Fannies and fanzines: Mail art and fan clubs in the 1970s

This article observes and explores the rise of a particular type of fan club the fan club as an artistic form. It addresses why the fan club became a popular format for artists to appropriate in the 1970s in the United States and Canada, especially in the international correspondence art scene, where participants used the mail as a medium for circulating postcards, letters, flyers, self-designed little magazines and other materials. I contend that fan clubs were counterpublics that offered the mail artists an apt forum for the self-conscious creation of alternatives to the art world, the mass media and mainstream entertainment, so that they could work out individual and collective identities, in particular, the expression of queer identities.