Creative networks are the fabric of countless netlinked fibers, flowing, interconnecting worlds, vital, vibrant, filtering through a sea of boundless information. Accessibility, facilitation, participation, information, and the interconnectivity of ideas is the harvest won. All knowledge returns transformed, transported, an omniscient omnibus for all to share.

Some traditional networks represent a formal, business work ethic, a professional hierarchy, the old order, but there are mail art and telecommunication art networks playing with a different set of networking values. Today, network art calls artists to a larger sense of purpose, inter-relatedness, and cooperation. It involves a shift from patriarchal, hierarchical, anthropocentric thinking to a world view vision; a metanoia.

Cross cultural networking is a radical act of gift sharing, collaborative play, interconnection and accessibility. Mail art and telecommunication networkers share cooperative values that were central to the volatile 1960s and 1970s culture in the United States; a time when definitions of social, cultural, religious and economic values exploded. At that time, art and communication were being stripped of elitism, re-evaluated and made accessible in street art and happenings. Buckminster Fuller predicted a networking spaceship Earth, and mass media expert Marshall McLuhan had enormous influence envisioning an age when information would be recycled from one medium to another. Fluxus artist Dick Higgins, a friend and publisher of McLuhan, coined the term "intermedia."

Mail art grew out of the social and political ferment of the 60s and has evolved, by some estimates, into a community of over 10,000 participants. Mail artists exchange, recycle and alter surfaces of mailing tubes, envelopes, parcels and their contents. These layered surfaces resemble a global collage of artist postage stamps, rubber stamped images, cryptic messages and slogans. Creative communication by concepts, visual symbols, signs and languages influence the way in which mail artists use media like papermaking, painting, audio, video, computers, artists books, copy art, stamp art, zines and performance art. If mail artists are the medium, is the mail artifact fiction? If this is true, how can mail art be fine art? Swiss mail artist Hans Ruedi Fricker has said, "Mail art is not Fine Art. It is the artist who is fine!"

Are mail and telecommunications art for artists only? On the contrary, both the mail art and telematic communities function as accessible public art forums. Mail artists and various institutions annually host hundreds of exhibitions open to public viewing and participation. Mail art exhibitions usually begin with an international mailing to hundreds of artists known to routinely exchange mail art. The customary guidelines for hosting mail art show are democratic by normal museum criteria: 1) No rejections; 2) All work exhibited; 3) No return of artwork submitted; 4) Choice of media open; 5) Free catalogue promised to all participants.

Some mail art exhibitions have included official U.S. postal stations at the exhibition site so that the visiting public can choose to respond to any of the participating exhibitors. Other mail art shows host "mail art openings" where all exhibited mail is experienced by the public on "opening night." Here the public is allowed to walk home from public institutions with mail art in their hands.

In more recent years, the telematic art community has also hosted enormous public cultural exchanges like Toronto, Ontario, Canada's "Particifax Network." Organized by the Grimsby Public Art Gallery in the Summer of 1984, Particifax included the installation of Canada Post Intelpost telecommunication machines in numerous public spaces including London, Ontario's Forest City Gallery. In a pioneering effort, Canadian mail artists Michael Bidner and Lisa Sellyeh interconnected mail artists, the public, and telecommunication artists by fax. Both artists succeeded in linking the Forest City Gallery site with mail artists attending San Francisco's "Inter-Dada Festival."

Beyond exposure of public mail and telecommunications exhibitions there is a home-based world where anyone can contribute to an artwork in progress. Here, the mail box and computer are the museum. Telecommunications artist Anna Couey characterizes the process of creating online telecommunication artworks as a public phenomenon:

"Many online artworks are constructed on a participatory basis, whether or not you define yourself as an artist, if you choose to participate, you ARE an artist. This has worked to break down the elitism normally associated with art activity...online art is public art because the public makes it!"

If these democratic similarities between mail and telecommunications networkers exist, why isn't there evidence of more interaction? Is there a pretext for interaction now?

Since the early 1970s mail artists have met one another to discuss the topic of inter-media communication. They have also established public forums for the discussion of netlinking alternative artforms. In 1985 Swiss networker Hans Ruedi Fricker dubbed mail artist sojourns and meetings "Tourism" and the tag has remained ever since.

Fricker, in collaboration with fellow Swiss networker Gunther Ruch, popularized tourism by inviting mail artists to cash in their stamps for airline tickets. The behavior was further encouraged by proposing decentralized mail art congresses that would convene wherever two or more mail artists gathered to discuss issues and concerns. Throughout 1986, over 800 mail artists in 25 countries met in 80 mail art congresses.

