M.A.D. 16 ottobre 2025 - Giornata Internazionale dell'Arte Postale

[Giovanni Bonanno]

M.A.D. MAIL ART DAY

16 OTTOBRE | GIORNATA INTERNAZIONALE DELL'ARTE POSTALE

a cura di Ruggero Maggi

 MAM MUSEO D’ARTE MODERNA E DELLA MAIL ART

Montecarotto (AN)

16 ottobre 2025 | 20 gennaio 2026

Inaugurazione | giovedì 16 ottobre 2025 | ore 18.00

 

 16 October 2025 | 20 January 2026

Opening | Thursday 16 October 2025 | at 18.00

  

Once again this year is renewed at MAM Museum of Modern Art and Mail Art in Montecarotto (AN) and at MUSINF Museum of Information in Senigallia the appointment with M.A.D. Mail Art Day | 16 October, launched at the end of 2022 by Ruggero Maggi to remember Ray Johnson, born on October 16 and defined as “the most famous unknown artist in New York”. By founding the New York Correspondence School in 1962, with which he mocked the various correspondence art schools that were springing up in the US at the time, he marked with this explosive initial moment, the Big Bang of Mail Art.

The MAM Museum of Modern Art and Mail Art of Montecarotto has been active since 1984. This museum was conceived and founded by Carlo Emanuele Bugatti with the Municipal Administration of Montecarotto, within an unprecedented project of a Widespread Museum on the territory of the then Provincial Authority of Ancona. In fact, the Museum collaborates historically and permanently with the MUSINF of Senigallia inaugurated in 1981, with the Nori dè Nobili Municipal Museum of Tre Castelli and with various other museums in the Marche region and in all the national territory.

On Thursday 16 October at 6.00 pm, will be present at the inauguration of the event the Mayor of Montecarotto Giuseppe Paoloni, the Mayor of Senigallia Massimo Olivetti, the Director of MAM e curator Stefano Schiavoni and the artist Ruggero Maggi.

Dedicated to Clemente Padin, who recently passed away.

 The event, curated by Ruggero Maggi and Stefano Schiavoni, presents various projects that explore the world of Mail Art.

 

• THE MAILBOX | AN INTERACTIVE OPEN-AIR MUSEUM

Already for some time in Italy, but also everywhere in the world, there is the tendency to close and remove mailboxes. The immoderate use of social media and email is relegating the “normal” mail to an increasingly obsolete communicational use, forgetting how important instead is also the tactile, visual and in some cases even olfactory “solicitations”. Not to mention the pleasure one receives in opening an envelope sent perhaps from the other side of the world and the “mystery” that is revealed as soon as it is opened. Now all this is being abolished in favor of faster dissemination and at the expense of a more personal and less homogenized communication, so: let's shut the mailboxes mouths! Once irreplaceable elements of the urban context, but now considered obsolete and useless. What will be the next victim to be sacrificed on the altar of modernity and progress? the post office?! A place that will survive perhaps only as a sales outlet for various items and services, like any bank, like an insurance office… anything but a post office, thus effectively betraying the primary function for which it was created. Who among us posting a letter or postcard in a mailbox has not felt a thrill in entrusting his or her message to a hole, the inside of which cannot be seen? A bit like inserting one's hand into the famous Mouth of Truth, with the feeling of never being able to take it out again!

In Piazza Bocca della Verità is the ancient marble mascherone, one of Rome's most famous symbols, placed since 1632 in the pronaos of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. The marble disk has the features of a male face with a pierced beard, eyes, nose, and mouth-perhaps of Jupiter, a faun, or a river deity- flanked by several symbols, including a scarab, two claws, and two wolf heads. William Wyler's film Vacanze Romane (1953), starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, established the Mouth of Truth to undisputed international fame.

The artists were invited to “ADOPT” a MAILBOX by photographing it after applying the image of the Bocca della Verità (Mouth of Truth) with the appeal “SAVE ME” and to send a revised print and their thoughts on the closure of post boxes to Ruggero Maggi, in order to obtain, unfortunately, a realistic national and international “map.”

