> contents / Henning Mittendorf - Germany / interview by Sztuka Fabryka (2000) /

1. How and when did you become involved in Mail-Art?

Since 1959 I dealt with fine arts and from 1970 on I participated in the "shows circus". In 1980 during a holiday's stay at the Atelier Artistique International de Séguret in France I met the German artist Aloys Ohlmann who introduced me to mail art. There has been a mixture of reasons, motives and emotions that caused me to get into its network. Above all I was very fascinated by the network's possibility to have artistic communication with other men as an then isolated creative person, artist. In the network my pseudonym is "HeMi", my virtual land is called "HeMiSpheres" and my archives are named "HeMiSpheres-Archives". (For details see Ruud Janssen's interview with me from 1995.)

2. Can you give us a short C.V. of your Mail-Art activities from the beginning till now?

As mentioned above I entered the mail art system in 1980. I am a member of also various mail artistic associations like among other since 1998 of the International Union of Mail Artists (IUOMA) and since 1999 of the International Mail Artists' Council of Virtual States (I.M.A.C.O.V.S.). My world-wide artistic linguistic and other kind of participation manifested itself beyond the regular correspondence with my partners still in 45 personal exhibitions in B, D, F, I, J, ROK and in the USA, in 10 own international mail art projects that have been shown repeatedly, in several texts being translated into a number of languages, namely into the Dutch, English, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese and the Romanian, in some own editions of artist's postcards, postage stamps ("artistamps") and artist's books, in some hundred cooperative exhibitions and in numerous participations as to further projects of other organizers, like mail art meetings ("artists' tourism"), others' editions as collective prints, collections of prints, cooperative books and cooperative periodicals, in the collecting of his works by public and private institutions and by private individuals, in mentions within print media and other ones, in several prizes and other distinctions and in my HeMiSpheres-Archives as reflection of my own world-wide artistic work, in particular my networking, showing own, others' and cooperative works as well as documents and documentations.

3. What are your specific activities within Mail-Art?

I am interested in the most different realities, subjects. I deal with individuals and with communities, with the living together and the mixture, with the various worlds of living in the different spheres and regions, with life-effecting and life-destroying qualities of relations, with peace and war, with symmetries and chaotic states in development, with the self-organizing reality in general and in particular. Asymmetry only becomes understandable before the background of symmetry. I deal with the individual-social construction of reality and with the contribution of the artist to it in particular by means of my media, especially my pictures, texts, inclusive poetica, and other expressions' means. I am interested in the - lasting - interconnected perspectives' change within the network of mail art, how indirect human relations can develop into the live-effective participative weave of relations and can cause above all also a growing identity of the mail artists. My artistic conduct, work, aims at the world-wide network oriented aspect of modern art, at the principles of mixing, balancing out and integrating of experimental art and the interconnected self-organizing perspectives' change in detail, for instance within a picture, on a bigger scale, for instance within an exhibition, and on a large scale, like within the artistic network, yes beyond that within the one of society. In so far my artistic creations are collages or show a collaging quality in a wider sense. The pictorial element has priority in my works; for I think that the circular vision, seeing through images, is man's original access to the world. My texts comprehend besides statements also such of theoretical kind, more seldom such of poetic nature.

I use for my pictorial working various traditional and experimental artistic engineering techniques. I bring into play techniques like drawing, painting, air brushing, monotyping and other. More and more the "quick, cheap and experimental" methods of creation like stamp print, copying, faxing and - recently - e-mailing overtake precedence over more traditional and expensive ones.

To cause irritation, shaking, fascination and construction I create ambiguous mixtures of "reality fragments" and "reality aspects" as self-similar correspondences, models, media offers, substitute pictures, of the world trying to show today's reality as I experience it: On the one hand they are nameless, speechless and meaningless, but on the other hand they are imaginative, fanciful, creative and in fact viable, existent, meaningful. Pictorial sight, vision, and abstract thinking, construction, do mix to something new that has to be explored. The use of drawing, of predominantly self-cut eraser stamps together with copy engineering technique above all have become a trade mark making prominent my works within the network of mail art.

4. In your work we find a lot of skeletons drawn in the specific Mexican graphic. Why is this?

Death belongs to life. And within my work one can find death just like life. Always skeletons appeared and appear within my pictorial work, especially drawn, painted, stamped or in another way printed, namely in individual works that altogether form a growing "dance of death ". I also have dedicated one of my mail art projects to the subject of death, namely the project "Who Eats Whom And Why?" from the year 1993. Your question, dear Geert, in the end aims at the contents of my work. In so far at first I have to make some general explanations, to be then able to deal with your special question for the skeletons in my creations.

4.1 The Situation Of Man: Life And Death While living I experience how men come into the world: blind for each other as well as damned to a lonely and forlorn definite failure and yet - deeply hurt - try to find a composure that enables them to survive: highest "clownery" accompanied by common crying and laughter, stammering and stuttering as well as silence. I experience, recognize and endure, that nothing is certain without death - for the individual, society, humanity, life, world and for the cosmos. I go speechless through man's deepest disappointment: senselessness full of fright and fear. But at the same time something within me, my survival instinct and my need "for higher sense and purpose, demands to question and to overwhelm this shock of my life's senselessness and to organize my life accordingly. By the fear all senses and all soul's experiences are challenged and vitalized. Within my depth's structure, my subconscious, starts an intensification and a change of the creation of the order's patterns, inclusive the shapes, gestalts, and aesthetic phenomena generated in their scope. I experience, have a premotion, feel and know, that it is my human task, to wrest as far as possible from the consciously recognized merciless organization of existence towards its end the other prepared and enabled to consolation structure of life and to create commonly with my fellow-men a kind of time that is not running inevitably to the end. Having to die and having to live form an in one another woven depth's structure of human life, a soul's ability, up to death steadily to evade its grab and to start something new. Nobody has to stay a prisoner of his "little I" and his past, but he can say: "I want to change and open to the other, together with it becoming intact participating in the moving whole. The continuation of the events depends on my decision too. I have to make up my mind."

