Many of these event score were performed on March 21 (in a three minute video) or LIVE on zoom on March 22.
My spouse (John M. Bennett) and I did an event on both of those Fluxfest Online days. John is a poet & performs his poems or poem events with his own fluxus bent on the delivery. Nothing of significance to report this morning except that I plan to eat Part II of my dark chocolate Easter bunny this afternoon. Also, we are both vaccinated and experienced no significant side effects beyond a little fatigue the 2nd day — and that was due to a healthy immune system showing its muscle temporarily. We’ve been getting out more to enjoy the warmer temperatures of sunny daZe in central Ohio. Call your family or friends and let them know you are thinking of them.
On March 11, 2021, an audio interview by Jennie Hinchcliff (aka Red Letter Day) with myself (C. Mehrl Bennett) aired for about 45 minutes via Jennie’s new podcast: SENDERS RECEIVE: MAKING MAIL / SENDING ART. Listen to our conversation in Episode #4 (and check out her other podcasts) by clicking HERE.She gave me a few questions before-hand to help me prepare, and asked for any subject suggestions that I might have as well. As the podcast title suggests, her focus is on mail artists. Of course, I was flattered to be asked for an interview, and Jennie made it easy with her conversational approach, plus she edits out those awkward moments where memory fails. For anyone who doesn’t know Jennie, be advised that she has done her homework [RE: mailart as a topic] not only with her own mailart practice and by hosting the group “SF Correspondence Co-op” in San Francisco, but she was one of two authors of a book which was published in 2009 by Quarto Publishing Group: Good Mail Day : A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art by Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler
For examples of mailart one only needs to search the web or social media sites with “Mail Art” or “Mailart” … many of us see the term as one word. Or you might search this wordpress site for examples of my own projects by clicking in the side bar for tags/categories “Mailart” or “Fluxus” or “Artists Books” or “Visual Poetry” or “Artistamp”, etc. to read more about the activities to which we may have referred to in this interview. I provide (below) a list of artists we mentioned just in case anyone might wish to search for further information by using the correct spelling of their names.
Artists we mention during this interview:
Daniel Spoerri,
Al Ackerman (aka The Blaster & many other pseudonyms he used as an author/ See LBP published book HERE),
Marilyn R. Rosenberg, NY
Jim Leftwich, VA
Ginny Lloyd, CA
Julie Jeffries (aka ExFacto Posto), TX
Adam Roussopoulos, MN
Mark Bloch, NY
Cathi Swalbe, IL
Mike Dyar, CA
Hal McGee, FL
Darlene Altschul, CA
Keith Buchholz, MS
Bibiana Padilla Maltos, CA
John M. Bennett (my spouse, poet, founding editor of Luna Bisonte Prods), OH
Ray Johnson, NY (deceased 1/13/1995)
John Held Jr., CA
K.S.Ernst, NJ
Dick Higgins, NY (deceased 1998)
Alison Knowles, NY
Ficus strangulensis (aka Forrest Richey), WV
Jas. W. Felter
Pete Balestrieri (Curator of science fiction and popular culture collections at the University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections & Archives). Pete gave us a tour of the Fluxus collection in the librarie’s Special Collections, to which HERE is the link to the online digitized Fluxus Collection! The UI’s Archives of American Art now has a mailart collection listed under the primary donator Chuck Welch (aka Cracker Jack Kid), to which I contributed a small assortment of 1980 & earlier mailart I received from S. America.
Other side notes: In the interview I mentioned how artistamps first began to gain popularity with artists on the west coast of the USA, and so Jennie mentioned the 2012 AARPEX event. The Artistamp Artists Reunion & Philatelic EXposition was a gathering of artistamp makers in 2012 in Seattle WA in November of that year. We also discussed a book published in 2012: Ginnie Lloyd published Women in the Artistamp Spotlight via her “TropiChaCha Press” which you can read more about & perhaps purchased by clicking HERE.
