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| Istvan Kantor Introduction to The Booklet of OZ, a tribute to David Zack  [Published in Italy by Vittore Baroni, 2003]
Dear Vittore, thanks for doing the Zack tribute booklet and also for giving me the possibility to write a short intro to it. I'm sitting in front of my computer and I'm trying to figure out how to do it. There are too many things in my mind and I wish I could write down everything simultaneously without respect to the linear form of writing, using some kind of a hyper-telekinepathic device that is able to receive and transcode several brain wave-lines at once. Reading Zack's letters I always had the impression that he tried to tell me a number of stories at once but unfortunately typewriters and keyboards were not the most accurate instruments for that. Isn't that frustrating? The result is a confusing, unreadable style that jumps from one idea to another without any logical continuity, an untangible, broken up, convulsive form of texts, notes, drawings, photos, sounds of a mad philosopher corresponding with a few hundred million mail-artists at once. I met Zack in 1976, in Budapest at the Young Artists' Club where he had a show of his correspondence-art works. His graphic images, collages, texts, drawings, xerox prints, small booklets, had a very confusing, chaotic, anarchist, naiv, innocent, childish quality. He used bright, colorful ornaments on old, table cloth or pillow cover looking rugs, small photographic images glued to them. Lots of stars, snake like, long pencil lines, little animal drawings embellished his text based works. It was the first time I saw color xerox and I was amazed by it. I was also very surprised by his excessive use of photocopying as an artistic technic. I learned that he had a xerox machine installed in his kitchen. Something like that was unimaginable in a communist country where printing and dissemination of information was the privilege of the state. I was extremely impressed. We got introduced to each other by Laszlo Beke who organized the Zack show. We sat down at a table and he put out all kinds of little objects from his pockets. He said that he lost all his money, he was dead broke. I didn't understand anything what Zack was mumbling, rattling or screaming about when he proposed me to become Monty Cantsin. I was fascinated by his monotonous, sometime hysterical but always confused style and misleading verbal communication manners, and by the fact that while he was explaining his incoherent theory he also played several musical instruments, like cello, tenor guitar, drums, hurdy-gurdy and toy-saxophone. I just kept listening, and, being a singer, after a while I joined in, singing popular hungarian folk and revolutionary songs to the wailing noise of Zack's relentless and endless lamentation. As a direct result of this very fertile, textual/visual/musical and mindfucking correspondence, the Monty Cantsin open-pop-star concept was born. Zack's visit suggested me that he came to Budapest to involve me in a new life mission I was chosen for. By who? I didn't know yet, but I suspected that there were some unknown forces taking care of it. This sounds very misterious, I know, but that's how I felt that time. I lived on the edge of life, gazing at the cloudy sky and dark waters, daydreaming of utopian revolutions, waiting for the miracle to come. Zack was the messenger-prophet who implanted in me the idea that there was something somewhere waiting for me. Seized by a yet invisible ghost of Neoism I run away almost immediately, leaving everything behind. Yeah, Vittore, there is a long story here to tell, but perhaps another time. You know most of it anyway as you were/are also part of the whole thing that is known under many different names and terms, from underground culture to mail-art to neoism via eternal network, correspondence art, open-pop-star project, apartment festivals, bullshit, electronic communication, etc. David disappeared in the mid 90s somewhere in Texas. But as an immortal super- electronic n-tity he is around, feeding us with his relentless and confusing inputs of unending correspondence novels. Ciao amigo Kantor/Cantsin Ps. Though the Zack exhibition/book project I've been planning for many years is still stagnating at the initial stage, the archive material is growing, and I hope that your publication will be a new impulse for its further development. Anyone interested please contact me [Istvan Kantor]. (written in Toronto, 2002) Text: © Istvan Kantor. All rights reserved.
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