I have the deep primeval experience of the human existence. I go through its paradox, its seemingly contradictory, senseless situation that, however, at a nearer analysis points to a truth: The death of the individual namely relativizes within the bigger scope. It has to accept its finiteness and to search for meaningful possibilities of existence, life, i.e. for such ones wherein the events are interconnected in a way that their organization provides an explanation for their connection.

Today's decisive sciences try to solve this problem by the already mentioned above model of the self-organizing system. Physics as basis of all actual science confirms the unity of the reality that man experiences as self-similarity, i.e. as correspondence of organization, of the validity of the same laws of nature, in all systems of the cosmos. It tries to explain, how the primeval "surplus" moves and structures itself with the help of its complementary double-strategy of chaos and symmetry creating the growing, evolving, life-effective totality of at the same time freedom as variety and riches and order as unity and balance. If one looks at the human life exclusively from the chaotic or from the symmetrical aspect, then every time it is senseless, namely destructive arbitrariness or lifeless stiffness. Only in the ideal dynamic interconnection of both aspects there is the chance of viable growing as part and as whole, inclusive the possible, meaningful, human life, living together. Self-organizing systems cannot be at a standstill, and they cannot endure eternally. Their coming into existence, growing, but their failure too are presupposition for the ongoing of evolution - up to its end. Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker says: "Only mortality and reproduction create the surplus of individuals and with it the struggle for life being the driving force behind evolution. Life continues to evolve, because every living being is on the verge of death. The individual is in this paradoxical situation: It kills, to live, and it lives, to die. It generates descendants that only can live, if it dies itself, and that are also determined to die themselves. If it and all its forerunners wouldn't have had in common the disposition, to want to live and to have to die, then it itself wouldn't have come into existence."

In the face of the expanding chaos' spiral of man-made catastrophes' productions the problem of the "failure being immanent in every partial system", for instance in the human individuals, becomes overlayed with the one of the "premature, averse to the system" failure, death, of the human technical world order, including big parts of the biosphere, man has to take responsibility for. Today in the scope of a meaningful individual and common life's organization one searches for concepts and strategies that convince man, to consent especially to the survival of the biosphere and with it of himself. To conduct according to sober if-then-descriptions is at stake, namely: to stabilize the human technical world order by a comprising culture of peace between men and between them and their fellow-creatures. The question of man's global civilization is at stake in near future. This sight understanding the earth within the course of time as loan of future generations to the actual one obliges man: It for every man's life ending in death makes the sense, to fulfill this task in common with the fellow-creatures, above all with the fellow-men.

4.2 My Depictions Of Death: Especially In The Form Of Skeletons I take part in the self-organizing reality's construction above all through the social discourse by and on artistic media offers using my potentials and my ways, namely by taking in unfamiliar impulses and passing on own ones. My impulses show themselves in own creations, i.e. in own works, projects and in own contribution to that of others, presented to the network of mail art and should the occasion arise in addition to the public. In the end the impulses for my artistic creations come out of myself, but the events of my milieu can provide the motivation, lately above all the network of mail art and the herein discussed subjects. I deal with a subject, including questions of the day, on the basis of the fascination and concern it causes to me and in the light of the new ecologic-ecumenical-economical function of art, i.e. in the scope of its orientation at peace. With it I try - as already mentioned above - to understand the "more" of self-organizing systems and to use this knowledge in my work. Before the background of today's human technical world order with its man-made catastrophes' productions my creations especially are about the - necessary - relationship of tensions between the freedom and sociability of man and its permanent democratic balancing out in the scope of equality and brotherhood in principle between all creatures, everywhere in the world and always anew. In so far I judge the existing relations' qualities, if they are orientated rather at the "human" principles, above all at freedom, justice and love, donating peace and life, or if they are following more the "inhumane" principles, especially the ones of striving for egoistic dominance, suppression, despotism and hatred, causing catastrophes up to death. I extremely love life being so volatile and hate death being so sure.

In the beginning is the mystery, the sudden appearance of the enigmatic death within the incomprehensible life, within my sphere of life, my profound fear about it and my attempt, to realize it and to make it receptive to myself, viable for myself, especially by artistic means. For this purpose I "borrow" the gestalt of leveling death from different times and cultures. The Mexican culture I don't know enough, but I like the colorfulness and cheerfulness of the skeletons. I also take the shapes from the representatives of the different wells, like from Albrecht Dürer, from Francisco de Goya, from José Guadalupe Posada, from Ludwig Richter, from A. Paul Weber and Otto Dix: merciless, cruel, bewitching, donating peace, sometime cheerful. From the beginning in my creations appear different skeletons developing their independent existence. Death dances through life, living beings causing death or being just like dead ones are dancing through my life and my pictures. Also if I try to express hope in connection with peace, justice, love and growing by images of nature, human life, birth, childhood, living together, skeletons can appear, for disorder and death are only understandable and meaningful before the background of order and life. With increasing age I develop a familiar relationship to the skeletons appearing within my pictures, i.e. to the unavoidable death laughing in the end. It is involved always: above all in the most intensive moments of physical and mental experience of life, even of highest desire and beauty, as longing, yes love, for repletion in eternal security - and this just means in death.

