The following was posted on PERFORM-L, a list dealing with performance
art (NYU, Northwestern being the main centers).
What's described seems yet another turn on the recent reproductions/
originals/etc. debate.  cal
 
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Cal Pryluck, Radio-Television-Film, Temple University, Philadelphia
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----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
I thought this may be interest..
 
  -Lucia
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
 
"Eternal Network: A Mail Art Anthology by Chuck Welch is to be published in
Fall 1994 by University of Calgary Press.  The 42 chapter, 350 page text
includes an index,  147 illustrations and six major appendices including the
largest extensive listing of underground mail art zines in existence.  A
thorough listing of nearly 100 international private and institutional mail
art archives appears in another important appendice.
 
But what is mail art?  Mail art is a paradox in the way it reverses
traditional definitions of art; the mailbox and computer replace the museum,
the address becomes the art, and the mailman brings home the avant-garde to
mail artists in the form of correspondence art, e-mail art, artistamps,
postcards, conceptual projects, and collaborations.  "Eternal Network
introduces readers to a lively exchange with international mail art
networkers from five continents.  The book include snail mail and e-mail
addresses, fax, and telephone numbers for
many active mail artists.  Readers are invited to participate -- to
corresponDANCE with global village artists who quickstep beyond establishment
boundaries of art.
 
Among the forty-two distinguished contributors appearing in "Eternal Network"
are New York City art critic Richard Kostelanetz; physicist, poet Bern
Porter; Director of the Museum of Modern Art Library, Clive Phillpot; famed
Fluxus artists Dick Higgins and Ken Friedman; University of Iowa art
historian and archival director Estera Milman, and mail art patron Jean Brown
who has collected the world's largest assemblage of mail art material now
undergoing documentation at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the
Humanities.
 
Many of the forty-two chapters appearing in "Eternal Network" are original,
unpublished essays pertaining to the origin and history of mail art
networking, collaborative aesthetics, new directions for mail art networking
in the 1990s, mail art projects exploring the interconnnection of marginal on
and off-line networks, mail art criticism and dialogue, and finally,
parables, visions, dances, dreams, and poems that articulate the living
mythology of mail art.
 
Edited by Chuck Welch, an active mail artist since 1978, "Eternal Network"
makes an important first step towards introducing mail art to non-artists,
artists, and academic scholars.  For more information send e-mail to
[log in to unmask] or write to "Eternal Network" PO Box 978,
Hanover, NH 03755