Today, Fricker is collaborating with netlink facilitators John Held Jr., Crackerjack Kid (the author), Mark Corotto (a.k.a. FaGaGaGa), Steve Perkins, Lloyd Dunn, Clemente Padin, and Peter Kaufman to encourage the decentralization of art by interconnections with intermedia artists, home tapers, fax artists, bands, bulletin board users, hackers, etc. in a "Decentralized World-Wide Networker Congress 1992." (hereafter called NC92) The mail and telematic art communities may find keys to interconnection through local/global projects like the "Decentralized World-Wide Mail Art Congress 1992," or the "Reflux Network Project."

As an NC92 facilitator, I have formed a "Telenetlink Congress" whose purpose is centered on reaching the telematic community through bulletin board services like New York City's Echo, Minneapolis' Artbase BBS, and by accessing internationally distributed USENET newsgroups such as alt.artcom, and rec.arts.fine. I found immediate response from Art Com's director Carl Loeffler who posted my NC92 invitations in the Art Com Electronic Network (acen) conference on the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) and offered to carry NC92's networker databank updates on alt.artcom. The Telenetlink Congress has also succeeded in making an important interconnection with Dr. Artur Matuck's telecommunications project for the Sao Paulo Biennale, the Reflux Network Project.

In July 1991, while accessing the alt.artcom newsgroup with my computer, I discovered the existence of the Sao Paulo Biennale project "Reflux Network," a telecommunications network of over twenty-four international nodes. Reflux Network is the project idea of University of Sao Paulo instructor Dr. Artur Matuck who aims to promote the ideal of international cooperation and collaboration through telecommunication technologies. Among myriad activities scheduled at the Reflux node sites from September to December 1991 are performances, teleconferences by computer, fax art exchange, digitized music/sound, video documentation and exchange by slow scan television and videophones. Public participation and exhibitions at each node site opened up the process as a democratic forum to dialogue.

Throughout the summer of 1991 I sent essays and letters to all artists associated with running the Reflux node sites. Every communication I've received from the telematic community has been, in effect, an effort to telenetlink beyond existing boundaries. With the cooperation of Reflux participants like Anna Couey, Jeff Mann, Fred Truck, Juan L. Gomez- Perales, Sarah Dickinson, Artur Matuck, Judy Malloy, Carl Loeffler and others, we are creating an on-going dialogue, a Telenetlink Congress that will spawn future projects interconnecting NC92 (mail art networkers) and the telematic community. I view these collective efforts as an ubiquitous "congress in process" extending throughout the NC92 Congress year (1992).

I would like to invite all of my readers who have access to computers, modems, or fax machines to join in a Telenetlink Congress with NC92 and the Reflux Network. Participation may involve any form of telecommunication exchange, e-mail, fax, video phones, etc. What mutual benefits would be derived from telenetlinking both worlds? Readers can join this congress by sending a brief one page statement about how you envision your own role as a networker. Proposals and projects that would interconnect the mail art and telematic communities are also welcome. Periodic updates concerning telenetlink project initiatives will be posted over Usenet newsgroups rec. arts fine and alt.artcom. Send your Telenetlink Congress statements and project proposals via (e)mail to Cathryn.L.Welch@dartmouth.edu. or fax to Chuck Welch, Telenetlink Congress (603) 448-9998. All statements received from artists in the telematic community will be part of the NC92 "Networker Database Congress," a collection that will be made available for research at the University of Iowa's "Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts Archive." Further information about scheduled NC92 events is available by writing to these facilitators:

H.R. Fricker, Buro fur kunstlerische Umtriebe, CH 9043 Trogen, Switzerland
Peter W. Kaufmann, Bergwisenstrasse 11, 8123 Ebmatingen, Switzerland
Netlink South America: Clemente Padin, Casilla C. Central 1211, Montevideo, Uruguay
Netlink East: Chuck Welch, PO Box 978, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
Netlink South: John Held Jr. 7919 Goforth, Dallas, TX 75238, USA
Netlink Midwest: Mark Corroto, PO Box 1382, Youngstown, OH 44501, USA
Netlink Subspace: Steve Perkins, 221 W. Benton, Iowa City, IA 52246, USA
Netlink West: Lloyd Dunn, PO Box 162, Oakdale, IA 52319, USA

Those readers who know of networkers that may be interested in NC92 are welcome to download this essay and transmit it to any BBS, electronic newsgroup, alternative zine or educational institution. Together, we can telenetlink congress now in corresponding worlds.