A report

on the postal activities of Angela and Peter Netmail

It's been quite a journey for Peter Küstermann and Angela Pähler. Their mail art activities have taken the German natives around the world and, on a personal level, moved them to unite in a shared and apt-family name, Netmail.

Peter first learned about mail art in 1981, from Don Jarvis, his "mail art godfather," at a poetry reading in London. Jarvis offered him an eight-page catalog from a mail art show, with a list of participants' names and addresses. Peter used this list for his first mail art project: "No War in My City", received 600 responses, and he was "hooked." His second mail art project, in 1984, "Big Brother is Watching You", followed mail art's unwritten rules: No rejections, no returns and documentation to all participants.

From this second exhibition, he became intrigued by some large rubberstamped works by Henning Mittendorf, and in the following year, he exhibited a whole series of these works at the BÜZ Centrum in Minden, Germany. After the enormous success of this exhibit, the BÜZ cultural center asked him to curate a series of exhibitions. Organizing these exhibits helped Peter to crystallize the link between mail art, with its rich variety of techniques and themes, and other contemporary art forms. He came to perceive mail art as the networking structure of culture, producing communications and understanding, as beautiful postal/art objects.

It is important, in understanding Peter's work, to realize how completely he integrates his network activities with his work at the BÜZ cultural center. While many mail artists exchange with other artists, few have put so much time and effort into bringing network art to the public at large. Minden has had the good fortune to be home not only to Peter, but also to Angela and the recently deceased [solo- named artist] Joki, all of whom have worked to integrate their international mail art activity with the cultural events of their city.

Dada's Children at the Master's birthplace:
both Kurt Schwitters and Angela Netmail were born in Hannover near Mail Art Mekka Minden

The evolution

In 1988, Angela Pähler, a physiotherapist by profession, was taking a Feldenkrais seminar, and Peter was there as translator for the American trainers. A friendship grew out of this chance meeting, and through it, Angela became interested in mail art, and slowly got involved in carving her own rubber. When they travel and visit other mail artists, which they do frequently, they carry blank perforated sheets that they use to produce collaborative, documentary artistamp sheets on which everyone involved uses their own stamps.

Over the years, they have developed a powerful working relationship in which Peter, "stimulated by hot morning showers, generates creative ideas faster than the water comes pouring out of the tap." Then Angela, over a good, whole-grain breakfast, helps sort out practical realities of time and money. These concepts are further refined after a bicycle ride through rainy Minden, by putting them through the infrastructure of the Buz Centrum, where the city funds limit those ideas further, getting them down to a size that can be reaIized. For example, they have recently narrowed Peter's idea for a year-long "art party 2000" (which grew out of the realization that in the year 2000, Angela will be 40, Peter 50; thus, 40 x 50 = 2,000), to one "art week." It will take place around 9 Sep 2000, to celebrate their birthdays and the millennium alike.

In 1992, Peter and Angela were in Vancouver, British Columbia to deliver some "Netmail". A Network Congress was held at Ed Varney's home-called the Museo-with mail artist Jim Felter, members of the Central Visual Artists Association (C.V.A.A.) and me. A dozen people gathered around Ed's huge kitchen table to see Peter and Angela, in their German postal uniforms, open their heavy backpacks and deliver the mail. We were all impressed with the big registration book that Angela carried, in which all the items they carried were listed and numbered. Each of us receiving mail had to sign on the line next to the number of the item(s) delivered, just like in the real post office. And of course, all the items we brought for them to deliver had to be numbered and registered in the book.

One of the funniest moments of this congress was when Terry Reid, taking Ruud Janssen's Congress in the Bathtub idea literally, asked Peter to deliver his mail to him in the bathtub, which he had filled with green Jell-O. There are many other such stories that came out of this project, but first, some details of the trip itself.

Free Personal Deluxe Netmail Delivery

The project, called Free Personal Deluxe Netmail Deliverv, began in the first seconds of 1992 in the Swiss mountains, at the home of HR Fricker. Peter and Angela picked up mail from Fricker and delivered it six months later to Shozo Shimamato in Japan. They started the project in Trogen, in honor of HR Fincker, who, along with Günther Ruch, organized the first Network Congresses in 1986, and who had issued the call for the 1992 series of Decentralized Network Congresses (DNC).

The idea of travel plus congress reminded them of an event by Los Angeles artist Creative Thing, who had delivered mail to a number of networkers in the course of running a oneday marathon. Peter and Angela decided to deliver mail on a larger scale: instead of one day and 42 kilometers (26 miles), they undertook one year, over 100.000 kilometers (62,000 miles), and the opportunity to congress with other mail artists. Just the thought of carrying that big registration book around made me tired, and when I considered the miles Peter and Angela had traveled and were yet to travel, and the amount of mail they carried, I began to realize the enormity of their project. By the end of 1992, they had carried over 4,000 pieces of mail weighing over 220 kilos (484 pounds), across 100,000 kilometers in 35 different countries ! All this was done in the space of a single year, at no cost to the sender or receiver! And congress, they did. It would take a whole book to give a full account of their travels and visits. En route, they participated in a series of Network Congress Sessions, where they met a number of mail artists and their friends, discussed network issues, collected and delivered mail, and often collaborated on commemorative editions of artistamps.

Here are some of the locale highlights: Vancouver. British Columbia, Canada, at Ed Varney´s Museo Internacional de Neu Art, with the members of he CVAA; Seattle, at Tui Tui with Dogfish and Dragonfly; Los Angeles, at Lon Spiegelman's Bugress meeting; Odzaci, Serbia, at part two of the Serbian Congress in Nenad Bogdanovic´s courtyard; Minsk, Russia, at Vladimir Sutjagin's First Mail Art Exhibition; Edewecht, Germany, at Klaus Groh's Literaturium; Woollonggabba, Australia, at Atomic Arts' congress; Arkadelphia, Arkansas, at a rubber stamp carving workshop at Henderson State University; Iowa City, Iowa, at the opening of Steve Perkin's Zine show; Trondheim, Norway, at the Multicultural Festival, with Roger Aasegg; San Francisco, at Mike Dyar's spiritual seance with the spirit of Joseph Beuys; Koshienguchi, Japan, at the Mail Art Museum of Koshienguchi, with Shozo Shimamoto; New York, at the New York Hilton Hotel congress organized by MOMA librarian Clive Philpott; Oxford-Cowley, England, at a Public Arts Postal Station with Dawn Redwood; Bologna, Italy, at Anna Boschi's country estate performance event; Split, Croatia, at the Museum Book Fair.

NO WALLS: Neither culture nor language nor geography can stop the mail. Or at least mail art. Here, Peter and Angela meet mail art friends at the central train station in Peking (China).

Marriage and the Pope

After leaving Trogen, in January 1992, Peter and Angela were married by network "administrator" Guy Bleus at his mail art archive in Wellen, Begium. At some point in their travels, they were in Rome and had an audience with the Pope. Since their family names were so often misspelled, the pope blessed them and issued a certificate which reads, "The Holy Father cordially imparts his Apostolic Blessings to Angela & Peter Netmail, as a pledge of heavenly favours," and from that time on, that is the name they have used.

Aside from the p]anned and scheduled meetings with other networkers, the Netmails had many spontaneous interactions with train conductors, travel agents and museum and library directors to whom they gave DNC mail, and in some cases, received items to deliver. En route from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, for example, their train conductor turned out to be the landlord - and friend - of mail artist Jim Klingbeil, whom they had met at Klingbeil's home. While he had already heard about mail art, he was fascinated to hear about their personalized mail delivery service.

They obtained another "convert" to mail art when they presented their official German passports, embellished with many colorful artists' rubber stamps and a visa from Dogfish's fantasy land of Tui Tui (in Seattle), to a Canadian customs officer. Initially, she refused them entry to Quebec and attempted to confiscate their "desecrated" passports. In the end, however, she was won over when Angela commented, "But aren't these stamps beautiful?" The official conceded that the mail art contents were beautiful, and she allowed them entry!

Throughout the trip, they also presented slide shows about mail art and networking, and gave workshops, lectures and performances, always clad in their postal uniforms (since they didn't have room to carry any alternative clothing). They were also interviewed for radio, television and newspaper stories. All in all, it was an incredible, talkative year in which they spread the word about mail art and networking with evangelistic zeal. Testing the rules Mail artists are inclined to send unusual objects and artworks, partly, I've always suspected, to see how far they can stretch postal rules and regulations. With Peter and Angela as carriers, the regulations were lax. Therefore they carried a number of items that regular postal services would either refuse or charge such prohibitive rates that the sender would carry the item back home. For example: from Tane in Australia, they carried a kangaroo bone to Rosy Gorden in Dallas, Texas, where the bone was hung in his open air collection on the veranda of his house. An umbrella covered with Mickey Mice images was transported from Minden to Paris, to Mickeymousologist Daniel Daligand, for his definitive Mickey collection. An "art beer bottle", from Marcel Stüssi in Basel, Switzerland, was delivered to a congress meeting in Milano (Milan), Italy, in a short seven hours - beating official postal times by days - where it was shared by Fernanda Fedi, Gino Gini and Paolo Barrile. A heavyweight - one I personally would have refused! - tightly glued and wrapped photo album from Mike Dyar in San Francisco, was transported to Jose Oliveira in Portugal for his artist book collection. It occupied half a backpack!

In the course of this project, the Netmails slept in trains, youth hostels, woods, airports, tents or the welcoming homes of other networkers. They traveled by train, bus, car and air. They delivered mail by swimming with the mailbag through an ice-blue lake - under the midnight sun - to deliver mail to Reima Mäkkinen in Kangasala, Finland ; arriving by horse and coach for the daily afternoon "shoot-out" in the center square of Jackson, Wyoming, with mail for Gary Connors; and sliding down a snowy mountain path on a sled to deliver the last piece of mail to HR Fricker in Trogen, Switzerland.

Motivation

What do the Netmails get from such an exhausting project? Why did they do it? They enjoy traveling, as indeed they must for such an undertaking. As Peter says, he saw this trip not just as a chance, but an obligation to heal, since historically, a German in uniform is a disastrous tradition. "Our fathers and grandfathers came as occupying soldiers, whereas we came as pARTners for joint art activities, a peace-making exercise to change a historical pattern through art action and creative involvement with others," he explains.

Further, through their interactions with persons in the public domain - train conductors, travel agents, postal carriers and others - their activities met their intention to keep the network open to all sides, in accordance with Joseph Beuys' definition of art and the artist. As a result, it was a year of "intense vibrations, which broadened, concretized and deepened our understanding of the abstract network idea." And it was a project of extreme physical experience, only possible through mutual support and constructive criticism between the two of them, which also strengthened and deepened their own relationship.

Consider, if you will, the prospect of carrying all those backpacks full of mail, which allowed them room for few personal belongings. Or getting used to climatic extremes quickly - from minus 45 C (minus 49 F) in Siberia to plus 45 C (113 F) in the central Australian desert - and experiencing the microclimates of each participant/host's personal environment. Further, there was not only the physical, but also the mental, emotional and spiritual climates of all those individuals! And what they found through all of this - the reward behind every single postcard was "a whole, creative personality; attractive, adventurous, inviting and worthy of our undivided attention."

Keeping busy

Thoroughly stimulated by their visits and discussions with the people they met on the trains between visists, they kept busy writing their daily documentary diary. And in their "spare time," they collaborated on a series of congress reports in which they recorded the discussions they heard on topics such as the Role of Fe-Mail Artists, Computers in the Network and from Croatia, The Network and the War, to mention but a few. The entirety of their output has been assembled into their Free Personal Deluxe Netmail Delivery Documentary Catalog, of which every participant received a free copy. Remaining copies are still sold, to make up for postal and other operational costs.

