XEROX EXPERIMENTS IN ZAUMLAND
By the end of the 1970s, Xerox technology was widely available in copy shops and increasingly affordable. Poets that distributed visual, multimedia, and even unique works began embracing the machine’s creative possibilities. Desktop and other forms of home publishing harnessed the creative energies of emerging technologies throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s to distribute visual and avant-garde work as quickly and widely as possible. In a prior exhibition at the University of Buffalo’s Poetry Collection, titled “From Concrete Poem to Zine Display,” curators Michael Basinski and Robert J. Bertholf note that the contributors to this movement—often centered in the Midwest—were “a fiercely independent group of entrepreneurial and intrepid poets/artists/editors” that “created fissures in the personal narratives and private confessional lyrics of American poetry.”
[Crag Hill, ed.].
Score, [no. 1].
[1983].
Cover and title page by Sylvia Pachéco. Contributors include mIEKAL aND, DIMICHELE, Crag Hill, and Laurie Schneider. The final issue of the magazine noted that “everyone knows of the great international concrete movements of the 50s and 60s (their experiments are now repeated in elementary- and secondary-school classrooms, and in advertising), but little did we know how many others sustained the practice of working poetry into pictorial forms. The practice has been with us for millennia and it will never die.”
John M. Bennett.
Lost and Found Times, no. 31.
Luna Bisonte Productions, 1993.
Cover by Hartmut Andryczuk. John M. Bennett recalls that Lost and Found Times began in 1975 as a “Fluxus and mail art stunt hatched by myself and the painter Douglas Landies,” in which “the first two issues consisted of fake ‘lost and found’ notices printed on single sheets distributed through the mail and by being put under car windshield wipers in a shopping center parking lot” (From a Secret Location website).
[mIEKAL aND and Elizabeth Was, eds.].
The Acts[,] The Shelf Life: Markready Documents, no. 1.
Xexoxial Editions, [1986].
This is the Inaugural issue of mIEKAL aND and Elizabeth (sometimes Liz) Was’ collectively printed publishing project, described as “A conceptual network of language fragments./ Continual epic interaction./ Polyartist polyvalent./ Information analog.” Contributors include Jonathan Brannen, Phyllis Cairns, David Cole, Peter Ganick, Crag Hill, Jürgen O. Olbrich, Warren Ong, and several others.
mIEKAL aND and Elizabeth Was, eds.
The Acts[,] The Shelf Life: Markready Documents, vol. 2.
Xexoxial Editions, 1988.
mIEKAL aND and Elizabeth Was founded Xexoxial Editions and the non-profit Xexoxial Endarchy, Ltd., through which they published the little magazine Xerolage, and embraced the Xerox machine as the mimeograph of the 1980s. This volume, subtitled “Poly Artistry,” features work by Crag Hill, Patrick McKinnon, Paulo Bruscky, Ybrigor Moss, Geof Huth, Elizabeth Was, George Myers Jr., and Bern Porter.
Liz [Elizabeth] Was and mIEKAL aND, ed.
“Ound: Polymorphic Poems for the Dislocated Tongue.”
Xerolage, no. 9, [1987].
This is the ninth issue of Xerolage, mIEKAL aND’s “irregular magazine of visual poetry.” Coined by aND, “Xerolage,” the word, was meant to “suggest the new world of 8 1/2 x 11 art propagated by Xerox technology. ‘The Mimeo of the 80s.’” Each issue of the magazine featured the work of one artist, with this issue containing Liz [Elizabeth] Was’ “Ound: Polymorphic Poems for the Dislocated Tongue.”
[mIEKAL aND].
BABBALLY.
Burning Press, 1990.
Blueprint poster, double-spined book, and cassette tape. This monumental poster contains a long poem subtitled “The Destruction of Mindfuck Diplomacy.” Per author aND, “BABBALLY is a serial poem of voices interacting in global neologism” written prior to the birth of his and Elizabeth Was’ child.
Alex Balgiu and Chloé Gourvennec, eds.
The Improbable: an occasional miscellany inhabiting the rich and varied space between art and literature, vol. 2, no. 1.
Siglio Press, 2023.
A project of Siglio Press, this issue is titled “Lingual Music,” and guest editors Balgiu and Gourvennec also serve as designers. Contributors include Rosaire Appel, bpNichol, Helen Cammock, Ulises Carrión, Lily Greenham, Jerome Rothenberg and Richard Johnny John, Annea Lockwood, Min Oh, and N.H. Pritchard. The first two issues of this project were distributed freely at the Siglio Press pop-up in the Museum of Modern Art, and began to circulate more rhizomatically after the COVID-19 pandemic.
E.J. McAdams.
4 x 4.
Unarmed, [2008].
