Mark Bloch (born 1956) is an American

conceptual artist Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional Aesthetics, aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes ca ...

, mail artist, performance artist, visual artist, archivist and writer whose work combines visuals and text as well as performance and media to explore ideas of long distance communication, including across time.

Early years and education

Mark Bloch was born to American parents in Würzburg, West Germany, in 1956 where his father was based as soldier of the US Army. Bloch grew up in Cleveland and then Akron, Ohio. Exposure in his youth to

Robert Wyatt Robert Wyatt (born Robert Wyatt-Ellidge, 28 January 1945) is a retired English musician. A founding member of the influential Canterbury scene bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole, he was initially a kit drummer and singer before becoming para ...

, the

Fugs The Fugs are an American rock band formed in New York City in late 1964, by the poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver (musician), Ken Weaver on drums. Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of The Holy ...

, and

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

and the unexpected discovery of

Frank Zappa Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by wikt:nonconformity, nonconformity, Free improvisation, free-form improvisation, sound experimen ...

's album

Freak Out! ''Freak Out!'' is the debut studio album by American rock band the Mothers of Invention, released on June 27, 1966, by Verve Records. Often cited as one of rock music's first concept albums, it is a satirical expression of frontman Frank Zappa ...

in his junior high school library led to an interest in the fringes of art. Coincidentally, Bloch later referred to his mentor

Ray Johnson Raymond Edward "Ray" Johnson (October 16, 1927 – January 13, 1995) was an American artist. Known primarily as a collagist and correspondence artist, he was a seminal figure in the history of Neo-Dada and early Pop art and was described as

as the "fringe of the fringe." Bloch attended Kent State University, where he was influenced by faculty members Adrian DeWitt, a Jungian who taught in the Romance Languages department, Robert Schimmel and Robert Culley, another Jungian, in the School of Art, Robert West in the Telecommunications Department and finally, visiting artists

Joan Jonas Joan Jonas (born July 13, 1936) is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, and one of the most important artists to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s.Takahiko Iimura from Japan, both videographers. Bloch attended Kent in the aftermath of the 1970

Kent State shootings The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre and the Kent State massacre,"These would be the first of many probes into what soon became known as the Kent State Massacre. Like the Boston Massacre almost exactly two hundred years bef ...

and was present during protests of a gymnasium that was built on the site of that incident in the late 1970s. Following his work with Jonas, and switching his focus from art to TV, Bloch received his B.A. degree in Broadcasting and was the creator of a "punk" performance art movement called The New Irreverence and other avant-garde provocations. Bloch was part of the M'bwebwe group that began in Kent, Ohio in 1974. After Kent, Bloch moved to Southern California, experimenting with performance, studying with artist

Rachel Rosenthal Rachel Rosenthal (November 9, 1926 – May 10, 2015) was a French-born interdisciplinary and performance artist, teacher, actress, and animal rights activist based in Los Angeles. She was best known for her full-length performance art pieces whi ...

, and supporting himself as a maker of corporate communications for corporate clients from 1978 to 1982. He continued these activities in Manhattan from 1982 to 1990, moving later into print media and then web design. Bloch performed "Heart and Technology" and "East Meats West" in

Laguna Beach, California Laguna Beach (; ''Laguna'', Spanish language, Spanish for "Lagoon") is a seaside resort city located in southern Orange County, California, in the United States. It is known for its mild year-round climate, scenic coves, environmental preservat ...

where he lived until 1981. On November 16, 1980, Bloch produced an early issue of his

D.I.Y. "Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, wikt:modification, modifying, or repairing things by oneself without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts. Academic research has described DIY as behaviors where "individual ...

zine A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to writ ...

, Panmag, numbered "451" in honor of the famed Fahrenheit 451 Books bookstore inviting visitors to create work which he later mailed and spending the day "in the window of the bookstore working on his postal art magazine," performing a work called "Artist for Sale," in which he made himself available to "buy or rent" for "$10,000 an hour." Bloch also typed on a typewriter in the window and gave a lecture on his "Postal Art Network" and its relationship to Laguna's status as an "

art colony An art colony, also known as an artists' colony, can be defined two ways. Its most liberal description refers to the organic congregation of artists in towns, villages and rural areas, often drawn by areas of natural beauty, the prior existence o ...

