THE FUTURE OF MAIL ART VISION- UTOPIA- DESIRES- PERSPECTIVE

What we all need, is extended families. That is the advantage of the network. Or the mafia. Or Alcoholics Anonymous, as Kurt Vonnegut says. As long as we work isolated and wagedepending in late capitalist industrial mass societies in a world of wars, there is reason enough for global village peer groups like mail art and its visions. Mail art is more exclusive than the Lions Club. And more creative.

Is mail art still the old concept? We see a lot of politicization through the web, for the good and the bad. And we do mind the rubbish we get in the mail that has nothing to do with our projects. And we
hate ,,This-is-my: I-want-to-be-in-your-catalogue"-e-mails. Still we are polite enough to enter every sender's name in the participants lists, but the colour prints in our catalogues we reserve to serious con-
tributions. There is a need for beauty even in mail art, our common avantgarde form means not only mail, but also art! And that does not imply censorship, but a desire for minimum quality.

Also the net needs more serious publications like,,NUMERO", and they need our financial support. We consider documentation of our status quo as important as production, before our historians falsify our holistic and vulnerable lives in order to build up their theories. Netzines and net-media are necessary for broad, effective , and cheap distribution of invitations for new projects and related information. That's where the internet-comes handy.

And documentations need to
become more reliable, just more than
incomplete address-lists full of mistakes.
We ourselves have come to the point
where we are very often tempted to par-
ticipate only in projects that are docu-
mented in real catalogues. Too often
one is annoyed about lousy so-called
,,documentations", if at all they ever ar-
rive back. Irresponsibility of mailart pro-ject
organizers not only irritates, but also de-
motivates. Those contributors who invest
their energy, time, and money deserve
better.

We ask everyone who plans a
project to honestly answer if (s)he only
wants to profit from the sources of mailart,
or if (s)he is really ready to invest, even
money. Mail art is not something you live
on, but something you live for. That needs
energy and persistence. Othennrise better
leave it. You won't get happy.

In these days of sponsorship we had
to learn the difficult lesson that you need to
cooperate with the business world and with
cultural bureaucracy if you want mail art
and its messages to be seen and enjoyed
not only by us few insiders, but in public, as
a contemporary art form. We all need the
courage and self-understanding not to shy
away from established media and cultural
institutions. To use them without pro-
stituting yourself is often enough the
squaring of the circle.

But our own example shows: Mail
Art Mekka Minden is now officially adver-
tized by the city's Tourist Office, 15 years
after we proclaimed it. Watch Guy Bleus
and be amazed where he exhibits and how
he documents. Or ask Anna Banana for her
fund applications.

Does the internet with its tons
of wasted virgin paper make snail-mail
obsolete? On the contrary: this aesthetic
phenomenon and challenge remains un-
beaten by the speedy technological re-
volution. E-mails make us miss the nostal-
gic time-lagging feeling until you receive a
long-expected colourful envelope full of
stamps:.This piece has gone through so
many hands before it reached us...

And we hope that more good ar-
chives will be built up and be accessible.
We experience daily the immense effort
of keeping a mail art archive - but also its
pleasure. It represents large parts of our
personal history that we do not want to
miss. And we do not only use it for orbi-
tuaries as rumor has it.

Baroni's idea of the ,,club of 12"
is tempting in its intimacy, as opposed to
the widespread supermarket self-service
mentality in the net, but it negates the
reality of networking processes, and it
excludes newcomers. In the end, every-
body has to find out personally whether
(s)he wants more personal exchange or
project-orientation.

Personal expectations? Some more
cul-tourism photos for our mail-artists family
album: the rare meeting with an Indian mail
artist - a carving workshop during a mail
art vernissage -·- bringing stampsheets
as mail art postman to senior citizens -·-
the smile of a participant when he gets our
hand-made catalogue -·- stamping a col-
lective collage at Minden's rubberstamp
shop -·- marvelling a logo-shaped stone
to remember Ray Johnson in the Hima-
layas -·- trying to get a holy cow in the mail
~.~ performing as Petra with other network
trannies -.- physical involvement, when mail
artists draw their messages on our heads -
·- diving for DNC-corals in the Red Sea -·-
welcoming travelling mail artists to our
Networker Hotel at Mail Art Mekka Minden -
.- farewell meetings over the graves of old
friends -·- but before that: a great mail art
get-together at our culture centre BÜZ with
exhibitions and shows and performances
and live music and dance on 9'h September
2000 to celebrate both our birthdays:
40 (Angela)x 50 (Peter)= 2000!