Concerning the Mysterious Disappearance of Richard Canard (Carbondale, Illinois, USA)

[De Villo Sloan]

Mail-art by IUOMA member Richard Canard (Carbondale, Illinois, USA)

April 23, 2014 - First, Richard Canard has not disappeared from the face of the earth. He continues to circulate his marvelous work throughout the Eternal Network, perhaps more than ever. He did mysteriously disappear from the digital realm in February, sending messages to his friends that his computer imploded. After several months, he has not returned to the aether. Will Richard ever return to grace the IUOMA platform with his insight and wit?

All I can really do is share some recent missives from Richard as part of the puzzle, and you’ll have to determine his current position. Here is the reverse side of the mail-art shown above:

Richard Canard has been a wonderful and natural contributor to Trashpo and DKult. Since his digital disappearance, he sent me this interesting piece:

And the reverse:

I wrote a letter to Richard enquiring about the status of his computer and relaying some thoughts on minimalist poetry. This is the response I received:

Richard Canard is a very fine visual poet. This particular piece appears to be a very clever erasure.

As for Richard Canard’s digital disappearance, I must consider the situation indeterminate. That should be no surprise. John Cage advanced the notion of the indeterminate aggressively, and Ray Johnson applied many of Cage’s ideas to mail-art including randomness principles and numerology as well as the indeterminate.

Even if he has disappeared from the digital realm, for whatever reason, we always know how to contact him.