And finally, I mentioned that The Ohio State University accepted my mailart archive & that I wrote a finding aid which can be accessed online. It’s organized in banker’s boxes by person (alphabetized) & decade, starting from the ’70s until mid-August 2018, and at some point I will be adding more to this archive. Artistamp sheets I received in the mail are in two huge binders. The call number for the “MAILART AND ARTISTAMPS Received by C. Mehrl Bennett” collection is part of this direct link: https://library.osu.edu/collections/spec.rare.0245 or else access via the following 5-step tree guide: https://guides.osu.edu/africana/specialcollections and then click on Rare Books & Manuscripts Library and then click on Explore the Collection and then click on Archival Collections and then search for MAILART AND ARTISTAMPS
Tomislav Butkovic (aka Wilhelm Katastrof) at a mailart exhibit he hosted in his home in Roanoke VA during the annual AfterMAF (Marginal Arts Festival).
The Score: Balance a banana on your head. Take a selfie. Eat the banana.
Official Documentation: Three artistamp sheets issues were designed by C. Mehrl Bennett, and then 40 copies of each issue were printed & perforated by Darlene Altschul, with one stampsheet sent to each of 90 participants (as there are 30 people represented on each stampsheet issue). An official BHC (Banana Hat Challenge) 3 minute video documents all the participants’ images within an official certificate of completion of the BHC. Part of the inspiration for this project was a dream I had (as explained in the image below of an official BHC certificate of completion.) Another inspiration was a call for 3 minute videos that was put out this year by Bibiana Padilla Maltos, Alan Revich, and Keith Buchholz for a Covid-19 pandemic (socially distanced) ONLINE version of our annual FLUXFEST. The “official” BHC video premiered among 30 other three minute videos submitted for a Facebook watch party on March 21, 2021 at the FLUXFEST 2021 ONLINE event site HERE & NOW (after Fluxfest Online happened on March 21 & 22) the “Official” 3 minute BHC video is also HERE at YouTube.
Unofficial Documentation: OVER 100 people submitted their selfie images for this project, but only 90 spots were available in the artistamp sheets. Some images not included in the artistamps sheets may have been multiple shots sent by one person, or they may have used software to create a digital banana on their self-image (thus re-interpreting the score instructions), or the banana was NOT a banana or was NOT balanced on their head (for example: duct taped to the forehead), or they may simply have submitted their image after all the spots were already claimed in the three artistamp issues. Because the BHC call was so popular, I had to up the original deadline for images by one month due to the limitation of space on three stampsheet issues. As the “official” video had a time limit restriction of three minutes, and it seemed like a better idea to simply create TWO videos, and allow ALL the submitted images in an “unofficial” video which is closer to eight minutes long. This unofficial video does not show the images in a stamp format as in the ‘official’ video (where the stamp format is used within the official certificate, see image below). Instead, the images are uncropped & more true to the originals submitted by each participant. In addition, I included 3 images at the end which show the 3 artistamp sheets, giving due credit to the printer & perforator, Darlene Altschul.
I have made the UNOFFICIAL BHC video available on YouTube. It has a different sound track than the official video and is five minutes longer (close to 8 minutes ). Watch it by clicking HERE (it should pop up at YouTube in a separate window).
RE: Darlene Altschul’s submitted image: Darlene lives in southern California where she has banana trees growing on her property. The FLOWER of the banana tree is HUGE with incredible, tropical petal shapes and beautious purple tones. If you’ve never seen the blossoms on a banana tree, take at look at Darlene K. Altschul of DKA Press in the BHC certificate below, as she is not wearing the ‘fruited’ banana, but the incredible flower of the banana tree!
Here are some postcard sized drawings which could be classified caricature art. I began these in December 2020. It all started with little water-based paintings I did on yupo paper, which has a thin plastic surface so the paint doesn’t dry quickly. This makes it easy to push around the colors to revise what’s there. I like to paint with Derwent ink sticks rather than watercolor cakes because the colors are more intense. For these drawings, the base which I draw on is a scan of the original abstract paintings, blown up from 2.5″x3.75″ to 4″x6″ (printed image is a bit less than the 4×6″ card.) So many of these start with the same abstract painting but turn into completely different happenings. I call these ‘obsessive’ because I’m drawing caricatures of birds and other animals, intimating female breasts where eyes might be, and seeing new critters in the negative space, or even sharing body parts with another critter next to it. The lines of the drawing happen very quickly & intuitively as I look at the abstractions & see the shapes appear. __ C. Mehrl Bennett
Click on above bandcamp link to listen to album, or search for EC SPLIT 13
EC Split 13 by C. Mehrl Bennett / Faserhaft an Electronic Cottage release
Tracks 1 – 9 by C. Mehrl Bennett In August Company
All tracks originally recorded in August 2020
Various instruments used include a harmonica, kalimba, windchimes, the flexing of stiff plastic packaging, a stick striking wood or bowl bell, and a Roland RD-500 keyboard. Sonic Pi software was coded for audio chords in Asemic Letters, and the tree frog audio in In Front of Him was freely provided by Dr. James P. Bennett of Madison WI, USA. Mixing software sold by NCH is MixPad/ WavePad which provided copyright-free cow moo, desk bell, and clock ticking samples, plus a voice synthesizer. Ambient sounds recorded from my home include an August rain storm, bluejays, a car driving over steel plates, and a land-line telephone.
