> contents / What is Mail Art? / Henning Mittendorf /

This question deals with art theory. I think that the artistic conduct as all other human doing has to be looked at and reviewed from the same aspect, namely from the the new paradigmshift. Therefore my answer comprises the following three aspects:

1. The New Paradigm shift (In the following the male notions man, artist etc. always mean the corresponding female notions, like woman, female artist etc. too) The actual world reality, so absolute truth, is not perceptible for man, as he is unable to leave his neuronal system. But he makes world reality "viable" for himself through constructing world's models by the means of his cognitions, i.e. his soul's experiences, like feeling, intuition, imagination and thinking, and the means of his participation, i.e. the reciprocal learning coordination of his cognitions, especially with his fellow-men through linguistic communications and other non-linguistic interactions, inclusive the various media offers.

Today's created world view shows reality as a complex self-similar system in principle self-organizing by the double-strategy of freedom as variety and riches in order as unity and balance. Through steady mixing, integrating and synthesizing new phenomena are created and the viable is selected. But since world reality developed into the human technical world order it doesn't stabilize itself anymore as man criminally neglects to coordinate his interferences in nature with its whole.

2. The Task Of Man, Especially Also Of The Artist All men are individual and at the same time social beings. The artist is able - and this distinguishes him from his other fellow-men - to express himself through his conduct even then, when already the participation's media, above all the language, fails them. Today highest final aim of human, inclusive artistic, conduct is to contribute responsibly to the stabilization of the world order. The enlightenment of human rationality about itself is as the so-called cognitive change the actual humane for it makes possible the vision of a more peaceful, peaceful, world order of the magic trinity of the Eternal Network (Robert Filliou), the Eternal Discourse (Richard Rorty) and of the Eternal Peace (Immanuel Kant), wherein the holistic imperative of coexistence overlays the egoistic one of dominance. Peace is presupposition for every progress in the living together, as man only in peace times is able to decide what freedom is just and what is injust. Today's art is participation's art: not a window onto the world, but a door to the world. And concepts of art are concepts of life. With that the so far way leading from art to the ethics turns round: art primary is a social (-artistic) problem and only secondary an (individual-) artistic one. The artistic expression as process and product, inclusively the artistic participation's media, always unites two, respectively four complementary qualities, namely the individual, social and intellectual quality and their aesthetical aspect. The individual quality is the aspect expressing the personal respectively individual freedom of the artist as man. The social quality is the aspect meaning the bond of community: the love, the empathy, the responsibility, the justice and the lawfulness, of the individual or personal freedom respectively. The intellectual quality means the aspect addressing to the responsibility of the artist to create as far as possible consciously, i.e enlightened according to the above mentioned cognitive change. It is true that thinking within the mental coherence is only one soul's function among others, but it is the most important one. For only it as quality is able to separate the subject from the object, to distinguish the experience, the conduct and the assessment, i.e. the conscious perception of the shape by its conscious creation, however always using mechanisms of the subconscious too. Today's thinking in the light of the new paradigm shift about the task of art finally leads - as already mentioned above - to the new function of art: That is the free communicative participation of all men in the increase of culture combined with the aim, at the same time to enrich and to stabilize the action community of nature and man as democratic human technical world order transforming it into a self-organizing world order - again. The aesthetical quality of the artistic conduct ist the aspect that makes the - hopefully more enlightened - work of the artist an work of art serving the above mentioned three qualities altogether. It is the highly effective self-organizing process of the mastering of ambiguity, of the overcoming of vagueness, by autonomous contextual automatic creation of order, gestalt, through subconscious mechanisms of reality construction, in particular through the man's structure of perceiving and its general, cultural and individual patterns of order. The aesthetic quality subconsciously forces, to move out of oneself and to get involved in the stimulus of the artistic media offers as unplanned, freely, spontaneously emerging active expression of the magic of the vague, of the subconscious, of the actual reality, and to accept and experience them. It makes possible the enlightened use of art strategies and art works for the borders transgressing viable regulation of social relations.

3. Mail Art As reality models, world views, are always constructed in respect to the fullness and complexity of the world-wide phenomena pragmatic-participative, learning-cooperatively, namely self-organizing, therefore modern avant-garde artists are striving to realize an artistic life's concept with that - using technical networks being theoretically accessible for everybody, especially that of the postal system and of the internet, - is kept up with artistic means a lasting global open discourse among trustworthy concerned creative people as equals thus creating a community of special kind: the network of the so-called mail art, its participants, the mail artists, and its artistic media. Within this network especially also within its common creations, are brought together and balanced out brotherly and sisterly opposing views, interests, world views, through growing power of judgment gained by interconnected perspectives' change forming a global viable, i.e. as far as possible non-violent, peaceful, reality's construction, always anew. Every creative man is admitted with each and every idea and medium to the self similar self-organizing system of the mail art. One-sidedness culminating in restricted admission and commercialization is tabooed. The texture of the many relations among the mail artists as the "more" of the system is the everywhere located "center" of mail art and characterizes each time's prevailing quality. At its best a cosmopolitan neighborhood and (partial) human peace order comes into being that leads to a reciprocal increase of the mail art network's efficiency's state with that through an enrichment of culture to a stabilization of nature, yes of world-reality as a whole, finally. Within the network of mail art a "super socialized group" is developing wherein one will find the shape of "superman kind", if one wants to determine it in advance academicly, and not within a "super brain" as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin says. (See my various detailed relevant texts.)

Copyright © by Henning Mittendorf - HeMiSpheres@t-online.de