However I cannot make friends with man as greedy necrophilia person responsible for death, destroyer of life and accelerator of the human technical world order's failure. Skeletons appearing in this connection in my creations point to the alternative utopian vision of the natural-magic-creative interconnection of all orders, to the vision of hopeful peaceful holistic growing - up to death, the new myth. It contains for man a life in freedom to love accompanied by the basic feeling, holistic intuition, to be connected responsibly in a free and at the same time magical manner with all orders. And here my skeletons accuse the men in the words Horst Janssen has expressed so distinctively as follows: "For your longings there are the cheapest tickets. Good living you obtain yourself by brutality. Your stupidity comes from thousand stolen intelligences. You are low and the not worth the labors of your mothers. Your untruthfulness is total. Possible fears are unfounded. For you will win all legal proceedings - but not the last one."

4.3 Conclusion: Love, thinking and art, i.e. their deeper meanings, originate in the insight to have to die, in death. And its expression through skeletons for me above all is the request, to deal with death and thus with life. There always is at stake at the same time to live intensely and with it to conduct responsibly orientated to the whole - without any speculation of the next world - also in the arts. The helplessness of modern man not least depends on the suppressing the death's memory.

5. Why do you do Mail-Art?

(In the following man etc. means woman etc. too.) This is a very far-reaching question, namely in the end the one for the cause of the interactions between the phenomena of mail art and myself, why they fascinate me, a question that demands extensive considerations.

6. What happens with the Mail-Art you receive?

I treat the received mail art in different ways according to the category it belongs to, namely if it concerns

•  invitations for projects and similar,
• documentations about projects and similar I participated in or
• other mail. After the "handling, dealing on" the mail the question of archiving or recycling arises.

1. Handling

The incoming mail becomes an important part of my "living" HeMiSpheres-Archives, i.e. of the materials that I need and use for my actual networking, up to the moment it is worked off:

• Invitations for the participation in projects are sorted for supervision, i.e. for punctual decision and - should the occasion arise - dealing with, into the dates' file. Invitations for exhibition openings, for meetings and similar are hanged up apparently in the corridor of our flat. As far as invitations reach me by e-mail they are printed out for this handling. After the dispatch of a contribution it is recorded in the "list of contributions". Carried out invitations are filed away. 
• Documentations concerning projects, meetings and similar wherein I have participated are collected in a carton. From time to time they are recorded in corresponding lists and then filed away. 
• Other mail, inclusive such dealing with personal projects, above all own mail art exhibitions, is kept on my desk and worked off gradually. Carried out mail is filed away.

E-mails are not moved into the "senders' file" within the personal computer until they are answered. It is true that I wish to answer all received mail. But this, however, is impossible for me as to the quantity of the incoming mail. I have to select the mail art I will react to in respect to my limited possibilities, in particular with regard to time, to money and to my physical-mental energy. Basis is the force of attraction that a piece of mail art exercises on me, if it tempts me to participate, to interfere, because it provides me with additional air and life's intensity. Thus the intensification of relations becomes more and more important as basis for my conduct, i.e. the transition from the growth of quantities to the one of qualities - in accordance with the natural law: The higher, more complex, the function, the less the growth of quantity. If the mail waiting for reply is equal in rank, then firstly I deal with the one of good friends and mail art friends, secondly with the one where I have to pay attention to a deadline and then comes all the other mail. Sometimes I prefer to deal with such mail that I can handle in a "most simple way", like by inexpensive means or by using graphics that I have in my stock.

2. Archiving

After the handling of the mail it is filed away into my "dead" documents, papers, into my archives. Therein are all received materials concerning personal and foreign artistic activities that are "finished" in the meantime, but that nevertheless - according to my opinion - are today and will be in the future of importance for me respectively for the network or society and on that one can fall back every time. In my archives is included in besides pieces of received mail art also copies of sent one as well as other materials orientated at art. 
The archiving has to be suitable, i.e. it has to guarantee an appropriate sure safe-keeping of the materials for a reasonable, as low as possible, expenditure. It has to be inexpensive as well as saving space and time, because for it are only available the own limited resources. The safe-keeping of the mail art takes place in the most simple way as a rule by the use of standardized cartons of the postal system. They are supplied with a letter each time marking the category of mail art they are containing, with a consecutively running number and with the details about the years from that they are stemming (from … to…). In my archives are used as markings the following combinations of letters, namely 

• for personal mail art projects, as a rule exhibitions: D = all sorts of documents, 
• for my contributions to others' works and projects: MA = invitations, K = catalogues, MA-V = lists and posters, B = books, P = periodicals, for instance magazines, lists, news papers. The distinction, however, between catalogues, lists, books and periodicals sometimes is difficult, yes arbitrary. 
• for other mail:
  When I started in 1980 with mail art, I at first sorted the "other mail" according to senders and within them chronologically. Already soon I had to give up this system of filing due to insufficient time and space. Today this mail is filed away unsorted and densely packed using cartons supplied with the letter F, the consecutively running number and with the details about the years from that the mail is stemming. Only artist's stamps and photos are kept in separate files.
  Disadvantage of this form of archiving is that it doesn't allow an accurate picking out of mail art pieces. Always the taking out of and the following returning and restoring of mail art is - especially for strangers - very difficult and joined to big expenditure. 

