> contents / Mail Art & Network: ten years after the first Decentralized World Wide Networker Congress 1992 / Clemente Padin /

In homage to Lon Spigelmann died in December, 2002

The USA are dominating the world like had never occurred in another moment of the universal history. They possess an absolute domain in the five spheres of the power: politic, economy, militar, technology and culture. To cultural level this domain expressed in the imposition of the own courages of the empire arriving to all the corners of the planet via media of massive communication, including internet. Peoples and countries comes back dragged by the dynamic of the globalization. The second revolution is been about capitalist. The economical mundialization arrives to all leaving democracies, sovereignties and borders of side, imposing the philosophy of the "mayor possible lucre." This brutal concentration of the financial capital and power have grown thanks to the extraordinary development from the technologies of the communication.

It has been said that, precisely, that has been the objective of the art mail: "The Eternal Network" of Robert Filliou, the utopic project, perhaps impossible of reaching, of the permanent communication of all through all the available mediums, the eternal development of the communication without limits. Tragic paradox, without a doubt, because has been thanks to that expansion of the communications that the capitalism has succeeded in imposing its economic structure and its "culture of the lucre" in almost everybody. It has been the globalization of their forms of life overturned to the rich being to any cost, the globalization of the absolute madness, the live outside of ourselves for the Mollock of our days: money. Of course that the Network of Filliou pretends the globalization of the human rights, today suspended in almost everybody, in altars of the achievement of a life in peace without the daily drama of living like animals behind a piece of bread in an environment beggared by the savage exploitation of the natural resources.

It is not rare, then, that the cultural activity, in so much, productive activity of the men, is going to remain to the margin of these structural budgets. The gigantic conglomerate of cultural industry are exploring its possible rental: the big groups editorial, the cartels of the disk, the mafias of the market of art, the producers and cinematographic companies, etc. Far of contributing to the diffusion and aggrandizement of the culture, these big concentrations of the cultural industry, converts it in superficiality (light) because, now, the aesthetic or comunicational value is not kept in mind but its cost in the market of art in accordance with the ideological necessities of the system. Cost, logically, manipulated according to the lucrative interests of the company of edition of books, disks, movies, paintings, CD Roms, etc.

The globalization and its associate phenomenons don't follow the conquest of the countries so much, how much the control of the markets. Neither its implicates the conquest of territories but the possession of their wealth. It to cultural level means the substitution of the local culture for the imperial. Uses and customs, gears, language, money, sports, history: the application of the great "raser" that erases the differences between the human groups, destroying the diversity and the differences. Paradoxically this is another of the big objectives of the mail art: the achievement of an only language that makes us siblings through the ethnic or economical differences. The empire and its globalization promotes fraternity through the consumption of their products. Like it is read in a warning of publicity: "We are brothers and sisters in PEPSI." The globalization not only finishes with the differences and the diversity but, also, with the own humanity. In so much the production of worldwide foods has ascended, by virtue of the big technologic advances at 110% of the worldwide necessities, approximately some 30 millons of people follows deading of hunger annually in so much another 800 millons lives in the infraconsume.

When the democracy and the liberty surges again in a world that has eliminated the worst authoritarian regimens, the censorships and the manipulations are born the ghosts of the past, above all, the control of the societies through the media: the falling a slep of the consciences, the move away them of the "dangers" of the social action, the tolerate the penury in reason of the reason "divine" or" supernatural," the "laissez faire", the cultivation of the personal garden (Voltaire), the concerns centered in the "myself" and its aggradizing (in damage of the rest, of course...), etc.

Focusing the analysis toward "Our America" like Marti said, it is appreciated the deterioration of State-Nation because the second revolution capitalist, the mundialization of the economy and the technologic changes that are transforming the geopolitic environment. This USA´s politics demand a very strong affluence of dollars toward its internal market and that money arises from the interests of the external debt (eternal and impossible of paying) that the Latin American countries have always paid. To first seen the conflict between the military cost of the adventures imperials and its falling added economy the peak of the movements of national liberation in some countries and the collapse of the economies they probably will make very insecure that fundamental contribution to the Treasure of USA (be seen the ceasing of compulsive payments of the Argentina). That flaw in the affluence of dolars to USA could be decisive in the ended of the politics imperial.

It does not fit doubt that Latin America is weakker link of the Empire. For it, we needed, today more than never, of an oiled "informational system", at least to artistic, competent and effective level, that diffuses our recoveries (like it already occurred when the period of dictatorships). Hardly if some institutions, still fragile, like the Worldwide Social Forum, some insurrectionaries movements, any progresist government and some "no-gubernative social organizations" could offer us any point of support in order to diffuse our ideals. The Network is the way. The nascent Zapatista Army of National Liberation of Chiapas, already made use of in order to change the tenor of the public worldwide opinion and brake, so, the brutal repression of the Mexican authorities when, towards the end of the century XX, went out to diffuse their proclaim and to denounce the brutality of the regimen, to the one which was added an exposition of mail art organized in Uruguay and diffused to worldwide level, thanks to the narrow knots of network.

In relation to network we have come appreciating how, little by little, the iron law of the capitalism comes making molars with the tacit essential rule of the mail art, the rule that maintained it in the area of the "value of use" (that is to say, outside of the area of the "value of change"). The rule that will immortalize to whom gave it verbal expression, the recently dead Lon Spielgelmann: "Mail art and the money doesn't mix". So, mail art was constituted in an alternating cultural and artistic construction that aimed the heart of the system capitalist upon obstructing the one which maintains it united: money. And, consequently, refused market (and consumism), upon criticizing its genuineness. In the last years we have attended the progressive mercantilization of some genders of mail art, above all, "artistamps" (stamps of false mail) and "rubberstamps" (rubber creative stamps). The files of the mailartists dead continues flowing to the big collections. Monthly we received the lists of prices of "artistamps" and the tendency to offer prizes for participation increases. Also, the expositions curated by Galleries and Museums continue in boost. However, the insurrectionist strength of mail art is so big that, still, this increments of the mail art bussiness doesn't affect its diffusion and growth. On the other hand the mayor novelty of the current "Net Art" (or art in the net electronics) resides in interativity, that mail art comes cultivating more for than 40 years.

Many before that the Frenchman Doctor in Sociology, Pierre Bourdieu, proposes in 1992, the creation of a "international of intellectuals" in order to confront the fateful aftermath of globalization with the union of all the intellectuals and artists of the world in order to fight against the offensive of transnationals of the culture already, the networking or the net of artists of communication to distance or art mail, had lifted the bases of a true art of communication, in where they remained the mercantile considerations of side and that, nowadays, fructifies through internet in the artistic interaction that they have developed to the maximum the arts electronics, above all. While the globalization that promoted the economical prevalent system attempts to carry to all peoples of world to the systematic consumption of its products, the "globalization" that mail art impeles pretends the establishment of links of communication with all pretending the unit of all the peoples in a genuine and worthy dialogue.

Clemente Padin, February 2003, Montevideo, Uruguay, special for P. W. Kaufmann.

 Copyright © by Clemente Padin - 7w1k4nc9@adinet.com.uy