PostHype

Introduction

In an undated article entitled “(mis)reading m@ilart,” blogger Matt Ferranto mentioned PostHype in relation to other mail art zines of the mid-1970s.

By the mid-1970s, …the mail art movement had matured and was soon changing. The new availability of quick, inexpensive xerographic printing machines coupled with the circulation of thousands of names and addresses in such mail art-oriented publications as DOC(K)S in France, Arte Postale in Italy, and Posthype in the United States led many new mail artists to mass mail printed matter to as many individuals as possible. In a situation reminiscent of the potlatch that so fascinated Bataille, these artists engaged in a competition of giving that introduced rivalry and antagonism into the mail art network. Attempting to gain prestige by demonstrating their ability to absorb great expenditures, they also took a perverse approach towards the idea of gift exchange. Their work was marked, as Ken Friedman says, “by hundreds of projects and exhibitions termed ‘first’ and ‘first international,’ as artists unaware of history and community tried to become the leading figure in the network.” Many experienced mail artists complained of an “explosion of junk mail and self-serving egotism.” ¹Link: http://www.spareroom.org/mailart/mis_2.html

DOC(K)S originated in 1976. Founded by Julien Blaine, in Paris, it was dedicated to poetry. It was always lavishly printed in four color offset. It was never quick or inexpensive, and never a mail art magazine. Some mail artists were also visual poets, and DOC(K)S occasionally recognized their work by publishing it. Blaine was also an occasional mail artist. Arte Postale! originated in 1979. Founded by Vittore Baroni in Forte dei Marmi, it was indeed dedicated to mail art. Each issue was hand assembled, and produced in an edition of one-hundred. As thrilling as it was to be published by Blaine in full color alongside famous poets, it was equally thrilling to be published by Baroni in a format true to the artist’s ideas and alongside her peers. PostHype originated in 1981, founded by John P. Jacob in Portland, ME, later of New York City, and was also dedicated to mail art. It was printed using xerography, but included one or more hand-made, original elements with every issue. For the record, xerographic printing was not cheap in the 1980s; even less so in the 1970s. Ferranto’s suggestion that something cheap might be made to gain prestige by its demonstration of great expenditure is contradictory and inaccurate.

Ferranto wrote of artists spoiling their nests in pursuit of fame, and of complainers. His citation of Friedman, about “projects and exhibitions termed ‘first’ and ‘first international,’” and his description of mail artist complainers, appears to point indirectly to Jacob, PostHype, and Jacob’s multi-year International Portfolio project (named The First and The Second International portfolios, about which Friedman did indeed comment to Jacob). PostHype was a personal endeavor that both promoted and documented Jacob’s work. It was not circulated to thousands, and it was never accompanied by lists of thousands of addresses. However, Jacob was an incessant complainer. Almost from the outset Jacob used his editorial platform to berate unnamed others to “raise our expectations of ourselves and each other” as artists. In between issues of the irregular PostHype, Jacob wrote long letters of complaint. The typewriter was central to his early mail art practice. The paradoxical issue of mail art fame was among Jacob’s many complaints — the editor as petulant chief despoiler — expounded in a series of letters and editorials disclosing his gradual alienation from the mail art community.

The largest PostHype print run, of three hundred copies, was in 1984; fewer than half were ever distributed. That year, Jacob was a participant in the two-day panel discussions related to the exhibition Mail Art: Then and Now, curated by Dr. Ronny Cohen for the Franklin Furnace.²Like others of the New York mail art community, Jacob greatly over-estimated the public interest in, and historical importance of, the events for any beyond that community. Mark Bloch, another panelist, has written about the second panel, where “mail artists read a manifesto, a shouting match ensued and Cohen abruptly took her leave from the ‘mail art melee,’ (as it was described in the Village Voice) which exploded into chaos.”³Link: http://www.panmodern.com/franklinfurnace.html Jacob was appalled by his own and the other panelists’ behavior. He transcribed his recordings of the contentious exchanges in PostHype 3.1, simultaneously fanning the flames and exposing the extent to which the New York City mail art community was dominated by a small, mostly male, coterie of artists, himself and Pittore among them. It was a turning point for Jacob and, not coincidentally, the last published issue of PostHype. In a follow up to PostHype 3.1, in 1987, Jacob published his extensive documentation of the Franklin Furnace exhibition, the panels, and his exchanges with other mail artists about them, in The Coffee Table Book of Mail Art: The Intimate Letters of J.P. Jacob. It was Jacob’s self-proclaimed withdrawal from mail art.

What motivated that departure? After the Artist Talk on Art panels, Jacob came to experience the ensuing conversations as increasingly strident, and as motivated by an unwarranted sense of entitlement that he summed up with the equation, I am an artist: I am entitled to your attention. Dr. Cohen was guilty of curatorial arrogance, but she was open to participating in the discussions about her decisions. When the panelists silenced her, they were also guilty of arrogance, by denying her the attention they believed themselves entitled to. That denial belied the language of mail art as open communication, as a democratic practice. Accusing her of censorship, by silencing her they became her censors. That position was untenable for Jacob. Already in 1984, he was interested in issues related to censorship. He had begun work on the mail art project Censorship East/Censorship West that would be documented in the last, unpublished issue of PostHype (v 4.1), and that was the origin for his later work in Eastern Europe and the USSR. After he travelled to countries where censorship was a routine form of repression, he resolved to no longer contribute to the pettiness and stridency of the conversations about mail art; the endless isms, open letters, and manifestos. First he withdrew from authoring or co-authoring texts about mail art, then he withdrew from the New York City network altogether. It was not the end, but rather a refocusing, of his networking activities.

Riding Beggar ceased publication in the 1990s. A complete run of PostHype was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 1987. Incomplete sets are held by the Getty Research Institute (acquired with the Jean Brown, Bern Porter, Carlo Pittore, and other people’s papers) and active mail art archives such as the Artpool Art Research Center. The Riding Beggar archive is housed with the John P. Jacob Collection at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.