Inspirations: environmental sounds, Hugo Ball’s dadaist sound poetry, asemic letters which synchronicity caused to arrive on the same August day from MaryAnne in the UK and from Rafael González in Spain. Many thanks to Hal McGee at Electronic Cottage for providing the opportunity & impetus to produce these tracks, and to Judith Pauly-Bender for being my “August Company”, and especially to John Also Bennett for his expertise in creating the final audio master.
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Tracks 10 – 19 by Faserhaft (Judith Pauley-Bender) Hausgeräusche: Loss of time 2020
“Loss of time 2020” is a critical sound on the lockdown situation, from my point of view a world social lumbago. The story of raw sounds is on the one hand a parable with a preliminary certificate (Track No. 19). On the other hand the little audio sketch is a chapter of my (lifelong) notebook. It is kept without third persons and is not a beauty contest. Opportunity, coincidence and time budget determine the form. So it turned out that here some sounds to my visual notes were allowed to become a mosaic stone in the EC-Split-Project 2020! I would like to thank the Electronic Cottage group, namely Hal McGee, the initiator of this inspiring audio project, for this quite unlikely opportunity to participate, Rafael González for pointing the way to this wonderful “EC experience space”, my split partner Catherine Bennett for her patience towards my pronounced obstinacy. Instruments and techniques? Every verse is different, all spontaneously and intuitively created. The protagonist is a kitchen alarm clock that called me to my human-physiological lumbago gymnastics in August 2020! Otherwise: a microphone, a karaoke tool for children, breath and voice, a 40-year-old “Korg-Taktell” (which broke during the recording), an ether, a monotron, a pipe, a monoloque. Everything is homemade, produced alone and (!) without any ambition to be artificial. This also applies to the improvised recordings of the tracks (8 out of 10 tracks only with a cell phone). Faserhaft Oktober 2020
credits
released October 14, 2020 by Electronic Cottage, Gainesville FL USA
MAINTENANT is an annual journal of contemporary Dada art & writing by THREE ROOMS PRESS, June 2020, co-edited by Peter Carlaftes & Kat Georges. The most recent issue was #14 which requested submissions on the theme of UN-SUSTAIN-A-BLE-SH*T (not my words; I would’ve suggesting SAVE OUR MOTHER EARTH, but that hasn’t worked in the past 50 decades so I guess they wanted to up it a notch?). I turned out to be the first to present, along with 13 other writers/poets/artists who were in that issue. We all did a 3 or 4 minute performance/reading based on our published work in issue #14 on Tuesday, Sept. 15th, 7 PM.. a bit over an hour total. YOU CAN SEE SEPT. 15 2020 performance here: https://youtu.be/OQRsUlMqfEo
ABOUT MAINTENANT: A Journal of Dada Art & Writing #14 it’s been said:
“A smorgasbord for those who are sick and tired of it.” “Though people expect Dada to be silly, and sometimes it is here, it is also often political and usually poignant…” —Seattle Book Review
“Timely and relevant.” —Tribe LA Magazine
“Excellent examples of collage and montage techniques . . . Interesting visual poems.” —Portland Book Review
“An interesting perspective.” —Manhattan Book Review
“Proof that Dada is not dead.” —Madjan Magazine (Serbia)
Especially if you catch parts of the Dada online festival, you may want to buy a copy of MAINTENANT #14 to read and see the art of the performers in the festival line up, plus much more from those who did not perform their works. You can order direct from the publisher at the above link, bypassing the money grabbing Amazon hub. Keep in mind that this book is over an inch thick (272 pp.) with FULL COLOR interior images and represents an international array of 258 contemporary Dada influenced artists and writers (art, poetry, visual poetry, prose) from 33 countries and 6 continents —so $25 is cheap! That’s my plug, plus I know quite a few of the contributors via the mailart network, flux list, fellow visual poets and experimental writers, etc. I was happy just to get a free copy of the book as a little fish in a big sea of contributors! This book is an obvious labor of Dada love for our Dada family but also for our ailing planet, Earth. Thank you, Peter & Kat.