The question of archiving electronically incoming informations has not arisen to me up to now, as I am in the internet only since the beginning of the year 2002. Cassettes, diskettes and CD-ROMs I keep too separately in cartons.

3. Recycling

And Collecting Only seldom I recycle received mail art. All in all I am a "born collector" preferring to keep the things he loves, but to part from them. From time to time I look at parts of my mail art collection. Then it becomes for me a mental meeting place with my network partners and with their ideas. This creates a little duration by memories as well as by historical sense and deepens the striving for a common horizon of the living together, namely in the daily communication process, in the active networking, supporting the choice of the special, rich, complex, qualitative, from the always flowing flood of novelties. My Archives are an accumulation of art, of creative ideas as well as techniques contributing to the expansion of mental experiences of the "seeing" onlooker, of his thinking and feeling, of the at the same time emotionalization and rationalization of knowledge, to a thinking and feeling seeing. Also the superfluous is passed on with it giving the differing voice a chance to be heard, i.e. the horizon of social accordance can become forced open. In my archives manifest my personal history and the history of mail art, of culture and of society. And a richer structure of the single and - as reciprocal effect - of society develop. They way of growing, evolution, is over vied, described, compressed, criticized, interpreted, through always new models of reality.
After my death my archives should stay together. An institution should take care of it that is close to mail art. Up to now I haven't tried hard to find it.

5. Why Do You Do Mail-Art?

(In the following man etc. means woman etc. too.) This is a very far-reaching question, namely in the end the one for the cause of the interactions between the phenomena of mail art and myself, why they fascinate me, a question that demands extensive considerations.

1 My Search

Since my early youth my affection belongs to art, i.e. to the artistic examination of world reality. Already early in my childhood I have a particular liking of hearing music, of visiting theatre performances and of dealing with fine arts, but above all of creating own pictures. As already mentioned, I have early contacts to my near artistic vicinity and later on to the network of mail art. With it my artistic doing always arises out of my feeling and thinking caused by my habitat in accordance with traditional thinking and its claims. Growing older less and less I fail using the traditional world model and its schemes of solving problems to explain the human catastrophes' productions I am seeing in the world and my - above all artistic - experiences. This causes within myself a growing tension sensitizing me for alternative starting points of thought. In the beginning of the 80ties of the last century nearly at the same time in this mental situation I lead to the radio programs and books "Nada Brahma - The World Is Sound" and "The Third Ear - About The Hearing Of The World" produced by the former German "pope of jazz" Joachim-Ernst Brandt, I visit the exhibition "Symmetry" in Darmstadt and I make the acquaintance of the network of mail art. In this way I meet the new paradigm shift for the first time, the new model change for many people beginning during the 60ties of the last century. According to the previous paradigm the world is a rational - free of contradictions - machine standing opposite to the all-powerful reason of man. The new paradigm replaces dual by holistic starting points for thought that are expressed by notions like network, self-organization, reality's construction, civil society, open global society's world and that are accompanied by the mystic holistic premonition, the new myth, to be interconnected in an enigmatic way with all orders and to be responsible for the whole. The new paradigm shift leads me as new thinking, feeling and intuition to the following new interconnected essential insights:
Reality doesn't exist in distance of the world, but it is its self-organization as perception of shape (gestalt) by creation of shape (gestalt): Primary the men determine according to their "own, self" their perception, experience, and their doing, their relations, above all also among themselves, with it the common wickerwork of relations and model of reality. Processes of perception and experience join through creative interactive, i.e. non-linguistic, as well as communicative, i.e. linguistic, processes of balancing out and of participation within the single man the feelings, the evaluations, the thoughts and the other soul's experiences forming possible individual multidimensional ideas of reality and within the living together of the individuals they treat these ideas in the same way creating viable common, i.e. social, models of reality. Secondary the latter ones react on the men and other "structures" of the system. Cognition and participation create reality! Every self-organization unites in a complementary manner chaos, symmetry and evolution creating the magical Holy Trinity, namely the creative double-strategy of freedom and order in change, i.e. of variety and richness in unity and balance. It is - looking back on it - optimal strategy of survival, as it strengthens as well as stabilizes the system's richness of relations and with it its possibilities as well as its states of performance being charged to the growth of quantities.
The new paradigm comes off of the one-sided egoistic rationality as well as of their certainties, inclusive objects, and turns to the enlightened pragmatic rationality, to its self-organizing relations, to its wicker works of relations as well as to their viabilities revealing their principle of life: non-violently self-organizing with it self-stabilizing processes of balancing out and of creation. The men recognize that they and they and the other nature need each other mutually for the functioning of the world, that it is not permitted themselves even in situations of conflict, to insist immovably egoistically on something that only is certain and useful for themselves, but that they have to balance out steadily on their inside and on their outside. And since the men have become due to their equipment with consciousness, language and with an extreme effective technology the most influential responsible determining factor as to the development of the world, this insight becomes the social imperative. It assigns to the men the common duty, task, to convert the world's "dis"order into the action's community of men and nature as dynamic social peace order and to stabilize it, namely as a more or less self-organizing world order. This model's change has the consequence that men reflect with sober if-then-descriptions on the social development above all also in the sense of new resources saving creation's chances, that they can conduct accordingly and that they have to do so. And they have to recognize that they - as long as they criminally don't coordinate their interferences into the world with the whole - are to blame for their conduct leading to war against each other as well as against the rest of nature and that the world degenerates into the human technical world disorder no longer stabilizing itself by its own, but dissolving self-accelerating and self-increasingly.
And they learn that the most effective influence on reality's construction happens at those points where one needs for this the least energy: within the own person of every man. And it becomes clearer and clearer that the necessary world peace just doesn't take place by the insight of the big political and economical powers, because their ruling one-sided structures of rationality and might don't allow the transition from conflict to necessary coexistence. Only common responsibly conduct from the grass roots, only democratic fanciful holistic conduct, helps. So far every way has to be gone. And here even little groups are important, because according to the theory of chaos within labile systems, like in the unstable world order, even little causes can have strong effects.
Within the western civilizations - not least because of expanded points of view and increased claims of the men - gradually the previous social model of the hierarchical system of rule, to care by reasonable aid "from top down to bottom" for the material prosperity and for the mental welfare of men is replaced by the alternative model of the pragmatic self-organization of the life's interests "from bottom up to top" within the open global society's world. Above all also new arising non-governmental "alternative networks" stand up for this. They have a tendency, to expand and to interconnect thus furthering democracy, peace and stability in the world. In respect to the steadily worsening facts human conduct has to change soon, namely as unity of recognition, knowledge, and acting. If the insight would become separated from acting, then it would lose its humanity. Only by this way man is able to fulfil his duty, to develop his cultural human nature, a challenge he will never cope with.
All these insights that are involved with the new paradigm shift touch me deeply so that they more and more spread to my feeling, thinking and doing. And when it becomes clear to me that today's time assigns within its light also to the arts the task to collaborate in the social peace order and that in the alternative network of mail art initialized by the US-American Ray Johnson there is available an instrument that is suited in optimal manner to fulfill this task, then I get on the network putting my whole - soul, heart and reason - into it.

