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 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Cal Pryluck, Radio-Television-Film, Temple University, Philadelphia <[log in to unmask]> <PRYLUCK@TEMPLEVM> ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I thought this may be interest.. -Lucia [log in to unmask] ---------- 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 Many of the forty-two chapters appearing in "Eternal Network" are original, unpublished essays pertaining to the origin and history of mail art networking, collaborative aesthetics, new directions for mail art networking in the 1990s, mail art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