playing around with AI these days...

[Juan Petry]

playing around with AI:

"Mail art, also known as postal art or correspondence art, has indeed played a significant role as a tool for free expression and resistance against censorship across various political and social contexts. Emerging in the 1960s as a form of avant-garde artistic communication, it has provided artists and individuals with a medium to exchange ideas, artworks, and messages without the constraints imposed by traditional art institutions or governmental oversight. This democratization of art and communication has allowed for the circumvention of censorship and the dissemination of alternative narratives.

The use of mail art during periods of political oppression, such as under dictatorships or fascist regimes, serves as a testament to the human need for freedom of speech and creativity. It has been a clandestine yet effective way for artists to maintain a sense of community, share information, and document their experiences. For instance, during the Cold War, artists like Joseph Beuys used this medium to support and communicate with political prisoners in East Germany, offering a form of solidarity and advocacy that transcended the Iron Curtain."

What you you think about mail art in these times. Please drop a comment!

[Juan Petry]

hello ilya,

thank you for sharing your thoughts. in fact it starts with a definition of "what mail art might be" and i think there is no common ground for that. what i see is, that still some conceptual artists are figuring out what it "also could be" in a post - factional and post - digital world. there is for many still this sensation of receiving an analoge physical piece of communication and to be able to enjoy this without any technical device. also for political and socio - cultural interested artists it looks like as being a still less limited space of free expression.
behind all, we are social animals, we what to see ourselves in the reflection of the recation of the other. and, making gifts into a group of worldwide people making gifts to others in the group is a sort of pleasure as well.

you maybe know this experiment in school about magnetic fields. you have little pieces of iron dust on a sheet of paper and below you move a magnet. the magnetic field moves the dust in a specific way and if you move the magnet this shape is moving as well. but in fact the dust is NOT moving. it is just the orientation of it. if you see mail art like this, its a kind of meme moving through social interaction of human mankind. We can humbly look forward to being able to see it the next time it comes to visit us.

[Ilya Semenenko-Basin]

I think he almost dies and is revived again from time to time.