Tag Archives: Belgium

IUOMA – music and art

Mail-Artist since:
1986
My Website:
http://www.thiswindow.org
Why I am involved in Mail-Art:

Was involved in the cassette / music side of mailart in the 1980’s /90’s. The whole idea of a network of artists connected by the postal system appealed to me and was an antidote to the stranglehold the ‘Art / Music’ establishment had over my creativity.

I have always considered mailart to be one of the major unsung heroes of Art History and every effort should be made to raise its profile.

Here are a few network related things I have done this millennium. http://www.thiswindow.org/Mail_Art/?cat=3

From profile page on: International Union of Mail-Artists – IUOMA

There is a brief retrospective interview looking back at the early days and the origins of ‘This Window’ in the November 2009 issue of ‘The Living Archive of Underground Music’.

“I think my first exposure to Peter Bright’s This Window project came with this tape on the IRRE label from Germany. Peppered with experimentalism and a sense of wander and wonder” Don Campau – Read more…

The early experiences of the audio mail art scene by Peter Bright (artist, This Window)

Published on: ‘The Living Archive of Underground Music‘

If you sat me down and asked me what were the main reasons for getting involved in this emotionally draining and sometimes very unrewarding ARTFORM called ‘home taping’, then I would say two things:

  • In the early 1970’s when I was about 13 or 14 years old I loved ‘Motown’ and ‘Led Zeppelin’ (my music tastes were very eclectic). In the UK there was a TV show called ‘Top of the Pops’, which shaped the adolescent pop culture. The stars appeared on a Thursday night and lip-synched to their hits. Then one night (1972) a band called ‘Roxy Music’ appeared and turned the whole thing on its head. I can still see the performance in my mind’s eye. I had suddenly been exposed to ‘Art School Rock’. They were remarkably radical, different musically and visually.
  • Around the same time (1973) an album was released on ‘Virgin Records’ called ‘The Faust Tapes’. This was a marketing experiment which had a retail price of 49 pence (UK) – so lots of people bought it and a lot of people threw it into the trash. The German band Faust were without a record deal and their producer Uwe Nettlebeck gave these tapes to Virgin for free. These apparently thrown together bits of tape noises, sounds, songs etc. were all mangled together – well, that is what most people thought. In reality it was an exceptionally well crafted piece of work and was the inspiration for my EEtapes release ‘Extraction’ in 1989.

These two things combined with going to Art School eventually got me involved in experimenting with recorded sound. The first machines I used were a Phillips reel to reel and a budget priced cassette recorder.

Read More…

 

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Recycled old exhibitions

I have decided to recycle some old preview invitations that I sent out for exhibitions over the years.

The ant and the word bug amused me.

The term mixed media has always made me want to reach for the puke bucket – I prefer the expression ‘Combine Painting’ or in this case ‘Combine Drawing’.I have always been a hoarder, newspaper clippings, postcards etc. It is only now that I have decided to recycle them.Juxtaposing images, either as a collage or printing is not simply a decorative process it is a complicated exercise. The mind always tries to create a narrative between images. The juxtaposition of arbitrary marks, color, photographs etc. will always tease and trick the mind into rationalizing what it is trying to process and attempt to make physical world references – in other words make sense of what it is trying to analyze.

BUg = aNT old exhibitions

Invited to perform @ 3rd mail-art festival ( 14th April 1990) – OJC Clichee in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium, as ‘This Window’Click here for This Window’s reviews in GAJOOB=======================

Royal Albert Memorial Museum Exeter March 2nd 1979 – 24th March 1979Exhibition of Prints from Exeter College of Art
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10-31 mai 1979École Regional des Beaux-Arts RENNESUne exposition commune des élèves

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Related articles

The ant and the word bug amused me

I have decided to recycle some old preview invitations that I sent out for exhibitions over the years.

The ant and the word bug amused me.

The term mixed media has always made me want to reach for the puke bucket – I prefer the expression ‘Combine Painting’ or in this case ‘Combine Drawing’.

I have always been a hoarder, newspaper clippings, postcards etc. It is only now that I have decided to recycle them.

