Mail Art News #38: Triumph of the Eclectic

The famous Flammarion wood engraving (colorized version)
 borrowed from the internet and ready to mail out

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Mail Art Microfiction

outgoing, Oct 2021

After prompting ChatGPT for a piece of mail art microfiction, I went in and made some changes for clarity and to keep the story on the desired track. This is for entertainment only and is in no way attacking IUOMA. 

The fictional online mail art community known as Mail Union Global was created only for the purposes of this work of fiction. Intelligence agencies on Earth and even on other planets may however be trying to send you remote messages. Haha? -T. Brown 6/7/2023

The Mind of Marina

Marina, a gifted mail artist and blogger, sat at her cluttered studio desk, immersed in a world of colors, rubber stamps, postage stamps, and envelopes. Little did she know that her creative passion had caught the attention of intelligence agencies seeking a channel for their covert operations and she was about to become a pawn in a web of intrigue and remote mind control.

One fateful day, Marina received an invitation to join an online community called Mail Union Global (MUG), a platform where mail artists from around the world could upload and share their creations. MUG seemed innocent enough, a place to connect with like-minded artists, but it concealed a dark secret. Unbeknownst to its users, the platform was infiltrated by alliances of competing intelligence agents, looking to exploit the coded messages hidden within the artworks.

Intrigued by the possibilities, Marina joined MUG, eager to showcase her art and connect with a broader community, but with each upload, she was being more and more scrutinized by shadowy figures seeking to manipulate her unwitting participation in their covert operations.

As Marina's art grew in popularity, she caught the attention of one particular alliance within MUG, known as "The Enigma Collective." They recognized Marina's talent and saw an opportunity to exploit her involvement in the network. They employed remote mind control techniques to implant subtle suggestions within her creative process, subtly guiding her to include specific symbols and codes in her artwork.

Yet, as the coded messages were transmitted through the innocent medium of mail art, Marina began to sense something amiss. She felt a growing sense of unease, as she began noticing recurring patterns in her work that seemed out of place to her. Unable to ignore the nagging suspicions, Marina delved deeper, stumbling upon a mysterious document that revealed the true extent of the mind control operation, and unraveling the true purpose of MUG and the dark world of intelligence agencies manipulating innocent artists like herself.  Shocked and appalled, she found herself at a crossroads.

With her newfound knowledge, Marina faced a difficult decision. Should she continue to play her part, oblivious to the consequences of her art? Or should she expose the truth, risking her own safety while disrupting the delicate balance of power within the intelligence community?

As Marina stared at her unfinished masterpiece, torn between her passion for art and her integrity, she knew that her decision would forever alter her life and those who had become unwitting players in this intricate game of deceit. The world of mail art, once a sanctuary for creative expression, had become a treacherous landscape where secrets lurked behind every brushstroke and alliances vied for control over the minds of unsuspecting artists.

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The Funny Papers

Incoming from Rebekka Schmidt -- what it feels like to check your email inbox, which often contains a great deal of junk mail, bills, and other annoying things, versus what it feels like to get mail art in your mailbox.

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Instagram

An image posted by gnarbeige was turned into a mailable post card for only 71 cents (postage included) on Stannp.com...That's not bad! I mentioned this on a previous blog post, but the post card has arrived in the mean time so I wanted to share. If you want to send the same image to everyone in your address database, you can. But first, you'd need an address database. I am slowly adding to my db. 

That's a direct scan of the post card. I mailed one to myself and one to other person. The sorting machines did bite into the surface of the card in a few places, causing some added glitch effect to this already glitch-art piece. 

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Facebook

Joey Patrickt posted a color Xerox calendar from 1981, a Barbara Cushman production, in the Buster Cleveland Fan Club group.

He's also making more issues of Eat IT UP Magazine of Art and Culture, the post-urban magazine of art and culture as a mail art production. Where do I get a copy of ziss zine?

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Tom Warner recently posted the following archival mail art from the late Mark Harp (1957-2004), currently set to friends only, but I reached out and he says he is open to emailing me more photos of the cards for inclusion in a future post here on Mail Art News. I look forward to that.

