|
|
||||
|
/ home / art / archive / event / encyclopaedia / shop / about us / contact / |
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
> encyclopaedia / |
|||
|
|
|||
|
> Commonpress / |
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|||
|
Commonpress is a zine from Pawel Petasz, based upon an international artistic co-operative practice of which each edition is edited, compiled and printed by a different Mail-artist. Petasz acted as co-ordinator and assigned an issue number to each participant who wished to publish under the banner of Commonpress. The theme of the issue was a free choice of the editor and other Mail-artists were welcome to send their artwork on the specific theme. The editor had no editorial control from Petasz, he/she only was responsible for including the contributions and was also the distributor of his/her own issue, in an amount of copies to the editors choice. Even the editor was able to choose free how many copies there will be made, she/he had to serve an obligatory list of persons who received a copy: participants, editors and archives suggested by editors, so about 200 copies was a minimum.
Petasz, who did get his inspiration for Commonpress from Ulises Carrion`s "Erratic Mail Service", has created many publications yet none so influential as Commonpress. Its history runs parallel with the development of Mail-Art as a global movement. For Petasz living in communist Poland there were limited possibilities, apart of censorship to realise publications. He thought there were also difficulties in the West to publish and distribute "marginal" arts, but at least less expensive. This made him realise that when once he mobilise artists to contribute to his zine, search some money for it and work it out, it would be difficult to continue the publication. Only splitting all these duties and after a painful effort to realise the first issue, he was able to start a constant publication of Mail-Art on a world-wide scale. After the first issue it was his intention that all contributors to the magazine would be also the editors of future editions. He expected some responsibility from participants to submit for any future issue, he supposed that as everybody can choose a time and if all conditions were set, such work and expense is acceptable for everybody. In practice this idea was soon overflow by participants who only were interested to be on the list. Petasz tried to solve this problem by stating that a participant to an edition must volunteer for a future issue and looked for artists who postponed their issue forever or who participated in several editions but never made one themselves. But in 1981 he struggled with the Polish martial law which gave him more problems to co-ordinate the original concept of common publishing.
From 1977 till 1981 Petasz was co-ordinator of the concept. On 13 December 1981 General Jaruzelski took over power, followed with a more tighten control on Polish citizens and system structures, censorship pressures were increased and Petasz was unable to communicate less freely then before. Gerald X. Jupitter-Larsen (Canada) volunteered to continue the project, he saw Commonpress not as a publication but told that it had become an expanding international performance. Jupitter-Larsen was not so good in co-ordinating the project and the project ended in 1992 with issue 100. Originally Petasz expected a sort of standardisation for each edition, using the title "Commonpress nr ..." with a subtitle only to connect with an other project. But soon it has occurred, that there is more potency in the project, as every particular editor wanted to do it in an own original way. Also he planned it as a monthly zine something which did not succeed. After Petasz published the first issue, many other issues were edited by various Mail-artists from the Netherlands, West- and East-Germany, U.S.A., Italy, Brasil, England, Belgium, Argentina, Switzerland, Hungary, Australia and Canada. A special issue was edited by Guy Bleus (Belgium) accompanied with an exhibition in 'het Stedelijk Museum het Torenke' of the city Tienen (Belgium). The catalogue of this exhibition was Commonpress number 56 (1984), dedicated to the philosophy and history of the zine, beside a microfiche with images of the covers it contained also an overview listing all issues. Commonpress number 56 is the most complete retrospective made about the concept and history of the zine during its existence. As after number 56 only seven new issues has been published in six years, while in the first seven years of the project almost every two month an issue was published or forty issues in total. Personal and social problems made that some artists were not possible to edit the promised and planned issues. Petasz observed and experienced sometimes confusing interventionism of editors into his contributing artwork, while he expected more responsibility from them being in turns an editor and an author. The very last issue, Commonpress number 100 is made by Birger Jesch (East-Germany) in 1990, with an exhibition catalogue for the Mail-Art projects "Your Favorite Pornography" from Jesch and "Animals" curated by Lutz Wohlrab (East-Germany). The concepts of Commonpress, Smile and other publications such as assembling magazines are similar to the philosophy of Mail-Art that communication is much more important then a single artwork, the collective process of creating art through communication is the artwork. Different from assembling publications, Commonpress extend the assembling theory, the individual production of one whole issue of a zine owned by the whole Network, is one single part of a collective project. Related Topics: Publications about Commonpress: References: Date last update: 12 December 2002
Commonpress number 33 edited by Russell Butler (U.S.A.)
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
