Géza Perneczky - C3 - Center for Culture & Communication ...

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PhotoSTATIC, you know how it seems to float around on the page & work with
worlds. It's good to see so much of it tightly related all in one place. The image
and text manipulations are expressive, and the pictures will satisfy any diabolical
cravings you may have... Subscribe to Xerolage...» (PhotoStatic. N° 16, Jan. 1986.
Lloyd → Dunn: Mail Review)
Miekal And, Liz Was / Interviewed. In: Lowlife, #16, May 1989, Atlanta, CA
(Anti-Isolation, #3-4): «The title is not exaggeration. This is an exhaustive and
highly usable source book of the networking arts. And & Was have a singular
dedication to the idea of what artists, working flarflung, can do to gain contact &
significant interaction, all with the spread of ideas in mind. Anti-Isolation is their
organ for this. Contains reviews, articles, graphics, and contacts enough to keep
the dedicated networker busy for months. I refer to it a lot to read the reviews,
which are short and to the point and give a good idea of what the work they're
about's about.» (L. → Dunn: Mail Review. In: PhotoStatic. N° 25-26, Aug. 1987,
874 p.)
«Stephen Perkins: (...) Is The Acts of Shelflife a book or magazine?
Liz Was: Both and neither I would say. We have always been interested in these
genres and forms that can't be labelled quite so simply, it feels like a book in the
way that it's bound and perhaps in the way that it feels when it's in your hands
flipping the pages. It's a magazine more than a book in the sense that it involves
many other people and I always think of magazines, although there are compilation
books, it seems like magazines are the kind of thing that involve many others. It's
unlike a magazine in that it doesn't come out periodically, but then again we aperi-
odic periodicals that we've published too. (...)
SP: Why the title The Acts of Shelflife?
Miekal And: it comes from a poem that I wrote and it's sort of a reference actually
to Charles Olson, it's a discrete reference, it's not like a quote from a book of his
or anything, but it's more certain sort of notion that came out of Charles Olson for
me about projectivist verse and having texts that extend out from themselves... So
the notion is that The Acts of Shelflife, the literal interpretation would be „the acts“
that somebody did and how it relates to being on a bookshelf years later and people
interacting with that. (...) The one thing that was kind of nice for Xexoxial was nor-
mally we are very frugal with how we distribute copies of our books and stuff
because we have to pay for the copies each time, so with The Acts The Shelflife we
felt a lot more generous with getting copies out and distributing them.»
(Miekal And & Liz Was in Conversation [Dreamtime Village, August 26,
1996]. In: Stephen → Perkins: Assembling Magazines. International Networking
Collaborations. Cat.: Half-legal, phc., 64 p. Subspace, Iowa City. 1996 / Print:
1997. 6-7 p.)
(And / Was Have Done To Be): Miekal And / Liz Was go full tilt – spinning off in
all sorts of publishing and performing directions under the corporate aegis Xexo-
xial Endarchy. For instance most recently there's been the Festival of Swamps.
It's their takeoff on a local arts event and the third such gathering of homemade
and a heapin' helping of noise/music... As publishers and non-stop networkers And
/ Was constantly churn out anthological gatherings of mail art and squibs on other
projects. Spek and Anti-Isolation are two on-going editions. They've produced
lovely handdone chapbooks on their in-house photocopy machine from the work
of Bruce Andrew, Loris Essary, Joe Schwind, Bern → Porter, JW Curry, → Music-
master and Joel → Lipman along with a bunch more. Lately Miekal and Liz have
gotten into creative plagiarism (as espouced by Stewart → Home and others)... It
may sum up the open-ended, free-wheeling philosophy at Xexoxial Endarchy. To
see their quirkly, clever and uplifting explorations for yourself write 1341 Willi-