." After moving to New York City in 1982, he met many of the Sixties generation of avant garde artists whom he had long been studying in written form, artistic heirs to the legacy of

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

such as

Dick Higgins Dick Higgins (15 March 1938 – 25 October 1998) was an American artist, composer, art theorist, poet, publisher, printmaker, and a co-founder of the Fluxus international artistic movement (and community). Inspired by John Cage, Higgins was a ...

and

Alison Knowles Alison Knowles (born 1933) is an American visual artist known for her installations, performances, soundworks, and publications. Knowles was a founding member of the Fluxus movement, an international network of artists who aspired to merge diff ...

, Jackson MacLow,

Al Hansen Alfred Earl "Al" Hansen (5 October 1927 – 20 June 1995) was an American artist. He was a member of Fluxus, a movement that originated on an artists' collective around George Maciunas. He was the father of Andy Warhol protégé Bibbe Hans ...

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super hi ...

and others. Bloch also met

who had heard of Bloch's mailed performance art pieces and invited him into his New York Correspondence School. In 2012, after studying Digital Marketing, Bloch received a Master of Science degree from the

Zicklin School of Business The Zicklin School of Business (commonly known as Zicklin) is the business school of Baruch College. It was established in 1919 and is named after financier and alumnus Lawrence Zicklin. Zicklin is the largest business school in the United State ...

Baruch College Baruch College (officially the Bernard M. Baruch College) is a public college in New York City. It is a constituent college of the City University of New York system. Named for financier and statesman Bernard M. Baruch, the college operates und ...

City University of New York The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven Upper divis ...

Graphic Design

Since 1978, Bloch has worked in various jobs related to the graphic design industry. From 1978-1990 he created slide shows for corporate clients in the audio-visual industry. Through the 1990s and into the new millennium, he worked at various publications including

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

and

CosmoGirl ''CosmoGirl'', also stylized as ''CosmoGIRL!'', was an American magazine based in New York City, published from 1999 until 2008. The teenage spin-off of ''Cosmopolitan'' magazine, it targeted teenage girls and featured fashion and celebrities. It ...

and participated in early cyberspace efforts for

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

, and

ABCNews ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast '' ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include morning news-talk show ''Good Morning America'', ''Nig ...

. Bloch helped create "Themes of the Times," among the earliest New Media projects at The New York Times and Bloch worked creating interactive maps and graphics for ABCNews.com at a time when it was jointly owned and operated by

Paul Allen Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American business magnate, computer programmer, researcher, investor, and philanthropist. He co-founded Microsoft Corporation with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which h ...

Starwave Starwave was a Seattle, Washington-based software and website company, founded in 1993 by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and led by CEO Mike Slade. The company produced original CD-ROM titles, including '' Muppets Inside'', and titles for Cl ...

and Internet news was still being invented. Bloch also wrote several articles for ABCNews.com and other Starwave-owned sites including features on art, music and animation.

Mail Art and Pre-Digital Networking

Since 1980, Bloch has published Panmag, his mail art-related zine which documented much of the activity of the New York mail art scene in the 1980s and beyond including the visits of various mail artists to New York, his travel in Europe and opinions about the goings on in the fringes of the art world. Bloch's writings on Fluxus, performance, communication, Conceptual art, mail art and contemporary art are referred to on mail art-related blogs. In 1984, Bloch published details of his mail art practice in "The P.A.N. Project" in the "Mail Art Then and Now" issue of the "Franklin Furnace Flue," edited by Dr. Ronny Cohen. Later, in an "Open Letter to the Network," Bloch offered a "critique of mail artists’ relations with the existing gallery system, attempting to distinguish 'the differences... between mail art and certified ''art''.' While calling on mail artists to 'ask the difficult questions' and 'digress from the backslapping that is so prevalent in mail art,' Bloch's proposals are limited to an exhortation to 'pursue a more rigorous dialogue than exists right now.' Bloch asserts that 'we concentrate on content rather than appearance.'" In "Offener brief an jeden im netzwerk" (Open Letter to everyone in the Network) Bloch and visiting mail artist H. R. Fricker of Trogen, Switzerland created a six-point manifesto in English and German that highlighted the importance of person to person correspondence in the mail art network, as opposed to mail art shows, which were increasing in popularity at that time. This focus on the "communicative processes arising from the exchanges between... artists" was shared by Bloch and Fricker and many of the other mail artists who entered the fray in the late 70s and early 80s. Fricker and Bloch's bi-lingual "''Phantastische Gebete'' Revisited," with its title referring to a famous

dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...

