“If you lose you integrity, you can’t get it back.”
– Angela, Google Tech Worker

Non Manifesto II.

Preface: I am not a Luddite. I worked in global technology firms for 40 years.

From Dada to Fluxus and Mail Art, avant garde art movements are a rejection and critique of the current culture. Dada against World War I. Fluxus in opposition to modernist, capitalist art.

Mail Art is about people corresponding through the postal system using physical objects, creating a personal network between humans.

Mail Art digital methods emerged in the early ‘90s. Chuck Welch’s Telenetlink and EMMA projects, Ruud Janssen’s IOUMA, and others built networks to connect artists together. Digital art tools like Photoshop and home color printing brought new ways to create art. Mail Art remained in the paper postal domain, following Mail Art & Fluxus Manifesto’s values. Despite the digital methods, mail artists retained their personal and networking agency. 

With the rise of Surveillance Capitalism, Mail Art works are being showed on surveillance platforms – Instagram, Facebook, X et al. Posting Mail Art on these platforms is akin to the Dadas supporting WWI.

When we use surveillance platforms, we support the societal and human harms that they are imposing on the world. Trump specifically took power due to actions from Facebook in 2016. Our personal data (clicks, keyboard patterns, cookies, mouse movements, location…) is being harvested, sold and used – and given to governments. With every transaction we use with these platforms, we give them revenue through advertising and data brokers. While personally we may be using them in benign ways, we are supporting child abuse, civil wars, suicides, political manipulation, and separating us from each other. They are also consuming a massive amount energy, furthering the climate crisis on Earth. We are unintentionally being colonized, and they own your digital doppelganger.

Mingling Mail Art with surveillance capitalism crosses a red line for me. I believe it’s inconsistent with the values of our network and spirit of oppositional art movements from Dada to Fluxus.

I am starting an Art Strike from April 15 until October 15, 2026 to protest the use of Mail Art on surveillance capitalism platforms:  Facebook, Instagram, Google/Youtube, X, and all AI tools. During the Art Strike, I will not create any art, and limit what I send out. Email if you want to know more about how the surveillance platforms work.

If you support my thoughts above, feel free to join this Art Strike.

nonlocal variable, April 15, 2026