2 Mail Art - My Found Treasure

At no time I have regretted this step. Yes mail art becomes my ideal of a dynamic global social peace order including myself, the beauty of that consists of showing own freedom and accept somebody else's one, my ideal that I have described already in 1985 within my essay "Mail-Art - My Dream Of Freedom And Love". It harmonizes in the light of the new paradigm shift artistic practice and theory, artistic life, with life in general. In detail I am fascinated in the fullness and the richness of the events of mail art, how they interconnect self-organizing from the wickerwork of their relations to the network of mail art and its consequences for the events, the participants, inclusive myself.

2.1 The Fullness And The Richness Of The Events

The fullness and the richness of the events appear to me above all in the mail artists, in their rules and in their creations, i.e. in their media offers. Exciting to me is, how the mail artists as p a r t i c i p a n t s of the network jump their borders. They feel the need - following as free and equal persons the social imperative - to interconnect feelingly, thinkingly creative-interactively with like-minded ones, to live and to create in common. They as fascinated, struck, touched persons, as concerned persons for concerned ones, can make all phenomena an object of their common work. They steadily expand commonly their points of view, because they are only able to take from their partners' media offers what they themselves can give, understand. They become for each other relevant persons the solidarity and friendship of whom are durable, because the participation with them reach the "existence's origin of reason" (Karl Jaspers). Their freedom shows itself as such of boundless creative possibilities by that they get close to the processes of perception and experience. Here they question also the institutions of the social communication processes, inclusive their technical networks as well as other media, and their rules. Fascinatedly I experience that the mail artists "perceive, experience includingly" therefore being quite different and as different persons whole, always anew.
Their unsophisticated r u l e s decisively take part in the quality of mail art guaranteeing in a creative manner that the open discourse, i.e. the self-organization, of the artistic network runs free from disturbances. In comparison with the processes of the traditional art sphere the ones of mail art are "freed" in two respects: Firstly there generally are no restrictions, for instance by a jury or by a charge, as to the participants and their media offers. All creative persons are asked, to interconnect artistic-creatively and to live together interconnected in this way. And to guarantee full understanding furthermore media offers of every kind in principle are allowed, i.e. all types of contents, materials, styles, techniques, "qualities", quantities etc. Secondly the processes of creation are withdrawn from the growing one-sided rational, above all economic, leveling, pressure subjecting them to the illusory taste's ideal of an economically privileged minority and undermining their radical popularization. The creation's processes of the mail artists instead of become the participating discourse out of dismay, shock. Always the mail artists are interested, to work out within mail art's community of consultation, argumentation and creation formed by enlightened reasonable persons not being restricted by any pressions interests being suited for generalization and being in accord with biosphere. These are interests that have an common organic inner root coming from being a creature as well as from the senses and that contribute to the overcoming of the increasing interruption of the interactions between sensuality, life as well as human society. Here the well-known "conflict between professionalism and dilettantism" repeats, in which only the latter creates a critic consciousness and hinders the "dissolving of the individual in the mass", as Marshall McLuhan says in his essay about the "anti-environment". If all human existence means living in - conditional - self-determination and if the first conscious act of freedom is the first human deed, then the network of mail art opens a wide field for human freedom. It shows me as to my artistic work a perspective that seizes me deeply.
The incoming works belong to the recipient. The organizer of a project is allowed to set conditions; he is obliged to supply every participant with a documentation; the single works become part of the whole.
During my mail art networking I become acquainted to an exciting fullness and variety of artistic languages and creations, of m e d i a o f f e r s , from that can be read by what the mail artists as contemporary witnesses are concerned. And I can interfere, if I want to do so. With the creations one questions, expresses opinions and makes statements, to put world-widely ideas up for discussion, confirmation or alteration, to participate in reality's construction. All conventional and alternative means as well as institutions are used, in particular also the global technical networks of the post and of the internet, to guarantee world-wide effective participation, above all linguistic communication. Artistic speaking always aims at the mechanisms of the perception and experience of reality. It is exciting for me, to experience my partners' individual unconscious and conscious handling of the inherent in every piece of art aesthetical mechanisms. Their nature consists of the speaking to experiences and strengthening them in an event-orientated automatically, subconscious, assessing manner. They don't turn the creations into concealed or dreamed of secret models, but they express within them as the well-known the unknown, the unexpected encounter with the incomprehensible real, exactly the event, on account of that possibly one gets a fright. Their individual aspect points to the fact that every artistic creation is subjective self-determined impulse on the basis of unconscious individual codes of order. The social aspect testifies that every artistic shape at the same time because of subconscious inherent general and acquired cultural codes of order is interconnected subconsciously with the community, is unconscious result of social reality construction. For me it is of special interest, to learn to what extent the mail artists consciously use the aesthetical phenomena, i.e. how far they seize their freedom as creative man to self-determined creation shaking points of view, proposing new models or expressing openness and speechlessness. Here all the other tasks of mail-art play a role that - besides the in all art inherent aesthetical function - are
assigned to it or it is divested of by the actual time. As individual-aesthetic-creative problem, as subjective expression, it evades general rules of evaluation, but as social context-oriented problem, as common demonstration, it is subject to the ethical norms. That means that the tension between ethics and aesthetics cannot become reconciled. Always one has to notice that the artistic in itself is not ethical. To be able to create artistic media offers full of quality the artist has to think. Today this means the challenge, to contribute by creation promoted by an enlightened thinking, i.e. by a shaping, gestalting, being enlightened about itself and aiming at peace and with it at the stabilization of the world order. The network of mail-art in this respect shows a big variety of conscious artistic creations as a counterbalance to the many existing unconscious aesthetical creations. They consciously use the aesthetic clous in an event-orientating assessing manner demonstrating how thinking expresses clearly and vividly by aesthetical means, how by artistic shapes is created consciously sensually sense, for instance by pictures. Here the media offers although are only to a certain extend the message, for always the observer takes, makes, his own picture by himself. At the end I am enchanted by the imaginative creativity of the mail art's media offers being above all at the same time unconscious and conscious, with it individual, i.e. unique, original and spontaneous, as well as social, i.e. comparable, conciliatory, and integrated causes as well as effects. They show different tendencies: away from unscrupulous resources consuming solutions towards resources sparing ones, like artist's stamps ("artistamps"), artist's rubberstamps, artist's postcards, inclusive the art on mass basis, away from the products, like material pictures, snail-mail, towards the processes, as to "virtual" media, like CD-ROMs and internet-exhibitions, to fax art, e-mail art as well as action art (keywords: happening, performance, intermedia, fluxus) and away from the isolated single work towards the common work, like the playful continuation of works with open end or the common development and carrying out of ideas, works and projects, each time uniting the contributions to the whole, for instance in the scope of common graphics, common books, common cassettes, common videos and common exhibitions. Here the fact finds expression that it isn't the single person, but the wickerwork of the relations that produces the works. It is true that the media offers are made, but not as expression of production and reception, but of participation; each time they themselves are in a certain way creative participating independent existence that is not final and cannot be planned, just at the same time cause and effect.

