International Mail Art Exhibition
Project idea: Claudia Sawallisch, Rosa-Therese Harter, Peter Gustavus
27 November to 31 December 2004
Their zenith had mail-art in the 70s and 80s. But even in the age of enamels and digital photography, paper mail is a verifiable medium between art and non-art. Mail Art works as project art. Your basic idea: No jury, no return, documentation to all participants (no examination, no return, each participant receives a documentation). Creative ideas were designed so that they could be sent by mail. Only works which, by their stamps, had an actual postal route behind them, qualified themselves for the participation.
Mail Art also wanted to explore what is actually available. The senders were encouraged to anticipate difficult things for the post office. A further aspect was the mutual networking - in this respect, Mail Art is a precursor of Web 2.0: recipients were sent to transmitters who in turn e-mailed mail, etc. Thus, sometimes extensive networks developed.
Claudia Sawallisch, Rosa-Therese Harter, and Peter Gustavus from the Berliner Kunstverein Quarts e.V. have once again invented MailArt: who visited the post-art exhibition of this Berlin artist trio, could become a mailartist himself. So write down the addresses and interact with the project creators.
For this exhibition, the initiators came back with their shipped works. Thus the multi-faceted communication of half a year could be shown - more than 350 exhibits, which the participating artists have sent. In this case, the volume of ideas among the mailartists often collided with the readiness to transport by post.
Information about Mail Art initiatives can also be found at International Union of Mail-art Artists