Mail Art Discussion

67) Are you angry with me?

2009-07-19T02:25:00.000-07:00

66) Are there too many blogs?

2009-06-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

Nowadays there are so many blogs that everybody is posting but no-one really has the time to go to all the other blogs. Communication is slowly coming to a new point where the blogs are taken over by social networks. Do you agree?

65) Mail-Art and Publishing Books

2009-01-08T09:49:00.000-08:00

After decades of doing Mail-Art I too started to publish books with the result of what I have written over the years and found out. I notice that the mail-artists tend not to buy these books. Is there a reason for this? Don't they want to pay money for books on the subject? Should mail-Art and money not be mixed?

64) Against Gender Violence

2008-11-28T07:04:00.000-08:00

More Info at http://boek861.com/violencia/

63) US International Postal Rates

2008-11-21T21:50:00.001-08:00

The International Postal Rates from the USA have been going up a few cents every year। Here are the Rates as of November 2008:
To Canada, Mexico: $०.72 for the first ounce, $0.55 for additional ounces
To other countries: $०.94 for the first ounce, $0.75 for additional ounces
There is an additional flat fee charge of $०.20 for:
- Large envelopes
- Rigid envelopes
- स्कुँरे envelopes
I usually add the 20 cents To be certain.

62) Mail Art Censhorship

2008-11-12T12:01:00.001-08:00

Folgende Information habe ich über http://www.01pla.net von Philippe Pissier erhalten:

September 24, 2008 French Postcards
A blogger on Libération’s Web site, Agnès Viard, reports that, in June, in Cahors, in the southwest of France, the mail artist Philippe Pissier (pronounced piece-Y¥) was being subjected to criminal investigation for having mailed a postcard of a bare-breasted woman, a nipple pierced with a safety pin, to a German exhibit of erotic mail art that had invited him to participate. After the assistant prosecutor Isabelle Ardeef began the investigation, Pissier was informed that he risked three years in prison and a fine of 175,000 euros for the crime of “disturbing public order and mentally endangering children by means of a pornographic work.” The following month, his computer and many of his works were confiscated, but the artist has remained without official word since then. As Pissier remarked, I am an adult, the mail sorters are adults, the mailman is an adult, and the addressee is an adult. I don’t see what the problem is. The local press has weighed in, heaping scorn on Ardeef for the inquiry. Giard reminds readers that such paintings as “Gabrielle d’Estrées,” by an anonymous French artist of the sixteenth century, is on open display at the Louvre, including to minors. “Le ridicule ne tue pas” (“You can’t be killed by ridicule”), the French say; but officials there would do well to remember that, in 1966, Charles de Gaulle’s regime was shaken by its (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to ban Jacques Rivette’s movie “La Religieuse,” a misstep that definitively revealed the aged President’s incommensurable distance from modern life.

More Info:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/goingson/2008/09/french-postcard.html

61) Mail-Art Changed my Life

2008-10-30T13:11:00.000-07:00

Just orderd this new rubberstamp. Symbolic for my life: It is changed by Mail-Art quite a lot. So why not share that with others. The rubberstamp still has to be made. I expect it in 2 days and will then start to use it.....

Is this a topic you can relate to? What changes have Mail-Art brought into your life?

60) Mail-Art in 10 years?

2008-10-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

With the rate the postal rates have increased, the sending of mail-art by traditional mail has become quite expensive. The die-hards keep on sending mail-art, but a new generation still has to discover the postage Stamp.

Will Mail-Art be arround in about 10 years?

59) Guillermo Deisler

2008-09-16T14:37:00.001-07:00

This hommage to chilean visal poet Guillermo Deisler I did more then ten years ago. It was onew of my first experience with multimedia. Reactions please.

Greetings from Hamburg

58) How do you archive mail art?

2008-09-06T07:09:00.000-07:00

Sending out some collage-cards using glue I thought about archiving or conserving mail art.

I am quite sure that after two or three years the glue will not keep the parts together. As it will also happen to cards I've got. Now, do you take precautions? Do you re-glue cards of your collection?

57) Impatience?

2008-09-06T06:51:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I just realized, that I sometimes become really impatient, waiting for the arrival of my send outs. On bad days ideas like "I should just post these cards with e-mail as computer scans instead of snail mail posts" come to my mind; and waiting for replies really nibble on my self consciousness ("Have I made sth. wrong?").

Well, on good days of course, I just think using snail mail is a good lesson to slow down in our fast world.

