magyar

ARTPOOL’S ART TOUR, 14 June–31 July 1982

Artpool’s second art tour project – the European tour

Travelling like a tourist, with a borrowed car, through six countries. A personal meeting with networkers we already know well from the mail art network, exchange of ideas, exchange of publications, collecting documentation, collecting addresses, making photo- and audio documentation, etc.

The venues of the meetings had been planned in advance, so during this time the postal network was also in operation, i.e. throughout the tour greetings from Europe were coming and going from east to west and back. The final result of the collecting activity was eight boxes of archive material.

The audio recording were used for Artpool Radio 5’s programme. The travel diary was used for a sheet of stamps and some illustrated reports in the following year for the first four issues of the samizdat art magazine entitled AL (Artpool Letter)

The tour, despite being planned, was a series of unplanned events. For example, external events such as overlap of the Dokumenta in Kassel and the Venice Biennial, but especially the radio and television broadcasts of the Football World Cup: they were in the centre of attention from Maastricht, Belgium, to Dego, Italy. It almost became unnoticeable that we were crossing from one country into another; only the languages spoken in each one helped us to know where we actually were. When we arrived in Dego in the evening, the Italians had just won the world championship and the frantic celebrations went on until dawn.

(English translation by Krisztina Sarkady-Hart)