Published by Michael Mann, Debbie Florence, and enemy of the people (aka Mike Sawyer), editors of Unarmed: Adventurous Poetry Journal. McAdams’ chapbook was distributed as an accompaniment to Unarmed, no. 78.
Geof Huth, ed.
The Subtle Journal of Raw Coinage, no. 46.
June 1991.
Described on the colophon page as “a monthly aglossary,” this little magazine included work by Gelett Burgess, Karel Capek, Lewis Carroll, R.J.E. Clausius, Thomas Jefferson, H.L. Mencken, Maury Maverick, John Milton, Isaac Newton, Edmund Spenser, Noah Webster, and Horace Walpole.
Jim Leftwich, ed.
xtant, no. 3.
Anabasis Xtant, 2003.
Leftwich donated his archives for Xtant magazine and Xtantbooks to Ohio State University Libraries under fellow poet/curator John M. Bennett’s guidance during the same year of this publication. Contributors include Reed Altemus, John M. Bennett, John Crouse, David Dellafiora, K.S. Ernst and Scott Helmes, Vincent Ferrini, Scott MacLeod, and Gustav Morin, among many others.
Luigi-Bob Drake, ed.
Taproot Reviews, no. 5.
Burning Press, 1994.
Displayed are works by Rea Nikonova and Serge Segay, including an interview on Russian Transfuturists. This quarterly publication from Ohio focused on “punk to pomo to LANGUAGE to dada to visual to even some pretty normal stuff.” Contributors include Mark Amerika, Tom Beckett, Jake Berry, Susan Smith Nash, and Charlotte Pressler.
[Michael Mann, Debbie Florence, and enemy of the people (aka Mike Sawyer)], eds.
Unarmed: Adventurous Poetry Journal, no. 16.
[2001].
The editors are not explicitly credited within the journal, perhaps reflecting a deliberate focus on prioritizing the poems themselves. In line with this approach, contributors’ names appear only on the final page and are connected to their respective works through a graphic index. Contributors include John M. Bennett, James Daily, Hydie Fettig, Debby Florence, Kimball Lockhart, Richard Martin, David Romportl, and others. Unarmed has published over 70 issues, at times accompanied by a chapbook.
mIEKAL aND and Elizabeth Was, eds.
Anti-Isolation, no. 2.
N.d.
Contributors include Elizabeth [Liz] Was, Dan Slick, yrizarry, Jon Bailiff, Marcus Dejardin, Ryosuke Cohen, Scott Helmes, mIEKAL aND, Dan Raphael, Charles Behnke, Ty Bennett, and Hapunkt Fix.
mIEKAL aND and Elizabeth Was, eds.
Anti-Isolation, nos. 3/4.
Spring 1987.
Designed and edited by Elizabeth Was and mIEKAL aND with typing by Sardyb. Periodical from aND and Was’ Xexoxial Editions, publishing imprint of “Xexoxial Endarchy, Ltd, a non-profit soon-to-be-tax-exempt multiarts organization dedicated to the experimental and obscure in art.” Contributors include Jake Berry, Don Boyd, Atma Rata Das, Greg Evason, Joel Haertling, Michael Helsem, Serse Luigetti, R.N. Mannings, Sardyb, De Villo Sloan, Dan Slick, Rotar Storch, Lang Thompson, and Chris Winkler, among others.
mIEKAL aND.
Euy: A Zaumist Biography of Alexei Kruchenykh.
Xexoxial Editions, [1986].
This was the first publication of Xexoxial Editions, published by mIEKAL aND in Madison, Wisconsin. Aleksei Kruchenykh was a Russian futurist at the turn of the twentieth century who is credited, along with Velimir Khlebnikov, for inventing “zaum,” an experimental form of language beyond meaning.
Roberto Harrison and Nicholas Frank, curators.
CORTEXt: A Survey of Recent Visual Poetry.
Hermetic Gallery, 1995.
Displayed is Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds’ visual poetry, which protests white takeover of indigenous resources.
Cover by Johanna Drucker. Contributors include Fernando Aguiar, John M. Bennett and Susan Smith Nash, Daniel Davidson, Johanna Drucker, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, Steve McCaffery, Dick Higgins, Spencer Selby, Irving Weiss, and Karl Young, among others.
Serge Segay.
Made in Zaumland.
Xexoxial Editions, October 1993.
Designed and produced by Detlef Benjamin, with a “manifesto” preface by mIEKAL aND. This volume includes Xeroxed mail art by Serge Segay, much produced in the late 1980s with some pieces possibly dating to the 1970s. The final two edicts of the manifesto state: “5. Visual Poetry factory hands rise & revolt. Oppression is beneath all great art,” and “6. All wild leaps of fancy still land on earth.”