Best,

mischa

56) Mail-Art Discussions

2008-08-22T00:40:00.000-07:00

As I have noticed only few discussions take place here. It seems most mail-artists are busy with sending out and receiving mail-art and don't like to discuss the subject. No problem. The blog will stay online just to demonstrate that.

55) Mail-Art Archives

2008-06-29T22:56:00.001-07:00

In my TAM-Archive I found this old article I wrote about Mail-Art Archives. It was then 20 pages long and I am rethinking this topic for a new version. What has happened to the mail-art that has been sent out all these years. Is it sold, brought to archives, still hidden in boxes, what do we know?

Any stories or things I should know on this subject?

After the summervacation I will start on writing a new text. I discovered some mail-art archives has moved into certains places, sometimes wellknown archives. But sometimes they are also sold (yes, people pay for the old mail-art of some wellknown people....)

Your thoughts?

54) What to say about this?

2008-06-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

The coupons I send out have a specific topic they touch. Is mail-art 'guilt-free' as some Americans say? Does one decide to answer or not and is the mailing one sends out really free. Or is it that mail-artists expect an answer and think it is wrong not to answer a piece of mail-art they receive? reactions?

53) A mail art a day...

2008-06-08T10:03:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I'd like to know how other mail artists "work": Do you produce daily / on the week end / from time to time, but focussed?

The background of my question is that often a "guilty" feeling starts when I don't make & send cards - mostly because my job eats me... From time to time I plan to make a card a day, as quick & dirty as I can, but at least I have cards to send. But then my "standards" come knocking and say: "You don't want to send this card?!?".

Well, how do you handle this?

Thanks for your response,

mischa gerloff

52) How much is the cheapest postage to send something to abroad?

2008-06-01T04:06:00.000-07:00

I know that the postal rates have increased a lot over the years. The 'snail-mail' has become very expensive. The rates for the cheapest mail in the Netherlands are:

Inside Netherlands (to 20 gram) 44 Eurocent
Inside Europe (to 20 gram) 75 Eurocent
Outside Europe (to 20 gram) 89 Eurocent

Just wondered how the rates are in other countries?

51) Question on size 8x8cm

2008-05-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

Looking at the circulaire 132, I wonder if there is a special idea behind artwork using dimensions of 8cmx8cm?
Can you give me the origin and the significance of this?

50) Cartoon by Keith Bates

2008-04-17T22:37:00.000-07:00

Your comments to this cartoon by Keith Bates bout the "MailArtMan"...........

49) New discussion one week later

2008-04-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

The mail is slow and takes time. The Internet publishes righ away and people can read all at the same time.... Do you spend to much time online and therefore don't send out as much as you would like to?

48) no discussions since exactly one month ?

2008-04-08T01:27:00.000-07:00

so what do you think about my new blog " a collARTage a day" I started just some days ago

to raise a little fund for my planned fluxus artistbook to be edited in future

it is a kind of a fluxus performance

give me some input, send me maybe a little scrap to integrate

than I will create my new collARTage

http://collartage.blogspot.com/

come in and find out

47) MailArt contains Inspiration and may be Addiction!

2008-03-08T23:11:00.000-08:00

Misha Gerloff

46) ... using mail art for the cover of a catalogue ...

2008-03-01T03:50:00.001-08:00

The A. S. Popov Central Museum of Communications in St. Petersburg has used my mail art for the cover of the catalogue of the show "Mailartissimo", without asking me before, not sending me an invitation to the exhibition (which is now even already closed), neither a copy of the catalogue. I asked the museum now several times in the last weeks to get a copy but did not get any reply.

What do you think about it ?

45) What is your passion in Mail-Art?

2008-02-27T22:50:00.000-08:00

Why are you doing Mail-Art? With the electronic communication-ways some still prefer the handmade mail and keep sending things out. Why?

44) Where is question No. 39 ?

2008-02-12T09:14:00.000-08:00

43) Where is Charles François?

2008-02-02T02:06:00.000-08:00

In the 80-ies I was in contact a lot with Charles Francois from Liege, Belgium. He used a modem and an Apple computer in the early years of communicating with e-mail. He har RATOS, I had the TBHS (Tam Bulletin Host System), and we were pioneers in these new fields where mail-art and electronic networks joined.

On the Internet I can hardly find things from him. His old website from the University of Liege has gone.... Does anybody know where he is or what happened?

The photo is from my archives (dates 15 years back I think).