Mail art has a long and proud history of pranks, games, false identities and humorous deception. Ray Johnson was the perennial merry prankster, and his brilliant, deadpan gags are the stuff of legend. A recent string of pranks are slightly less funny, however, and those are the rash of fake projects which have appeared recently. These seem to be more of an annoyance than anything else.
Being the victim of a prank can be amusing, embarrassing, or in the case of recent projects which promise documentation, exceedingly time consuming and expensive. Whereas I'm not opposed to the idea of creating fake mail art projects for people, I am opposed to the idea of promising documentation for fake projects. If the "What does ALICE look like?" project had only encouraged people to send me images of "Alice" without promise of documentation, I would not have been nearly as annoyed as I was.
Earlier in the year, I had been pranked several times by Partisan d'Amour, an anonymous group which specialized in confusing people who ran mail art projects. They had sent me a contribution to Exquisite Square which appeared to come from Joe Decie of England, and in addition they submitted things to several mail art shows with their name but my address! It was very confusing for everyone involved, but for the most part it was harmless. Then "What Does ALICE Look Like?" appeared. I was hurt and angry that someone would do something like this to me, and set about collecting evidence to find out who this person could be.
It's very strange to have someone use your identity-- very frightening and scary... it makes you feel powerless in a way. When I first learned of the project, I was so frustrated and annoyed that I nearly quit mail art on the spot.
As the fake project progressed, however, I got some nice contributions from some wonderful people and decided to produce a zine as documentation (issue 36 of Shouting at the Postman). I apologize that I cannot reproduce these works in color as they rightly deserve, but the cost and time would be too great. I am also unable to publish the entries on the website as I don't have enough space.
I received a copy of the Fake Projects Survey in an envelope with a Danish stamp a few weeks ago, and returned it to Frank in Denmark. While I was preparing the first version of this article, Frank sent me an e-mail to let me know that he had no such survey. I rooted through my pile of envelopes to be recycled, and examined the "Danish" envelope closely. I was quite surprised to realize that it bore a postmark for a country other than Denmark and the handwriting of the address matched that of one of my oldest mail art friends from that same "non Danish" country-- and it matched it quite well. I quickly wrote an article which pulled together all the evidence I had and positively identified the prankster for all the world to see. I felt exhilarated that I had solved the great mystery which had consumed my life for the last few months. I fired off an e-mail to the prankster- "I now have proof that it was you and I will tell everyone unless you apologize."
While I was waiting for a reply, I started thinking about it.
Why would this person who had been my friend for so long do something like this to me and other mail artists? And why would they distribute the "fake it" flyer as well? Why would this dedicated mail artist want to destroy mail art? I could only come to the conclusion that this was not the reason-- there had to be a much deeper purpose to the project for this person to go to so much work.
The only conclusion I could come to is that the prankster is making some kind of statement about documentation for mail art projects. By creating these fake projects, he has guaranteed that many people who send out art for projects will get nothing in return. I assume that he is trying to teach people not to sit by the mail box waiting for documentation which may never come, and the lesson is this:
One should not make mail art for the reward of documentation. One should make mail art for the reward of making art and sharing it with others.
Once I realized this, I realized that I could not point the finger of blame at this person because their intentions are not evil, merely mischievous and perhaps a little annoying, but not evil. I quickly sent another e-mail informing this person that I would not reveal their secret life as a prankster.
Of course, I could be reading too much into these fake projects, and they could simply be the result of petty revenge for one thing or another without any deeper meaning, but either way I hope that these false projects will end soon so we can be pretty sure that the art we're sending to people isn't going to be discarded because the project is a prank.
(*not his real name)
Joe Kunstler was the person I accused of sending me the Fake Projects Survey and several other flyers for fake projects in an envelope which bore a Danish stamp. When he returned from vacation recently, he angrily replied to my e-mail that he was innocent and that the evidence against him was part of a plan to frame him as the faker. Perhaps this is the case. Perhaps I am wrong about this, so in an effort to find out if it is indeed Joe, I now present the evidence which led to my conclusions and ask what you think.
