In my last email back at the end of November 2020, I detailed my project PUBLIC COLLECTORS POLICE SCANNER, which had just wrapped up.
For 75 days in 2020 I listened to the police scanner and the interplay between dispatchers and Chicago police officers working throughout the city. I listened using Broadcastify and Crimeisdown. While listening, I took notes and indicated the day, date, and time on a sheet of paper, along with the day number for the project. I would listen in one continuous session for around 45 minutes a day. I began on September 10, 2020 and ended the project on November 23, 2020.
Since that time I have completed two publications for the project: a 90-page book that compiles every page of notes along with process photos and an essay, and a single sheet publication, CHEST WOUND TO THE CHEST, that features a found poem created using lines of text that I heard throughout my listening.
The book PUBLIC COLLECTORS POLICE SCANNER, while focused on some challenging and sometimes just downright unpleasant content, is actually a beautiful object. It was printed by myself and a commercial printer using both digital and two-color RISO printing and then the sheets were collated in Chicago at Union Bindery who stitched the stacks and bound them perfectly with fabric library tape. 249 copies were produced.
The book is available for $20.00 and is being distributed by Half Letter Press. If you buy the book, I'll also throw in a free copy of CHEST WOUND TO THE CHEST. PURCHASE.
Last year Maximillian Goldfarb invited me contribute a text to his project Reports, and in early January my text "Chest Wound to the Chest" scrolled down a public-facing LED sign in Hudson, New York for two weeks at Incident Report—the storefront space of The Flow Chart Foundation (located at 348 Warren Street, in Hudson, NY). Copies of the booklet were available for free to passersby, or could be read inside the space along with other Public Collectors publications.
Quite a few friends were able to see the project in person and my buddy Jeff Economy was kind enough to shoot this short video. Big thanks to Maximillian for inviting me to participate.
Most readers of this newsletter are probably aware that since 1998, along with Brett Bloom, I've also been a member of the group Temporary Services and am a partner in our publishing imprint Half Letter Press. I try not to post TS and HLP news in these emails because the separation between Public Collectors (which is just me) and Temporary Services / Half Letter Press (Brett and myself) is already confusing to a lot of people.
Early last month we published a long-awaited reprint of the book Prisoners' Inventions which was written by our late collaborator Angelo in collaboration with Temporary Services, and this news is too big to contain within one group. Here is the story behind this book:
In 2001, the group Temporary Services invited their friend Angelo, a prisoner in California, to write about and draw the different things he had seen other
prisoners invent.
Angelo illustrated everything from immersion heaters with electrical plugs made from razor blades, paper clips, and popsicle sticks, to cooking methods for bologna jerky on built-in cell light fixtures. These drawings and writings became the book and widely exhibited project Prisoners’ Inventions, first published in 2003. Salem Collo-Julin was also a core member of the group during that time.
This redesigned and expanded edition of Prisoners’ Inventions includes many pages of additional drawings and writings that Angelo produced after the last printing, as well as a new introduction by Temporary Services that details the origins and life of the project. Prisoners’ Inventions reveals an often-neglected side of prison existence: the need to create those objects and experiences that allow the most basic human desires to be satisfied.
The book is available through Half Letter Press. It was such a monumental effort to get this thing back into the world and I hope some of you will check it out. I think you'll agree that it was worth the wait. PURCHASE.
Above are a couple spreads showing Angelo's drawings and writings. The book was designed by Partner & Partners who were terrific collaborators and did a wonderful job with the material.
Angelo's Archives - An Endless Project
When Prisoners' Inventions' author Angelo died in late 2016, it became my own enormous project to figure out how to contend with all of the other drawings and writings that he mailed me while he was incarcerated. When Angelo was released from prison in 2014, he didn't feel an urgent need to have the things that he sent me (he was too busy acquiring all of the books and video tapes and DVDs he wanted to check out that he couldn't read or see while in prison) so he just instructed me to hang onto everything. There have been glimpses
of Angelo's work in Public Collectors blog posts throughout the years and I included him in some publications like the Public Collectors book I made with Inventory Press in 2014. Aside from a some exhibitions including one by Temporary Services, mostly from the early 2000s, little of this work has been shown.
