Sehr geehrter Herr Malutzki,
Compared to the spam emails we get today, the junk mail I regularly found in my mailbox in the 1980s was actually fairly harmless. But it annoyed me at the time, and I could not understand why I, who had never ordered anything from Quelle, should receive “personal” letters from the mail-order house, for instance beginning,
“Dear Mr. Malutzki, when I looked at my customer files recently, I was pleased to see that you will be celebrating your birthday in a few days. I want to wish you a very happy birthday!” At some point, the involuntary humor in these letters must have impressed me, though, and I started to save them. I published the ten “best” letters, uncut, as FlugBlattBuch No. 6, printed in a continuous typographical block (12-point Futura Medium) without indentations, interrupted only by ten “illustrations”: collages using image materials from the Quelle catalogue and printed with polymer plates. It was the first time I had used polymer plates. Until then, I had had zinc plates made for me, but it was getting harder and harder to find companies that could do it. So I started to make my own polymer plates, which increased my letterpress options. Unfortunately, one curious found object from the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, dated 11/4/1989, only reached me after the edition was completed. It found its way into the booklet anyway, as an addendum on a loose sheet:
“Dear Ms. G., thank you very much for your message. Although we regret your decision, we naturally respect your wishes. Your customer account no. 1602-1388 will be deleted. We wish you all the best for the future”. (From Quelle customer support, in response to a message informing them that Ms. G. was deceased.) The story had a funny postscript later on, when the booklet was recorded in the catalogue of the MoMA library: the loose sheet was misunderstood in New York, and was recorded as “Errata slip inserted.”
24 pages, hand-set, letterpress printed,Text in German, printed booklet, 15.5 x 22.5 cm,
200 numbered and signed copies. Lahnstein 1989.