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IUOMA

In the 1990s there were bookstores. These bookstores had philosophy and Eastern religion sections. And Bush's Everything Zen, I Don't Think So was playing on something called the radio. Not George Bush. 

Thanks Pam for documenting my recent questioning.  

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Incoming (in no particular order)

A giant mega showering-down of universe bux from the Heavens THANK YOU to Adam Roussopoulos for sending me so many unmounted rubber stamps to play with and several nice sheets of artistamps. Additionally included was a list of suggestions originating from Jon Foster on what to do with all the Add & Passes you might get...

... which of course reminded me of an article I'd seen on the old internet called The Laziest form of Mail Art; or, the Bane of the "Add to & Pass On" Xerox Sheet. See more here. 

I call it the old internet because that's what websites used to look like and it's an article documenting a time in mail art history when Xerox art must have been all the rage. If you have any examples of this Xerox add & pass, let me know.

Universe bux are cosmic rewards, not associated with Fluxus Bucks in any way, but I could print some universe bux up on my new printer and mail them out. 

Add & Passes are fun once in a while. I don't want too many of them though. My main problem with them is that they show up all disorganized and maybe I'm not feeling anywhere close to where the image is coming from. "How to add my creative energies to this jumble? Hmm...maybe I can add something over here...no I just f*#ked it up. The next one I get, I'm going to cover completely in black ink...and stamp my name on the back with all the other names. Haha!" However, I did add to something that came to me from Sarah Roe and it turned out ok. See the outgoing section for more info on that. 

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Monster A GoGo

Shirley the mail art tortoise is adjusting to a recent move. 

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Cristiano Pallara 

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various clippings from anonymous in Kansas

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I'd sent some blank zines out to people, so it's surprising to see that some of them have come back to me, no longer blank! Here are two such examples. 

J. Norton in Missouri, USA

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Lubomyr Tymkiv in Ukraine

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nonlocal variable

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Peter Wilson 

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Rebekka Schmidt

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Outgoing

I will be sending out some small Flammarions, borrowed from the internet and printed using my new Epson ET-2800, a seriously impressive printer so far. And it wasn't too expensive as printers go. 

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This is an Add & Pass I received from Sarah Roe. Theo Nelson also added before sending to Sarah R. 

I added the white wax pencil and the silver and gold color pencils, and will probably send back to the originator of this A & P, Cameron Terhune. 

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Reader Mail

Mail Art News correspondent, Mark Rossmiller, has this to say about mail art in Kyrgyzstan: "There's no [other] mail artists here I think.

Longtime reader Joey Patrickt suggests a report on copy art. Yes, I can look into that for a future post, but where to start?

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From the Archives

From Lorre Smith in 2021. Interesting composition. Nice colors. Fun textures. Something planetary is suggested here. Maybe it says something about humankind's ongoing efforts to triumph over Nature. It is uncertain whether or not the giant achievement, represented by the gold rectangle, has been reached already, for there is another rectangle, the green rectangle, representing knowledge of Nature, i.e. reality in all of its vast and intricate shapes and forms, always morphing and testing human sentience. 

Lorre Smith

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Cristiano Pallara 

I didn't want to write an intro today, so I'll write an outro instead. Coming up with titles for blog posts has become somewhat challenging since it's always such an eclectic mix of content, so we'll go with that today. Triumph of the Eclectic. Catchy, isn't it? Moving forward, I might throw in random titles that may or may not have much to do with the content of the blog. Don't panic. It's just me being weird. Eccentric? 

Send me all the rubber stamps. Send me all the rubber stamps. Send me all the rubber stamps. Send me all the rubber stamps. Send me all the rubber stamps. Send me all the rubber stamps. Send me all the rubber stamps. Send me all the rubber stamps. Send me all the rubber stamps. Send me all the rubber stamps. Send me all the rubber stamps. Send me all the rubber stamps. Send me all the rubber stamps.