Mental Contagion

Artist, writer, and designer Karen Kopacz was founder and director of Mental Contagion. For eight years Karen, along with a dedicated team of contributors, collaborated monthly with writers across the U.S. to publish the arts & lit online magazine Mental Contagion featuring a national and global community of arts and culture creators.

At the dawn of the Internet, the magazine featured artists living in many countries around the world including, the U.S., Japan, Taiwan, Iran, Budapest, Russia, Peru, Australia, Italy, England, France, Ireland, and Scotland. For this unique curation of Mental Contagion, Karen was invited to be a panel member of Fostering New Culture on the Internet at the SXSW 2005 Interactive Festival.

Within the 86 issues launched, notable features and interviews include: writers Andrei Codrescu, and Heather Mcelhatton, cinematographer Tim Cragg, light sculpture artist Grimanesa Amoros, mass culture photographer Chris Jordan, artist Andrea Carlson, explosion photographer Sarah Pickering, Rennie Sparks from the Handsome Family, Frank Warren, creator of PostSecret, and, of course, Craig of Craigslist.

MC was the platform that laid the foundation for Eric Hoffman’s biography on poet George Oppen. Emily Johnson of Catalyst Dance was a guest writer. It became a platform for writing about consciousness, punk rock, and spirituality for David Kopacz, which became a focus in his writing career. And, it was the predecessor publication to Karen Kopacz’s art print and writing series.

The publication could not have sustained as long as it did without the dedicated help of the following team members: Gene Dillon who wrote the column Tin Can, produced the interview series The Shovel, and later became a contributing editor and producer; Wendy Lewis who wrote the column Rus and produced Pure Hash column for contributing writers; and Dean Pajevic who wrote the column Mags and produced the Cause & Effect column on art and environment; Sam Edsill who wrote and interviewed artists for the column Cause & Effect and became the Special Projects Editor at the Gazette, Cedar Rapids; Katie Bratsch who led as editor for 2 years, and so many more.

(Archiving a small selection of featured artists and contributors has been a project unto itself. MC contributors, if I missed someone, please reach out.)

Arts and literature Internet journal Mental Contagion published monthly or bimonthly between 2000 and 2008. The journal published 86 issues featuring literary works, essays, and interviews that featured emerging and established artists and writers to an international community.

Mental Contagion was always free to the public. Its in that same spirit that we decided to offer access to the complete archives of Mental Contagion’s primary columnists, packaged for print or screen-reading. These free PDF mini-books are housed here for all to enjoy.