|
|
||||
|
/ home / art / archive / event / encyclopaedia / shop / about us / contact / |
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
> encyclopaedia / |
|||
|
|
|||
|
> Incongruous Meetings / |
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|||
|
The 'Incongruous Meetings' in 1998 (IM98) was the third 'Congress year' of the Mail-Art network and organised by Vittore Baroni (Italy). Baroni was directly involved in the earlier 'Congress years'. In the 'Decentralized Networker Congress' in 1992 he helped the organiser Hans Reudi Fricker (Switzerland) to formulate the worldwide call. In 1998 he was the general organiser of the 'Congress year', he invited Mail-artists to organise a meeting and to send him documentation of the meeting. He collected all the material into a Conclusive IM98 Calendar catalogue. The idea behind the 'Incongruous Meetings' was to join in a shared spirit of a "networking community", with the thousands of individuals that build up and inhabit the different underground channels of independent and counter-cultural communication, such as zine-publishers, net-artists, independent artists, poets, home-tape musicians, and anyone else who cared to participate. The brainstorming and related activities that came out of the "decentralized congress" idea were very fertile with results. "It was inspiring to meet many artists together and discuss networking related theories and practicalities", said Baroni, of the congress. That is why he started the 'Incongruous Meetings'. Participation in the 'Incongruous Meetings' was very simple, everyone was free to organise a meeting for whatever reason they wanted. The organising Mail-artists did chose a day or a period of the year when the meeting would take place and returned to Baroni a printed form that he distributed in the Fall of 1997 along with the first 'Incongruous Meetings' invite. They filled this form with information about the when, where, what, who and why of the intended meeting. All the received forms with planned meetings were then reprinted and widely circulated in bi-monthly lists via surface mail and e-mail.
In total there were 151 meetings plus a small number of obviously fake invites and conceptual jokes. About twenty-eight countries were involved, among them imaginary and virtual countries such as 'Akademgorod', 'Napoleon Island', 'Netland' and 'Tui Tui'. 'Netland' is a synonym for the 'eternal network' of Robert Filliou (France). It is a virtual country and a collective free zone where everyone is invited to play. Some Mail-artists such as John Held Jr. (U.S.A.), Guy Bleus (Belgium), Hans Reudi Fricker (Switzerland) and Baroni himself adopted "Netland" in their artwork, and are also artists who have had important influences in several 'Congress years'. Roughly between five hundred and three thousand participants were involved in these several congresses, including men, women, transgenders, railway men, AAAstro-men (1), turkeys, fish, stones, Luther Blissetts, UFOs, SubGenii (2), nudists, Mail-artists, net-artists, poets, musicians and a few art critics. To spread the news, the 'Incongruous Meetings' received the support of various magazines such as Open World, P.O.Box, Umbrella, Boek861, and other publications. A typical aspect of Mail-Art is that each idea attracts other Mail-artists to adapt it in their artwork or activities. Keith Bates (England) for example printed and distributed a large number of IM98 art tickets and Joel Cohen (U.S.A) a.k.a. The Sticker Dude from 'Ragged Edge Press' created various leaflets, stickers and rubberstamps for the 'Incongruous meetings'. A congress year also provides the possibility to include worldwide actions of remembrance, such as the occasion, three years after the drowning death of Ray Johnson (U.S.A.) as a result of jumping in the water off the 'Long Island' bridge on the 13th of January 1995. On the same day in 1998 large groups of people in Argentina and Spain gathered at the same time. 21.13 O'clock, in front of the local Post Offices wearing bunny masks. 'Le Forbici di Manitù' in which Baroni is member played, 'A Song About Ray' live in front of a Post Office in Italy, while replicating a street installation of Johnson's 'moticos'. The 'Incongruous Meetings' also had a bizarrely appropriate appendix with the opening on January 14th 1999 of a Ray Johnson retrospective at the 'Whitney Museum' in New York, the same space where one of the very first Mail-Art exhibitions was organised by Johnson himself in 1970. On the opening day several Mail-artists met, some wearing Ray/bunny "collage decoder" masks prepared and smuggled into the museum by Joel Cohen. (1) AAAstro-men: Are members of the 'Association of Autonomous Astronauts'. They describe themselves as "a world-wide network of local, community-based groups dedicated to building their own spaceships. To establish a planetary network to end the monopoly of corporations, governments and the military over travel in space." It is a kind of multiple name, not in an artistic way, but more to create a social movement. (2) SubGenii: SubGenius is a fake cult and a parody of a church called the 'Church of the SubGenius'. Started in the U.S.A. by Rev. Ivan Stang (U.S.A.). Somewhere in the beginning of the eighties, it spread among zine publishers, graffiti artists, Hollywood hipster wanna-bees and counter-cultural artists including celebrities until it became a widespread underground cult in itself. "Subgenii" applies to followers and promoters of the Church of the SubGenius who encourage the human need to follow rather then to create. Many were inspired by the "Church of the SubGenius" to start their own fake church, usually short-lived. Related Topics: References: Date last update: 26 January 2004 |
||||
|
|
|
|||
