What Is Copy Art?

[Anna Balint]

It´s quite difficult  to find references to copy art as precursor of net.art. 
This is not  a reference either, but at least a description and history of 
of copy art, stating some characteristics of copy art that could be 
relevant for net.art as well. 
Posted with the permission of the author.

What Is Copy Art? Photocopy as an Art Medium
by Reed Altemus 
 
Of all the myriad individual ways of describing and defining photocopier 
art, there are two, in particular, which seem to me the most useful. The 
first is very broad: photocopier art consists of any instance in which an 
artist, cultural worker or any individual uses a photocopier as an 
important step, whatever that may be, in the process of producing 
creative work. Its set includes very definitely copy-arts-and-crafts, 
flypostering, micropress, mail art, and zines. The second useful 
definition is more mediumistic and specific and says that copy art 
consists of an artistic and paradoxical reversal of the purpose of the 
technology, using a copying device to produce an original one-of-a-kind 
photocopy through an interference with or intervention in the usual 
functions and operation of the copy machine. The premise of this 
second take is that copy art is defined as work where the artist 
purposely uses a copying device to produce something which is not a 
copy and can therefore only be called an original by using certain more 
or less well-known techniques to divert the photocopier from its normal 
function. From this arose the epithet "original copy". For copy artists, 
copy art is never a copy of art, but rather the goal is to produce an 
original work achieved through a process of exploration and 
experimental intervention. One might call the difference between the 
two areas as photocopy as a means to an end and photocopy as an 
end in itself - the ostensible difference being between using the 
technology as a machine i.e. duplication and using it as a tool i.e. 
creation. There are also certainly plenty of overlaps between the two, 
for instance, the production of editions and artists' book to mention just 
two. The first category is probably more useful in describing the medium 
in general terms as it is most known, taking into view all the functions 
photocopiers play in cultural activities, and probably accounts for 99% 
of the cultural use of photocopier technology while the second is more 
an experimental and limited domain of specifically copy art praxis limited 
to the technical aspects of the medium and based on an artistically 
adopted paradox. The latter amounts to a very small segment of artists 
who consider use of the photocopier as an art medium in itself. 

Mail Art & Photocopy

As for the connection between copy art and mail art, the connection 
between photocopy and mail art has been there from the beginning- 
both Ray Johnson and David Zack owned copy machines which played a 
considerable role in their activities. Both were interested in using the 
copier as a machine for multiplying their work as well as a tool to 
produce experimental prints. Also, in the late 70's the artistampist and 
painter E.F. Higgins III began producing his artistamps using the Xerox 
6500 color copier at Jamie Canvas, an art supply store in New York City 
where he worked. It was around this same time that the Canadian 
Jacques Charbonneau visited New York with his portfoilio of collages 
and was introduced by Higgins to the color copier. It was as a result of 
the meeting and the resulting enthusiasm for the possibilities of the 
color photocopier that Charbonneau returned to Montreal and 
established a gallery, Motivation V, for copy art which, later, evolved 
into the Centre Copie-Art which was to become a hub in the 
international copy art circuit in the 80's and 90's. Probably the best-
known episode within mail art is an infamous incident during the late 
70's where a letter by Charles Cummings was printed in the Canadian 
correspondence art magazine of note FILE criticizing those who had 
been bombarding the magazine's mailing lists with reams of impersonal 
photocopies. Seeing the intimate nature of correspondence lost in the 
process, Cummings deemed what he had received "quick copy crap

not worth the paper it's printed on" and called it "the utmost in idle 
activity." Whether it was recognized that the use of photocopy enabled 
some mail artists to expand their reach into the darkest corners of the 
postal network and spread their, and others', ideas more quickly and 
more widely might still be a valid question to ask. Mail art, subsuming 
many media, remains a footnote, albeit a very substantial one, in the 
history of copy art. In the 80's, during the high point in the use of 
xerography and the postal system, it was assumed that Ray Johnson 
played a pioneering role in bringing the copier into an art context in his 
New York Correspondance(sic) School (see Rigal). Since then, however, 
through the dogged and extensive researches of the Canadian critic, 
Monique Brunet-Weinmann, for her "Global History of Copigraphy" CD-
ROM, it has come to light that it was an instructor at Rochester Institute 
of Technology, Charles Arnold, Jr. who made the first photocopies with 
artistic intent in 1960. Worth mentioning also as an early figure was the 
California Beat artist Wallace Berman, who received a Verifax copier as 
a gift from a friend in 1960, but didn't begin to work with it until 1962. 
Berman was also aware of the subversive use the mails could be put to 
and usually distributed his well-known Semina magazine as well as 
staying in touch with friends and colleagues via the post.

Sources:

Vittore Baroni."The Book(let) of Zack" Viareggio, Italy: Near The Edge/ 
E.O.N., 2003. 
Bloch, Mark. email to Reed Altemus 09-27-02 quoting Bill Wilson to 
Valery Oisteanu New York surrealist and friend of Ray Johnson 
regarding Ray Johnson's use of photocopy 
Brunet-Weinmann, Monique. "For A Global History of Copigraphy" CD 
ROM Montreal: Produits Loplop, 2001. 
Lipschutz-Villa, Eduardo, ed. Wallace Berman: Support the Revolution. 
Amsterdam, Holland: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1992. 
Rigal, Christian. "L'electrographie (Electrography)." Colóquio/Artes 26 
(61): 18-31 (June 1984). 
Craig Saper Networked Art. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 
2001. 

This is a draft Š2003 Reed Altemus, no use without permission.