• “Goodbye red mailboxes. Or almost” by Fabio Bonacina (Director of the Museum of Tasso family and Postal History) is an exhaustive historical text on mailboxes
• “Ochopee Post Office” by Gabriele Belletti (Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Italian and French, University of Florida) a detailed analysis of the situation of mailboxes in the United States.
• Stagepoetry a selection of works in memory of Carla Bertola, curated by her partner in life and art, Alberto Vitacchio. “[…] Carla has explored language both in its visual and sound forms. Her route has continued to follow the paths of the written poetry passing constantly to visual experiences, to mail art and sound poetry and works in the field of performance, suggesting very personal research. She has also worked for a long time on women futurism, creating new sound texts, visual scores, performances on ‘tavole parolibere’ like ‘Campo di Marte’ by Enrica Piubellini, presented many times in performance for two voices and after on multitrack like the one kept at the Paul Getty Museum. For more than forty years she has dedicated her commitment to follow her ‘creature’, the international poetry magazine Offerta Speciale (with inside original handmade works by artists) to which have contributed 628 artists from all over the world. Beside the magazine was born also Busta Sorpresa (a container of original visual works of ten artists on sixty copies).”
• ZMAG - Zoom Mail art Group (contacts: The Sticker Dude and Nonlocal Variable) is a mini-community of Mail Artists who enjoy using Zoom to round out our connection to each other created through the exchange of snail mail or email, meeting monthly to share new projects, historical perspectives or issues relating to Mail Art.
• Screening of “ZMAG Postal Film #1” by Imogen Pranger. Comprising 14 uniquely painted, stamped, drawn, splat, and spliced rolls of clear 16millimeter film, brings together participants of the monthly Zoom Mail Artist Group meeting into an exquisite corpse of snail mail celluloid. Each participant's roll has been ordered in accordance to when the roll was received in the mail after being treated, creating unexpected material contrasts and visual harmonies by way of the postal service.
• MAILART song by T. Chew, a country-style divertissement with sounds created using the names and pseudonyms of mailartists.
• edition gxggxxg is a mail art project in which auvikogue/peter schubert invites artists from the world of MailArt or SoundArt - with whom he has contacts or who have been recommended to him - to collaboratively design an envelope containing graphic works and a mini-cdr sound recording. An edition of 10 small artworks with texts in the native language of each individual artist participating in the project. Ruggero Maggi was invited to participate in edition #06. Years ago, he responded to auvikogue's first call for mail art, introducing Peter to the world of mail art, which Ruggero has been a tireless promoter of for decades with his Amazon Archive. Since then, letters have regularly crossed the Alps between the two artists. Maggi focused his work in collaboration with auvikogue on the concept of ‘Non-Violence’ inspired by the thoughts, actions and writings of Mahatma Gandhi, sending a photographic work with 10 interventions and subsequently a video entitled ‘Fax correspondence’, a visual sound art work by Ruggero Maggi & Kappa with the voices of Viola Bergamini and Melissa Simionato, which auvikogue reworked into the audio piece ‘Il decollage non violento di una corrispondenza via fax’ (The non-violent decollage of a fax correspondence). To complete the edition, auvikogue included his own graphic works from previous performances and sent them back to Maggi.

• SAVE THE HISTORICAL MUSEUM OF COMMUNICATION IN ROME

It is now inevitable that M.A.D. Mail Art Day will include a petition. Last year, it was to save the Hungarian Artpool Archive by Galántai, this year it is to save an institution equally important, the Historical Museum of Communication in Rome, which has been closed for years for renovation works. These works should have started three years ago but they are still languishing and will perhaps begin in 2026.

