Report on the Mail Art Nehvorking Congress Discussion with Minoru Nishiki, Kyoji Nakatani, Tamotsu M'atanabe, Michio Wakamatsu and Kowa Kato in Tokyo, Japan about " The Re-use of images in the Network "

In his mail art project, Tamotsu e>(posed his own name s18n in an artistic form to re-use and alienation for networkers to create new visuals as "Add-To's", a common mail art technique. He has
brought the whole collection of entries to this meeting and explains that his motive for this action was above all his interest in artistic cooperation, to see what happens if others play freely with

a symbol given by him.

The participants compare the results to other similar visualizations of the network idea, e.g. FaGaGaGa's FACEzine, Ryosuke's BRAIN CELL, and Angela"s and PeteI's super-size COLLECTIVE COLLAGE with hundreds of net-stamps, -stickers, and artistamps and

handwritten messages.


Tamotsu realizes that artists from other cultures may not even have reco8nized his name si8n. So does the re-use of images im-


ply understanding! Is it necessary above all? How does meaning change (many interesting examples in his collection)? How does it

get Iost?
Tamotsu feels a true dadaist in tile Duchamp/Schwitters tradition. He would never claim copyright, though some mail artists falsely try, mixing the network ut-, with commercial art.

Among all the déja-vus of the mass media's image flood the network seems to create its own icono8mph)r from Ray Johnson's tongue-sticker to Shózó's bald head, and it is the interesting e)lecatchers that get re-used ft-eely.