Archive or Recycle

[Ruud Janssen]

When you start with mail-art you get things in. After a while you start to Archive (build a collection in boxes, portfolios or maybe even fill your complete house or start a museum) or you start to recycle (you receive to much and start to pass on).

What do you do?
What do you hope others do?
Is it essential that there are Mail-Art Archives?
Should archives end up in museums or can they be sold?

[Fred Wilder]

So far I keep the Mail Art to myself but sometimes I do find myself acting as curator of my modest collection when friends drop by and I give them the magical Mail Art tour.
No idea what happens to my work, maybe it's tucked away in a box under the addressee's bed?
Sell, trade, museums Yes! Keep them active and not under the bed.

[TIZIANA BARACCHI]

Archive, of course. It is necessary.
I think nowadays Mail Art can enter Museums, because it is now a part of the history of Art, if you want or not!
Ciao
TIZIANA

[Junanne Peck]

I keep mail art received in boxes and can't seem to part with the freely given pieces of art but am always willing to exhibit the pieces whenever and wherever....I hope other artist would do the same....
I agree with fred: Sell, trade, museums Yes! Keep them active and not under the bed.

[Gik Juri]

ARCHIVE NO RECYCLE - set comma where You want

[Denis Charmot]

I archive, of course. Some mailartists have taken care to create something for me. I conserve it.

[Stangroom]

Most everything is archived here...
some more organised than others.
BIG files for regular correspondents...
and then I never know what to do with the odd postcard.
Robin Crozier had everything that he'd ever received
either in boxes or loose leaf notebooks.

[Rod Summers / VEC]

Archive which I consider as an art work in progress and which will be completed the day I stop.
I am not concerned with what others do with their mail-art.
Not essential... unless, of course, art is essential.
The owner or collector of an archive can do whatever they wish with it, sell, donate, recycle or eat.
If I don't sell mine it goes to the library of the University of Ohio in Columbus because I arranged that with John M. Bennett. I would prefer to sell it, anyone out there got the €1,500,000.oo asking price? I would swap it for a farm in Iceland.

[Peter Kupas]

archive of course,
though i don't think its a must.
and there is so much art - and since the whole thing is about networking, i don't think that it should stay in archives, like museums. everybody should build his or her own collection.

[stan askew]

i definitely keep all the mail-art that i receive. some are stored in archival boxes. some are on bulletin boards in my studio where i can view them on a regular basis. i think it is important to document mail-art. i would like to see mail-art in museum collections. perhaps in library collections, as well.

[Gik Juri]

May be, recycle for 1500000EUR? Give me 1500000EUR, and I'll recycle Your archive!

[Heath Row]

I donate everything I receive to the Great Lakes Underground Press Collection at DePaul University in Chicago. Because I've been donating materials since the mid-'90s and because I donate correspondence as well as zines and other items, they take most everything I send. It also gets cataloged and is accessible by students, researchers, and the public. So, archive. The mail art I receive tends to get included in the boxes of zines, etc., that I donate.

[Mail Art Martha]

It should be recycled, I am sure, by which I mean it should be bundled together with newspapers, etc and put to be collected outside, after all it is supposed to be ephimera, isn't it? But I cannot do so. I have a large pile of the work sent for past projects of mine, plus all the documentations of the projects I joined, neatly archived in boxes from IKEA, ( this a recent development) Those pieces of art which are sent independently from a project, as friendly communications, I stick on the glass doors of my bookcase or on walls. Sometimes I send them to somebody else or use them as bookmarks. Artists books get displayed on the coffee table for a while and then they go to the bookcase to join Kairan.
I fear the possibility of moving ...
I hope others are stronger characters and throw my work away, after having admired it for a reasonable period. I do not think it is essential that there should be archives or museums and most emphatically Mail Art should never be sold.