2.2 From The Relations' Wickerwork Of Artistic Events To The Network Of Mail Art

I like, to receive impulses from the artistic discourse, wickerwork, to input impulses into it, to experience into what they turn, to work together artistically with other creative persons in the network, yes, to live together with them, and thus to participate in the interconnected perspectives' change. For it allows me to have the following crucial experiences:
I experience fascinatedly, how out of the steady interconnection of the many single relations between the mail artists, inclusive their media offers and the used institutions, grows together within a continual peaceful discourse a wickerwork of relations comprehending them all: the network of mail art as an action's field of permanent artistic communication, understanding, so artistic participation in the world. Here it is important for me that the network doesn't come into existence by the mail artists following certain rational aims and orders, but rules of pragmatic viability. Its relations and events therefore organize pragmatically by themselves; above all they are self-determined, self-reflexive, spontaneous, emotional, open, multidimensional, irreversible, vulnerable. By a development's leap from quantity to quality out of many grows a whole that is more than the sum of its parts, i.e. its participants media offers, institutions and its single relations. And the "more" of the system is its holistic spirit that determines its "quality, quality of life", inclusive its consequences for other social spheres.
In the system, network, of mail art the different points of view of the mail artists expressed by various artistic media offers are brought together by the strategy of the interconnected perspectives' change. It casts a spell over me, whenever it comes into effect, for instance in the different common creations, projects. Here is valid: It is true that interconnection can become planned, but understanding and viability cannot become programmed. Always anew there come into existence - in a non-violent manner - higher states of performance, points of view, and common more comprehensive models of reality by dicoursive conglomeration, accumulation, as well as by deepening and expanding of points of view, by surrounding syntheses through becoming alike of consciousness, by processes of balancing out. Many rich creative ideas dealing with the manifold endeavors of men to portray reality are generated and connected to each other with suitable means, are integrated into comprehensive ones or selected. I correspond to the democratic effort of mail art, not to spread, to impose, opinions, but to activate self-determined experiences. As a rule the mail artists are more interested, to "give the conversation new turns", than to decide it without contradiction or to regulate it at all (Richard Rorty). Yes, often it is only important to talk to each other, to hear to each other and to share views, to know what to do finally. Within the bigger connection of society, yes within the open global society's world, besides the areas of life being far-reachingly well-ordered by conventions, inclusive the official art sphere, there develops in mail art an as to aesthetics and thoughts fascinating world-wide field dealing creatively in a holistic manner with that what hides itself behind the reality's models and the conventions, what proves as not or not yet usable through conventions, as vague, yes as irrational. It overtakes in the interest of the whole the task, to allow individual aesthetic creation, to enable man by combining the individual-mental with the social-institutional level, to grasp and to produce something new for life's sake.
As in reality there are no separate networks, therefore as to the network of mail art there exists besides the inner wickerwork of relations, the inner discourse, also the outer communication process comprehending actions directing at the public outside the network, the communication process with other social areas and institutions, like municipalities, museums, universities and firms. By it the mail artists allow to gain insights into their experiences and put themselves up for discussion outside the net.
The network shows itself to me to be a exemplary convincing field of a "higher, more complex, sociability" and its creations point to the so narrow ridge between the different social spheres, i.e. the common self-similar structures and functions of all human areas of life, yes all areas of life. This model finds its way to me, when the mail artists live together on a global scale in a peaceful artistic-creative manner and interfere self-determinedly as well as non-violently in all areas of life, namely there where they feel moved and obliged to do so with it in principle being reflected, asserting oneself and possibly being cause of fermentation in all phenomena. Mail art at its best can be a modern example of a supranational social human technical world order as peace order. By the world-wide cultural exchange of mail art is reached an internationalization that means an antithesis to the globalization in the form of neo-colonialism, of markets' expansion and media' economisation rather hindering the conversation between the cultures than furthering it.