tome translated as "Fantastic Prayers," stated, "1) An important function of the exhibitions and other group projects in the network is: to open channels to other human beings. 2) After your exhibition is shown and the documentation sent, or after you have received such a documentation with a list of addresses, use the channels! 3) Create person-to-person correspondence... 4) You have your own unique energy which you can give to others through your work: visual audio, verbal, etc. 5) This energy is best used when it is exchanged for energy from another person with the same intentions. 6) the power of the network is in the quality of the direct correspondence, not the quantity." The manifesto concludes, "We have learned this from our own mistakes." Bloch participated in several "Tourism" mail art congresses of 1986 and attended the Neoist Festival of Plagiarism in Glasgow and other events in 1989 but felt that two events of that nature were enough so he decided to "boycott the 1992 congress year" as well as the "incongruous meetings year 1998," opting, instead, for a "year of decompression" in 2004 that was eventually manifested in lieu of Congress participation. Bloch's work both parodied and penetrated

avant garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or 'vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical De ...

circles with his writings on Neoism,

Stewart Home Kevin Llewellyn Callan (born 24 March 1962), better known as Stewart Home, is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. His novels include the non-narrative ''69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess'' (2002), an ...

and the Festival of Plagiarism in Issue 28 of his zine Panmag, subtitled "The Last Word" in which he proposed a Word Strike which put forth the oft-repeated motto of that period, "Don’t say art unless you mean money." Bloch later pushed that emphasis in the Panscan area of the Echo Communication teleconferencing system. Bloch is a vehement defender in online communities of the purity of the

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

generation that preceded him, insisting that his contemporaries are free to be influenced by what he calls the Fluxus "movement" (as opposed to those who see it as an open-ended "spirit" or "attitude") but should not call themselves or their work "Fluxus" directly. "Mark Bloch’s views on the current situation of Fluxus in the mail art network (as well as newer generation artists who call themselves Fluxus) can and do generate heated debate." Bloch calls the overuse of the word "Fluxus" by younger artists "misinformation" and a distortion of the historical record.

Early cyber-migration and Ray Johnson research

Since 1980, Bloch has published a zine called ''Panmag'' and tried to use it a in various ways to push back the boundaries of what art can be. Bloch "situates his practices within the new expanded field of publishing. As the editor of ''Panmag'', he has combined both digital and traditional media in his periodical… He presents an interesting case for the… periodical to be considered as performance art," said scholars Marie Boivent and Stephen Perkins, citing "his expansion of the traditionally static nature of the periodical into a new role as an active physical agent." Bloch is recognized as being one of a handful of early converts from mail art to online communities. In 1989, Bloch began his experimental foray into the digital space when he founded Panscan, part of the Echo NYC text-based teleconferencing system, the first online art discussion group in New York City. Panscan lasted from 1990 to 1995. Following the death of

in 1995, Bloch left Echo and began a twenty-year research project on Communication art and Johnson and wrote several texts on him that were among the earliest to appear online and were cited elsewhere in other media. Bloch and writer/editor Elizabeth Zuba brought together "their distinct visual and literary perspectives to explore Ray Johnson’s innovative interpretations of 'the book'" at the Printed Matter New York Book Fair in 2014. Bloch has since acted as a resource for new generation of Johnson and Fluxus followers on fact-finding missions. It was Ray Johnson who introduced Bloch to Robert Delford Brown and his wife Rhett Cone Brown by bringing him in the 1980s to their home "that Mr. Brown called 'The Great Building Crack-Up'" in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

which eventually led to Bloch becoming Brown's biographer, writing ''Robert Delford Brown: Meat, Maps, and Militant Metaphysics''," published by the Cameron Art Museum in 2007. In 1984, Johnson stated in a radio interview, "Ray Johnson is playing the role of Ray Johnson. But there was another possibility, which is that the role of Ray Johnson might have been played by Mark Bloch... Mark Bloch, whose introduction to me consists of some letters in which he wrote to me to tell me that he had been impersonating me on the West Coast, which I found rather intriguing. And I wrote back immediately to tell him that if he was impersonating me, that I would impersonate him and so we began this correspondence; we finally did meet." Bloch corresponded with Johnson from 1982 until the latter's suicide in 1995. Bloch has written extensively about Johnson for Whitehot Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Paper Magazine and others.

