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Comment by Valentine Mark Herman on November 22, 2010 at 8:38pm

Mail Art (Maga)Zines: are there any of these still in existence, and if so where can i find details of them? Regards, Val

Comment by Valentine Mark Herman on November 22, 2010 at 8:37pm

IUOMA membership card (paqge 11 of 1988-2008 Overview book): could the General-President send me one please -- and I will carefully place it inside the book? Thankyou

Comment by Valentine Mark Herman on November 22, 2010 at 8:34pm

The Universal Postal Union celebrates World Postal Day on 9 October each year (see below). Does IUOMA have a similiar day commemorating...its founding (sometime in August 1988)?
If so, when is it please?
If there's not such a day, should we have one?
Regards Val
****************

"World Post Day is celebrated each year on 9 October, the anniversary of the establishment of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) in 1874 in the Swiss capital, Bern. It was declared World Post Day by the UPU Congress held in Tokyo, Japan, in 1969.

The purpose of World Post Day is to create awareness of the role of the postal sector in people’s and businesses’ everyday lives and its contribution to the social and economic development of countries. The celebration encourages member countries to undertake programme activities aimed at generating a broader awareness of their Post’s role and activities among the public and media on a national scale.

Every year, more than 150 countries celebrate World Post Day in a variety of ways. In certain countries, World Post Day is observed as a working holiday. Many Posts use the event to introduce or promote new postal products and services. Some Posts also use World Post Day to reward their employees for good service.

In many countries, philatelic exhibitions are organized and new stamps and date cancellation marks are issued. Other activities include the display of World Post Day posters in post offices and other public places, open days at post offices, mail centers and postal museums, the holding of conferences, seminars and workshops, as well as cultural, sport and other recreational activities. Many postal administrations issue special souvenirs such as T-shirts and badges."

Comment by cheryl penn on November 22, 2010 at 4:44pm

Does Vispo count?

Comment by Rain Rien Nevermind on November 22, 2010 at 4:15pm

A. B. A. Y. M. P. M.

A. B.ook A.bout Y.our M.other's P.otato M.asher wants to know ::

What ever happened to Ed Plunkett
who invented NYCS and Nyc-Nyc Jokes ?

.... I knew Ray Johnson in REAL LIFE
When he was doing his Mother's Potato Mashers

EVERY Mother had a different Potato Masher and
yet their Potatos all LO0ked pretty much MATCHED

Nyc-Nyc
Who's There ?
Your Mother's Potato Masher
Your Mother's Potato Masher Who's Who

Love, Marcel Duchamp's Mother's Potato Masher Cloaked Joke Book

Comment by Rain Rien Nevermind on November 22, 2010 at 3:42pm

Whatever happened to Edwin Golickoff ?
Excuse me I have a cough,... Whatever happened to Ed Weird go Lick Off ? Asking is FUN da MENTAL to MAIL ART.

Comment by Ruud Janssen on November 22, 2010 at 6:22am

The New York Times

October 31, 1998

Dick Higgins, 60, Innovator in the 1960s Avant Garde

By Roberta Smith

Dick Higgins, a writer, poet, artist, composer and publisher who was a seminal figure in Happenings and the concrete poetry movement and a co founder of the anti authoritarian Fluxus movement in the early 1960s, died on Sunday while visiting Quebec City. He was 60 and lived in New York City and in Barrytown, N.Y.

The cause of death was a heart attack, his family said. He was staying at a private home in Quebec City while attending a colloquium on "Art Action, 1958 1998" at a performance space named Le Lieu.

Higgins, who invented the term "intermedia," had a long list of achievements, most of which he enumerated in a carefully maintained curriculum vitae that ran to 47
pages. Its table of contents listed such headings as Visual Art, Movies and Videotapes, Music and Sound Art and "Selected Discussions of Dick Higgins," one category of which was "articles, or interesting reviews."

The bibliography reflected a polymorphic involvement with language, literature and books. It included books of theoretical essays, plays, poems, word scores, musical scores, graphic music notions and performance piece instructions.

Titles could be strange: "foew&ombwhnw," a 1969 book of essays, is an acronym for "freaked out electronic wizard and other marvelous bartenders who have no wings."

This volume was a characteristic combination of the traditional and the iconoclastic: while its pages featured columns of word scores, visual poetry and essays that ran vertically from spread to spread, the volume was bound like a prayer book, in leather, with a ribbon bookmark.

Most of Higgins' books were published by companies that he founded, funded and ran himself, the best known being Something Else Press. During its brief life span (1964 1975) it published books and pamphlets by avant garde writers and artists of several generations, including Gertrude Stein, Richard Hulsenbeck, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Emmett Williams, Claes Oldenburg, the Futurist painter Luigi Russolo and the 17th century poet George Herbert, whose pattern poems
Higgins considered a precedent for concrete poetry.

As his books were extremely well made and Higgins was prone to order reprintings on the slightest excuse, many Something Else titles are still in print.

Higgins was born in 1938 in Cambridge, England, the son of a wealthy family that owned Wooster Press Steel in Wooster, Mass. He was educated at several New England boarding schools, attended Yale University and received a bachelor's degree in English from Columbia University in 1960.

He also studied at the Manhattan School of Printing, attended John Cage's influential course on music composition at the New School and studied with the avant garde composer Henry Cowell.

By the late 1950s, Higgins was working for a book manufacturer while immersing himself in the flourishing New York art scene, where the increasing dissolution of boundaries between traditional art media fit his sensibility. He was interested in anything that was new and within a short time seemed to know nearly everyone moving in that direction.

With Allan Kaprow and others he planned and performed in the first Happenings. With George Macunius, he established the loosely knit group known as Fluxus, which accepted any activity as art and played fast and loose with definitions.

Thus Higgins' musical composition "Dangerous Music No. 17" of 1963 consisted of Higgins' wife, the poet Alison Knowles, shaving his head. "Dangerous Music No. 2," which Higgins had performed on Sunday at the colloquium in Quebec City, involved screaming as loudly as possible for as long as possible.

In 1966, Higgins' essay "Intermedia" published in the first issue of the Something Else Newsletter drew on his experiences with Happenings, Fluxus, concrete poetry and performance art. It formulated the concept of works of art that combined different forms film and dance, painting and sculpture that are today often referred to as multimedia installation art.

In addition to Ms. Knowles, whom he married in 1960, divorced in 1970 and remarried in 1984, Higgins is survived by their twin daughters, Hannah, of Chicago and Jessica, of New York; a sister, Lisa Null of Washington; a granddaughter, and his stepfather, Nicholas Doman of New York.

Comment by Rain Rien Nevermind on November 21, 2010 at 6:44pm

What ever happened to Dick Higgins
I'll ask again... What ever happened to Dick Higgins, again ?
Asking isn't near as FUN as FUN Da Mental Mail Art.

Comment by DKeys on November 21, 2010 at 4:40pm

Thanks Ruud. I've never seen a call for this until I looked up an exhibition. I'm intrigued by this as I'm always making altered boxes-mini Pandora's

Comment by Ruud Janssen on November 21, 2010 at 4:36pm

Answer comes from Hannah Higging, daughter of Dick Higgins and Allison Knowles. Met Hannah and Allison last April this year.

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