The documentation below was included in each of the ten issues of Film Clips # 6, produced by Geof Huth on 29 December 2007 and featuring the work of Márton Koppány. The edition was distributed as follows: 1. Geof Huth (though destined for the University at Albany, SUNY)
2. Nancy Huth
3. Erin Huth
4. Tim Huth
5. The Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry
6. Márton Koppány
7. Karl Young
8. Karl Kempton
9. Bob Grumman
10. endwar
A Self-Destructing Compilation
of Cultural Iconography and Mail Art
o + + + + + + + + + + + + r
The Purprestor’s Attempts Excoriated
What About This is About
An envelopzine, it enwraps. It enshrines an assortment of recordings of human tendencies, words and images, colors and blacks and whites, shapes and thoughts, desires and tendencies, loves and losts. It does not mean, but is. It does not continue, but exists. It does not adhere, but floats. Given a purpose, it refuses. Given an opportunity, it looks the other way. Given away, it accepts. It is not designed to last nor to be remembered, being but a thought thought briefly on a walk, a slash of sunlight across the wrist catching the outline of hairs, a whiff of something like your childhood that is then gently urged away by a breeze, one fleeting electric touch of skin on skin. All of these evaporate as experience piles upon experience, and the mind refuses to hold it all in, refuses to do reality’s insistent bidding, and sets free those small thoughts, those tersest memories, that it no longer needs. Yet there seems something significant about any group of objects amassed. We struggle to create sense out of them. Why, we wonder, these objects? How do they mean together? At one level, this is but a collection of decades. Each decade says something about the products of our culture, what they are, how they look, what they do. Each contains some kind of recorded information, so each item is a message to the future, which is all that writing, all that any art, ever is. These messages we create to exist, to remember ourselves to posterity, to provide experiences to ourselves and others, to try to see if we might not fail.
The Things Inside of Which Be
First, we have the alkaline envelope, each of which carries information about a separate semi-annual meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (each of which Geof Huth attended). The title of the envelopzine is handprinted on the outside top of the envelope, and each is numbered on the premlip on the reverse of the envelope. Inside the envelope, we find an unused two-cent postal card mimeographed with an announcement for a 1950s meeting of the Mid-Hudson Valley Joint Board of the Textile Workers of America and carrying the handwritten title of the envelopzine on its front, a yellow card with a Kendall Q-Trace 5400 electrocardiogram tab electrode and with the text “e.(k.)g.” handwritten at the bottom, a three-row sample of jacketed microfiche, a plastic baggie with three small pieces by Márton Koppány (“?,” “Happy Snowman,” and “instrumental:”), a fake Discover credit card used as an advertising gimmick, a New York State Lottery Quick Draw card, a small silver envelope containing a copy of Márton Koppány’s “Ellipses No. 13-14,” an advertisement (in English and Spanish) for the McDonald Corporation’s 2004 Instant Prize Giveaway, a booklet advertising Tom Phillips’ 2005 show (“Works from A Humument”) at the Flowers gallery in New York City, an errata sheet for an item elsewhere in the envelope, a page from a copy of the minutes of a meeting of the City Council of the City of Mount Vernon in New York from 2003, a copy of a booklet (Archives & You: The Benefits of Historical Records) produced by the New York State Archives and Records Administration in 1990, a copy of issue No. 1 of the Gazette du Commerce et Litterarie, pour la Ville & District de Montreal from the 3rd of June 1778, an advertisement for the Rotary Club’s Lord of the Rings Movie Festival at Proctors in Schenectady (New York) on 31 July 2004, and a copy of the March 1997 issue (Vol 1, No 4) of Serving New York, a publication of the New York State Office of National and Community Service
Why Would This Even Be?
We create to be, we read to know, we know to live, we live to love, we love to feel ready to die. One envelope of Film Clips is no panacea, yet it provides what is essential for human life: Experience. We run through the paces of our lives in search of those experiences that bring us joy and meaning. We do not always find them, and this would not be such an experience to many, but maybe it is to some. Film Clips expects nothing of its intentionally few readers but a moment’s attention.
The Can’tributor’s Address
Márton Koppány, 1145 Budapest, Bácskai u. 22 HUNGARY
C+O+M+P+I+L+E+R
Ge(of Huth), 875 Central Parkway, Schenectady, New York 12309 USA
qbdp # 188 + published & assembled the 29th of disember 2007
this copy under your eyes is copy number [ ] of 10
un violon d'ingres
