I recently wrote this short text for a snail-mail mailing cum dodo ATC attached,
am I just a old embittered snob totally off mark?
VB
DODO not DADA - summer reflections on a shiny mailbox
So, is mail art still alive or (almost) extinct? Though I never stopped
swimming in the correspondence flow since I first entered the postal network
way back in the late Seventies, this question is becoming more and more
difficult to answer. The mail art community, if there ever was one, from
my observation point seems to be receding into utter obscurity or melting
into (Inter)net-art, which is a wonderful but rather different kind of
experience.
Yes, there are still mail art shows and ?festivals? being organized around
the (Western) world, but the medium has become a bit stale and tired, the
original feeling of excitement and discovery is long gone (and this is
understandable
for a phenomenon that spans four decades, no small feat in itself!) but
it has not been replaced by the wisdom and maturity that old age usually
brings forth. I perceive a forced mood of ?eternal youth? for a medium that
has had its days. The very symbols of correspondence (artists? postage stamps,
rubber stamps, postcards, envelopes, etc.) are being gradually abandoned,
they are not the main focus of postal activities anymore, or they have become
rare practices pursued by a dwindling number of veterans. Artists? Trading
Cards might be a cute new twist to the old game, but it never really spread
out and conceptually I find it a bit weak, missing a precise link with the
postal medium (and art history). Mail art lost a centre of gravity, its
identity fragmented into a myriad of individual projects, and not many seem
to care much anymore about a communal ?philosophy?. Old mail artists die
- too many to mention, r.i.p. - and the newcomers are often unaware of mail
art?s tradition (yet there are books available to be read, just check Google
or Amazon!), so the dream of a global and peaceful community of artists
sharing experiences is fading away into underground myth and urban legends.
Something you will tell to your grandchildren, and they will smile and shake
their heads in disbelief?
I find rather telling the fact that one of the few ?signs of networking
life? - messages that are not aimed at individuals but rather addressed
to the entire circuit of postal artists - that I noticed in the past few
months is a series of loosely connected mailings (from Lumb, Bates, Brignull
and others) comparing mail art to the Dodo, the notorious exotic bird that
has come to represent the endangered animal species par excellence. So I
am not the only pessimist networker feeling the ground shake under his feet.
Things have changed a great deal in the almost thirty years I spent inside
(and outside) the postal net: riding on the crest of the new wave/punk energy
in the Seventies, but still maintaining the positive ideals of the Hippie
era, resisting the boredom of the Eighties and Nineties clinging to the
collectivist Utopia of a free-for-all and open trading system, entering
the new Millennium to find out that, after all, maybe those cynical punks
were right, this is a ?no future? situation for the planet. Evil forces
prevail, the model for global cooperation that mail art so well exemplified
proved inapplicable to the big numbers. Maybe all the money we dumped in
postage stamps and photocopies would have been better invested in some charity
project, maybe a little voluntary social work would have been less wasted
time. But just see what millions of people reunited by music with the ?Live8?
event has been able to obtain by the powers that rule the Earth: next to
nothing. Contemporary popular culture has touched an unprecedented low,
the new generations have got used to a diet of heartless blockbusters and
mindless bestsellers. Mail art is not the only endangered Dodo around.
The Dodo was a mild bird with a hooked beak and a gentle spirit. When the
Portuguese sailors first discovered the friendly bird on the shores of the
island of Mauritius in the year 1598, they called it ?dodo? (?simpleton?)
mistaking his child-like innocence and lack of fear as stupidity. Being
also unable to fly, the bird was easily killed by men and by other new animals
introduced in its environment, like dogs and pigs. By the year 1681, the
Dodo had been completely wiped out from the face of the planet. We do not
even have a complete skeleton, so the bird only lives today through the
rare descriptions of the time and the pictures of artists, such as the drawing
made by Sir John Tenniel for Lewis Carroll?s Alice in Wonderland. Maybe
the same will happen to mail art in a near future, when postage rates will
have become even more expensive: artistamps and such ephemera will survive
only in the description and catalogues of a few devoted bibliographers and
scholars. Mail art is not only endangered by sky-rocketing postage rates
though, I think the most perilous risk factors are not those that come from
outside but those that spring from its own ranks. I notice a widespread
lack of interest in mail art history (taking at face value Ray Johnson?s
pun ?mail art has no history, only a present? may have fatal consequences!),
so there is a consequent scarcity of magazines or forums for a collective
debate on the relevant issues related to networking (there are a few newsgroups
on the Internet, I peeped into them, but it is mostly small talk and unrelated
projects). Ultimately, mail art is folding on itself for the general inability
to come up with new networking concepts, different from the worn-out ?theme
show? format, the ageing ?assembling? zine, the never ending chain-letter-like
add-to-and-pass-on formula. I am not just whining and preaching, I try to
do my bit: with the participation to the Funtastic United Network concept
(SUN of FUN convention organized by Piermario Ciani coming up in early
September),
with the When the Saints show of alternative ?holy images? (the second ?station?
opening in Pisa at the end of September), with the planned Luther Blissett
multiple name decennial commemoractive dvd, just to mention three recent
projects in progress, I try to take networking tactics into new grounds.
The doomed AAA book on artists? postcards may finally see the light one
of these days, and there are other publications placing mail art in a historical
perspective bubbling to be published soon (by John Held Jr., Mark Bloch
and others). I may be one of the ?last dodos?, but I will not be crushed
down so easily and without reaction. Wanna join the fight?
Vittore Baroni @ E.O.N. ? July 2005
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