Probably the main thing which make me suspect that it was Joe was the fact that every single copy of the "What Does Alice Look Like?" flyer came from him. One person who received it said it arrived in an anonymous envelope bearing a stamp and postmark from his home country, The Netherlands. Several people asked me if I thought Joe was the person who started the project because of the distinctive style of the flyer, similar to other flyers Joe has produced in the past. I did not feel that this was sufficient to prove him responsible for the project, but still I asked Joe if he knew where the fake project came from. He said he did not remember.
Then an envelope arrived, containing the Fake Projects Survey. It was meant to have appeared to have come from Denmark as it bore a Danish stamp, but inexplicably it had a postmark from Rotterdam, which is in Holland. Again, I did not consider this positive proof because Joe's mail doesn't usually have a Rotterdam postmark. But then I examined the handwriting and compared it to Joe's.
The above image shows the envelope which contained the fake projects. The samples in boxes are enlarged portions of this envelope, and the samples below the boxes are taken from several envelopes which Joe has sent me. There is no question in my mind that Joe addressed this envelope- look at the strange combination of letters in "ASKalice"- a lower case "k" followed by a small upper-case "A" followed by a large upper-case "L" is especially distinctive. The person who addressed the envelope has tried to disguise their handwriting by using lower case letters in "PO Box," but the numbers are the same. Lower case letters are abandoned on bottom line, which is virtually identical to Joe's handwriting, especially the numbers in the postal code. Please note that I have not altered these samples in any way.
Joe has asserted that someone has forged his handwriting on the envelope, but I maintain that there's no way someone could know how Joe writes my address without seeing the mail he sends me, and I keep all the envelopes I receive from him. In fact, someone has tried to make this envelope appear not to have come from Joe- it bears a Danish stamp, despite the fact that it was mailed in the Netherlands. Wouldn't someone use a Dutch stamp if they wished to frame Joe in this way? Wouldn't they make it more obvious it was from "Joe" whose mail has a quite distinctive style?
Joe also maintains that the postmark is from Rotterdam, which is 150 km away from where he lives, so this is one question I cannot answer, but I'm sure mail artists realize how easy it is to get a distant postmark on an envelope using a third party.
Now I ask you, the reader, to give me your input- have I wrongly accused Joe Kunstler? Please let me know what you think. I did not wish to publish this information, but Joe's insistence has forced me into a position where I must ask impartial people to consider this evidence and tell me if I'm wrong. I like Joe and it pains me to accuse him of this.
"well, Im not at all surprised by your conclusion... put it this way I'd be surprised if it wasn't [Joe]. Just comparing the fake flyers to [Joe]'s you can see all the similarities."
"Joe appears to be guilty, however, have you established a motive . . . seems that would be one element missing from the evidence presented?"
I forgot to mention that K. Frank Jensen (who the "Danish" envelope was meant to appear to have come from) recently published an article which was critical of the mail art world, and especially critical of Joe Kunstler. -Ken
"Without having read that article, the handwriting is damning evidence."
"Yes, the handwriting does look familiar to mine. Is that all the proof you have?"
I responded...
What more proof is possible? Tell me, an anonymous
envelope with only my address, a stamp and postmark are all
I have to use. Just looking at the way "ASKalice" is written
on that envelope is enough to convince me- you write it
EXACTLY the same way, with the same combination of upper and
lower case letters. How would someone know this to fake it?
It is too similar to be a coincidence... I don't care about
any of this any more. I don't care if you did make up fake
projects or if you didn't, and I have told you this in the
past. Please, let us put an end to this time-wasting
discussion. It only serves to give me headaches. I already
have too much to worry about with moving. I will
not post any more information about fake projects
again. Let us assume that there is a far more
clever prankster than anyone can imagine who has created
this envelope in an effort to make you, me and Frank angry.
I finally met "Joe Kunstler" in person, now 11 years after this all happened, and he sheepishly admitted that he was indeed behind the fake projects.