Fine artist

Mark Bloch works in a variety of media and calls himself a "pan-media" artist. Bloch's one man show "Secrets of the Ancient 20th Century Gamers" was presented at Emily Harvey Foundation in NYC March 18 through April 2, 2010 and received favorable reviews. It featured paintings, collage works, assemblage, issues of his zine "Panmag" and other works. In 2014, Bloch curated a New York City arts festival celebrating the centenary of cult hero artist-collector

Guglielmo Achille Cavellini Guglielmo Achille Cavellini (11 September 1914 – 20 November 1990), also known as GAC, was an Italian artist and art collector. After an initial activity as a painter, in the 1940s and 1950s he became one of the major collectors of contemporary ...

, at various venues around Manhattan including the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

Library, Richard L. Feigen & Co., Lynch Tham, and the Whitebox Art Center on the Lower East Side where a 55 foot long wall covered with artworks from the mail art network and local artists and a 14 by 14 foot drawing of Cavellini by Bloch was revealed during a three hour-plus opening marathon of performances, spoken word and music. In 2016, Bloch and the granddaughter of Dada founder

Marcel Janco Marcel Janco (, ; common rendition of the Romanian language, Romanian name Marcel Hermann Iancu ; 24 May 1895 – 21 April 1984) was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist. He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading ...

, the Israeli art journaler and art therapist, Michaela Mende Janco, created "Dadawatch," a one-year communications project to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Dada and inviting public online participation. On February 22, 2019, Emily Harvey Foundation presented the world premiere of "Not Jean Brown" by Bloch and the artists Rimma & Valeriy Gerlovin, a 16-minute short film about the Massachusetts art collector, Jean Brown (1916-1994), some 35 years after it was originally begun in 1985. The video covers highlights of Brown's vast archives, now at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Bloch edited the film and created the soundtrack that featured "Sink Sound (for Jean Brown)," a "music of contingency" contributed by composer by

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...

. From March 26 to June 30, 2020, Bloch was scheduled to curate an exhibition called “Panmodern!” at the Bobst Library of

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

featuring papers and archives of his Postal Art Network (P.A.N.) activities that utilized the international postal system as a distribution system. The exhibition was postponed by NYU due to the

Covid-19 virus Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory illness responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had a p ...

. The exhibition will eventually be hosted by Fales Library's "Downtown Collection," founded in 1994, which documents the downtown Manhattan arts scene that evolved in SoHo and the Lower East Side during the 1970s and through the early 1990s.Press Release: "'Panmodern!' An Exhibition of the Mark Bloch/Postal Art Network Archive To Open March 26 to June 30, 2020 at New York University's Bobst Library" Panmodern.com, New York

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References

External links

*Mark Bloch, Panmodern website, http://www.panmodern.com *Fales Library and Special Collections, Mark Bloch Postal Art Network (PAN) Archive, http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/fales/bloch/ *Articles by Mark Bloch in the Brooklyn Rail, https://brooklynrail.org/contributor/Mark-Bloch *Articles by Mark Bloch in Whitehot Magazine, http://whitehotmagazine.com/contributors/mark-bloch/165 *Mark Bloch, Artist Organized Art, Interview: Larry Miller on the Flux Labyrinth, http://artistorganizedart.org/commons/2015/06/flux-labyrinth-larry-miller.html *Mark Bloch Interview: http://iuoma.org/blog_new_2015/2015/06/17/mail-interview-with-mark-bloch-usa/ *Interview with Mark Bloch in the Brooklyn Rail about his archive and the NYU Panmodern! exhibition: https://brooklynrail.org/2020/03/art/MARK-BLOCH-with-Megan-N-Liberty {{DEFAULTSORT:Bloch, Mark 1956 births Living people Artists from Cleveland Writers from Akron, Ohio American contemporary artists American performance artists