Editing Mail art (section)

===1970s and 1980s===
In the 1970s, the practice of mail art grew considerably, providing a cheap and flexible channel of expression for cultural outsiders. In Canada, the [[artist collectives]] [[Michael Morris (artist)|Image Bank]] and [[General Idea]] have been heralded as instrumental to the early history of networking and social interaction as art.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Bloch|first=Mark|author-link=Mark Bloch (artist)|title=A look at three Canadian artists known as the Image Bank: Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov and Gary Lee-Nova|url=https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/vincent-trasov-gary-lee-nova/5137|access-date=2022-02-01|website=[[Whitehot (magazine)| Whitehot Magazine]]}}</ref> Correspondence Art was particularly widespread where state censorship prevented a free circulation of alternative ideas, as in certain countries behind the Iron Curtain or in South America.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Jacob|first=John|author-link=John P. Jacob|title=East/West: Mail Art & Censorship|journal=[[PostHype]]|year=1985|volume=4|issue=1|issn=0743-6025}}</ref>

The growth of a sizable mail art community, with friendships born out of personal correspondence and, increasingly, mutual visits,<ref>{{cite journal|last=Lloyd|first=Ginny|title=The Mail Art Community in Europe|journal=Umbrella Magazine|year=1981|volume=5|issue=1}}</ref> led in the 1980s to the organization of several festivals, meetings and conventions where networkers could meet, socialize, perform, exhibit and plan further collaborations. Among these events were the Inter Dada Festivals organized in California in the early 1980s<ref name=Ross>{{cite news|last=Ross|first=Janice|title=A gleefully rebellious festival of dada|url=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__IZN7YDU3d4/S_aip9CJ4WI/AAAAAAAAAmU/gS467sN7lZQ/s1600/reibunedada.jpg|access-date=11 April 2013|newspaper=Oakland Tribune|date=August 26, 1984|location=Art: The Tribune Calendar}}</ref> and the Decentralized Mail Art Congress of 1986.<ref name=HRFrickerOberlin>{{cite web|title=Hans-Reudi Fricker|url=http://www.oberlin.edu/library/art/mailart/bios/fricker.html|work=Mail Art @ Oberlin|publisher=Oberlin College & Conservatory|access-date=11 April 2013|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130903031741/http://www.oberlin.edu/library/art/mailart/bios/fricker.html|archive-date=3 September 2013}}</ref>

In 1984 curator Ronny Cohen organized an exhibition for the [[Franklin Furnace Archive|Franklin Furnace]], New York, called "Mail Art Then and Now."<ref>{{cite web|title=Mail Art From 1984 Franklin Furnace Exhibition|url=http://www.franklinfurnace.org/research/projects/flow/mailart/mailartf.html|publisher=Franklin Furnace|access-date=25 January 2014|archive-date=2 February 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140202190845/http://www.franklinfurnace.org/research/projects/flow/mailart/mailartf.html|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Mark|first=Bloch|author-link=Mark Bloch (artist)|title=Franklin Furnace Fracas|url=http://www.panmodern.com/franklinfurnace.html|publisher=panmodern.com|access-date=25 January 2014}}</ref> The exhibition was to have an historical aspect as well as showing new mail art, and to mediate the two aspects Cohen edited the material sent to Franklin Furnace, breaking an unwritten but commonly accepted custom that all works submitted must be shown. The intent to edit, interpreted as censorship, resulted in a two-part panel discussion sponsored by Artists Talk on Art (organized by mail artist Carlo Pittore and moderated by art critic [[Robert C. Morgan]]) in February of that year, where Cohen and the mail artists were to debate the issues.

The night preceding the second panel on February 24, [[Carlo Pittore]], [[John P. Jacob]], Chuck Welch a.k.a. CrackerJack Kid, David Cole, and John Held Jr. crafted a statement asking Cohen to step down as the panel moderator. Welch delivered the statement whereby Cohen was asked to remain on the panel but forfeit her right to serve as moderator. Instead of remaining, Cohen chose to leave the event. After some give and take with both panelists and audience, Cohen left, saying, "Have fun, boys." Her entourage walked out with her during the ensuing melee.<ref>{{cite news|title=International MailArt—Part II: The New Cultural Strategy|last=Heisler|first=Faith|year=1984|issue=4|volume=9|page=18|journal=Women Artists News}}</ref>

The excluded works were ultimately added to the exhibition by the staff of the Franklin Furnace, but the events surrounding it and the panels revealed ideological rifts within the mail art community. Simultaneously fanning the flames and documenting the extent to which it was already dominated by a small, mostly male, coterie of artists, the discussions were transcribed and published by panelist [[John P. Jacob]] in his short-lived mail art [[zine]] [[PostHype]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Jacob|first=John|author-link=John P. Jacob|title=Mailart: A Partial Anatomy|journal=[[PostHype]]|year=1984|volume=3|issue=1|issn=0743-6025}}</ref> In a letter to panelist [[Mark Bloch (artist)|Mark Bloch]], [[Ray Johnson]] (who was not a panelist) commented on the reverse-censorship and sexism of the event.<ref>{{cite web|last=Mark|first=Bloch|author-link=Mark Bloch (artist)|title=Ray Johnson's letter to me after the event, questioning the issue of sexism.|url=http://www.panmodern.com/ray-atoa-letter.jpg|publisher=panmodern.com|access-date=25 January 2014}}</ref>

The rise of mail art meetings and congresses during the late 80s, and the articulation of various "isms" proclaimed by their founders as movements within mail art, were in part a response to fractures made visible by the events surrounding the Franklin Furnace exhibition.<ref>{{cite book|last=Jacob|first=John|author-link=John P. Jacob|title=The Coffee Table Book of Mail Art: The Intimate Letters of J. P. Jacob, 1981–1987|year=1987|publisher=Riding Beggar Press|location=New York|url=http://arcade.nyarc.org:80/record=b569546~S8}}</ref> Even if "tourism" was proposed satirically as a new movement by {{ill|H. R. Fricker|de}}, a Swiss mail artist who was one of the organizers of the 1986 Mail Art Congress, nevertheless mail art in its pure form would continue to function without the personal meeting between so-called networkers.<ref name=HRFrickerOberlin />

In the mid-1980s, Fricker and Bloch, in a bilingual "Open Letter To Everybody in the Network"<ref>[[Mark Bloch (artist)|Bloch, Mark]] and {{ill|H. R. Fricker|de|lt=Fricker, Hans Ruedi}}. "Phantastische Gebete Revisited" in ''Panmag International Magazine'' 6, ISSN 0738-4777, February 1984. p. 8.</ref> stated, "1) An important function of the exhibitions and other group projects in the network is: to open channels to other human beings. 2) After your exhibition is shown and the documentation sent, or after you have received such a documentation with a list of addresses, ''use the channels''! 3) Create person-to-person correspondence... 4) You have your own unique energy which you can give to others through your work: visual audio, verbal, etc. 5) This energy is best used when it is exchanged for energy from another person with the same intentions. 6) the power of the network is in the quality of the direct correspondence, not the quantity." The manifesto concludes, "We have learned this from our own mistakes."<ref>Röder, Kornelia "H. R. Fricker, Mail Art and Social Networks", HR Fricker: Conquer the Living Rooms of the World, Kunstmuseum Thurgau, Warth, Switzerland: Edition Fink, 2014, p. 38.</ref>