Report on the Mail Art Networking Congress with Kimmo Framelius in Helsinki, Finland about " Criteria for a Nail Art Archive "

A con8ress with Kimmo, the lonely ascetic in HelSinki, whose Life

is half dedicated to mail art, as one can easily see from the wails of his council flat. We discuss criteria for a mail art archive:

• Above all it seems a necessity to overcome the inevitable chaos that every mail artist experiences sooner or later.

• Different filin8 systems have special (dis)ad\antages: alphabetic order with one box per letter is easy to extend, 8ives however little space to individual collecting.

• Ordering by sub-genres is attractive for exhibiting purposes, causes however overlapping problems, e.g. a rubber stamp and an artistamp on a decorated Mail Art envelope ( =3 different sub-groups).

• Keeping countries to gel her makes easy, also: anthologies.

• Do you keep books and docunnentatiotls separately from the original artworks that you receive ill )lour- nnaii.! \\'hat ii a book it-self claims to be art, a "book art"?

• A common widespread way is just keeping projects together. which may be 8006 for further exhibitions - or mean a dusty box

• The squaring of tile circle may be asMnB curators for dou~lein your attic.
  copies of their documentation and keeping a sophisticated indes- :i ing system, which might even involve the use of punch cards or a
  computer,

• Do you keep different sizes in different places or just cult them
  
  down to file size, Like one German M.A. does? -f P How can you keep all that PERMANENTLY going without get-
  
  ting bored or exploiting others?

• An archive seenls a necessary evil, since we networkers fulfill ALL traditionally subdivided functions of the art circuit - from producer to collector: the others' work is the hard-earned reward for our own work.

• After all, are we to do the work of our historians and biogr;tphers? Obviously: YES - as part of being a NETWORKERS