2.3 Effects On The Participants And On Myself

Yes, the more I insolve, integrate, my artistic activities, myself, into the network of mail art over the years, the severer becomes my love for it, for it changes me, my heart and my head, in a mysterious way by managing in the light of the new thinking, feeling and intuition to harmonize my conduct with the world, always anew.
The world-wide artistic living together within the network of mail art vitalizes my potentials and channels my tensions into interactive-creative interpersonal relations opening up to me the gateway to the world. Within it I get access to the in magical manner growing common knowledge of world reality that I as a single person wouldn't have ever. Thus I get the chance, to exceed my little I, not to be attached to much to my egoistic certainties. The isolated, separated, ingenious foreman who - according to the previous paradigm of art - expresses in a screened off sphere his disclosures within perfect works aiming at the redemption of the men becomes - according to the new paradigm - an extremely variedly interconnected and locally and temporally indeterminable person which participates pragmatically in the common process of creation and one cannot define. I can perform all possible roles of the art sphere separately or additionally. I can conduct as producer, like poet, fine artist and editor, as mediator, like organizer of projects, as recipient, like onlooker, collector as well as archivist, and as theorist, like critic and philosopher.
I become a multi-talent, generalist, meta-physicist, figure of emptiness, dreamer and utopist, nonconformist, clown, enchanter and seducer of souls, creator and constructivist of the real, all in all a wanderer with the open, the vague, with life, free of purposes and at home everywhere. I change the search for duration and for reliability I do miss in my existence into a stronger meeting with the other, the alien, the other life, with the alien person.
Driven by my striving for amalgamation, by my love to the other, I dive expanding but maintaining my individuality into something wide and deep, into the big river of artistic living together, of artistic participation, through that at the same time I participate in the common construction of reality.
But participation needs as presupposition openness, empathy, the willingness to get involved in the appearing, the opening up to a more comprehensive reality. This is the attitude that isn't only open for events that are made perceptible by artistic media offers, but at the same time for the special common carrying out within living together from which artistic events are coming into being. That is the mechanism by that arise in an artistic non-violent manner areas of more comprehensive efficiency making possible the break with the usual, the experience of the non-perceptible, the experiencing of complete bewilderment and speechlessness as well as - should the occasion arise on a trial basis - the new distinction and formation of new patterns, new models, new forms of expression and of understanding, of participation, a common new beginning, always anew.
At the same time with my pictures, models, of reality expand my structure for perception, my power of judgment and my potential of creativity. I experience - integrated into the change of the network - my life's progressing in step, interconnected, with the fates of my partners, yes, with the ones of the living things. Because I more and more become a part of that what I know better and love stronger, therefore at the end I am becoming a community of persons, yes the dynamic biologic-mental network of mail art and of the new dynamic world view becoming expressed by it. I increasingly try - more and more liberated from one-sided rationality and orientated at the whole - to determine my conduct by myself as bigger individuality. For being very particular the notion individuality means that the man is undivided inside and outside, that all is one, the single person is interconnected deeply with the others and with world's life.
I experience that to gain peace inside and outside I have to interconnect my body and soul as a whole with the world and at the same time - should the occasion arise adapting the environment or rather myself - by an in tendency non-violent state of balancing (out). While being in this state I on the mental level "discern" reality "enlightenedly", yes - when at the same time resting in myself and in the world order - I "understand" it "through being well and happy". Networking helps me to enjoy life and gives me self-affirmation as well as hope at a time wherein the fear of chaos is growing. Often I am touched by my living together within the network to such an extend that I think I have to do all at the same time, from art production via theorizing, organizing, documenting up to archiving. Here is a risk that what I am doing is too much for my material and mental resources. And I have to take into consideration my borders.
Now after two decades of own networking my love for those partners has grown that haven't given up discouraged, but today like years ago resist together with me the chaos and the senselessness in the world and give evidence for the dignity of human spirit and its power of defiance, its capability of resistance.

