Originally intended as a subscription bimonthly, it was launched in the Lower East Side of Manhattan to create an avant-guard media focus on no wave, downtown music, performance art, experimental electronica, noise music, and audio art.
[1][2] Over the span of its activity, Tellus broadened its curatorial focus to include such diverse subjects as the contemporary music of China, Just Intonation, Fluxus, Tango, and Paul Bowles.
[3] Tellus publishers and executive editors – visual artist and noise music composer Joseph Nechvatal; former curator-director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and curator-director of The Jewish Museum, Claudia Gould; and new music composer and director of Harvestworks, Carol Parkinson – conceived of the compact cassette medium as a no wave Fluxus-inspired media art form in itself.
Nechvatal and Parkinson had met in the mid-1970s and performed in a performance art / minimal art dance trio with Cid Collins influenced by the post-Merce Cunningham postmodern dance/choreography of Deborah Hay (with whom they studied in 1977) and Carolee Schneemann (with whom they toured Europe in 1978).
In 1979, Nechvatal, Collins and Parkinson had organized the five night Public Arts International/Free Speech performance art festival in May at 75 Warren Street in Manhattan and Nechvatal and Parkinson continued to see each other in the art music milieu of the downtown minimal music scene, as they worked for the Dia Art Foundation as archivist (Nechvatal) and assistant (Parkinson) to La Monte Young.