S H E
She (Sheila E. Murphy) has acquired a basic purpose to
Become an adjective of “words” by in-beat brilliant lyricism
And through a prolonged psychic breath
Where previously defined words
E-luminate and E-ngage a Myriad of Strings
A lack of punctuation, especially her sensuous clasps,
Risks transparency and define touch with hands,
Tunes, and quiet thoughts, wings out,
Entirely somewhere else, yet here she goes…
Tuning the tune with fluidity
Arched phrases are stated with appropriate
Perfection whenever there is at least one syllable
To whisper formal definitions that
Point to an expanding vocabulary of time
Letting her chords breathe yet again
Measured with all the uncertainties (steeped as
They are by chastened ex-poets in this light where
Livestock live to maturity) she would have us
Consume gentlemanly acts of God, eat poets,
And move us deep into fluent possibilities
We learn her lines, diction, syntax, and the
Air through which she sheperds riverways
With “shadow artistry” into her desert realm
To a place you’d think the opposite of ‘continued’
But instead it opens the light to well plucked
Memories (different from reasoning) from
Discernibly sweet and haunting weather
Flowing through all the windows and doors
Of our world, its colors bled from within the
Confines of a monsoon of something “new”,
Something ineffable but truly ‘within’ as
It opens up to all discerning worldly rats and flies,
The ones hunkering down in empty lanes of leaves
Undoing the words, dis- or re-aligning each
Phrase like carved cheese melting in their mouths or
Like trees pruned fluently in their own language
So as to re-explore what is over their sofas,
Under their skin, and inside their heads
- C. Mehrl Bennett, July 2020
This is a MASHUP poem. It was assembled and inspired by cutup blurbs written by Charles Alexander and Eileen Tabios about (and including SEM phrases within) a new book of poems by Sheila E. Murphy titled GOLDEN MILK. Read most of the original blurbs listed in this book’s description in the link below.
Since 1974, Luna Bisonte Prods (LBP) has published a wide variety of experimental, avant-garde, audio, and visual literature in a wide variety of formats by artists from all over the world. Among the authors and artists published are such major and emerging figures as Ivan Argüelles, Sheila E. Murphy & K.S. Ernst, Jim Leftwich, Andrew Topel, Carlos M. Luis, Scott Helmes, Jake Berry, John M. Bennett, Susan Smith Nash, Al Ackerman, Bob Heman, Richard Kostelanetz, Charles Henri Ford, Dick Higgins, Robin Crozier, Peter Ganick, steve dalachinsky & Yuko Otamo, Mark Young, Michael Peters, and many others. LBP books are collected in major libraries and institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Sackner Archive, Princeton University, SUNY Buffalo, The University of Wisconsin, Brown University, New York Public Library, Washington University, Ohio University, The Ohio State University, and many others.
For additional LBP books by John M. Bennett and by other writers and artists, go to: http://www.johnmbennett.net/
Stefan Brandstifter of Mainz, Germany, suggested a collaborative project when he emailed digital scans of twenty-four collages he made in July 2019 when he was at The North Sea. C. Mehrl Bennett and John M. Bennett took turns working on them until they felt completed (March 2020). Enjoy the slideshow by clicking the arrows to scroll through these.
The above link is where you can search for a digitized sketchbook by entering a tag for subject matter or media, or enter the artist’s name (mine is C. Mehrl Bennett), or enter the number assigned to a specific sketchbook. My sketchbook is number S284636
I did my own scanning before mailing the book to Brooklyn NY, so I’m offering scans of it below since you’re already on this page. CLICK on UL image and you can page thru at full screen:
