Dear Networker,
I started to work on Artpool’s online Mail Art Chro-No-Logy in 2015, elaborating the chronology of the international Mail Art / Fluxus / Correspondence Art network. The starting point of our editorial research was the collection of materials (works, project documentations, correspondence and other publications) which has been accumulated by György Galántai’s and Júlia Klaniczay’s creative and organizational activities. These materials in question have been systematized by the archivists working at Artpool.
The collection had been complemented by various Correspondence Art / Networker archive materials donated to Artpool (by, among others, Gábor Tóth, Mario Lara, Patricia Collins, Pete Horobin, Klaus Groh and Peter Küstermann). On the other hand we leaned on the international Mail Art chronology published by John Held, Jr., listing projects from 1970 to 1985 as well as on the easy-to-use online Lomholt Mail Art Archive launched by Niels Lomholt in 2014.
We know about many past projects which we couldn’t include as except an invitation/call we have no documents (like a catalog or at least a list of participants) about the realization of it.
We have already been in touch with a couple of artists during the last years. We’d like to thank the following networkers for helping us by sending missing documents and/or first hand informations for our research: Vittore Baroni, Paulo Bruscky, Leonhard Frank Duch, Luc Fierens, ha (on the DATA project by Pete Horobin), John Held, Jr., Alexander Hirka, Peter Küstermann, Larry Rippel, Herbert Rodriguez, Gábor Tóth, Chuck Welch etc.
You can reach the Mail Art Chro-No-Logy website at https://artpool.hu/MailArt/chrono/introduction.html. Please feel free to comment and share your thoughts on it.
Also I’m sending to you a questionnaire attached about the topic which I hope you’ll be so kind to fill out and send back to us. This would be great help to focus my research and to look up more materials in our archives.
Questionnaire for Artpool’s Mail Art Chro-No-Logy
We kindly ask you to add any information whether online or offline in relation to your answers below.
1) Would you mind sending us your list of MA shows and projects you organized?
2) Do you have a list of MA shows you participated in?
3) Which MA shows do you consider the most important in the 1970s? Could you give a TOP5 list?
4) Which MA shows do you consider the most important in the 1980s? Could you give a TOP5 list?
5) Which MA shows do you consider the most important in the 1990s? Could you give a TOP5 list?
6) Which MA shows do you consider the most important since the year 2000? Could you give a TOP5 list?
7) Which Congress Years did you participate in? Could you give us a listing?
Viktor Kotun, Budapest, 2024