In the meantime, I’m also sending the petition to you, my friends, and asking all of you, Italians and foreigners alike, to sign it in an attempt to save this excellence dedicated to the postal world, which I had the pleasure and privilege of visiting a few years ago. An incredible discovery in Rome's EUR district. A huge, wonderful postal container with the first Roman mailboxes and, little by little, like a fantastic journey through time to the present day, between transistors and satellites, also visiting the control room of the Elettra, Guglielmo Marconi's ship.

https://www.change.org/p/salviamo-il-museo-storico-della-comunicazi...

 

 “RUGGERO MAGGI – VISUAL POETRY”

by Stefano Schiavoni

MUSINF Sala Bugatti | Senigallia

21 November | 10 December 2025

Opening | Friday 21 November 2025 | at 17.00

 

Always in context of M.A.D. Mail Art Day at the MUSINF Sala Bugatti in Senigallia, will be presented, curated by Stefano Schiavoni, the visual poetry exhibition by Ruggero Maggi. This new exhibition project re-proposes and consolidates a proven collaboration while maintaining a relationship to be developed operationally in the near future, through the collaboration between the two museum institutions with the exhibition of works by the main international protagonists of Mail Art present in the Senigallia archive of the Musinf and the centrality of the project M.A.D. Mail Art Day.

 

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

ANDORRA Julien RDX ARGENTINA María Castillo, Silvio De Gracia, Floki Gauvry, Stella Maris Velasco BELGIUM Sjoerd Paridaen BRAZIL Marcelo Dola, Hugo Pontes CANADA Diane Bertrand, Circulaire132 / RF Côté, Susan Gold, Spike Spence CZECH REP Zdenek Sima DENMARK Niels Lomholt FINLAND Marko Heinonen FRANCE Martine Baert et Didier Trumeau, Eric Bensidon, Veronique Champollion, Michel Della Vedova, Lyza Sahertian GERMANY Norbert Böckmann, Hans Braumüller, Maks Dannecker, Fidels Daughter, Thorsten Fuhrmann, Thomas Glatz & Lutz Gemthal, Elke Grundmann, Annegret Heinl, Uwe Höfig, Eberhard Janke (Edition Janus), Siggi Liersch, Susanne Mitterwieser, Andre Radke, Peter Schubert, Ulrich Tarlatt, Horst Tress, Rainer Wieczorek & Antonio Moreno, Lutz Wohlrab GREAT BRITAIN A.1. Waste Paper CO (Michael Leigh) GREECE Nicolas Malevitsis, Katerina Nikoltsou HOLLAND Ko De Jonge, Rod Summers/VEC HUNGARY Peter Abajkovics, Tibor Vass INDIA Renuka Kesaramadu ITALY Dino Aloi, Salvatore Anelli, Giovanni Arici, Tiziana Arici, Franco Ballabeni, Fabrizio Bandini, Nino Barone, Vittore Baroni, Negro Luigi Barquez, Donatella Baruzzi, Nicola Bertoglio, Carla Bertola e Alberto Vitacchio, Chiara Bertoncello, Daniela Billi, Antonio Bobò, Rovena Bocci, Mariella Bogliacino, Maria Bonaduce, Giovanni Bonanno, Giambattista Bonazzoli, Marzia Maria Braglia, Mirta Caccaro, Mariangela Calabrese, Angela Caporaso, Francesca Cenciarini, Giuliana Ceretta, Antonio Chiarello, Maria Antonietta Claretto, Crescenzio D’Ambrosio, Diana Danelli, Patrizia Dellavalle, Annitta Di Mineo, Renata Di Palma, Marcello Diotallevi, Benedetto Fanna, Gretel Fehr, Domenico Ferrara Foria, Anna Finetti, Roberto Formigoni, Attilio Fortini, Antonella Gandini, Ornella Garbin, Massimiliano Ghidini, Mario Giavino, Lino Giussani, Robert James Hanrahan, Peter Hide 311065, I Miradebora, Luigina Iacuzzi, Benedetta Jandolo, Glauco Léndaro Camiless, Alfonso Lentini, Leona K., Pino Lia, Maya Lopez Muro, Gian Paolo Lucato, Serse Luigetti, Ruggero Maggi, Paola Marcucci, Maria Grazia Martina, Anna Maria Matone, Virginia Milici, Annalisa Mitrano, Fernando Montà, Giovanni Morgese, Cristiano Pallara, Walter Pennacchi, Salvatore Pepe, Marisa Pezzoli, Riccardo Pezzoli, Tarcisio Pingitore, Laura Pintus, Franco Piri Focardi, Veronique Pozzi Painé, Vittorio Giuseppe Preite, Ptrzia (TicTac), Alessandra Pucci, Residenza Emanuele Tapparelli D’Azeglio (ospiti e personale), Gaetano Ricci, Elisa Rioda, Sabina Romanin, Antonio Sassu, Roberto Scala, Paolo Simonetti, Cristina Sosio, Lucia Spagnuolo, Giovanni e Renata Strada, Camilla Testori, Elsa Testori, Roberto Testori e Mauro Sanesi, Paola Toffolon, topylabrys, Ilia Tufano, Emilio Vance (Filippo Giaconi), Silvia Venuti JAPAN Tohei Mano MACEDONIA Zlatko Krstevski NORWAY Torill Elisabeth Larsen PHILIPPINES Michelangelo Mayo PORTUGAL Paulo Teles BroTTas ROMANIA Ovidiu Petca RUSSIA Evrika Junglle Mail Art, Alexander Limarev SERBIA Nenad Vuckovic SINGAPORE Gloria Keh SPAIN Sabela Baña, Pedro Bericat, Francisco Galvez Dead Wax, Miguel Jimenez, Isabel Jover, Maxima Maria Kinsky (Galeria HMH), Severiano Lago Palmero, Cesar Reglero, Jaume Rocamora, Andreas Streicher (Galeria HMH), Judith Sturm (Galeria HMH), Mikel Untzilla, Valdor, Manuel Xio Blanco SWEDEN Henry Grahn Hermunen SWITZERLAND Ueli Sager TAIWÁN #FFFF00 USA John M. Bennett, Cecelia Chapman, C.T. Chew, DKA Post (Darlene Altschul) Cascadia Artpost (Jack Lattemann) Nonlocal Variable (Duane Schulz) | Art installation Flux Bombing, Mike Dyar / Eat Art, Willie Marlowe, C. Mehrl Bennett, Nonlocal Variable, Joey PatrickT, Steve Random, The Sticker Dude (Joel Cohen), Tofu.

