on the Door of Art History, with Nonlocal Variable

  

Prepress 

Stream of conscience word salad from looking at things
on the desk & screen, then highlighted a word per line,
which turned into a not-so-coded message. 

TB: Hi Nonlocal Variable. How did you get into mail art? And your name indicates that you're into programming. To what extent does your interest in technology influence your art? 

NV: I’m a child of the 60s and tend towards the experimentaI and fringe culture. I found mail art through music. I love avant-garde music and writing – John Cage, LaMonte Young, etc., and corresponded directly with musicians. I learned about Fluxus, Ray Johnson and others. Someone sent me a card that said “Post Card Art,” and before I knew it, I was stuck in. 

Nonlocal Variable is a quantum mechanics term as well as a coding term. Einstein discovered the idea of “spooky action at a distance,” where 2 particles can communicate simultaneously. Bell’s Theorem solved the math about this by plugging in a “nonlocal variable.” It’s turned out to be a very playful art name. That said, I did start in Information Technology, then a career in companies that innovated digital imaging. So, I do use tech in mail art, but do a lot of handmade methods blended with digital imagery. I’m very into chance operations, Dada, detournement, cut-ups, Neoism, humor and cultural commentary in my work.  

TB: Thank you for explaining. I believe you are the correct person for me to ask this next question. In the future, will there be direct brain to brain messaging? How might this change mail art? 

NV: No. Brain-to-brain messaging will not happen directly. It’s an imaginary concept propagated by Elon Musk (who eats bugs) and Ray Kurzweil at Google, who did a TED talk on screen as an AI young woman singing “White Rabbit.” Due to our overshoot of Earth’s carrying capacity, paper will become the primary way Fluxus and mail art happens. We will, though, all have Xerox copiers inside our eyelids.

TB: I will think about that. Now, might people already be receiving mailart and other messages from other galaxies via some quantum physics mechanism? 

NV: Who knows. Given the crazy things that humans on Earth are doing right now, anything’s possible. When I show friends the mail art I send and receive, some do think I am from another galaxy. Seriously though, what amazes me about mail art and mail artists is how universally positive and friendly this practice is. The level of trust is so different than most of the social web. 

TB: There are ways to lose mail art friends but I won't go into the details about that here. You mentioned Fluxus. What is Fluxus to you? Does Fluxus continue or did it stop at some point? 

NV: To me, it represents the idea that process creates art product, and an ethic of creating new art forms. Especially chance operations. I go back to Maciunas’ Fluxus Manifesto (“promote non art reality”). Reject the dominant paradigm. I think it’s still active. 

TB: Why did you take a 25 year break from mail art? What were your initial impressions upon returning to the world of MA? What's your current favorite piece of mail that you've sent?

NV: Work intensified, more family priorities – MA slowed down and eventually just stopped. Didn’t really have the time until I left my tech career.

Initially it felt like it was mostly on the web. That turned out to be wrong, and I’ve reconnected with old friends and met new people via IUOMA and word of mouth. Seems like there’s less cultural commentary as the situationist and Neoist age, but the art’s great. People still get it.

From back in the day, a Photoshopped destruction of the Mona Lisa. Now, it’s a little 16- page chapbook I just made called Gelatinous Shoe Residue. 

The Fluxus Manifesto said
“Purge the world of dead art,”
so it had to be Mona. 

Gelatinous Shoe Residue. I saw

this phrase somewhere and had

to do a book about it. Feels like a

good tagline for Western Culture.

TB: Based on your influences, where do you see your creativity heading next mailartistically. 

NV: I'm doing more with small booklets, Dada word salads and detournement (completely changing the meaning of a piece of work). Also looking to get more artistamps and rubber stamp carving. Some things about the Donald and Silicon Valley billionaires. Found objects trigger a lot of what I do. And finally I have two never-finished 1990's projects, so that's next. Should be cool given the age of the unseen pieces. I like to keep myself and my mail art friends back on the heels, thinking "Huh?" I just did a piece with my cat surrounded by dead herrings. Subvert the dominant paradigm.

[Was there ever a zine called The Read Herring? If not, there should be. Even if it's only a fictional zine title.  -TB]

TB: Do you have any thoughts on political mail art? Let's say someone sends you something in the mail with a message that you disagree with. What do you recommend? Engage them in a postal battle? Send it back to them, "corrected"?

NV: Given the divisiveness we have now I don't do much political sending, and focus more on the megacrisis: big oil, climate change, autocracy, collapse. If I get something I don't agree with, that's fine. I won't, though get in a debate with the sender. We need to be more tolerant (yes, it's hard).

TB: Are there any other topics you would like to discuss here?  What would be your ideal piece of mail art to receive? 

NV: I'm curious about who and why is drawn to this practice, and how they found it. It's interesting to see how people's personality comes out in the work, and the sense-making and messages with their content. My long-term hope is that we stick mostly with the physical art (it's called MAIL art, right?), and minimize the time we spend on digital placements and sharing through a screen. And finally I hope people take the time to learn about and embrace the fundamentals of the Fluxus Manifesto, Dada and all of the other cultural underpinnings of Mail Art.

No need to dream of an ideal mail art piece, though the coconut I received from Hawaii was pretty epic. I'm thankful for anything that shows up in the mailbox. It's all cool.

[And now let's take a look at a few more creative works by Nonlocal Variable along with comments from the artist. -TB]

1994 Independence Day 

A first attempt at Artistamps, featuring Émigré’s Remedy typeface. 

Wanted by FBI 

I’m very concerned about Surveillance Capitalism, and it
was time to create a whimsical, sarcastic treatment of our
famous neoliberal monopolistic libertarian oligarchs. 

Linear B 

Made a sheet of ancient Linear B glyphs, painted and
cut them up, and set them on a brilliant data poem
my brother did in 1980.

 

Not a Toy 

Got some lamps with these crazy warnings, decided to
rework them with chance operations. The center image
was plagiarized from an ethical tech  academic.
Right side were items AI vision saw in pictures

. 

Links: 

Website: https://nonlocalvariable.art/

IUOMA: https://iuoma-network.ning.com/profile/nonlocalvariable