| Guy Bleus: Global Administration by John Held, Jr. To get to Wellen is no easy matter. It is in the rural northwester corner of Belgium, about ninety miles north of Liege, and some thirty miles west of Maastricht, Holland. The closest city is Hasselt: mid-size, respectable, bourgeoisie, clean, groomed, polite. The home of Guy Bleus is a very special place. Since his birth in 1950, he has lived over Wellen's movie theater, owned by his father. Right across the street, in the town square, is a church dating from the 12th century. It is a perfect example of architecture from the Middle Ages. Guy Bleus is caught in this web spun of medieval scribe and twentieth century media awareness. Because Guy grew up watching so many American movies, his English is excellent, and his writing comes naturally in both Dutch, his native tongue, as well as English. His father was also attracted to American culture, naming Guy after an American acquaintance (and that is why his name is pronounced with an i ending and not the traditional European e). His father was a town clerk, and many of Guy's obsessions are directly inherited from him. He keeps his mail art in the same type of archival boxes his father retained town records. In 1979, Guy Bleus registered himself and his activities as a trade mark at the Common Patent Office of the Benelux countries in the Hague, Holland, and was given the number 42.292. Bleus continues to honor this event as a historic performance blending his mail art activities with art administration. It is the bureaucracy of information that fascinates Bleus. He has a degree in philosophy, which he puts to use in his analyses and manipulation of communication aesthetics. Each medium of information transfer is explored for its communicative potential. One learns from preceding formats: be it postal, fax, cd-rom, internet, balloon, or through the senses. That is why Bleus' investigation of communication transfer is as relevant for cyper surfers as it is for rubber stampers. Because of the lack of critical acceptance of mail art, and the difficulty in knowing the medium without direct participation, it has been the task of the mail artist to document the field. Books on the subject by Michael Crane, Chuck Welch, and myself, arose from the fact that there was a void that needed to be filled. But no one has documented the field by collecting the material, organizing it, proper housing, and describing the material than Guy Bleus. His home is a shrine to the artform, containing the works of over 4,000 artists from throughout the world. The Administration Archive is broken into sections. By far the largest is the incoming correspondence broken down by country, and then alphabetically by the artists name. Box numbers and correspondent are matched by the computer, and although the system does not allow for casual browsing, it is a structure allowing easy access to the materials. From the incoming correspondence certain items are isolated into separate categories, including mail art catalogs, artist postage stamps, posters, specific mail art events (i. e., congresses), and Bleus' own numerous, and legendary curated projects. Unlike many collectors, Bleus rarely buys works for his archive. Simple living arrangements don't allow him this luxury. Rather, the Administration Archive has been developed through interaction with the international mail art community. It is "an assembling project" that has been amassed through many hours of correspondence and research. The collection is not so much a comprehensive view of the mail art medium as a record of Bleus' participation within it. There is no one more active than Guy Bleus, and his overview is as broad as one could hope for. The collection is a working archive, from which Bleus draws information for his future exhibitions, projects, and writings. This becomes an extension of the archive, sharing the information he has received with others interested in the field. His projects, and the documentation resulting from them, are legendary. No one in mail art has done more projects and exhibitions of superior quality than those of Bleus. For his Aerogramme Mail Art Project/Commonpress #56 catalog, produced with the assistance of the Museum Het Toreke, Bleus reproduced over a thousand photographs of mail art objects onto seventeen microfiche cards. One of his most recent works,The Artistamp Collection, has reproduced the work of four hundred artist postage stamp creators from 45 countries on a CD-ROM. His documentation of projects is always special, reflecting his interest in new information formats. And this is something that distinguishes Bleus's work. He explores the role of communication in many mediums, because he sees a thread running through all of them. Whether the medium is balloons, scents, telegraphs, fax, performance, internet, or the postal system, they are all tools for communication between individuals. Bleus casts his eye on the artistic possibilities of each. The mediums are examined and analyzed for their communicative potential. And it is for this reason: as Bleus has stated, "A fundamentally democratic world is only possible when everybody is permanently informed and involved..." That involvement requires communication, and the structure of communication is administration. ...................... We have reproduced some selected writings of Bleus that have appeared in previously published, yet difficult to obtain works, hoping to bring them before a larger audience. The first section, Introducing Mail-Art, presents some of his most reproduced texts. Used in many mail art catalogs to introduce the medium to new initiates because of his concise and insightful statements, the texts have become important cornerstones of mail art philosophy. The second section on Mail Art Administration highlights Bleus' concerns with this important aspect of his work. For one of his exhibitions, he brought in his desk, his rubber stamps, and parts of the archive, to confront the viewer with this important part of his daily life. In these texts, he continues to explain the important reasons for his administrative activities. Mail-Art Genres explores the many avenues in which the communicative processes intersect. Photocopy, artistamps, artist books, and the fax are some of the many topics Bleus covers in his discussion of the new communication medias. Many of the texts formerly appeared in his work, A Dialogue Between the Postman and His Electronic Shadow, published by Belgian Postal Museum in 1994, and previously available only in Dutch. The last section, Networkers, Networking and Netland, covers the new territories opened up by electronic media. Never one to content himself with proven ground, Bleus is constantly in search of new paths presenting greater communication potentials. While others may discuss the technical implications of the new electronic medias, Bleus points the way to their creative potential. If there was no Guy Bleus, we mail artists would have had to invent him. He is the perfect embodiment of the dedicated cultural worker, investing his life in the pursuit of better understanding through communication. |