 

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS "ZMAG Postal Film #1"

Imogen Pranger, Reid Wood, Mars Tokyo, John M. Bennett, C. Mehrl Bennett, Theo Nelson, R.F. Cote, Nonlocal Variable, Neosho, Michelangelo Mayo, Mike Dickau, Joey PatrickT, Ruggero Maggi, Bibiana Padilla-Maltos, The Sticker Dude & Adam Roussopoulos.

Thanks: Mirco Giacomelli Foundation, @rtLine C.I.D.I. Senigallia, Territori Sensibili

 

M.A.D. MAIL ART DAY | 16 OCTOBER

by Ruggero Maggi

MAM di Montecarotto (AN) via Circonvallazione 4 | Montecarotto (AN)

16 October 2025 | 20 January 2026

Opening | Thursday 16 October 2025 | at 18.00

FREE ENTRY

opening hours and visits | [e-mail] | tel.[phone] | [e-mail]

 

“RUGGERO MAGGI – VISUAL POETRY”

by Stefano Schiavoni

MUSINF Sala Bugatti via Marchetti 73 | Senigallia (AN)

21 November | 10 December 2025

Opening | Friday 21 November 2025 | at 17.00

FREE ENTRY

opening hours and visits | www.senigalliacittadellafotografia.it

 

Evento segnalato da Archivio Ophen Virtual Art di Salerno