User:Bocajpj/sandbox

In the 1970s, the practice of mail art grew exponentially, providing a cheap and flexible channel of expression for cultural outsiders and demonstrating a particular vitality where state censorship prevented a free circulation of alternative ideas, as in certain countries behind the Iron Curtain or in South America.

In 1984, the evolving norms of the mail art community were tested when curator Ronny Cohen organized an exhibition for the Franklin Furnace, New York, called "Mail Art Then and Now." 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 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. On the second night, the mail artists read a prepared manifesto penned by Pittore, and Cohen was jeered from the stage; during the ensuing melee all of the panelists also walked out. The excluded works were ultimately were 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 JP Jacob in his short-lived mail art zine PostHype. In a letter to panelist Mark Bloch, Ray Johnson (who was not a panelist) commented on the reverse-censorship and sexism of the event.

The ensuing 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. Even if "tourism" was proposed satirically as a new movement by H.R. Fricker, a Swiss mail artist who was one of the organizers of the 1986 Mail Art Congress, nevertheless mail art in its purest form would continue to function without the personal meeting between so-called networkers. As mail artist Anna Banana put it, "the best part about mail art is that you don't have to be there in person to be in on the action."