> contents / When is a Documentation a Documentation? / K. Frank Jensen /

In Kairan, issue 2, the editor challenges the readers with a question „Why not..... talk instead (“instead” meaning instead of the missing documentations) about the outstanding documentations we have found in the mailboxes“? Yes, why not?

What is an outstanding documentation then? To me, a mail art documentation has several purposes. It is the receipt and acknowledgement the project-initiator give for the contributions. It is kind of repay for the many hours, the contributors have spent on contributing to the project. Furthermore, the documentation is a mean for the contributors - who only rarely can attend a local exhibition in a foreign country, if one such is arranged - to know, what the project is all about and to see, at least to some degree, in what ways other contributors have considered and worked on the theme.

Thus, to make a decent and worthy documentation is a great part of running a project, a part which, admittedly, is demanding and time consuming. The conscious project initiator should, however, ideally consider it being a challenge to make a proper documentation. The work in itself should be considered a pleasure and reward to the mail artist in charge of the project. It gives him or her a chance to present, not only the project, but also qualities and abilities of him- or herself. By neglecting to make a proper documentation, the project initiator does not only miss the great challenge and satisfaction it is to work on it, but it proves - at least to me - that this mail artist is more interested in gaining than in giving, which otherwise should be an essential part of the entire mail art concept. Shouldn’t it?

A proper documentation should offer the recipients (the contributors) any relevant details about the project: its purpose, the initiator’s own feelings and ideas about it. Names and addresses of all contributors are essential, as a means to contact similarly disposed artists and extent one’s contacts, if wanted. The idea of the network, isn’t it? To consider which artists are like-minded and worth to contact can, of course, not be decided from a plain list of names, we need to see a reasonable number of the contributed works. Doesn’t this make sense?

Thus a plain list of names is not a proper documentation. It doesn’t tell anything about the project, the outcome of it, how the participants reacted to the challenge the subject gave them.

A proper documentation can be a problem if the mail artist goes for quantity rather than quality. With many contributors, not to speak of 100-200 or even more, financial support will for many be needed to make a decent documentation of most projects. Alone the costs of postage! But is that what we want, a large number of contributions? I see here a big demarcation line between two groups of mail artists. A line, that is unlikely to be transgressed. On the one side, the many, who consider quantity being a measure of importance, and on the other side those, who consider quality important. I’m on the quality side; others are on the quantity side, because they have other objectives with their mail art, than I have. To them. also, the subject matter of a project is inferior; that’s not what it’s all about....

Fundamentally, there is no reason to discuss this, but what I do not like is, that some quantity people insist to have the right to define what mail art is, and consider themselves being the only true mail artists. They are not, they are just on the other side of that line. For my part the limit for issuing a proper documentation was reached, when I received more then 60-70 contributions to my yearly „Mail Artists’ Tarot“ projects. To make a documentation I myself found satisfying, was no longer the pleasure it used to be, and it became much too costly. Besides, at that limit all the junk started coming in: contributions, which had nothing to do with the subject, pieces cut from pornographic magazines, another „postcard“ taken from a bunch of standard „contributions“ mailed to just every project, with the obvious purpose of bringing „the artist“ on as many lists as possible. After that, I felt a need to turn to „invitational“ projects. Dirty word, „invitational“ to the people on the other side of the line, I’m afraid. „Not Mail Art!“, they will say.

*** I have come now to mention a couple of those good documentations, which the KAIRAN editor asked for, and which to me are good documentations of the respective mail art projects. I have carefully omitted any project sponsored by tourist offices, postal museums and like bodies, with a publication budget behind them. The following documentations are all entirely privately produced, made with care and love by mail artists, who consider a proper documentation to be an important part of their projects.

First on my list is the documentation of the project „RUST“ (1996), initiated and documented by German mail artists, Anne Nomrowski and Dietmar Vollmer. The 115 pages documentation is the most elaborate documentation in my entire archive of mail art. It was produced in a limited number of 80 copies for the 69 contributors, who „...in collages and graphic poetry describe their relation to rust“, as the initiators state. The book is bound in heavy corrugated cardboard, which functions excellently with the subject. All project entries are rendered, and a lot of them are illustrated by pasted-in color photographs. Other photos are enclosed separately. Some of the contributed rusty objects are included in the documentation, another mail art axiom, „circulate“ being followed. The entries are edited in a sort of thematic order; headlines are added and interspersed texts and quotes add to make the many different contributions a congruent whole. It is obvious, that the two artists really enjoyed to work on this documentation and they gave back as much more and even more, than what they received.

These two artists are, however, not mail artists in the eyes of all mail artists. Why not? Because they offered the exceeding number of 11 copies of this excellent documentation for sale. An elitist attitude and a disaster to the „real and genuine“ Eternal Mail Art Network! Rather is a sloppy list of names genuine mail art. Isn’t it?

The next to be mentioned is the „Mona Lisa Project“ (1996-97). staged by Leo du Fichi (USA), better known, perhaps, as „Smallville Funny Farm“. Leo did, patiently, print more than 100 received images, many in color, from just as many contributors, using a slow jet ink printer, making up this comprehensive documentation sent to all contributors of his project. No plain list of names here and a lot of effort given to make the documentation.

The third documentation to be mentioned arrived short ago, and it is by no other than the editor and publisher of KAIRAN, Gianni Simone. It is a documentation of his project „Key 164“ and it is subtitled „CHANCE series no. 01“, indicating that more of the same kind can be expected. Gianni explains exemplary, what the idea behind the project is, and how it came into being. With the invitation was included a color picture of a plastic key, with a big plastic gadget attached (to prevent it from being stolen). The project’s concept was to give a description in words and/or images of what the key was for. 21 contributors did so, and the contributions are all rendered in the 40 pages documentation, interspersed with series of photographs by Duane Michaels, whose photo exhibition inspired Gianni to the entire project. Would a list of the names of the 21 contributors to this project have been a documentation? No, it would not. It would have been a list of contributors, of no use to anyone, except those, whose main interest in mail art is to get on as many lists as possible. The people on the quantity side of the line.

These three examples of good documentations are only a few out of many. Luckily, there are many more, let me just mention Japanese Keichii Nakamura’s many documentations, the steady flow of docus from German Michael Fox, excellent docu from Dutch Anne-Miek Bibbe, Michael Herms and Magda Lagerwerf, USA mail- and landscape artist Marilyn Dammann’s documentation of, for example, her „Shadow-project. German Barbara Hilmer-Schröer and Ralf Schröer’s documentation of their „Geschichten von Sternen und vom Mond“-project, Belgian mail artist Guido Vermeulen’s „Signs and Stones“ and „Notebook projects“, British/Australian David Dellafiora’s documentation of several Field Study projects. The list is long, luckily there are still many mail artists, who value the work it is to create a proper documentation of their projects and who take to the effort of doing it.

K. Frank Jensen (article for KAIRAN no. 4, 2002)

Copyright © K. Frank Jensen - kfj@mail.tele.dk