[2] Mark Bloch was born to American parents in Würzburg, West Germany, in 1956 where his father was based as soldier of the US Army.
Exposure in his youth to Robert Wyatt, the Fugs, and Yoko Ono and the unexpected discovery of Frank Zappa's album Freak Out!
"[15] After moving to New York City in 1982, he met many of the Sixties generation of avant garde artists whom he had long been studying in written form, artistic heirs to the legacy of Marcel Duchamp such as Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles, Jackson MacLow, Al Hansen, Nam June Paik and others.
[17] In 2012, after studying Digital Marketing, Bloch received a Master of Science degree from the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York.
Through the 1990s and into the new millennium, he worked at various publications including Rolling Stone and CosmoGirl and participated in early cyberspace efforts for The New York Times, and ABCNews.
Fricker and Bloch's bi-lingual "Phantastische Gebete Revisited," with its title referring to a famous dada tome[32] translated as "Fantastic Prayers," stated, "1) An important function of the exhibitions and other group projects in the network is: to open channels to other human beings.
3) Create person-to-person correspondence... 4) You have your own unique energy which you can give to others through your work: visual audio, verbal, etc.
[35] Bloch's work both parodied and penetrated avant garde circles with his writings on Neoism, Stewart Home and the Festival of Plagiarism in Issue 28 of his zine Panmag, subtitled "The Last Word"[36] in which he proposed a Word Strike which put forth the oft-repeated motto of that period, "Don’t say art unless you mean money.
As the editor of Panmag, he has combined both digital and traditional media in his periodical… He presents an interesting case for the… periodical to be considered as performance art," said scholars Marie Boivent and Stephen Perkins, citing "his expansion of the traditionally static nature of the periodical into a new role as an active physical agent.
[42] In 1989, Bloch began his experimental foray into the digital space when he founded Panscan, part of the Echo NYC text-based teleconferencing system, the first online art discussion group in New York City.
Bloch's one man show "Secrets of the Ancient 20th Century Gamers" was presented at Emily Harvey Foundation in NYC March 18 through April 2, 2010[53] and received favorable reviews.
[60] Bloch edited the film and created the soundtrack that featured "Sink Sound (for Jean Brown)," a "music of contingency" contributed by composer by John Cage.
[61] Bloch exhibited several issues of his Panmag zine and some artistbook works at Paris Koh Gallery in Fort Lee, NJ in 2024.
Critic Robert C. Morgan called it "fascinating work that rethinks how communication is done in the digital era" and cited the ability of Bloch's "The Museum of Good Ideas III (2014)" to "transcend its material constraints.
"[62][63] Bloch curated an exhibition called “Panmodern!” at the Bobst Library of New York University featuring papers and archives of his Postal Art Network (P.A.N.)