3 Improvement Of The Parts And Of The World Order As A Whole

Mail art for me becomes an unusual experience, a surprising insight and a risk with an uncertain ending, in short: an adventure. It is granted to me as networker, to participate directly in the fulfillment of the - never ending - task that is set the actual art by today's zeitgeist, namely to save the enigmatic shape of life from the abyss of the non-perceptible of today's reality. For it in my opinion succeeds above all in using the strategy of mail art. Above all with its help the art as interconnected art of participation, art of communication, art of life, wins the power to participate in the construction of reality. The discourse of the network effects an increase of the dynamic power of judgment and of the creative potential of the participants as well as of the whole order. The network becomes an essential part of the self-organization of man's creative potentials at all, to win new experiences, because the phenomena of the perception of reality are valid generally and thus any experiences made in the artistic sphere dealing with processes of perception can become transferred generally to processes of social reality's construction. Yes, it as true democratic wickerwork of creative ideas and means working critically against the traditional criteria of reality gets revolutionary artistic character.
The vision of mail art contains the hope, yes the certainty, to come through a reciprocal raising of understanding to an improvement of culture's state of efficiency and with it to an optimization of nature as a whole, as action community. It shows exemplary global common artistic living together within a dynamic cosmopolitan neighborhood and social human peace order, in a society's world, a "super socialized group" (Teilhard de Chardin). The vision of mail art embodies for the mail artists at the same time the ideas of the "Eternal Network" (Robert Filliou), of the "Eternal Discourse" (Richard Rorty) and of the "Eternal Peace" (Immanuel Kant). It shows a world filling up more and more with self-determined creative peaceful life, always becoming mentally a bit more richer and a bit more peaceful.
By its own shape, gestalt, and by many of its creations the mail art succeeds in expressing the new symbol and the new myth, the new vision: The world is all one. The man is the world and the other way round. The world grows within man, the man grows within world, the man becomes the shape of the world and the world becomes the shape of man. And all growing needs peace in and with all.
"Small is beautiful!". Mail-Art is beautiful! And the mail art develops a strong power of attraction. It becomes together with its several ten thousands participants the most important social-cultural movement of the world irritating the official art sphere. Therefore it tries to monopolize mail art. But it doesn't succeed, because for both areas there are valid rules contradicting each other: The official art scene goes on - in contradiction to the new paradigm shift - with its practice selling still illusionary illustration's and reproduction's art: It uses as a pretext the consideration with redemption bringing perfect reproductions of truths revealed to ingenious artists, because in truth it is steered above all by acting aiming at profit. Mail art, however, is much more, namely participation's art, life's art. It consists of the creative participation in the world effecting more autonomy, self-determination, life, freedom, love, sensibility, participation, confidence, tolerance, friendship, variety, ethics, knowledge, social and ecological balance, democracy, peace, hope and many more. To this there is no alternative today.
But often mail art is divested of standing and importance and it doesn't receive the social attention and support it deserves. The blemish of the transient, marginal, alternative, yes of the subversive adheres to it. Above all its aim is smiled at. It is criticized that until now an insight never would have led to an improved conduct, as in the moment is proved again by the emergence of the system of values of neocapitalism in the western civilizations. But without insight there is no chance for improvement at all, for the manifestation of cultural human nature. Man has to understand that today there is no alternative to peace, if world shouldn't fall into the abyss, and that he has a chance, to create peace.
In the end network art makes obvious that art isn't only entertainment, stage-managing, perfection, interpretation, but also creative stabilizing participation in the "designing", gestalting, of the living together, should the occasion arise as aggressive opposite authority against mad ways of life.
Always anew within the network thus a global common expanding sense of tolerance arises non-violently giving a chance to all points of view orientating at itself.
And as cognitive phenomena are valid in general, mail art becomes a science, the relevant insights of which are of the same importance as the respective ones of the other sciences. In respect to its common artistic, with it human, reflection and speaking about the knowledge of knowledge, i.e. how knowledge and reality come into being, it becomes experimental basic research.
Network art for society becomes an utopian power, a strong help, a fruitful and at the same time kind natural resource that's why the freedom of it is protected by many constitutions. To stop with its continuation would mean the giving up of the creative by its own and the withdrawal of hope for all.
It is conceivable that in the way of development the characteristics of mail art change, like today, when besides the traditional forms of mail art, of "snail mail", new forms of transmission of the large technologically advanced networks of the postal system and of the internet appear, like the "e-mail" and the "fax-mail". But this is not the end of mail art, but only the end of the unity of notion and experience. In the beginning usually the notion wins trying to disprove the experience. For instance many mail artists dogmatically stick to the snail mail as the only true mail art according to their opinion. But the notion of mail art is a dynamic notion of function. It takes as a starting point that the functions of the mail art - except its aesthetical one - will change historically in a self-organizing manner and its creations accordingly. The actual zeitgeist assigns to the mail art its current functions. Finally the notion has to adapt to the new circumstances. If it doesn't change, then it either becomes superfluous or memory of itself ( HeMi/E new version 08.02.02).