Juxtaposing images, either as a collage or printing is not simply a decorative process it is a complicated exercise. The mind always tries to create a narrative between images. The juxtaposition of arbitrary marks, color, photographs etc. will always tease and trick the mind into rationalizing what it is trying to process and attempt to make physical world references – in other words make sense of what it is trying to analyze.

BUg = aNT old exhibitions

Invited to perform @

3rd mail-art festival ( 14th April 1990) – OJC Clichee in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium, as ‘This Window’
Click here for This Window’s reviews in GAJOOB

=======================

Royal Albert Memorial Museum
Exeter March 2nd 1979 – 24th March 1979
Exhibition of Prints from Exeter College of Art

=======================

10-31 mai 1979
École Regional des Beaux-Arts RENNES
Une exposition commune des élèves

=======================

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Cassette Culture an art network

Cassette Culture was an offshoot of the mail art movement of the 1970s and 1980s, it emerged from the DIY ethic of punk. In the UK cassette culture was born during the post-punk period, 1978–1984, extending through the late ’80s and into the ’90s. It was a postal-based network identical to the mail art scene.

The packaging and designing of the insert sleeve of cassette releases was an important part of the movement, a high degree of creativity and originality was visable in the execution of the overall appearence of the prioduct. Most of the  packaging relied on traditional plastic shells with a photocopied “J-card” insert but some artists broke away from the restrictive dimensions of the audio cassette format, either in a slick graphic  way or by  taking an anti-art stand point  – using a conceptual, DADA methodology .

BWCD released a cassette by Japanese noise artist Aube that came tied to a blue plastic ashtray shaped like a fish. EEtapes of Belgium release of This Window  “Extraction 2” was packaged with an X-ray of a broken limb in 1995. The Barry Douglas Lamb album “Ludi Funebres” had the cassette box buried in some earth contained in a larger outer tin and covered in leaves.

The European scene was very active during this period with exceptional ‘labels’ appearing in Germany and Belgium.

IRRE Tapes (Germany) run by Matthias Lang evolved out of the IRRE Fanzine which he published regularly during the early 1980’s covering New Wave, Post Punk and the German Underground. This European cassette label helped to spread the word around the world, supporting the independent, self financed artist, releasing material by the likes of Brume, Maeror Tri, City Of Worms and This Window. His eclectic taste covered the whole range of the DIY, Independent Underground music scene from Experimental Electronica to Guitar Pop.

Below is an extract from an interview on The Living Archive Of Underground Music, which is an archive dedicated to Cassette culture, home taping, tape trading and mail art from the 1980s to the present. The Living Archive Of Underground Music is written and edited by Don Campau. Read more…

Wie hattest Du das Label bekannt gemacht? Durch Magazine, andere Labels, Radio?

How did you spread the word of the tape label? Magazines, other labels, radio?

Tja ob IRRE Tapes je bekannt war? Wenn dann eher durch das unabhängige Netzwerk in der ganzen Welt, damals konnte man auch noch kostengünstig Tapes in andere Länder schicken… die Mehrzahl der Tapes wurde mit Gleichgesinnten in der ganzen Welt getauscht, so richtig kommerziell verkauft wurden die wenigsten – dafür hab ich heute aber auch noch unzählige Kisten alter Tapes die ich im Tausch damals bekommen hatte. Es gab zwar auch kommerziellere Vertriebe, die aber nie wirklich lange z.B. der tolle 235 Laden ich glaube in Bad Honnef. Die hatten auch mit tolle Mailorder-Kataloge, geniale Ideen z.B. gab es da das Tape des Monats das man per Dauerauftrag bekommen konnte……

Well, if IRRE-tapes were really that popular? If so, the independent network all around the world helped to make the label popular…at that time postage for tapes to be sent to other countries was quite cheap…the majority of tapes was swapped with artists all around the world and only a very few were really commercially sold. I still have many boxes full of old tapes that I received by trade. There were also more commercial distributors that never existed so long, like the 235-shop in Bad Honnef. They had great mailorder-catalogues and it was even possible to get there the „tape of the month“ by periodical payment order.

The Insanely Happy EP – Insane from Belgium

Alain Neffe is probably one of the most influential ‘cassette underground’ people around, his Belgian label Insane released many of the 1980?s heroes of the home taping and mail art scenes. Here is an opportunity to get a collectors edition … Continue reading ?

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