86) Poll-3

85) Poll-2

84) Poll-1

83) Art in Mail: Mail Art?

I wonder: I see so many mail art send in envelopes, not as mail art. Wrong perception? What do you think?

82 ) Chinese Mail-Artists

I started a project to search or even connect to Chinese mail-Artists. In the past (80-ies and 90-ies) I did get some mail from China. But mostly from non-Chinese that lived for some time there. Do you think there is a specific reason as to why there are no contacts with chinese. Are the reasons Language, politics, money......? What do you think?

81) Anyone can Comment now; doet that help?

This blog has now a setting that anyone can comment. The moderation is set on to prevent spammers from automatically enter texts, but we will see if there are now more reactions. Do you agree this might help?

80) Do you actually read these posts?

When I look at the number of visitors on this blog, it comes to over 2000 each month. The entries are just small numbers each month. To make it simple. When you read this message, just answer YES, and I know you are reading this. Does that work?

79) So many visitors, so few entries

There are a lot of visitors to this Mail-Art Discussion Blog, but there are so fe entries? What is the reason for this? Is a blog not working. Do some visitors want to have access? (send a request by e-mail to me), or are we all just readers and no writer?

78) The right time for mail art.

Hello everyone!

Have you ever felt that something is blocking you, when you're trying to create mail art, but you don't know what is it? Or what's causing it? I'm having the right ideias, but something is saying it is not the right day to do it. This is realy weird sometimes. Maybe we just assemble the thoughts and dreams in our minds until the right time to release them into art.

Anyway, hope you're all having a good time over the world.

Eduardo Cardoso

http://paranormalmailart.blogspot.com

77) glad to be here

hi Ruud many thanks for inviting me to join the group.

Hope I've navigated the various complexities of enrolment successfully !

76) More Mail-Art projects?

On the website for Mail-Art projects I notice that the number of started mail-art projects is increasing. New mail-artists start with new projects which start on websites like these and don't use the mail for spreading the project news. Documentation is also published on websites. Is this the new Mail-Art Projects reality and do you like this developement?

75) Has Mail-Art changed?

The new generation that does "Mail-Art" might have a different perception of this art-movement than the older generation that has participated for decades. Is that true?

73) Time to read

Yesterday suddenly 5 comments on my blog from Michael Leigh. He writes - among other things- that blogging on his own sites it takes away the time to visit all the other blogs and see what is happening. Time is scarce. Do we have time to read all the things other publish? How do you divide the time to publish and read?

72) Ray's Big Day

Did anyone send or receive anything interesting on this important date? I sent a card to three people; would've sent more, but didn't notice the date until just before the post office closed.

Cheers,

Brad

71) New Mail-Artists from the Web

The older generation Mail-Artists was sending out traditional mail and integrated the e-mail and Internet with their communication. There is now a new generation out there that discovered mail-art through the Internet and only after that started with the sending and receiving of mail-art. What made you choose for the slow and old-fashioned mail? You could send a digital images instead? What made you send out mail the old-fashioned way?

70) M@IL-@RT and INTERNET

68) Self-promotion or Networking?

I notice that the tendency of some mail-artists is to post just anywhere their work without any reaction to the place where they publish their work. Have some forgot the interaction that is so basis to mail-art?

67) A BOOK ABOUT DEATH/ Matthew Rose

Matthew Rose September 10 at 5:06am Reply

LIVE WEB CAST FOR THE OPENING IS HERE: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/abookaboutdeath

Please bookmark the page. We'll be starting around 6 pm NYC Time.

If you are planning to come to the opening, come around 6 PM, bring a bag for the pages of the book (some are large).

See the most recent works on the blog: http://abookaboutdeath.blogspot.com/

And artist Caterina Verde's "wall" web site of the show here:

http://abookaboutdeath.net/

More photos coming... if you will be at the opening feel free to video tape the performance.

Thanks to all who made this happen.

Best,

Matthew

66) Are there too many blogs?

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

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

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

63) US International Postal Rates

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

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

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?

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

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?

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?

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

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

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?