General Idea
Life & Work by Sarah E.K. Smith
5. This name made reference to the New York School of painting. Ina Blom, “How To (Not) Answer a
Letter: Ray Johnson’s Postal Performance,” PAJ 86 (2007): 7.
6. Gwen Allen, “The Magazine as Mirror: FILE, 1972–1989,” Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative
Space for Art (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011), 159.
7. Three individuals turned down the invitation: Robert Fones, Ray Johnson, and Father Malachi.
Janis Campbell also declined to participate on the grounds that the competition was “sexist
exploitation,” but the group included her letter of decline as an entry. See Fern Bayer, “Uncovering
the Roots of General Idea: A Documentation and Description of Early Projects 1968–1975,” The
Search for the Spirit: General Idea 1968–1975 (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1997), 67.
8. Cumming, for instance, created a project for the first issue of FILE under the headline “Behind a
Big Story There May be Another One.” He created a simple map of the contours of the North
American continent and asked readers to “Locate and draw from memory the Canadian/American
border.” Cumming compiled the submissions from FILE’s readership and created a composite
image that showed a knot of borders, revealing the diversity of opinions. See FILE Megazine, “Mr.
Peanut Issue,” vol. 1, no. 1 (april 1972).
9. For instance, Ray Johnson proclaimed the end of the New York Correspondance School [sic] in a
satirical obituary in 1973.
10. The Art Metropole collection is now housed at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. For a list
of artists whose work in mail art is held within the collection, see
https://www.gallery.ca/fr/bibliotheque/content/list_mailcorr.pdf.
11. The Portapak employed half-inch video format, which subsequently became obsolete.
AA Bronson, correspondence with author, January 11, 2016.
12. Of Anger’s work, Bronson explained, “We played it again and again in our rather cold and barren
General Idea loft, stunned into (stoned) silence by its cold blue luminosity.” AA Bronson, “Queer
Cinema from the Collection: Today and Yesterday,” Museum of Modern Art,
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1161; AA Bronson, correspondence with author,
August 24, 2015.
13. AA Bronson, correspondence with author, August 24, 2015.
14. AA Bronson, correspondence with author, August 24, 2015; Susan Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’”
http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html.
15. Bronson explained that General Idea frequently discussed Susan Sontag’s article on camp in
the early years of working together. AA Bronson in correspondence with author, August 24, 2015.
16. Test Tube was ultimately not disseminated this way.
17. AA Bronson notes that no other video distributors existed, but that there was an existing artists’
video organization in Vancouver at the time. AA Bronson, correspondence with author, February 3,
2016. Art Metropole continued to disseminate video work to institutions until 1987, when it changed
its focus to domestic distribution due to the emergence of specialized organizations such as Vtape
in Toronto.
18. A companion volume was produced in 1986, titled Video by Artists 2, edited by Elke Town.
These books were part of a larger series of Art Metropole publications that foreground artists’ writings
in relation to specific media. Other volumes in the series include Performance by Artists (1979),
edited by AA Bronson and Peggy Gale; Books by Artists (1981), by Tim Guest and Germano
Celant; Museums by Artists (1983), edited by AA Bronson and Peggy Gale; and Sound by Artists
(1990), edited by Dan Lander and Micah Lexier.
104