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Mail-Art is a recent evolution in the arts. The phenomenon probably started together with the post-system as it is today ...

History
The start of the current movement is situated in the sixties and comes from Fluxus, Le Nouveau Réalisme, Gutai and Ray Johnson's New York Correspondance School. Ray Johnson tear up apart his collages in several pieces and posted them, with the message to do something creative with it and to send them back. The very first network was created. He made a list with all the so called "contributors" to the Mail-Art network and introduced several artists from America, Europe, ... The phenomenon became also known thanks to 2 articles in Rolling Stone by Thomas Albright, in 1972.

The grow of Mail-Art is also influenced by the general state of society in the 60's and 70's. It were the days where social, cultural, economic and religious values changed drastically and a larger co-operation with democratic values was demanded. Mail-Art was an excellent way of communication to reach this goal. In the 80's lots of youngsters found their way to Mail-Art, thanks to the punk movement. Home-taping and small self released publications were an important part in this sub-culture, these objects were spread by mail off course.

Mail-Art is a movement which stands for the democratization of the arts for artists and non-artists. It wants to exchange art, ideas and information directly without using the channels of the art market. The art world is ruled by a few directors of museums and art galleries who dominate the market. As a reaction on this, Mail-Art has grown out to a worldwide "network" of people who correspond with each other on a creative way, mainly by the classic postal system, but today also modern techniques are used such as fax and computers. Only the classical postal system remains the main factor of Mail-Art for its multi-dimensional function. Freedom is an important contents, there is freedom to come and go in the network and there is freedom to manifestate themselves in the way the person chooses. The correspondence and the exchange of ideas is the most important. This is in contrast with the official art world where there is a concurrence between artists. Maybe therefore that well known artists participated with Mail-Art; such as Yoko Ono, Christo and many others.

Unwritten rules
From the beginning Mail-Art participated in the rituals of the post. Artistamps and rubberstamps are constant used objects in the Mail-Art. Also people try to use several media of correspondence techniques creatively: post, fax, telephone, e-mail, ... as long as there is the possibility to send the artwork. For the organization of Mail-Art expositions some unwritten rules are used which are accepted within the Mail-Art community.
1. Everybody can and may organize a Mail-Art exposition;
2. A theme for an exposition is chosen and the news is spread around in flyers and Mail-Art publications;
3. Every contribution to the project will be exposed, there are no rejections;
4. No fee is asked for contribution, every Mail-Art exposition is free and open to all;
5. All who contributed to the project receives a catalogue or documentation in return with a list of all contributions.
It is impossible to speak about a definable Mail-Art network, because each postal artist has his/her own small network. Which is build up through correspondence with postal artists who shares his/her interests in subjects and media of artworks. The conglomeration of all these networks which all are connected with each other can be called the Mail-Art Network. In this way each Mail-Art archive that a mail-artist gets through correspondence is unique according to other Mail-Art archives. In the whole world there are a few Mail-Art archives which are remarkable ...

TODAY
Today at the beginning of a new millennium, Mail-Art is called more and more 'the Network'. The reason is that artists today are active in several media as there are: Mail-Art, small-press, home-taping, e-mail-art, ... The borders, if they ever have been there, become vague, the communication extends to other sorts of independent networks with individuals not bound with Mail-Art. Mostly these networks has grown out of the Mail-Art network, such as the home-taping network, or were inspired by it. Mail-Art will always exist. The growing commercializing of media, economy and arts will force people into independent networks to search for some counterculture. Mail-Art is an un-commercial network that can fulfill this need for lots of people.

Copyright by Sztuka Fabryka