SPAZIO THETIS VENICE
“MAIL ART, ART IN TRENCH”
Mail Art meeting by Ruggero Maggi
WEDNESDAY 8 MAY 2024 at 5.00 pm
“Mail Art, art in trench” meeting curated by Ruggero Maggi will be held onWednesday 8 May 2024 at 5.00 pm in Venice at the Spazio Thetis | Palazzina Modelli (Castello).
Speakers will be Chuck Welch (aka CrackerJack Kid) American mailartist, Willie Marlowe American verbovisual artist, Antonietta Grandesso Manager of Spazio Thetis, Piergiorgio Baroldi President of the Cultural Association Paolo Rizzi ETS, Stefano Schiavoni Director of the MAM Museum of Modern Art and Mail Art of Montecarotto (AN ) and the artist Ruggero Maggi.
Dedicated to Giorgio Nelva and BuZ Blurr (Russel Butler), who recently returned to sender.
Mail Art, art in trench.... an artistic trench refractory to the conditioning and fashions of the prevailing "art system"... a social trench against the tragic war-mongering tendencies that are spreading throughout the world. A type of artistic research that finds its natural poetic sedimentation in creative communication; after all, isn't communication at the basis of every human contact, of every artistic impulse? Mail Art represents the apex of this type of experimentation. In the relationship between sender/recipient and through the object sent it finds the right conceptual sublimation. I have always thought that every human action should be motivated by a longing for spirituality deriving from art and science and that it should have as its aim the achievement of high and profound goals. “You were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge” as Dante wrote (XXVI canto of Hell, v. 119). Mail Art is no exception, it has always been a careful spokesperson for artistic and poetic messages, with profound social implications.
There have been mailartists imprisoned for their ideas of freedom, such as the Uruguayan Clemente Padín and the Salvadorian Jesus Romeo Galdamez. Mailartists who turned also to technological research such as the Belgian Charles François, Sandro Bongiani - Ophen Virtual Art Gallery, Claudio Grandinetti - Artefice, Claudio Romeo - DodoDada and the American Chuck Welch (aka CrackerJack Kid) with his projects and his important collection Smithsonian Artistamp and Mail Art Library present in the archives of American Art in Washington , D.C. Speaking of Chuck Welch, who will be present at our meeting, I want to remember one of the finest mail art projects that Chuck created in the late 70s: he asked me to send him a pair of old jeans and surprisingly, after a while, I received an original letter kit made up of sheets and envelopes made from the fabric of my old trousers, a real mail art surprise! Then there are mailartists who have dedicated themselves to real editorial projects, such as the German/Chilean Hans Braumüller with his magazine Artist Matter Zine and the publication of books such as "United in Mail Art", "Meta+Verse" realized with Ruggero Maggi and “Mail Art In Cyberspace” by Chuck Welch.
Mail Art truly has many faces, far from being a mere exchange of postcards, it has long since taken on a global dimension and there are now very few countries in which at least one mailartist does not reside. Mail Art, the quintessence of creative communication, an international network that embraces the entire world, a forerunner of recent social networks. An “Eternal Network” – as Robert Filliou defined it – open to everyone, artists and otherwise: this is precisely the great disruption represented by Mail Art.
The networker is like a piece of a formidable mosaic in a boundless universe of poetic energies. In reality its function is unique, since its placement within the circuit itself with the relative connections with other operators is unique. Probably the network itself is the greatest work of art in the world!
Mail Art isn't done for money, it isn't done for fame...
it's done... it's lived... it's emotion..
R.Maggi
info | maggiruggero@gmail.com