In 1993, Peter and Angela hosted my art/parody research project, Proof Positive that Germany is Going Bananas, as the gallerists of BÜZ cultural center in Minden. In my attempt to get to the cause of the phenomena, I asked visitors to the exhibit to take my Roar Shach Banana Peel Test (15 cards with photos of banana peels in random formations) and the Inventory for Banana Syndrome, a variation of the much-used Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, with bananas substituted in half the items. With Angela's help, I hung an exhibition of 110 of the news items I'd had enlarged and laminated, which illustrate my thesis that Germany has gone bananas. Then we visited a local fruit distributor, picked up crates of fresh bananas for the events, along with many inflatable bananas, tabletop promotional materials and a stand-up figure of Unkle Tonka, with which we decorated the two large rooms in the culture center. Peter L. Gross (a.k.a. PLG), my correspondent from northern Germany, who had supplied the banana-flavored newspaper and magazine clippings that inspired my project, arrived in Minden to assist with the project. One afternoon, we hosted a group of 10 old-age pensioners from the local retirement home and had them take the Roar Shack Banana Peel Test. While they were surprised by the nature of the test, they had a lively time discussing the images and putting their responses on the forms I provided. We gave them tea, banana bread and bananas, and I awarded them each Masters Degrees of Bananology by way of thanking them for their efforts.

Birthday celebrations

Throughout 1998, Peter and Angela created cultural events to celebrate the 1,200th birthday of their home city, Minden. Many of their ideas were accepted and funded by the city, though they - like most artists - hate the paperwork involved. Throughout this yearlong celebration, they were able, more than ever, to integrate their global networking into the local cultural scene, bringing old and new mail art friends to Minden to participate in exhibitions. Buz Blurr from Gurdon, Arkansas; Giovanni Strada from Ravenna, Italy; Emilio Morandi of Ponte Nossa, Italy; and Groenendaal from Holland did large paintings on public billboards throughout the old city. This was part of the Open Air Gallery that Angela organized from May to August.

Funding

Peter and Angela's activities are funded through "mixed sponsorship." For example, the POINT Advertising Agency sponsored the Open Air Gallery, and the Minden Tageblatt (Daily) newspaper gives them very low rates on color photocopies. The bulk of their budget, which comes from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, is funneled through the BÜZ Centrum, which also allows them the use of their infrastructure; i.e. telephones, fax, e-mail and other facilities, including the Centrum's two large meeting rooms and coffee bar. This office also supports their yearly costs of postage, photocopies and gallery materials. Their budget also includes plenty of "self-exploitation" money from Angela's physiotherapy practice, which takes up the financial slack.

The Netmails document all their activities, giving good feedback - in the mail art tradition - to all participants, and letting the rest of the network share their experience through surplus copies, like in their 350-page Netmail Yearbook '98, documenting the year's projects celebrating Minden's 1,200th year.

Conclusion

To sum up the activities of this most prolific of mail art pairs, I asked the Netmails what they felt has been their most important and effective project. First, they suggest, has been the world tour and the contacts they made throughout it. That is - people. Then, the different bibliophile products they have made documenting their projects, including books, brochures, films, poems, drawings and artistamp sheets. "How do you measure effort?" the Netmails ask. "Number of participants? Quality of contributions? Human warmth? Color? We strive for a numerous quality of colorful warmth." Angela and Peter are spiritual seekers, currently living in a small community, and feel they are on their way to a bigger one in the future. In "past lives," Peter was a businessman with a large and sucessful private tutorial service. Then for 10 years, he was a jazz musician, playing throughout Europe and in New Orleans, Louisiana. Teaching came next, with languages his specialty: English, Russian and Latin, which he was doing through 1986, when I first met him. None of these pursuits satisfied his need for stimulation and growth in the way that mail art networking has.

They have made two attempts to create a larger spiritual and ecological community. For inspiration, they visited Findhorn, Scotland, and Peter recently traveled to Auroville, a growing, international spiritual city in India. Their aim is always to be "on the way," and they are quite satisfied with their way of life in which mail art will remain an integrative part. They cannot imagine ending up like most Germans in their own castle/home with the "4Fs." That is, Feierabend, Flaschenbier, Fernsehen und Filzpantoffeln. Or, in English: spare time, beer bottle, television and felt slippers! They care little about material values and have no car, house or life insurance. Maybe, they say, in 30 years, "We will proudly present the world with a big shelf of books, films, documentaries of a rich life ... the last and only private piece of furniture we will be allowed in the social old people's home."

(The author Anna Banana is a longtime artist with an interest in rubber stamps, artistamps and mail art. She lives in Sechelt, Brirish Columbia, Canada.