Angelo left me with thousands of pages of writings and drawings which, now that Prisoners' Inventions is back in print, I've been starting to think about again. Most of the drawings have probably not been seen by anyone aside from maybe Angelo's cellmate(s), the prison mail room, and myself. Angelo was a complicated man who made a lot of art for his own private reasons that he never pushed me to exhibit, publish, sell, or do anything with unless I wanted to. Some of that work should stay private. Other things are just incredible and deserve to be seen.
Angelo loved to take various historical themes and explore them for years on end. He made a series of drawings of Stone Age period humans (sometimes with modern details tossed in like a TV set) that are particularly extraordinary. Here's one sample from 2009 titled "The Reserves" showing a little group discussion that's happening while a mastodon receives a cluster of spears in the background.
In the coming years I plan to start making publications around some of Angelo's art and writings. It will take a lot of thinking and sifting, and there will be no easy answers on what to do, but I plan to do something. Angelo was so prolific that I could easily spend the rest of my own life just dealing with materials from his life. Being responsible for someone else's creative output when they are no longer alive is a complicated problem. I'd love to talk to others who are dealing with this challenge so if you are one of them, please reach out.
Want to hear a pretty wild Angelo-related story? About 9 years ago, before Angelo was transferred to another prison and then eventually released, he mailed me three enormous boxes of personal papers, legal papers, writings, drawings, and unused art supplies. Each box had about 40 pounds or more of paper and it was incredible how much was crammed in. You can see a detail of one of these boxes above. Angelo loved storing things in envelopes and there were envelopes inside of envelopes inside of envelopes.
One of the envelopes inside an envelope that I never looked at until this past week, from 1992, contained a bank statement with his mother's address on it in Los Angeles. Inside that statement was a Department of Corrections photo ID with Angelo's picture. Before meeting him in person in 2014 I had never seen a photo of Angelo, despite the fact that we had been corresponding for about 23 years. We just mailed each other letters and never even spoke on the phone until his release. If I had opened that box sooner, I would have known what he looked like years earlier than I did.
The last time I was in Los Angeles a couple years ago I had brunch with my dear friends Rob Ray and Jen Hofer. Rob loves the book Prisoners' Inventions and has written about how influential it was for him. I asked Rob and Jen to suggest a place to eat and they decided on a favorite little Mexican restaurant near their house. We had a great meal together and it was delicious.
Knowing that Angelo either lived with his mother, or in a unit that was adjacent to hers in a small complex, I decided to consult Google street view to check out the location listed on the bank statement. The area is partly obscured by trees but it was near a corner and right next to a Mexican restaurant. My heart skipped a beat, as I realized that it seemed to be the same spot where I met with Rob and Jen. I quickly messaged Rob and he confirmed the name of the restaurant. In all of the vastness of Los Angeles, we had brunch about 50 feet from where Angelo lived before he was in prison.
Going through Angelo's papers is always heavy—even more so since his death—and it will be a journey. It is going to be a journey that I intend to take slowly and gradually, but I'm committed to it.
In addition to Temporary Services / Half Letter Press having a exhibitor page/table at Printed Matter's Virtual Art Book Fair, I'll be talking about the Public Collectors project QUARANZINE and other pandemic publishing concerns for this panel. I hope you'll e-attend!
Towards A Self Sustaining Publishing Model, with Marc Fischer, Vivian Sming, Yuri Ogita, and Devin Troy Strother, moderated by Be Oakley
Friday, February 26 ~ 2–3:30pm EST
THE CLASSROOM This panel invites Marc Fischer, Vivian Sming of Sming Sming Books, and Yuri Ogita and Devin Troy Strother of Coloured Publishing to talk openly about the ways they fund their projects. During the prolonged crisis of Covid-19, this panel confronts how we can continue to make our work without governmental, institutional, or large donor funding. Be Oakley of GenderFail will engage the panelists in a conversation about the money we make, the resources we have (and don't have), and how we can make a living. This panel will be a resource for smaller imprints and self-publishers to talk openly about radical forms of supporting each other. Presented by GenderFail.
Like I say every time, thank you for following and supporting this work. As always, you can find all past publications that are still available here. Public Collectors has a lot of projects cooking but is also sort of between projects as I pick at things that are taking a while to ripen, so I'm not sure what I'll do next but these newsletters are a good way to stay alerted.
Marc / Public Collectors
Public Collectors organizes exhibitions and events, participates in exhibitions organized by others, creates exhibition opportunities for collectors, teaches, lectures, responds to research inquiries, and makes its own publications. The administrator of Public Collectors is Marc Fischer. He is based in Chicago, Illinois.
